Noemie Emery of the Washington Examiner blames two of the Democrats’ most successful campaigners for the party’s present national electoral woes.
Face it, Democrats, where you are at the start of 2017 is not where you thought you would be.
Just eight years ago you were looking at several decades of liberal governance under your very own Franklin D. Roosevelt, with united control of the federal government. Now, as they say, you can drive to Utah from Florida without passing through one state that is not under unified GOP governance. Your political leadership is now geriatric, and your candidate cupboard is bare. And what set of miscreants brought this upon you? Look no further than your most recent two-term-winning presidents, so glib, so winning, and so very persuasive that they lured you out on a limb that they sawed off behind you, and left you to fend for yourselves.
First is our man-of-the-world 44th president, whose superb education at all the best places failed to include fundamentals of power, such as that weakness abroad invites further predation, and that no domestic program can succeed and be stable unless it rests on a broad and bipartisan base. …
… [I]n the elections that followed when Obama was not on the ballot, issues that rose from the healthcare debacle mowed down line after line of Democratic incumbents like the Union artillery destroyed Pickett’s Charge. 2010 was the reaction to the bill’s passage, 2014 was the year people began losing their plans and their doctors, and 2016 was the year premiums rose by one-fourth just before the election, doing Hillary Clinton no good.
When the dust cleared, Democrats had lost 1,030 seats at the state and federal level and were at their lowest ebb since the late 1920s. And then, just when your party was hurting, you were dealt blow number two by old Bill.
With a candidate bench verging on practically nothing, the last thing you needed was someone to scare off potential contenders, but that happened to be what you got. Rolling in money since 2009 due to the pay-to-play system that had reigned while she held office, backed to the hilt by friends in high places, Clinton Inc. made it clear from the moment in 2013 that she stepped down from office that 2016 was Hillary’s Moment, and challenges to her would not be allowed.