washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

J.P. Green

Political Strategy Notes

The heat is on Michigan Governor Rick Snider to reverse his position and refuse to sign the so-called ‘right-to-work’ bill the Republicans snuck through the state legislature last week. Here’s a good example of a creative protest being mobilized by ‘We Are Michigan’ to persuade the governor to do the right thing. The President will meet with Snyder today, and here’s an update on other protests being planned in the state.
Dave Zirin reports at The Nation on the groundswell against the right-to-work bill, including the pro baseball and football unions. He quotes DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFLPA: “When you look at proposed legislation [called] ‘right-to-work’ let’s just put the hammer on the nail. It’s untrue… What this is instead is a right to ensure that ordinary working citizens can’t get together as a team, can’t organize, can’t stand together and can’t fight management on an even playing field…So don’t call it a ‘right to work.’ If you want to have an intelligent discussion about what the bill is, call it what it is. Call it an anti-organizing bill. Fine. If that’s what the people want to do in order to put a bill out there, let’s cast a vote on whether or not ordinary workers can get together and represent themselves, and let’s have a real referendum.”
And Greg Sargent has an excellent update on the Democratic strategy to encourage the governor to allow the RTW bill to be subjected to popular referendum.
At The Daily Beast Hedrick Smith argues persuasively that the “Fiscal Cliff Is Latest Symptom of Unfair Redistricting“: “…The partisan manipulation of congressional districts garbles more than the numbers. It sharpens the partisan divide in Congress. Both parties try to create safe districts and within those highly partisan lines, moderates tend to lose out and extremists tend to win. Both parties become more polarized. Without gerrymandering, red states would be less red, and blue states would be less blue. The middle would have more chance to re-emerge.”
And Crystal Ball’s Larry J. Sabato and Geoffrey Skelley take an extensive, state-by-state look at the 2014 battle for control of governorships, and why it is critically important for national politics.
Here’s an interesting NPR post by Liz Halloran about an overlooked demographic group which gave President Obama 70 percent of its votes — the “nones,” a.k.a. the “religiously unaffiliated.”
Peter Grer has a Monitor update on “Obama’s Medicaid expansion: How many states are likely to rebel?
The “we don’t need no stinkin’ science” crowd apparently gets much more MSM coverage in the U.S. than elsewhere. Mijin Cha reports at Demos that “the U.S. gives a significant amount of media attention to climate deniers — far more than any other country. Over one-third of articles on climate change in 2009-2010 contained viewpoints from climate deniers, even though only a fraction of the scientific community questions the existence of climate change…of 13,950 peer-reviewed climate articles, just 24 reject the idea of global warming — a mere 0.17 percent.”
From CNN Politics: According to the Politico/George Washington University Battleground survey released Monday, 62% of registered voters say they back an immigration reform proposal that would allow illegal or undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship over a period of several years, with 35% opposed…The new poll is in line with an ABC News/Washington Post survey conducted right after the November election that indicated Americans supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants by a 57%-39% margin.”
The accolades for Mitch McConnell’s unique achievement keep on coming.


Responding to the Sneak Attack Vs. Michigan Labor

The Nation’s John Nichols has a sobering article for Dems who may still be basking in the warm glow of the election. Nichols’s “GOP, Koch Brothers Sneak Attack Guts Labor Rights in Michigan” tells the disturbing story of how the government of the once mighty industrial state of Michigan has been turned into an anti-labor bastion almost overnight:

In the state where workers sat down in Flint General Motors plants 75 years ago and emboldened the industrial labor movement that would give birth to the American middle class, Republican legislators on Thursday voted to gut basic labor rights.
…After Republican leaders announced Thursday morning that they intended to enact so-called “Right-to-Work” legislation – which is always better described as “No-Rights-at-Work” legislation – the Michigan state House voted Thursday afternoon to eliminate basic union organizing and workplace protections that generations of American workers fought to establish. Several hours later, the Michigan state Senate did the same thing, as part of a bold anti-labor initiative launched in coordination with a Koch Brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity project to “pave the way for right to work in states across our nation.”
As the Republicans launched the attack on unions and their members, Americans for Prosperity — a group developed and funded by right-wing industrialists and billionaire campaign donors Charles and David Koch — was in the thick of things. AFP recruited conservatives to show up at the state Capitol in Lansing to counter union protests and prepared materials supporting the Michigan initiative, including a 15-page booklet titled “Unions: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: How forced unionization has harmed workers and Michigan.” Within minutes of the announcement by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder that Republicans would ram through the “Right-to-Work” legislation, AFP was hailing the move in formal statements “as the shot heard around the world for workplace freedom.”
Snyder, a Republican, has indicated that he will sign the measure that was passed during a lame-duck session of the legislature.

