USA Elections

Brett LoGiurato and Hunter Walker

 

Time cover mocks Obama

Democrats knew they were in trouble on election night Tuesday when a Virginia Senate seat that was expected to be a blowout victory began to come in much closer than expected.

"When you’re cheering for an eke-out win in Virginia, it’s not going to be a good night," one Democratic strategist told Business Insider. 

Another Democratic insider summed up his impression of the evening’s results in a blunt text message: "Fucking. Bloodbath."  

In almost every sense, the midterm elections were a disaster for the Democratic Party. The Democrats lost their majority in the US Senate, and the final results were shaping up to be close to the worst-case scenario for Democrats in which Republicans would swing eight or nine seats.

In addition to the Senate majority, Democrats were badly beaten further down the ballot. They lost key gubernatorial battles — some in strongholds and others in key targets for pickups. And they were further walloped in the House of Representatives, where Republicans are now on track to have the party’s largest majority since 1928 for the final two years of President Barack Obama’s term.

Republicans were gleeful.

"Feel like we’re surfing at the moment," one Republican official told Business Insider, playing off the theme of a GOP "wave" election.

 

Democrats who spoke to us also described the results in nautical terms, but they saw it as a natural disaster rather than a day at the beach. 

 

"No one expected the tsunami in 2014," a Democratic operative said.

The operative pointed to the fact election forecaster Nate Silver’s model initially didn’t make dire predictions for Democrats as evidence "there was literally no indication of this."

"Look at Nate Silver’s stuff. Not that he’s a god, but he aggregates all the polls," the operative said. "I’m honestly in shock."

The Democratic insider who described election night as a "bloodbath" also used the tidal-wave metaphor — and that person laid blame for the wipeout squarely at Obama’s feet.

"This is a tsunami. Heads will roll at 1600. And if they don’t, shame," the insider said, adding: "The president has 60 days to clean house, regrow his spine, and lay out an aggressive, centrist agenda. If he fails at any of those, he might as well just start writing his memoir."

A national Democratic operative from the liberal wing of the party echoed the idea Obama was personally to blame for the party’s losses Tuesday night. The operative also slammed any colleagues who might try to defend the president.

"Democratic operatives who refuse to acknowledge this is the White House’s fault are out of their f—— minds," the operative said. "These operatives who don’t understand that the White House fucked up are the same hacks who overcharge House and Senate candidates for shitty consulting work and help lose elections year after year."

The operative also said Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hurt the party by delaying ambitious action on immigration and other hot-button issues to protect incumbent senators in southern states. 

"It also doesn’t help that Dems completely broke their promise to enact immigration reform. Reid’s strategy of ‘no big bills’ this year that could protect [Arkansas Sen. Mark] Pryor, [North Carolina Sen. Kay] Hagan, and [Louisiana Sen. Mary] Landrieu obviously backfired," the operative said. "They lost anyway, and we pissed off our base at the same time."

According to the insider, Democratic pollsters traced the origins of Tuesday night’s Republican victories to Obama’s infamous late August news conference in which he was asked about his plans for dealing with the jihadist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS) and declared "We don’t have a strategy yet."

"[We have] now heard from multiple pollsters that the bottom fell out when the president said he didn’t have a plan to deal with ISIS," the insider said. "Reinforced growing belief that it was a rudderless ship, and then Ebola struck."

On election night, Democrats’ Senate problems began in Virginia, where incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Warner was staving off a challenge from Republican Ed Gillespie that was much stronger than expected. Most outlets still had not called the race by night’s end, though Warner had jumped to a lead of a few thousand votes.

"Didn’t expect this," one Democratic strategist texted Business Insider as the race remained tight as the night went on.

In the Senate battle, Democrats lost seats to Republicans in North Carolina, West Virginia, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Iowa, and Colorado — giving the party a 52-45 majority. The results yet to be called include Alaska and Louisiana, where a runoff will be held next month and polls show Republicans are favored to make another pickup. 

But perhaps more sobering for Democratic officials were gubernatorial races. Their candidates lost in toss-up states like Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine, and Florida, all of which had highly vulnerable Republican incumbents. The GOP also took control of the state houses in the Democratic strongholds of Illinois and Massachusetts.

REUTERSMitch McConnell with his wife, Elaine Chao, at his midterm election night rally.

However, the most surprising gubernatorial race of the night belonged to Maryland, where Republican Larry Hogan shocked the current Democratic Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who was sitting Gov. Martin O’Malley’s hand-picked successor.

"We heard it was getting close, but it ended up pretty much being a blowout," a top Democratic official told Business Insider.

One Republican strategist immediately pointed to Maryland when asked by Business Insider what was most shocking about Tuesday night’s results. 

"What the heck? It’s effin’ Maryland!" the strategist said. 

Indeed, the Democratic insider said Brown’s internal polling showed him up by 13 points as recently as two weeks ago. 

Jon Thompson, a spokesman for the Republican Governors’ Association, told Business Insider the Maryland race surprised him the most "by far."

"Voters tonight rejected the Martin O’Malley/Anthony Brown high-tax agenda and voted for real change with Larry Hogan," Thompson said.

Another Republican strategist pointed to Iowa as the most embarrassing loss of the night for Democrats. In that state, Republican Joni Ernst beat Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley to flip an open Senate seat into GOP hands. 

