Senate Democrats Saw GOP Wave Before Election Night

[brooklynite]

Source: Roll Call

The executive directors of the Democratic and Republican Senate campaign arms broke down the results of Tuesday’s midterm elections Thursday at an Election Impact conference hosted by CQ Roll Call, giving a candid assessment of the factors that led to Republicans taking back control of the Senate for the first time since 2006.

Guy Cecil, who ran the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the past two cycles, said top-level Democrats knew about a week before Election Day the tide had moved against them and were bracing for losses across the board as results came in Tuesday night.

“We had hopes we could stem the tide, but it became clear to us that it would be difficult to do,” Cecil told the audience.

Read more: http://atr.rollcall.com/senate-democrats-saw-gop-wave-before-election-night/?dcz=emailalert

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Not what they told me on Friday...someone's going to be getting a very grumpy letter.

[Autumn]

1. You are a big wig in the party right? I hope you do more than

a grumpy letter. It sucks to be lied to.

[brooklynite]

7. I cc'd my letter to five donors with deeper pockets than I have...

I'm waiting to see the response before I escalate.

[elleng]

13. Glad to hear you're doing this, brooklyn.

[Renew Deal]

2. I'm sure it didn't put a significant dent in your finances.

[Wellstone ruled]

3. When your miilk toast messages are similiar

to the opposition,you get what you say. Heard a similar scenario back in August from a old campaign friend,skeptical and hoping the campaign people could some how change what the sampling was showing. The decisions to run away from Mr. Obama was biting them in the ass and they knew it. When the Rethugs framed their messages as the President and that President,never using the Presidents name Obama,the message was visually planted and with it a undertone of racism. And so it goes.

[msongs]

4. first up stop calling it a wave. it was statistically typical for midterms nt

[Treant]

6. Thank you!

If that was a wave, I'd hate to see an actual, you know, wave.

Calling this a wave is like calling the Ebola issue in the United States an epidemic. Both are overly, obviously hyperbolic.

[AlbertCat]

8. it was statistically typical for midterms

not to mention nearly every state in play was already deep red.

[NordicLeft]

12. Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia are "deep red"??

[brentspeak]

16. Agreed. Ludicrous statement above yours'. n/t

[ballyhoo]

17. Agreed. Some people say strange things. Wave or

not, it was the lowest voter turnout since the 1940's.

[AlbertCat]

20. Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia are "deep red"??

Yep.

North Carolina is my home state....and it is now deep red....pay attention!

SD and WV.... are you kidding?


Remember....there's a black man in the White House. The bigots came out everywhere!

[wisteria]

25. Do so research. Up until recent years all these states were more red than blue, and at best

they have been a washed out purple during the Obama administration.

[wisteria]

26. I understand what you mean.

They were very red before they ever became purple and blue in recent years. These states always seemed to be teetering blue, with huge undercurrents of red. Conservative voters can out because they were energized.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

5. Of COURSE they knew it. The Republican Base was determined to stop the black guy....

Only they don't call him that.

The young people and the Liberal Base?

They're bummed they didn't get their pony.

[cosmicone]

9. Stupid democrats always fall for the repuke tricks

First Al Gore was convinced that running on Clinton's record would be detrimental and he distanced himself from Clinton with a big drama. Instead, he should have embraced Clinton and ran on continuing his economic policies. He would then have had a supreme-court-proof majority.

Now, the democrats were convinced by the repukes that Obama was a liability and they ran away from him. Instead, they should have touted job growth, stabilization of the economy, Obamacare's advantages etc. and fewer people would have been dissatisfied with the democrats.

I would have started every stump speech with "Remember how things were the last time Republicans had control in 2008 ... Do you want to go back there?"

[elleng]

15. Yes, and thanks

for mentioning Gore's disastrous approach.

[Fla Dem]

10. They played defense instead of offense

Their messaging sucked.

"He added, “Over two-thirds of all Senate ads that the Republicans ran were about the president, which is a pretty remarkable statistic. … And when you’re doing that in states on this map, it certainly had an outsized effect.”

They should have hit back with all the Obama accomplishments. Instead they let the lies and half truths stay unopposed. Bunch of cowards.

Alison Grimes thought she could tiptoe around who she voted for. Instead of just coming out and saying she voted for BO and then listing all his accomplishments as they related to Kentuckians.

