WASHINGTON, D.C. – The realization that voters who live 15 minutes outside this city are completely disconnected from people who work and govern here has finally hit.
At least it is resonating with the brains who must run the campaigns to retain the largest congressional majority ever held by a political party; the jury is still out with the Obama administration.
“It’s bad. No, let me rephrase that – it’s toxic for any incumbent, especially for one that has a ‘D’ after their name,” one in-the-loop Democratic strategist admitted over coffee within the shadow of the Capitol.
He’s not predicting total defeat for Democrats in Congress and governor’s mansions. Yet if the election were held today, his client losses would outnumber victories, big-time.
“The president and the Democratic Party need a do-over moment,” he says. “But it has to be genuine. It has to be believable. People will see through anything less in a moment, and that is when we really start losing seats.”
On the heels of President Obama’s State of the Union address, his team dispatched him on a “salt of the earth” tour (to quote The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart) to reconnect with Main Street America. They also dispatched him for separate “question time” sessions with congressional Republicans and Democrats, to show he’s “listening” to everyone.
His messages have been pretty much the same: Big banks, Wall Street and Big Oil are bad; Washington’s partisan bickering must stop; Republicans are the party of “no.”
Here’s the problem with that: Obama campaigned on all of this two years ago; he had a whole year to do something about any of these issues. Eventually, voters figure out that while the rhetoric is glorious, the results are flat.
One Democrat who was able to come down from the political-elite mountain was Hillary Clinton.
In the 2008 primary, Clinton got her groove going when she relaxed, listened to and connected with voters. Unfortunately for her, that didn’t happen until the Ohio and Texas primaries, when she was too bogged down in super-delegate math and caucus losses to win the nomination.
Yet Clinton “got it” far faster than Obama has. She was able to rebound and win just about all of the final primaries and, eventually, the popular vote – but she lost the political-elite super-delegates and hard-left party activists who vote in caucuses.
In a twist of pure irony, Obama needs to pull a “Clinton” to win back voter confidence.