Along with Ernst’s victory, the GOP dealt an extra blow to Iowa Democrats by winning Braley’s seat in the House of Representatives. In that race, Rod Blum beat Democrat Pat Murphy.

"Bruce Braley was such a terrible candidate that he even cost his party a safe House seat," the GOP official said.

 

Here Are The Big Winners And Losers In Politics This Morning

 

 

The Winners:

REUTERS/John Sommers II U.S. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell addresses the crowd during a campaign rally in Louisville, Kentucky, November 1, 2014. McConnell is running against Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes.

The first and most obvious winner is Mitch McConnell who will be the Majority Leader in January.

Earlier in the year, he looked to be under siege in his race for re-election but ran among the smartest campaigns in the country as he first swamped a Tea Party challenger and then destroyed Alison Lundergan Grimes, the candidate the Clintons helped handpick to oppose him, in the general election.

McConnell finally gets his chance to run the Senate and the man in position to put the heat on President Obama even if he won’t have an easy time with some members of his caucus.

Tom Cotton came into 2014 as the most hyped GOP Senate candidate but was thought to have run a lackluster campaign that turned an easy win into a nail biter. In the end, he won his Arkansas seat in a landslide. That puts him back into the conversation as the most highly regarded young (37) Republican and a future leader of his party.

In the course of the last year Joni Ernst went from a national unknown to the leading Republican dragon slayer who turned a likely Democratic hold to a GOP Senate pickup in Iowa.

The first women sent to DC from the Hawkeye state, she turned out the most effective ad of the campaign in which she spoke of castrating hogs and making the pigs in Washington squeal. Forget about Sarah Palin and Michel Bachmann. Ernst is the new female star of the Tea Party with a bully Senate pulpit.

AP

Ted Cruz wasn’t on the ballot and his GOP nemesis McConnell got a major promotion. But Republican control of the Senate will also make him more important and bring even more attention to his guerrilla campaign against both the Republican establishment and the Obama administration as he prepares for a presidential run.

Scott Walker’s struggles to win re-election as Wisconsin governor were supposed to tarnish his hopes for the presidency. But rather than being knocked off by another huge effort by the unions and liberal Super PACs, he wound up prevailing by a convincing margin that will boost his credibility for 2016. Though he is still untested on the national stage, winning three elections in five years elevates him to the first tier of GOP candidates if, as is expected, he runs for president.

Chris Christie didn’t have a very good 2014 that started off with Bridgegate and ended with a video in which he told a critic to “sit down and shut up.” But as head of the Republican Governor’s Association, he has to get some of the credit for a GOP wave that saw major wins for Republicans in blue states like Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts. That gives his flagging hopes for the presidency a much-needed boost.

The only Democrat on our list is Elizabeth Warren, another senator who wasn’t on the ballot. Being in the minority in the Senate will only enhance her standing as the idol of her party’s base. It will also put her in a position to wage her own guerilla campaign to hold President Obama’s feet to the fire should he be tempted to try and cut any deals with the GOP Congress.

 The Losers:

REUTERS/Jonathan ErnstU.S. President Barack Obama campaigns for U.S. Representative Gary Peters, candidate for Senate in Michigan.

The most obvious loser is President Barack Obama for whom this midterm must stand as a personal repudiation even if he chooses to pretend that is not the case.

Whether he chooses to try and work with Congress or tries to govern on his own with executive orders of questionable legality, the lame duck period of his presidency begins now.

The other obvious loser is Harry Reid who gets demoted from Majority to Minority Leader. Reid, who ran the Senate with an iron fist and squelched debate from both sides of the aisle, will not find the change invigorating or pleasant.

Even before her party tanked on Tuesday, Democratic National Committee Chair Rep.Debbie Wasserman Schultz was already lined up to be the scapegoat for the defeat. The White House has been waging a war on women with her in the cross-hairs for the last three years but the catastrophic loss may give Obama the opening to finally fire someone that he seems to dislike almost as much as Benjamin Netanyahu.

The competition for the worst campaign of 2014 is stiff but the title has to go to Iowa Rep. Bruce Braley who single handedly turned a safe Democratic Senate seat into a Republican pickup. Though, as I noted, Joni Ernst ran a nearly perfect campaign against him, Braley’s gaffes will not soon be forgotten. Runners up would be Alison Lundergan Grimes who turned a close race against an unpopular Mitch McConnell into a rout. And she still isn’t saying whether she voted for Obama.

Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis was probably even more inept than Braley or Grimes but doesn’t get the title because she would have lost in red Texas even if she ran a perfect campaign. Still, the collapse of her catastrophic and mendacious run for statewide office was as catastrophic as her rise from obscurity via a pro-abortion filibuster last year was meteoric.

AP/David Zalubowski Hillary Clinton.

She wasn’t on the ballot yesterday, but the likely 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took a hit as much as any other member of her party.

The scope of the GOP win and the inability of her party to generate an Obama-style turnout without the president on the ballot should chill Democratic optimism about the next national election.

So should the failure of the Clintons to help Democratic candidates around the country.

The one Republican loser on the list is Scott Brown. Though he wound up losing by only a whisker in a New Hampshire Senate race that few gave him a chance to win, had he stayed home in Massachusetts and run for governor, he’d have been the one to beat Martha Coakley.

Had Brown done so, he’d be governor and have a bright future instead of seeing his career in elective politics finished.