Democrats need to learn from the Republicans. They had nothing to run on except to bash the President, and yet they were on the offensive.

Turnout of course played a major role in the Dem's defeat, but I just wish they had gone down swinging.

http://www.democratichub.com/obama-administration-accomplishments.aspx

[blm]

11. Then why didn't you move quickly to CORRECT the tidal wave of BS the GOP was using?

Obama could have had a longasittakes press conference with an opportunity to address the FALLACIES being pushed by the GOP propaganda machine and repeated by their corporate mediawhores. Ebola, ISIL, Medicare, economy, gas prices.

[ramapo]

14. Typical gutless Democrats

Democrats got what they deserved. I've seen this show before, last in 2010. Imagine if Republicans were running on BO's record. There would've been campaign commercials touting record stock market, lower federal deficit, lower gas prices, higher exports, lower unemployment, lower uninsured and much more. Then there would've been lists of how the other side had blocked, time after time, legislation to address middle-class problems. There would've have been a pithy slogan like "Working for all Americans".

Now if Republicans had just lost their majority after being thwarted by a filibuster-wielding scumbag. They might have said, "sure we'll cooperate", while telling that scumbag, Guess what? Go f-yourself because we're going to filibuster everything you want to do.

But Democrats just don't have the balls to be as big a bunch of dicks as Republicans have been. They will go along mostly, probably because they feed at the same money troughs as do the Repubs.

It is truly a disheartening spectacle.

But at least Mitch McConnell says the Senate will have a five-day workweek. Kudos to him for at least making this sorry collections of SOBs spend a full week at work.

[mazzarro]

19. I have said this before and I'll keep repeating it!

I believe that Dem leadership purposefully down play improvements wrought by liberal policies and Democratic party administrations because their corporate overlords frown on these type of things being made known to the wider population.

These things are not regularly put out by the MSM and even when there are, there must be some type of couching of the information to minimize their impact. So Dem leadership never allow any campaign to run with liberal accomplishments proudly and loudly touted at all; instead the accomplishments are treated as somethings to be ashamed of.

The penalty for contravening the rule of the overlords is lose of lucrative appointments to corporate boards, endorsement and speaking fees which I believe Dem leadership and their associated political advisers dread like plague.

[caber09]

18. Notice the tone of the media too.

For the last 18 months, it was smart for the Ds to run away from Obama, then Tues night and since then, saying they shouldve run on Obamas/Dems accomplisments....Hey remember 2008....we are better off because....x y z...etc, Alot of this is also due to the media playing up the obama hate...and of course then saying no they shouldve used him more

[Starry Messenger]

21. How insensitive to not let you know first.

They told me all about it in an increasingly desperate series of fundraising emails.

[global1]

22. If It Was Known Before The Election That We Were Going To Take A Drubbing Then....

they should have been readying for the day after the election a plan to go on the offensive. I've said in other posts here on DU today that the Dems now need to go all out offense.

They say - the best defense is a good offense. Given that we should hit the ground running to beat the Rethugs to the punch and start pushing things through that are progressive and populist and the American People will support. If the Rethugs start shooing those down - then maybe the People's eyes will be opened as to which Party has their best interests at heart.

[PSPS]

23. LOL. Hardly a "wave."

Of course, everything is nothing but spin these days. But this was no "wave." Democrats didn't start voting for republicans as the spinmeisters try to imply. They just didn't vote. This always happens in the mid-term of any president's second term. What's remarkable is that democratic turnout was far lower than it had been in recent history. And we all know whom to blame for that.

[pscot]

24. I was wondering about this

Democratic leadership had to have seen this coming. They couldn't very well cop to it beforehand, but internal polls must have shown at least the broad outlines.

[wisteria]

27. I could see this coming. The media was trying real hard to make this the Republican year,

and our own messaging sucked. I always tried to talk up our President's record of accomplishments, but it was discouraging to see our own candidates stutter and grope for a way to answer the question about voting for our President. Why couldn't they stand tall and tell the truth? This is the exact thing the Repubs did when Bush was in office, and they lost.
I gave donations very selectively, because I figured I would be throwing my money away otherwise. The candidates I did support with my donations won, by the way.

[davidpdx]

28. I think the whole lot of them were in denial

All of them should be fired. Cecil as DSCC, Wasserman-Schultz as DCCC Chair, etc. Completely clean house.

[JudyM]

29. and Reid. How has he led, exactly? nt