Now that the results from NJ and VA have been masticated for a few days, it´s pretty obvious that the most ominous–but potentially reversible–factor in the dual Democratic defeats was a massive change in the composition of the electorate. According to exit polls, under-30 voters represented 21 percent of the Virginia electorate in 2008, and only 10 percent last Tuesday. And in NJ, the under-30 share of the vote dropped from 17 percent in 2008 to 8 percent in 2009.
African-American turnout didn´t drop so much; in VA, it declined from 20% of the electorate in 2009 to 16 percent this year, and in NJ, it actually went up marginally as a share of the electorate. But since turnout generally dropped, it´s clear that 2008´s massive African-American turnout for the Democratic ticket was not replicated.
With Democratic fears about 2010 already heavily focused on the typically older and whiter composition of midterm electorates, the NJ-VA results simply confirm what we already knew, but at a level of intensity that is surprisiing (though Corzine´s general unpopularity and Deeds´ questionable campaign tactics are responsible for some of the problem).
The question going forward, of course, is why the Obama Coalition turnout was so weak, and what, if anything, Demcrats can do to reverse this trend during the next year.
And that´s where the relative clarity over the numbers breaks down into varying interpretations over the implications.
Unsurprisingly, many self-conscious Democratic progressives think that Obama´s “centrism” has “discouraged the Democratic base,” much as, they believe, Bill Clinton did so in his first two years, leading to the Republican landslide of 1994. In this view, the administration and congressional Democrats need to forget once and for all about “bipartisanship,” congressional compromises, Blue-Dog-coddling, or deficit worries, and plunge ahead with a boldly progressive agenda that revitalizes the 2008 coalition. This interpretation, of course, collides with the counsel of those focused on the disastrous performance of 2009 Democratic gubernatorial candidates among independents, who are (often falsely) assumed to be “centrist” in orientation.
Others focus on the mechanics of voter mobilization, and suggest that what most needs to happen in the next year is a rebuilding of the Obama ¨”machine” that helped boost minority and youth turnout to historic levels in 2008.
And a third theory is simply that conditions in the country, and the enduring unpopularity of both political parties, has eroded the Democratic vote in those segments of the electorate least likely to vote (young voters being most conspicious in that category). According to this theory, a record of forward momentum in Congress (on health care and climate change) and on the economy is most crucial in reducing the fallloff in pro-Obama turnout and the carnage among independents.
The first and third theories point in different directions, since a ¨”bold progressive¨ direction may not be consistent with congressional accomplishments (aiming instead at a Trumanesque placement of blame on Republican obstruction and extremism). And both theories may not sufficiently account for the difficulty in transferring Obama´s relatively strong approval ratings in the potential electorate as a whole to actual voters deciding between actual Democratic and Republican candidates competing across the country in individual races. As Jonathan Singer pointed out this week at MyDD, one scenario going forward is that Barack Obama could become a latter-day Ike, incapable of transferring personal popularity to his party (though split-ticket voting has vastly declined since the 1950s).
Democrats need to debate and sort out these theories of last week´s turnout calamity. But one this is clear: a continuing focus on the dangerous extremism of the GOP is consistent with every theory, particularly if, as is likely, Republicans go into 2010 hoping to reclaim control of the House, and head towards 2012 with a presidential field tilting to the crazy Right. You can argue all day about whether Obama or congressional Democrats have dashed the hopes of many 2008 voters for dramatic change in Washington. But 2008 Obama voters who are made abundantly aware that today´s Republicans want to govern from a position well to the Right of that of George W. Bush and Tom DeLay are a lot more likely to go to the polls next November no matter how sanguine they are about the administration´s record.

If you like a blog that both skewers low-watt political commentary and provides an important reality check about a much misunderstood political category, read Nate Silver’s post “Independent Voters and Empty Explanations” at FiveThirtyEight.com.
Silver begins by quoting from articles by writers who should know better, including Karl Rove, all in agreement that ‘Independent voters’ hurt the Dems in Tuesday’s elections — to which Silver responds:

This is what passes for analysis nowadays.
Why did Democrats lose in Virginia and New Jersey on Tuesday? Because independent voters moved against them, say the pundits…This is true, insofar as it goes; Democrats lost independents nearly 2:1 in the gubernatorial race in Virginia, and by a 25-point margin in New Jersey.
But it doesn’t really tell us very much. It’s a lot like saying: the Yankees won the Game 6 last night because they scored more runs than the Phillies. Or: the unemployment rate went up because there were fewer jobs.

