Democrats are still in deep denial about 2016. They were supposed to enjoy a landslide victory that would vanquish the Republican Party forever. It wasn't supposed to be close. Then they lost, badly. On the heels of defeat they've employed a variety of strategies to help them cope.
First, they claimed the election was rigged, then we endured a worthless recount effort that only solidified the win, then they started screaming about popular votes, crowd sizes, and "legitimacy." None of the caterwauling mattered because none of it changed the fact that Hillary would never be President. Now, they're starting to look toward the future.
The plan is obstruction until the midterms. In 2018, they say, things will be different.
The only problem is, as The AP points out, they probably won't.
Passionate protests against Donald Trump's presidency have swelled the ranks of Democratic activists, but their new enthusiasm faces a hard reality: Republicans remain well-positioned to retain their grip on power in the 2018 elections.
While Republicans hold only a slim majority in the U.S. Senate, Democrats occupy most of the seats up for election in two years. That means they must play defense against Republicans, especially in 10 states that Trump won.
In other words, Democrats are going to be playing defense on their own one-yard line. It's obvious that the base is ready for the fight. The true believes are furious with a capital "F" and we've seen them trashing neighborhoods all across the country. However, unless something big changes, the Dems defense will probably be overrun like last night's Atlanta Falcons.
AP quotes a Princeton statistician named Sam Wang, who thinks there's going to need to be a major shakeup if the Democrats hope to retake any ground.
But for Democrats to win back Congress, Wang said it "would take an extreme event. The question is, are we seeing something that's headed towards that?"
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting 59 Republican-held House seats in 24 states as it builds toward the next election. Those include 23 districts where Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton defeated Trump and various others that Republicans took away from Democrats in recent years.
It also is beginning to place full-time paid organizers in 20 of those districts, something the committee says it has never done at this early stage.
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You'll notice a theme in all of this. It's "anger and protest." ABC even put it front and center when it posted this article on Twitter:
ABC News notices that 2018 is going to be horrible for Democrats
"Despite surging protests." ...Dems still seem to think that the various protests we've witnessed are a sign of strength and enthusiasm. Their problem is that the only people who feel that way are people who are already voting for Democrats. The faithful may love the riots, marches, vandalism, and rallies, but to everyone else it looks like a violent temper tantrum. If the DNC wants to turn the tides, it will have to either win back voters who've jumped ship, or it will have to corral new voters.
That means changing their message.
If, as the AP suggests, the plan is to deploy a small army of organizers, they haven't learned their lesson. The DNC's thuggish, street-level, "organizing" - coupled with an out-of-touch intractable agenda - is what got them into this mess. Doubling down won't work.
As long as their strategy of constant, vocal, outrage continues, the turnaround isn't coming.