This despite the fact that President Obama carried Michigan by a 10-point margin and his stated opposition to the so-called “right to work” law. Nichols adds that “The Republican legislators evidenced no intention to listen to logic, or to entertain honest debate. GOP legislative leaders had plotted behind closed doors with Governor Snyder, to have Michigan join the traditionally lower-wage states that decades ago enacted “Right-to-Work” laws to thwart the rise of a labor movement…” Protestors who managed to get inside the legislative chamber were pepper-sprayed, while others were locked out.


Political Strategy Notes

Not all conservatives are tea party puppets or monomaniacal ideologues. Some top business and defense executives are now calling for tax hikes on the wealthy and defense budget cuts, according to this Huffpo report by Ryan Grim and Sabrina Siddiqui.
Yet another Associated Press-GfK poll indicates that “Americans prefer letting tax cuts expire for the country’s top earners, as President Barack Obama insists, while support has declined for cutting government services to curb budget deficits…There’s also a reluctance to trim Social Security, Medicare or defense programs, three of the biggest drivers of federal spending, the survey released Wednesday found.”
In another just-released survey, “American voters give President Barack Obama a 53 – 40 percent job approval rating – his best score in three years – and by a wider 53 – 36 percent they trust the president and Democrats more than Republicans to avoid the “Fiscal Cliff,” according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today…Voters 65 – 31 percent support higher taxes on households making more than $250,000 per year, with 84 – 14 percent support from Democrats and 66 – 31 percent support from independent voters. Republicans are opposed 53 – 41 percent…American voters say 56 – 38 percent that Obama and congressional Democrats will make a good faith effort to cooperate with congressional Republicans on important issues. By 51 – 43 percent, voters say congressional Republicans will not act in good faith.”
Was there ever a more hypocritical Republican than John Sununu, who now echoes his version of Romney’s “Obama won because of those who are dependent on government” meme? Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia’s bio of Sununu: “As White House Chief of Staff, Sununu reportedly took personal trips, for skiing and other purposes, and classified them as official, for purposes such as conservation or promoting the Thousand Points of Light. The Washington Post wrote that Sununu’s jets “took him to fat-cat Republican fund-raisers, ski lodges, golf resorts and even his dentist in Boston.” Sununu had paid the government only $892 for his more than $615,000 worth of military jet travel. Sununu said that his use of the jets was necessary because he had to be near a telephone at all times for reasons of national security…After leaking rumors of financial difficulties in his family, he traveled to a rare stamp auction at Christie’s auction house in New York City from Washington in a government limousine, spending $5,000 on rare stamps. Sununu then sent the car and driver back to Washington unoccupied while he returned on a corporate jet. In the course of one week, 45 newspapers ran editorials on Sununu, nearly all of them critical of his actions…Sununu repaid over $47,000 to the government for the flights on the orders of White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, with the help of the Republican Party. However, the reimbursements were at commercial rates, which are about one-tenth the cost of the actual flights; one ski trip to Vail, Colorado alone had cost taxpayers $86,330.”
At PoliticusUSA, Jason Easley explains why Fox is benching Dick Morris and Karl Rove.
Lois Romano has an interesting Politico report on Democrats trying to get access to the Obama campaign’s 16-million voters, donors and volunteers data base, noting: “The data is rich with intricate layers of information about individuals’ voting habits, television viewing tastes, propensity to volunteer, car registration, passions, email address, cellphone numbers, and social media contacts. The historical trove enabled Obama to connect with voters on a highly personal level and get them not only to vote but to actively persuade their neighbors to do the same.
A new poll by the Barna group indicates a strong majority, with growing conservative support, for dumping the electoral college.
At CNN Politics, Kevin Liptak’s “Digital experts: Social media and dual screens the future of online campaigning” notes that “…Metric trends don’t end at viral photos and funny memes. Increasingly, the web is offering predictive tools that could become essential for campaigns looking to gauge their position ahead of important contests. Charles Scrase, Google’s head of elections, issue advocacy and non-profits, said search volume had become “so prominent we’re able to predict the outcome of primary elections,” including Rick Santorum’s surprise Iowa caucus win in January…”People want to gather information earlier,” Scrase said, saying 51% of voters were looking for information about the election more than a year before Election Day.”
Transparency International has released the Corruption Perceptions Index 2012. which “ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be…” The ten ‘cleanest’ are, in order (several are numerically tied), from the top: Denmark; Finland; New Zealand; Sweden; Singapore; Switzerland, Australia; Norway; Canada and The Netherlands. The U.S. ranks 19th, a little behind Japan, Germany, the UK and a few smaller nations.
This will likely be mother’s milk for John Stewart.