Silver then provides a reminder course in J-101:

But in politics, it’s not the proximate cause we’re interested in but the ultimate one. Yes: independents went mostly for Republicans in New Jersey and Virginia (we could have inferred this without having to look at the exit poll). Yes, this “caused” the Democratic defeats. But what caused the independents to move against the Democrats? That’s what we’re really interested in, since that’s what will have implications for future elections.
Too often in “mainstream” political analysis, once it is pointed out that independents have swung in one or another direction, the analysis stops. The pundit inserts his own opinion about what caused the independent vote to shift (“Obama’s far-reaching proposals and mounting spending”, says the Washington Post), without citing any evidence. It’s a neat trick, and someone who isn’t paying attention is liable to conclude that the pundit has actually said something interesting.

Ouch, sayeth the punditry. Now, some poly sci for grown-ups from Silver’s post:

Part of the problem is that ‘independents’ are not a particularly coherent group. At a minimum, the category of ‘independents’ includes:
1) People who are mainline Democrats or Republicans for all intents and purposes, but who reject the formality of being labeled as such;
2) People who have a mix of conservative and liberal views that don’t fit neatly onto the one-dimensional political spectrum, such as libertarians;
3) People to the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum, who consider the Democratic and Republican parties to be equally contemptible;
4) People who are extremely disengaged from politics and who may not have fully-formed political views;
5) True-blue moderates;
6) Members of organized third parties.
These voters have almost nothing to do with each other and yet they all get grouped under the same umbrella as ‘independents’. But that’s getting away from the point. Independent voters are treated as a cause, when all that they really are is a symptom. The key is in figuring out what ails the patient.

If anything more pertinent has ever been said about “independent voters,” do share.

Others may dither, but Thomas Schaller cuts to the chase today over at FiveThirtyEight.com with his post “The Big 2010 Question“:

…The big question for both parties–and particularly the Democrats–is one I raised this morning on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan show: How replicable is Barack Obama’s precedent-setting presidential coalition in an off-year election?
It’s easy to just say, well, it’s not replicable. Of course it isn’t exactly replicable. The so-called “Obama surge” voters clearly will not turn out at the same rates, and thus not constitute the same proportion of the electorate a year from now that they did a year ago. So the question really is, To what degree, along some continuum between the 2008 presidential electorate and the ones from the 2009 elections this week, will 2010 look like one or other other? And looking backward may provide poor guidance: Because there’s never been an electorate assembled like the one Obama did in 2008, we’ve also never had a post-Obama midterm cycle.

Schaller then asks what may be an even bigger question, this one directed at Team Obama:

…I want to start this series of posts with a very simple question that is, more or less, directed at the Obama White House political operation, and can be rather simply stated: One year out, what are you planning to do in order to safeguard your newly-acquired congressional, gubernatorial and even state legislative majorities?

Schaller continues with a series of thought-provoking ‘sub-questions’ regarding: agenda-setting; candidates; contacting and turnout; and messaging, followed by a lengthening list of reader comments, some of which are equally perceptive. This one’s a must-read.

The announcement of double-digit unemployment is usually an automatic meme-generator for the out-of-office party, so we can expect a lot of Fox News and wingnut jabber about how it’s all President Obama’s fault. It probably won’t matter much to them that most thoughtful voters will connect it to the Bush meltdown.
Alert Dems will respond that this is the 22nd consecutive month of job loss in America, so the trend started at the end of ’07, when the ‘mission accomplished’-‘heckuva job Brownie’ guy was running things. Dems will also remind the commentators that it’s amazing the rate isn’t worse considering we are only a year from the worst economic meltdown since the crash of ’29. More to the point, it would be worse, if not for the Obama/Democratic stimulus, and it would be a lot better, if not for the GOP-led opposition to the stronger stimulus most dems wanted.
As Paul Krugman argues in his New York Times column:

…early this year, President Obama came into office with a strong mandate and proclaimed the need to take bold action on the economy. His actual actions, however, were cautious rather than bold. They were enough to pull the economy back from the brink, but not enough to bring unemployment down.
Thus the stimulus bill fell far short of what many economists — including some in the administration itself — considered appropriate. According to The New Yorker, Christina Romer, the chairwoman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, estimated that a package of more than $1.2 trillion was justified.

