Now Can We Stop Running Losing Campaigns?

The consultants are analyzing Alison Lundergan Grimes' catastrophic campaign and coming to the same conclusion they always do: "It wasn't conservative enough.  We need to appeal more and harder to republican voters!"

The voters who will never, ever, EVER vote for a candidate with a D next to her name.

Ignoring the 900,000 Kentuckians who voted for President Obama in 2012 and sat home last Tuesday because there wasn't an actual Democratic candidate running against Mitch McConnell.

But a few observers have it figured out.  Charlie Pierce:

First of all, the president's basic unpopularity was unquestionably a factor, but not anywhere near as much of a factor as was the reluctance of the Democratic party -- from the president on down -- to embrace the actual successes that the administration has achieved. The economy is, in fact, improving. It is the responsibility of the president and his party that we have the paradoxical polling that indicates that the elements of the Affordable Care Act are popular, while "Obamacare" is not. (Mitch McConnell told a transparent lie that Kentucky could get rid of the ACA and still keep its very popular state exchange. He didn't suffer at all for that.) The senatorial candidates who lost were senators who ran away from the administration. Alison Lundergan Grimes wouldn't say if she'd voted for the president. Kay Hagan endorsed the Keystone XL pipeline. Michelle Nunn practically ran as an independent. How much worse could it possibly have been for all of them had they stood by the president and his record? How much worse could it possibly have been for them had the president come to campaign for them?

Erik Loomis:

So there’s a lot of work to be done. In case this post was too long, here is a short open letter to the Democratic Party with some visuals.

Dear Democrats,

Less this:



More this:



Thanks,
Erik

Steve M:

No, Democrats shouldn't attempt phony duck-hunting and NASCAR bonding -- they should be who they are, advance policies that help the non-rich achieve a better life economically, and pitch that approach to the old as well as the young, the white as well as the non-white, the rural as well as the urban and urbane. Everybody but the rich is in the same boat these days anyway -- your recent-vintage Ivy League sheepskin won't get you a real job any more than decades in the recently closed factory will -- so a message of economic relief for the non-rich, backed by concrete proposals fought for seriously, ought to have appeal across demographic lines. No, this won't win Democrats a majority of older males. But it will make inroads. And this doesn't have to be in lieu of appeals on other issues -- it should be in addition. You fight for Joe Lunchpail's economic security and he really might not mind that you also fight for his nephew's right to get gay-married.

Last word to the Rude Pundit:

The Rude Pundit has said before, and he'll say again and again: We have to stop acting like the visiting team in our own country.