Political Strategy Notes

The Editors of the American Prospect have “A Strategic Plan for Liberals,” a forum with 11 contributors including: Jan Schakowsky; Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson; John Podesta; Heather McGhee; Thomas Mann and others.
James S. Hohman reports at Politico that “A survey of 800 Obama voters, conducted last month by Global Strategy Group for the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way and shared first with POLITICO, finds that 96 percent believe the federal deficit is a problem and that 85 percent support increasing taxes on the wealthy.”
The New York Times is running a mini-forum on “Do Filibusters Stall the Senate or Give It Purpose?
On MTP Sen Claire McCaskill aptly described the dilemma the Speaker of the House is facing — and a question the media should keep asking: “…I feel almost sorry for John Boehner. There is incredible pressure on him from a base of his party that is unreasonable about this, and he’s got to decide, is his speakership more important or is the country more important?”
Nader does what he does best: Making the case for conscientious consumerism, this time with respect for holiday shopping. Might it also be a good idea for all Dems to make a commitment to buy a couple of gifts with a union label?
Paul West’s “Crunching the numbers: How big was Obama’s win?” at The L.A. Times has a couple of interesting stats: “Overall, the popular vote fell by about 3.5% from 2008 in most of the country — the 42 states that did not feel the full effects of campaign advertising and organizing (turnout, as a percentage of the vote-eligible population, was off by even more). But the popular vote total rose by 2% overall in the eight most heavily contested swing states (Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Hampshire), all of which Obama won…Obama is likely to become the first presidential candidate since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 to gain at least 51% of the popular vote in two consecutive elections. And as votes continue to be tallied, his margin over Romney is gradually expanding.”
Norquist is working overtime, badgering the media with his “tea party 2.0” meme, which they are eagerly parroting. At New York magazine, Jason Zengerle explains “Grover’s Best Trick: How he herds reporters.”
In his WaPo op-ed column, E.J. Dionne, Jr. argues that “Democrats could use their own Grover Norquist.”
NYT’s Peter Baker takes a look at President Obama’s tougher negotiation strategy, explaining that the bend-over-backwards conciliatory pose the President took in ’09 is over: “The president is not going to negotiate with himself,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “He’s laid out his position, and Republicans have to come to the table.”
At the National Journal, Ronald Brownstein reports that “The Senate’s Democratic Coalition Is Growing More Unified.” Says Brownstein: “…Almost all major Democratic Senate candidates did a better job than their Republican rivals of unifying their base and attracting more crossover voters. That pattern allowed Democrats to virtually sweep the Senate races in the states Obama that won and to triumph in four states that Romney carried decisively–Indiana, Missouri, Montana, and North Dakota.”


States with Election Day Registration Led Turnout in ’12

By now everyone should know that early voting was of tremendous benefit to Democrats, and Republicans spent a lot of time, money and effort trying to get rid of it in the 2012 election. Early voting is important for progressive. But so are opportunities for late voting, as well as late voter registration, especially election day voter registration.
States that have some form of election day voter registration include: Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Washington DC. Connecticut and Rhode Island have Election Day registration only for presidential elections. Only North Dakota has no voter registration requirement at all.
Certified voter turnout figures results in some states will not be released until December or even January, as uncounted absentee and provisional ballots are tallied. But, for the 19 states that have reported their totals, it’s clear that states with election day voter registration still lead the way in boosting turnout. Here are the rankings of the 19 states in terms of “Voter Eligible Population Highest Office Turnout Rate,” according to calculations by Dr. Michael McDonald of George Mason University:
MN (75.7%); NH (70.1); IA (69.); MD (66.2); MI (64.7); FL (63.5); DE (62.7); ND (60.6); LA (60.4); VT (60.4); ID (59.6); SD (59.4); WY (58.9); GA (58.3); RI (58.0); SC (56.6); KY (55.3); AR (50.5); and HI (44.2).
Although Wisconsin is not in McDonald’s data, it’s estimated that WI, which also has election day voter registration, had 70+ percent eligible voter turnout, according to the state’s Government Accountability board. Thus, the four states with the highest turnout of eligible voters all had election day voter registration. However, Amanda Terkel reports that Governor Scott Walker is now proposing to eliminate it in Wisconsin, and citizens groups are organizing to protect it.
Studies by Demos indicate that, In 2004, voter turnout in election day voter registration states was 12 percent higher than states that did not have it and 10-12 percent higher in the ’06 mid-term elections. If there is any voter reform Republicans fear more than early voting, it is election day registration.


Political Strategy Notes

Greg Sargent’s Plum Line report on President Obama’s campaign to take the fiscal cliff negotiations to the peeps notes that “A new Post poll out this morning confirms again that the public is on the side of Obama and Dems in this battle. Sixty percent of Americans favor raising taxes on incomes over $250,000. Sixty three percent of independents, 65 percent of moderates, and even 47 percent of conservatives, agree. By contrast, 67 percent of Americans oppose raising the Medicare eligibility age — as do 68 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of conservatives. And a plurality opposes reducing deductions — the preferred GOP approach. ”
Stuart Rothenberg’s “Supermajority Within Reach for Senate Democrats” at Roll Call should provoke some shivers at the NRSCC. But they may find some comfort in Reid Wilson’s “Senate Democrats Face Another Daunting Numbers Game” at the National Journal. Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik get down to individual upcoming senate races at the Crystal ball.
If you haven’t seen it already, take a look at this clip of Pulitzer-Prize journalist Thomas Ricks calling Fox News out on their shilling for the GOP in distorting the Benghazi story. But reports that now he’s dissing MSNBC seem like a pointless exercise in false equivalence.
The “more disturbed than I was before” remarks of Sens. McCain, Graham and Ayotte have the bogus smell of an agreement they made before their interview with Susan Rice, perhaps to justify their call to squander millions of taxpayer dollars on an unnecessary Special Select Committee to hype the Benghazi tragedy. None of them had much to say when dozens of American civilians were killed in Iraq as a result of poor security during the Bush administration. Maddow puts it in perspective right here.
The Daily Texan editorial board has a pretty good overview of the role of the youth vote in the presidential election.
At HuffPo, Ian Gray reports on the controversy surrounding Ex-Florida GOP Chair Jim Greer’s outing of the GOP’s voter suppression: “The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates…It’s done for one reason and one reason only…’We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us.”
Kos makes a persuasive case that the election proves that Democratic victories in the future will be all about working the base and ignoring so-called ‘independents.’
Linda Greenhouse has an interesting opinion piece at The New York Times about the importance of Scotusblog as the unrivaled source for the best reporting on the U.S. Supreme Court — and the irony of its credentialing difficulties. Now that it’s been gobbled up by Bloomberg, the hope is that its quality won’t suffer.
Those who thought the Romney campaign’s election post-mortem statements couldn’t get more bizarre, should read Benjy Sarlin’s Talking Points Memo post, “Top Romney Adviser Brags About Losing Poor, Minority Voters To Obama.”
It would be a good thing if this was more than just making nice, and President Obama found something substantial for Gov. Romney to do. (other than Ambassador to the U.K. or heading the S.E.C.)


