Sunday, November 09, 2014

Why is Debbie Wasserman Schultz getting a pass on democratic thrashing in 2014 mid-terms

By now we all know that the democrats took a major ass kicking in the 2014 mid-terms. Many have blamed President Obama for this and maybe rightfully so. Many talking heads have said that this election was a referendum on President Obama's policies. As the President of the US, he is the head of the party so some blame goes to him the same way he would have gotten credit if the democrats had held onto the US Senate.

Many democratic candidates have been blamed for running bad campaigns or single issue campaigns. Some kept rambling about women's reproductive rights, another about income inequality, and another about Obamacare. But they didn't seem to focus on the many ongoing issues affecting voters in their states. Now even though all politics is local on a national level the democrats running for Senate, and the House of Representatives seemed to have no one coherent message. The republicans had one, and it was simple, Obama is bad. Yeah, they ran against something instead of for something but it was a simple message that was uniform across the states and worked.

The infuriating part is that the democrats had great things to talk about. Unemployment continues to drop, gas prices continue to drop, and the stock market is booming and the democrats mentioned none of that in a nationwide narrative. There was no one message that resonated across the country as the republicans had.

Democratic candidates in some states ran away from the president's policies, even attacked him on some issues and asked him not to come to their states. This resulted in losses for everyone that tried that strategy of distancing themselves from the president. No one seemed to get the idea that he could ENERGIZE and MOBILIZE the democratic base.

I'm wondering when DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz will get the blame for this? As the chair it was her job to get the message and a strategy out there like her counterpart at the RNC, Reince Priebus did. It was her job to get candidates to but into a comprehensive strategy. In my opinion, she did not, and that led to a huge failure on election night. She deserves a large part of the blame, and I'm wondering why she hasn't stepped down as chair or why President Obama hasn't asked her to step down?

Quite simply she did not get the job done and does not deserve another bite at the apple. I hope we as democrats don't intend to let her led the charge again in 2016 because, in 2014, she led us to republican control of both the House and Senate.

I'm just saying.

George L. Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.com

No comments: