"To be on one side and deny any validity to the other builds the kind of complacency that in politics is very dangerous."

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Politicians Can't Ignore Their Opponents' Perspective
By Charlie Cook, December 8, 2014

It's true that perspective is everything in politics, but we often forget just how true that is.

There can be two diametrically opposed points of view, each supported by indisputable facts, but reality can be somewhere in between.  Although no one can deny that Democrats have had an awful year—three-term Sen. Mary Landrieu's reelection loss on Saturday put the final exclamation point on that—there still can be two different viewpoints.

On the one hand, a Democrat can say that each party has, from time to time, suffered ugly years; the political pendulum swings back and forth. Republicans endured horrific years in 1974, and arguably in 1982, 1986, 2006, and 2008; Democrats were hurting in 1966, 1980, 1994, 2010, and 2014. A Democrat can point out that in this year's Senate races, of the nine seats the GOP picked up, seven were in states that Mitt Romney won in 2012, and six were in states carried by both John McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012, so these were hardly cases of Republicans winning road games. Losing only two seats in states won by President Obama hardly reflects a tsunami, in the Senate anyway.

The Democratic rosy scenario is a little harder to make in gubernatorial races, where the losses were substantially worse for Democrats than expected, and defeats in Maryland and Massachusetts were particularly striking.

In the House, out of 435 seats, 13 is hardly a huge swing. Nine Democratic losses were in districts that we all knew would be very challenging. Only a handful saw surprise losses and unexpectedly tight races, and they were pretty much in what The Cook Political Report's House editor, David Wasserman, calls "orphan states"—places such as California and New York that didn't have a competitive statewide race driving turnout.

But on the other hand, two numbers stand out. Think 86 and 1928. Come January, Democrats will be tied for their lowest number of Senate seats in 86 years, since 1928. In the House, Democrats will be at their lowest level in, yup, 86 years, since 1928. And in a good measure of politics in a more grassroots metric, according to numbers provided by the irreplaceable National Conference of State Legislature's elections guru, Tim Storey, there will be fewer Democratic state legislators in—wait for it—86 years, since 1928. The combination of historic losses for Democrats in President Obama's first midterm election in 2010, and his second midterm, this year, with minimal mitigation in the intervening 2012 election, was little short of catastrophic for the Democratic Party.

So, 86 and since 1928—that's a bit more than a bad night or even a bad year. In another year, with a different political environment, Democrats might well have won Senate contests in states they lost this year, such as Colorado, Iowa, and even North Carolina. But barring scandals or inexcusably bad GOP candidates, it may be a long time before Democrats elect U.S. senators in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia; or before they regain more than one or two non-minority House seats in these states. (It would be pushing the envelope to make the same statements about Georgia, North Carolina, and, certainly, Virginia: The Old Dominion is now, certifiably, a Mid-Atlantic state; North Carolina is one in fits and starts; and, someday, the same thing will be said about Georgia.) For Democrats, the Deep South, as well as rural and small-town constituencies, may be gone with the wind.

My own view is somewhere in between, but I lean more toward the latter point of view than the former. Bouncing back from the past six years will be challenging for Democrats. While Republicans have some profound demographic problems that will make presidential races and Senate contests in certain states more challenging than they would like, Democrats now have virtual no-fly zones in some parts of the country; the party isn't likely to really come back across the South in my lifetime.

Having said that, just a look at the 2016 Senate race picture reveals what is likely to be a real fight for the majority. While Republicans have 24 seats up, compared with just 10 for Democrats, and with seven of those GOP seats in states Obama won in both 2008 and 2012 (and nine in states Obama carried 2008), the map is extremely challenging for Republicans in two years—just as this year's was for Democrats. Furthermore, the presidential-year electorate is looking much better for Democrats, and midterm electorates are looking great for Republicans these days, lending a potential boom and bust, or maybe "boomlet and bustlet" era for the parties in the foreseeable future.

Washington Post columnist and Brookings Institution political maven E.J. Dionne makes the point that politicians on each side should spend some time listening to the other side's talking points rather than just trying to believe  their own. For Democrats to believe this wasn't a horrific election revealing some inconvenient truths is both delusional and self-destructive. For Republicans to see this as a mandate and believe that they have clear sailing ahead is equally wrong and dangerous. There is considerable truth in both of these perspectives. To be on one side and deny any validity to the other builds the kind of complacency that in politics is very dangerous.
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