Krugman is pessimistic about the president’s prospects for securing a significant cut in unemployment before the mid-terms, a point of view shared by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich in his Salon.com post earlier this week:

If Obama and the Democrats lose one or both houses of Congress in the midterms, it will be because the president learned only the most superficial lesson of the Clinton years. Healthcare reform is critically important. But when one out of six Americans is unemployed or underemployed, getting the nation back to work is more so.

In today’s L.A. Times, Reich is quoted saying of the jobless rate announcement,

It’s an important political threshold…the 10% is going to give Republicans more ammunition to criticize the [Obama] administration and force the hand of the administration to at least appear to be taking additional steps to remedy the situation.

The one encouraging sign in the unemployment report is that hires of temp workers are up, usuallly a harbinger of hiring for more stable jobs.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, declared the “recession is very likely over” in September. If he’s got any leverage left to help make good on his pronouncement, now would be a good time to deploy it.

When you type the words, “Why is Nancy Pelosi” into Google, the search engine offers to complete your question with three popular queries:

1. Why is Nancy Pelosi so stupid?
2. Why is Nancy Pelosi so powerful?
3. Why is Nancy Pelosi bad?

Every national politicians has his or her share of critics, but Nancy Pelosi seems to inspire a special kind of agitation from her detractors. This is a point highlighted in a new profile of the Speaker in New York Magazine:

To conservatives, she’s the devil: “Mussolini in a skirt,” “Nancy Botox,” a “domestic enemy of the Constitution.” In August, when she and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer wrote a USA Today editorial calling town-hall shouters “un-American” for stifling national debate, a radio host said he’d like to punch her in the face; Joe the Plumber wanted to “beat the living tar” out of her; and Glenn Beck brought out a cardboard cutout of her likeness, then pretended to drink wine alongside it: “I wanted to thank you for having me over here in wine country,” he cackled. “By the way, I put poison in your—no, I look forward to all the policy discussions we’re supposed to have. You know, on health care, energy reform, and the economy. Hey, is that Sean Penn over there?” She’s a high-handed lady who needs to be “put … in her place,” as the National Republican Congressional Committee said when she questioned General McChrystal’s advice on Afghanistan. “It’s really sad. They really don’t understand how inappropriate that is,” Pelosi shot back, smirking a little and trailing a hand in the air. “That language is something I haven’t even heard in decades.”

Nancy Pelosi is occasionally called the most hated woman in America, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that much of that hatred seems to stem from the fact that she is a woman. Harry Reid, for instance, is the victim of similar approval ratings, but his enemies don’t attack him with the same sort of vitriol. Just type the phrase, “Why is Harry Reid” into Google — you get no suggested completion to your query at all.
When she isn’t being threatened by conservatives, Pelosi often escapes national attention altogether. That’s a shame, because in terms of accomplishment, it’s hard to imagine how she as Speaker could be more effective. She’s raised $155 million for the DCCC since 2002 and helped to orchestrate the new Democratic majority in Congress. Of course, from the floor, she’s been a champion for major increases in college aid and pay for veterans, upping the minimum wage, climate change, and now, health care.
That’s leadership we as Democrats can be proud of.

Chris Bowers has an Open Left post that taps exit poll data to reveal the influence of the youth vote, or rather the lack of it, in the NJ and VA gubernatorial election outcomes. Bowers presents charts depicting a significant decline in the percentage of voters 18-29 and 29-44 for both states, and explains:

About two-thirds of Christie’s victory margin can be accounted for by this shift in the age of the electorate. While Deeds still would have been wiped out even with the 2008 age composition of the electorate, the change there is no less striking:..In Virginia, Democrats went from a 39-33 advantage in party ID, to a 33-37 deficit. In New Jersey, Democrats went from a 44-28 advantage, to a 41-31 advantage.

Bowers concludes “Republicans seem to have gained another 3-4%, simply from turnout differential based on age,” and adds “…the lack turnout among voters under the age of 45 threatens to cost Democrats more votes than any other factor.” It’s understandable, says Bowers, because “…younger voters have been hit hardest by the recession, and that they tend to not turnout in off-year elections.”
Bowers is skeptical that the Blue Dogs and beltway insider Dems will address the age gap. Let’s hope our mid-term candidates are paying more attention.

