|
2002 Midterms -An Electoral DebacleThe results speak for themselves. On Nov. 5, Democrats lost seats in both houses of Congress and failed to pick up a majority of the governors’ houses as they had been forecasting going into the elections. Arguably, more devastating is not just what they lost, it is how they lost. Credible, articulate, attractive Democratic candidates were defeated across the country. In Minnesota, following the death of Sen. Paul Wellstone, his stand-in, former Vice President Walter Mondale, lost to a less experienced Republican challenger. Republicans also swept statewide races for governor, secretary of state, and auditor. The normally sober Associated Press called the Minnesota Republican victory a “romp.” A big factor in the Democrats' Minnesota collapse was the media firestorm that followed a memorial celebration for Wellstone that Republicans complained turned into a political rally. Most of the memorial gave voice to the personal grief caused by the plane crash that killed Wellstone, his wife and his daughter. But some eulogies were unusually political as they called for continuation of the senator's commitment to social justice and a Democratic victory. Given the way the national news media works these days, the consequences were predictable. Republican pundits pounced on the Democrats for an unseemly display of politics at a time of mourning. Some conservative commentators even exaggerated the facts of the memorial service. The day after the service, for instance, CNN's Tucker Carlson said, "The political world is still reeling tonight from yesterday's nauseating display in Minnesota, where a memorial service for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone was hijacked by partisan zealots and turned into a political rally. Republican friends of Sen. Wellstone were booed and shouted down as they tried to speak." Carlson's account may have succeeded in stirring the fury of the Republican base around the country, but the reality of the memorial was far less dramatic. No Republicans were shouted down as they tried to speak. From the crowd of 20,000 people, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott was greeted with "scattered boos ... as he entered the arena," wrote the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "Lott smiled and waved."
For Democrats, the Minnesota election debacle wasn’t the worst of Election Night 2002, however.
In Georgia, a Republican won the governor’s race for the first time since 1872. Sen. Max Cleland, a triple amputee Vietnam War hero, lost after being labeled soft on national defense by an opponent who never wore a uniform. In the House races, Democrats lost in the 11th and 12th districts, which had been carved by the Democratic-controlled state legislature to favor Democratic candidates.
In Maryland, Republican Bob Erlich defeated the sitting Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend to become the first Republican governor of Maryland since Spiro Agnew in the 1960s.
In Massachusetts, Republican Mitt Romney defeated state Treasurer Shannon O’Brien to become the fourth straight Republican governor in a state where Democrats hold a 3-to-1 voter registration advantage.
In Missouri, Democratic Sen. Jean Carnahan, the wife of the 2000 Democratic Senate candidate Mel Carnahan who died in a plane crash weeks before the election, lost to a much younger candidate, Jim Talent. Talent won after claiming Carnahan was part of the Democratic Senate majority that was blocking George W. Bush’s agenda.
In New Hampshire, Republican John Sununu defeated a popular sitting governor, Jeanne Shaheen. The race, which had been moving toward Shaheen one week before the election, turned toward Sununu in large part because of the message that Sununu would stand with Bush.
In race after race, Democrats struggled to get their message out and Republicans successfully muted core Democratic issues, such as prescription-drug legislation and environmental protection, by offering weaker policy alternatives. On top of that, Republicans gained by riding Bush's coattails as he stumped for Republicans and questioned whether the Democratic-controlled Senate cared about the security of the American people.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2002/111902a.html
Monday, Nov. 11, 2002
Howard Kurtz:don't think there's any way to cast this other than as a Democratic debacle. The party now controls zero branches of government. They lost only a few seats, but the opposition party nearly always gains seats in a midterm election. They lost races that no one thought they would lose (like the Georgia governor's race). The expectation, set in part by the media, was that they would probably hold the Senate. Yes, the number of seats is small, and a switch of 40,000 or so votes in two or three states would have meant Tom Daschle could keep his job. But the Republicans turned out their voters and the Democrats couldn't match that enthusiasm, in part because of what even many Democrats now say was the lack of a coherent message.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/02/regular/politics/r_politics_kurtz111102.htm
Reasons for GOP Success
There are several reasons why the GOP did well in this election cycle. First, the party successfully redefined the national agenda away from what usually is a focus on domestic economic issues. Midterms typically center on issues such as jobs, education, and health care, not foreign policy. By taking a tough stance on international terrorism and arguing for the need to use force against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Bush pushed the political debate onto terms that were much more favorable to Republicans than Democrats.
