It's downhill for Democrats after President Obama leaves, one consultant says. Dem strategist: Party 'in decline'

One of the Democrats’ most veteran strategists warns that the party is “in decline” and “at considerable risk” when President Barack Obama is no longer on the scene.

“Since Obama was elected President, the Democrats have lost nine governorships, 56 members of the House and two Senate seats,” Doug Sosnik, the political director in Bill Clinton’s White House, writes in a new memo.


While Republican branding problems get the lion’s share of attention, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating has declined by 15 points since Obama took power. A Pew Research Center survey this January showed that the Democratic Party was viewed favorably by 47 percent of Americans, down from 62 percent in Jan. 2009.

With the likelihood of gridlock and near-record-low confidence in public institutions, Sosnik expects 2014 to bring the fourth change election in the past eight years.

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“This puts Senate Democrats in a vulnerable position, while threatening Republican’s control of the House as well as their sizeable numerical advantage in the governorships across the country,” writes Sosnik, who advised Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential race and now does consulting work for a variety of private-sector clients.

[Read the whole memo. View the accompanying PowerPoint slides.]

Obama neither directly campaigned nor raised money for down-ticket Democrats last year. The post-election creation of Organizing for Action to push his own agenda has upset party regulars because it makes the Democratic National Committee less relevant than ever, squeezes fundraising for other Democratic groups and emphasizes issues that put moderates in a bind.

“Obama not only got elected by running against the party establishment, but he has governed as a President who does not emphasize his party label,” writes Sosnik. “It’s hard to be a change agent if you are lugging around a party label in an era where voters are so strongly disaffected from our institutions.”

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These memos are read closely by an influential community of insiders in the political and business worlds. In this one, Sosnik outlines several challenges facing his own party:

• Obama’s personal popularity does not easily translate for other candidates. The president is not building the Democratic Party’s institutional apparatus in a way that it will thrive when he’s gone.

• The losses in the 2010 midterms gave Republicans control of the redistricting process, which will be in effect until after the 2020 census. This gives the GOP a structural advantage in keeping the House.

• Millennials, born 1981 to 1994, and Generation X’ers, born 1965 to 1980, are voting Democratic, but a plurality identify themselves as independents — which makes them less reliable.

• Democrats cannot count on the same level of African-American turnout without Obama at the top of the ticket. Sosnik cites new analysis showing that in 2012 for the first time ever eligible black voters turned out a higher rate than whites.

While Republicans have a serious Hispanic problem, Sosnik explains, “younger Hispanics feel less of an allegiance to the Democratic Party than their elders.” Only 50 percent of Hispanic voters aged 18-34 identify themselves as Democrats, according to Gallup, compared to 59 percent of Hispanic voters 55 or older.

If Hillary Clinton does not run, Sosnik fears that Democrats will be left with a thin bench of top-flight presidential contenders in 2016.

Looking to 2014, Democratic base groups also tend to turn out at lower rates for midterms than presidential elections.

In terms of actual policy making, Sosnik believes that it will be “almost impossible” for Obama to effectively engage Congress.

“Obama’s victory last November was a great political achievement, but the fact that he didn’t set out a clear policy agenda for a second term left him without a clear mandate to govern over a politically divided Congress,” he writes.

Sosnik notes that many Republicans are more concerned about losing in a primary than a general election, which makes compromise harder.

“Furthermore,” he writes, “there’s not a single member of either party who fears paying a political price for not falling in line with the President, making it even more difficult to get members to cast difficult votes.”