It would be hard to find a more astute observer of Virginia politics than Larry J. Sabato, Director, U.Va. Center for Politics and head wizard at Larry J. Sabato’s CrystalBall website. Although it’s been well-reported that Democratic turnout and especially African American turnout were critical factors in the NJ and VA gubernatorial elections, just to flesh it out a bit, here’s a couple of nuggets regarding VA turnout from his “Sabato’s Fun Facts–Election ’09” post today:

…In Virginia, one result of absentee Democrats was the lowest voter turnout for a gubernatorial election in the state’s modern two-party history (1969 to 2009). The 2009 turnout of 39.8 percent of the registered voters was the lowest in forty years. Even with all the population growth since 2005, the absolute voter turnout in 2009 (1.97 million) fell below that of four years ago (2.0 million). And the electorate was barely more than half that of 2008 (3.7 million). Astounding.

And the African American vote in particular:

…In a sampling of heavily black precincts around Virginia. Even though Creigh Deeds received a larger percentage of the black vote (93 percent) than the previous Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Tim Kaine, in 2005 (90 percent), the turnout was miserable for Deeds–more than 10 full percentage points lower. He received many fewer African-American votes than Kaine, despite near-unanimous backing from blacks who cast a ballot.

And while you’re at the CrystalBall, read Alan Abramowitz’s post-mortem, “What Happens in Virginia and New Jersey, Stays in Virginia and New Jersey,” which provides elegant numbers-crunching to verify that the data,

…provides no support for the belief that the Virginia and New Jersey results predict what will happen across the entire nation next year or that these elections constituted referenda on President Obama’s performance. Instead, the Democratic defeats in Virginia and New Jersey reflected a combination of normal turnout patterns favoring the out-party in off-year elections and the weaknesses of the Democratic candidates in both states.

Abramowitz expects Democratic losses in the mid-terms next year, the extent of which would at that time more likely be linked to how voters “evaluate the performance of President Obama.”

TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira’s op-ed in The New York Times provides one of the better antidotes for all of the hyper-ventillating about Republicans winning the governorships of VA and NJ. From Teixeira’s chill-pill:

Start with the predictive value of the Virginia and New Jersey victories: there is none. Sometimes the party that wins both those governorships gains seats in the next Congressional election; sometimes that party loses seats. Far more consequential is the historical pattern that the new president’s party tends to lose seats in the first midterm election. Once that is taken into account, as the political scientist Alan Abramowitz of Emory University has shown, victories in Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races tell you nothing about who will gain seats in 2010 or how large that gain will be.

Teixeira shreds the GOP’s “Obama was repudiated” meme, noting,

In New Jersey…it’s significant that Mr. Obama’s approval rating among 2009 voters (57 percent) was identical to the percent of the vote he received there in 2008. In Virginia, while the president’s 2009 approval rating was 5 points less than his 2008 voting result, the 2009 electorate was also far more conservative than last year’s. Besides being far older and whiter than in 2008, the voters in Virginia on Tuesday said they had supported John McCain last November by 8 points, meaning they were not favorably inclined toward President Obama to begin with. In fact, given that only 43 percent of these voters said they supported Mr. Obama last November, his 48 percent approval rating among them does not indicate a shift away from him but rather toward him.

Teixeira also points out that the GOP defeat NY-23 — one of the most staunchly conservative districts in America –provides a grim omen for a party that is now dominated by conservatives, and especially for “those in the party seeking to emulate the electoral strategies of Bob McDonnell in Virginia and Chris Christie in New Jersey,” both of whom tried to “cover up the conservatism of their views” on key issues. “That was relatively easy to do in governors’ races in an off-year election,” says Teixeira. “It will be harder for candidates to do in national elections in 2010 and especially 2012.”