Political Strategy Notes

One of the key lessons of the 2012 election is that it is not how much money Super-PACs spend on a campaign; it’s how the money is invested — and Dems did a damn good job of it, explains Rodell Mollineau at The Daily Beast.
…And this is also gratifying.
California may be providing an instructive lesson for advocates of moderation. Anthony York’s “Election loss has Republicans seeking common ground with Democrats” in the L.A. Times notes a new willingness of business leaders to support moderates. York argues “Democrats now hold a two-thirds supermajority in both the Assembly and Senate, meaning they can pass taxes and place proposals on the statewide ballot without any Republican support…”For the business community, there is a recognition that the best path forward for the state from a governance perspective is with moderate Democrats,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant who advised the California Chamber of Commerce on a number of legislative races this year.” Put another way, the quickest road to more moderate politics lies not in converting Republicans to sweet reason, but in defeating sufficient numbers of them.
And when it comes to big state voter turnout, the west is the best. The formula, according to Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais: “In California, the triple combination of a simple, online registration process, the convenience of voting by mail and the presence on the ballot of issues that directly related to the self-interest of a significant sector of voters brought newcomers to the polls, kept the state’s turnout at a high level (even when California’s electoral vote result was a foregone conclusion) and resulted in no reports of major problems at the polls.”
For revealing critique of the arguments of the economic gurus behind the tea party ideology and perhaps a majority of the Republicans in congress, try Robert M. Solow’s New Republic review article, “Hayek, Friedman, and the Illusions of Conservative Economics” Solow reviews “The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression” by Angus Burgin.
Paul Begala’s “Denialists, Whiners, and Wackjobs” at The Daily Beast provides a useful typology of some GOP leaders.
Mike Lux makes a couple of salient points in his HuffPo post “Can Democrats Retake the House in 2014?,” including: “…Most of the groups, bloggers, money, and talent in the Democratic party and progressive movement was focused elsewhere, on keeping Romney and Republicans in the Senate from running the table and taking over every branch of government. Most people and groups had given up on winning the House months ago and were spending their time, money, and brainpower on the Presidential race and those marquee Senate races like Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, and Sherrod Brown. We need to create a Manhattan project for retaking the House with the best thinkers, biggest groups, and most influential donors in the party involved.”
At Time Swampland Michael Scherer’s “Friended: How the Obama Campaign Connected with Young Voters” provides a good overview of a key element of Dem strategy.
At The National Review Michael Barone notes some of the eirie similarities in the ’04 and ’12 presidential elections and tries to put an optimistic spin on the numbers to encourage his fellow Republicans about the future. He adds, however, that “…Democrats have a structural advantage in the Electoral College. An extra 2.47 percent of the popular vote netted Obama 80 more electoral votes than Kerry. Obama won 58 percent or more in eleven states and the District of Columbia, with 163 electoral votes. He needed only 107 more to win.”
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, shrewd GOP pillar in the U.S. Senate, has pointedly trashed Norquist’s ‘The Pledge,’ reports Meghashyam Mali at The Hill.


