Editor’s Note: Cornell Belcher is president of Brilliant Corners Research & Strategies and was a pollster for Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns as well as for the Democratic National Committee. He is also a CNN political commentator. Follow him on Twitter @cornellbelcher. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
Story highlights
Cornell Belcher: Obama should have spent more time on campaign trail
Democrats fled from best progressive persuasion voice in our times: Belcher
Clinton Democrats, there are only Democrats, Belcher says
Shortly before the midterm election, I wrote a strategy memo outlining how core Democratic voters were not yet energized and well-positioned to vote.
It shouldn’t have been much of a bombshell. It simply outlined what everyone already knew: Low turnout would equal disaster for Democrats.
Later I wrote a commentary for CNN.com outlining the enormous differential in likely turnout between Democratic and Republican precincts. For certain, the Achilles’ heel for Democrats was a broad and deep drop-off of its inveterate voters.
When the electorate shrinks, Democrats lose. To succeed, Democrats must always be expanding the electorate and using every tool in their arsenal to do so.
This brings me to how I was wrong on Election Night.
I was wrong to go along with conventional wisdom about how the election was all about rejecting Obama, and that it would be wise not to make him a focal point.
According to exit polls, most voters in fact rejected the idea that their vote was in opposition to Obama. A 45% plurality said Obama had not been a factor in their vote; 53% of independent voters and a larger majority (55%) of moderate voters said Obama was not a factor in their vote.
Obama was very much a factor for Republicans. But for the broad swath of voters outside of hard partisans, this election wasn’t about him.
But for Democrats, it should have been.
Here is why: According to projections by the United States Election Project, turnout in the 2014 midterm elections was the lowest in over six decades, a pathetic 36%.
Guess which political leader is really good at energizing turnout and expanding the electorate?
In 2008, candidate Obama helped increase turnout to an astonishing 62%, helping Democrats win seats up and down the ballot in both red and blue states. In 2012, he did it again, with close to 60% turnout – once more winning a majority on his way to winning back-to-back majorities, which hasn’t been done by a Democrat in my lifetime. He helped Democrats pick up Congressional seats even in a year many prognosticators said Democrats would lose the Senate.
No, President Obama shouldn’t have been put on a bus tour through the Deep South, but he certainly should not have been locked away in the White House either. There hasn’t been a better campaigner in either party in over three decades than Barack Obama. When he is on the campaign trail, he can bring stadiums full of voters to their feet, as if at a Beyoncé concert.
This midterm, Democrats basically told the best campaigner in our history to go sit in a corner. It wasn’t the right map. They essentially told Michael Jordan not to suit up for game seven because the game was being played in a hostile arena.
And why did we do that? Because we didn’t have the fortitude to stand with him and the accomplishments we should have trumpeted: lower unemployment, declining crime, economic growth that is the envy of the European Union, manufacturing growth, a booming auto industry, low gas prices, a record number of people with health insurance, the deficit shrinking as a proportion of GDP, and Osama bin Laden dead. Hell, with a lot less, President Reagan declared it was “morning in America.”
“Yeah,” you tell me, “but Americans don’t feel the economy is getting better.”
Well, you know how NOT to change that narrative – by running from our accomplishments.
The painful truth is, we ran away from the best progressive persuasion voice in our times because the ghost of our country’s original sin still haunts us. We looked at that battleground map running through the heart of Dixie and trembled. We ran away from Obama instead of fighting, instead of calling to the better angels of the American electorate.
We tried to parse our party’s identity, which only reinforced the tribalization of our electorate. So we called ourselves “Clinton Democrats.” Pitiful. We all know what that means. It only validates the putrid, subtle racism that it is attempting to perfume.
Note to future Democratic campaigns: There are no Clinton Democrats, there are only Democrats.
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