No election post-mortem would be complete without insights from a couple of Democratic luminaries and occasional TDS contributors named Mike Lux and Robert Creamer, both of whom are posting at the HuffPo: Here’s Lux’s take:

Let me try to explain this to the caution captains in my party. There are two reasons we lost those Governors’ races yesterday, and they are closely related: voters are in a foul mood, and base Democrats – young folks, unmarried women, minorities – didn’t come out.
Let’s just spend a minute talking about the economy. Unless we start to produce a whole lot more jobs than even the optimists are projecting right now, voters are going to be in a really foul mood a year from now when they go to vote…And for the young people who haven’t found decent jobs, economically struggling single women, and minority voters who overwhelmingly voted for Obama and other Democrats in 2008 and 2010, they could well be feeling that they haven’t seen change they can believe in, that they haven’t seen the Democrats they voted for and in many cases worked for delivering anything that matters to their lives, and that will make them very tough to get out to vote. That’s what happened in NJ and VA this year, and it is incumbent on Democrats to change that dynamic in time for the election in 2010…In the face of a weak economy, angry voters, and a discouraged Democratic base, Democrats have exactly one chance at surviving the elections a year from now: deliver the goods.
…We are going to need to craft a strategy for winning that is based on deserving to win because we delivered important, tangible things that mattered to voters, things that make angry voters understand that we share their anger and are doing something to change things so their lives will be better, and things that help Democratic base voters feel like it is worth voting again.

And from Creamer’s “Four Lesson’s for Democrats in Tuesday’s Elections“:

First and foremost, the results show that it is critical that the Democratic message be framed in populist terms…Not surprisingly voters are unhappy. Ten percent unemployment, rising health care bills and shrinking incomes will do that. All of these problems resulted from the Republican policies of the previous eight years and the conservative values frame of the last thirty years. They have been caused by the concentration of power in Wall Street, the big health insurance companies and the dominant role of corporate special interests in Washington…But if Democrats do not clearly frame the debate in those terms, it is easy for voters to vote against whoever is in power at the moment — which now happen to be Democrats.

In Creamer’s point #3, ‘inspire the base,’ he notes:

Without an inspired base, Democrats cannot hold our own in 2010 — it’s that simple…Success at making change will help renew the faith of Independents and also help energize the base. But to be inspired, the base of the Democratic Party must be convinced that the president and his party are the champions of core progressive principles as well. A hopeful populist frame is critical to motivate mobilizable voters.

Creamer’s points #2, addressing how to win independent voters and #4, a cautionary note that comes with benefiting from the Republicans’ ‘circular firing squad,’ also merit a read. Both Lux and Creamer are saying that the wrong take-away from the ’09 elections is for Dems to embrace centrist timidity and fear of real change in the mistaken belief that the election indicates that moderation is the wave of the future. Instead, winning in ’10 and ’12 will require a bold, unmistakable commitment to fighting for jobs and reforms that benefit working people, instead of Wall St.

Last night’s legislative elections offered few surprises. As the polls closed, Republicans and Democrats each held a majority they needed to protect, and today, the status quo remains the same.
In Virginia, buoyed by a set of strong statewide candidates and a national climate that put history on their side, Republicans last night added to their margins in the House of Delegates.
But the GOP believed that this election might help them wipe out all the Democratic gains of the past six years, and it did not.
Democrats in the state were able to knock off two vulnerable Republicans, electing Luke Torian and Robin Abbott to the caucus. Their victories helped to offset losses in other parts of the state.
In a night when state Democrats were looking for good news, the New Jersey Assembly offered a sharp counterpoint to elections elsewhere.
Headed into Tuesday, Democrats held a solid majority, but Republicans had been talking about mounting a serious effort to cut into that margin, if not win the eight seats they would need to tie the chamber.
The Democratic Assembly Caucus met that challenge head-on. In the weeks before Election Day, New Jersey Democrats built up formidable advantages in fundraising, candidate quality, and organization. That in turn allowed them to counter a bad set of national trends and a strong statewide campaign from GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie.
Last night, the Democratic Caucus protected all of its incumbents, ultimately holding 47 of 48 seats. The only seat that now appears to have changed hands was left open by retirement in District 4.
The NJ Democratic Assembly Caucus did nearly everything right in this year’s election, and the advantages they banked during the summer allowed them to offset the Republican climate in the state last night.
Across the country, Democrats still hold 60 legislative chambers and control 55 percent of the nation’s partisan legislative seats. Our current position remains a solid one heading into the final election before the Census and the next round of Congressional and legislative redistricting.
For more information, visit DLCC.org.