Romney Could Help Heal America, But Seems Uninterested

James Rainey asks at the L.A.Times “Did Romney deserve the negative media coverage he received?” I guess my answer would be ‘No. He deserved more negative coverage than that.’
Gone, unfortunately, are the days when the impulse to be charitable towards defeated political adversaries was generally well-received. Partisan hack that I am, I nonetheless wish we could have better reconciliation and and a semblance of bipartisan unity after elections. Constant bickering gets tiresome and, after a hard-fought battle, it’s a commendable human impulse to let bygones fade away and begin relationships anew, using what has been learned to work together more productively for the common good.
Romney couldn’t even manage to be gracious in defeat, whining about “gifts” to pro-Obama constituencies. It’s as if the concept of being magnanimous toward one’s adversary is anathema to the masters of the universe.
Romney is not alone among his GOP brethren in a lack of graciousness towards President Obama in particular. Despite protestations to the contrary, it’s very hard to discount race as a factor in their overarching resentment of the President, so bitter is the tone of the Republican critique of the Administration. But Romney could have set an example of civility and genuine patriotism even in defeat by reaching out to President Obama and offering to help promote reconciliation. But it appears to have been completely out of the question.
Would it be so unacceptable for Romney to make a statement urging his fellow Republicans to respect the President’s 4 million vote victory and offer some bipartisan cooperation? He certainly sounded the bipartisan trumpet loudly enough in the final weeks of his campaign. Doing so now could help heal the divisions in the electorate.
Democrats have not always been exemplars of goodwill when defeated. Our left flank can get pretty acrid when we get beat. But that usually passes and is replaced by a willingness to compromise and cooperate to achieve the best that we can salvage for the common good. That seems to not be on the radar screen of the leaders of today’s GOP, and unfortunately Romney has done nothing to promote healing. He should. That’s how grown-ups resolve bitter conflicts. President Obama should invite him to the white house and give him a chance to reconsider.
it might be a good idea to start a new tradition, in which both presidential candidates do a few joint appearances after every election, focused on the goal of healing the divisions caused by their campaigns. Policy differences will remain, but the loser should always acknowledge that his/her party has an obligation to compromise to some extent.
It may be that such a gesture on Romney’s part would be greeted with cynicism by his party. But in doing so, he would at least be sending a message of reconciliation to his rank and file supporters. That would do some good and serve him well.


Political Strategy Notes

Craig Timberg and Amy Gardner have an encouraging read, “Democrats push to redeploy Obama’s voter database” at the Washington Post. As Michael Slaby, the Obama campaign’s ‘chief integration and innovation officer,’ put it: “Though often described as “microtargeting,” Slaby said the most important element was what he called “micro-listening.” I have a hunch Republicans are going to have trouble replicating the Dem’s edge in microtargeting and message testing, since listening well is clearly not a big part of their skill set.
As Messina says “Old-Fashioned Door Knocking Got Better Data Than Online Data Mining,” notes Elizabeth Flock of U.S. News.
At The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin assesses the prospects for filibuster reform.
Interesting: Peyton M. Craighill and Scott Clement report in their WaPo article “Can unions save the white working-class vote for Democrats?” that “At the national level, just 18 percent of voters are union members themselves or live in a house with a member. That’s down six percentage points since 2004 and the lowest level in exit polls back to 1972.” I would say that 18 percent is a pretty sizable constituency.
Wow. John McCain’s nickname should not be “Old Sour Grapes,” as a friend calls him — It should be “Vinegar,” as this revealing report, “The Unhinging of John McCain” by Geoffrey Dunn indicates.
The ratings ass-whupping commeth for Fox news too, courtesy of MSNBC.
This is kind of a knuckleheaded argument, considering that there are more than 6,000 Latino elected officials and more than 45 milion Latinos in the U.S. Also, it wasn’t all that long ago, we saw a guy go from being a lowly state senator with little money and few connections to President of the U.S. in about 5 years.
Oh, please.
The Nation’s Eric Alterman explains how the Romney campaign’s delusions of political grandeur were spoon-fed by the MSM: “Post-truth politics reached a new pinnacle this year as major MSM machers admitted to a lack of concern with the veracity of the news their institutions reported. “It’s not our job to litigate [the facts] in the paper,” New York Times national editor Sam Sifton told the paper’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, regarding phony Republican “voter fraud” allegations. “We need to state what each side says.” “The truth? C’mon, this is a political convention” was the headline over a column by Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post “fact-checker.”…not only did many members of the MSM give Romney a pass on his serial lying; they actually endorsed his candidacy on the assumption that we need not take seriously any of those statements the candidate had felt compelled to make in order to win the nomination of his party.”
A cartoon for the still-clueless.


Can Dems Pick Up 17 House Seats in 2014?