Second, the GOP used the bully pulpit of the White House to raise money for their party's candidates around the country and to send the president into crucial swing states in the last three weeks of the campaign. With Bush's popularity hovering in the mid-60s, he was able to swing close states into the Republican column in several House, Senate, and governor's races.
Third, the relatively low turnout of voters across the country played to the GOP demography. Republican voters tend to be more upscale and prosperous than Democrats. In close races, suburban areas posted much higher turnout than did urban areas that traditionally have favored the Democrats.
By having followed a strategy of blurring differences with the GOP, Democrats were not able to energize their base and convince their partisans that the stakes of this election were high enough that people not very engaged. In a situation where there is low turnout and Republican supporters are more likely to cast ballots, the GOP was able to win many of the closest races on Election Night.
Finally, Republicans had a good combination of money and message. In many states, the GOP candidate out-spent the Democrat and had a message of being tough on foreign policy, conservative on taxes, and moderate on education and health care. Meanwhile, Democrats generally had less money and were unclear about whether they wanted to confront the president or blur the differences with him. In politics, money and message is a tough combination to beat.
http://www.insidepolitics.org/heard/report1102.html
Clinton: Democrats "were missing in action"
In a major political address this week, former President Bill Clinton bluntly dissected the Democrats' recent electoral losses. Moving to the left, he said, is not a solution -- but fighting back is.
"Democrats have to have ideas to win," he said. "We were missing in action in national security and we had no positive plan for America's domestic future." To get the party back on its feet, he says, hard changes need to be made -- but moving to the left is not one of them.
Democrats have to have ideas to win. Republicans will always have more powerful interest groups and the fervor of right wing emotions, as we saw with the Confederate flag issue in Georgia and South Carolina in this recent election. They have an increasingly right wing and bellicose conservative press, with the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal emboldened by the last election, to urge that what we should really be doing is raising taxes on lower income working people so they will come to hate the government just as much as the editors of the Wall Street Journal do. And we have an increasingly docile establishment press, to be fair, partly because of the enormous trauma of September 11th and its aftermath.
On the other hand, the cultural bases of the two parties are more or less even, about 45 percent of America each, and we win on the issues when we put them out in a balanced and fair way and people can hear what we have to say. We have to find a way that brings people together across party and income, racial and religious lines. In the recent election I was honored to do what little I could, mostly to keep our candidates from being even more badly outspent than they were going to be anyway. In the future, that will be done by others, especially as the presidential campaign takes over. I beg to differ with those who think we don't have leaders of today and tomorrow who can do that. I think we have a lot of very, very good and able and articulate people in the House and the Senate and in other areas of public life. I think the most important thing is that we have to get the ideas out there.
http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/feature/2002/12/06/clinton/index.html
Election Night Theme #1: Baffled by why the poor economy didn't help Democrats more and hurt Republicans more. Just two examples of this common befuddlement:
-- ABC's Claire Shipman, recounting the findings of an ABC News telephone poll, during that network's 10pm EST hour:
“A lot of people have wondered why, given the state of the economy, are the Republicans doing as well as they're doing. Why, for example, is the President's approval rating as high as it is? Look at this first set of numbers we have about what people think about the economy right now. Only 28 percent of the people we asked think it's in good shape, 72 percent actually think it's in bad shape. But what's happening essentially is people aren't blaming Bush for that and that's because when you look at his approval rating and you look at the approval rating he has, especially on the issue of terrorism, that's acting as a shield not only for President Bush but for Republicans around the country.”
-- NBC's Tom Brokaw to Dick Gephardt during the 10pm EST hour: “Congressman, a lot of Democrats were surprised that your party was not able to take more advantage of voter concern with education and in the economy and health care issues. In fact, this could be a historic election for the Republicans -- maybe for only the third time since the Civil war they are able to gain seats while holding the White House.”
http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20021106.asp#1
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