A lot of election commentary has focused on the formidable predicament Dems face as a result of GOP gerrymandering in the House of Representatives, resulting in fewer and fewer swing districts. The general consensus is that it has screwed us out of a decent shot at retaking a House majority and dims prospects for moving legislation forward.
Nate Silver, for example, paints a pretty bleak picture of Democratic prospects going forward in his FiveThirtyEight post, “Democrats Unlikely to Regain House in 2014,” explaining:

…Democrats did regain some ground in the House. Although several races remain uncalled, Democrats would wind up with 201 seats in the House if all races are assigned to the current leader in the vote count – an improvement from the 193 seats Democrats held after the 2010 midterm elections. That would leave Democrats needing to pick up 17 seats to win control of the chamber in 2014.
Although 17 seats is not an extraordinary number, both historical precedent in midterm election years and a deeper examination of this year’s results would argue strongly against Democrats being able to gain that many seats.
There is also reason to suspect that Democrats are unlikely to sustain the sort of losses in the House that they did in 2010. But odds are that the electoral climate in 2014 will be somewhere between neutral and Republican-leaning, rather than favoring Democrats.
In midterm election years since World War II, the president’s party has lost an average of 26 seats in the House, as shown in the chart below. The president’s party gained seats only twice, in 1998 and 2002.
…This year, there were only 11 House seats that Democrats lost by five or fewer percentage points. Thus, even if they had performed five points better across the board, they would still have come up six seats short of controlling the chamber.
In other words, Democrats would have to perform quite a bit better in House races in 2014 than they did in 2012 to win control of the chamber – when usually the president’s party does quite a bit worse instead.

As Rob Richie and Devin McCarthy report at Fairvote.org that “52% of Voters Wanted a Democratic House,” yet the GOP kept a comfortable majority of 54% of seats in the House despite Democratic candidates having an overall 4% advantage in voter preference over their Republican opponents.”
At The Hill, Cameron Joseph notes,

According to a recent study by the Center for Voting and Democracy, Democrats start off with 166 safe districts while Republicans start off with 195. There are only 74 true swing districts where the presidential candidates won between 46 and 54 percent of the popular vote, down from 89 before redistricting.
That means the GOP needs to win less than one-third of competitive House seats to stay in control — something that shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish, barring a huge Democratic wave. In a politically neutral year Democrats are likely to have around 203 seats, a number that’s only slightly higher than the number they’ll have once the remaining 2012 races are called.

While historical precedent has been a dependable factor to consider in predicting House election outcomes, there are exceptional elections that bust precedents. Also, the Republican party is more divided than it has been in many decades, and it could get a lot worse. Dems are more united than in a long time, and we can build our edge while Republicans work through their internecine squabbles.
Many pundits were surprised by the pivotal influence of demographic transformation on November 6th and the microtargeting prowess and intensity of Democratic GOTV. Republicans will eventually catch up on microtargeting, but there will be a learning curve of some duration for them, during which Dems can gain ground in swing districts.
One significant obstacle is that many of the most skilled Dem GOTV operatives will be deployed defending Senate seats, with a very tough map for 2014. But with adequate training for new GOTV workers and volunteers. Dems will be better prepared to leverage our informational edge.
According to CNN Politics data, Republicans won 41 of the 435 House Seats being contested with 55 percent or less of votes cast in each district. Here are 27 U.S. congressional districts that Republicans won with 53 percent or less of votes cast: CA31; CO3; FL2; FL10; IL 13; IN2; IN8; IA3; IA4; KY6; MI1; MI3; MI7; MI11; MN6; MT1; NB2; NV3; NY11; NY19; NY23; NY27; NC9; OH6; OH16; PA12; and TX14.
Advantages and disadvantages for both parties will pop up in those districts in the two years ahead. But, with our informational advantage, Dems may be better prepared to exploit new developments and incumbent blunders as they emerge. Of course, Dems will have to be equally-energetic in defending House seats they won by close margins.
Democrats ought to be able to pick up 17 Republican seats with a combination of better candidates, state-of-the-art micro-targeting and a more focused and energetic GOTV program targeting pro-Democratic constituencies in those districts – small though they may be. There should be an equally vigorous ‘front porch’ campaign to sway persuadable voters. Further, if Democrats can do as well as we have with 7.9 percent unemployment, an improving economy should boost our chances in ’14.
Too much focus on historical precedent is debilitating. History is never made by entertaining defeatist memes or those who are daunted by precedent. Indeed, all that President Obama has achieved has resulted from his determination not to be discouraged or in any way deterred by historical precedent. With a similar bold vision — and some muscle behind it, Democrats can retake a House majority in the 2014 midterms. If we decide that we aren’t going to be ruled by history in 2014, then we can make it.