The Democrats' lost generation

As Democrats take stock of their grievous losses in the 2014 elections, party leaders are confronting a challenge perhaps even more daunting than their defeats in the House and Senate: the virtual wipeout of the Democratic talent pool across the country.

After the Republican waves of 2010 and 2014, the party is depleted not just in its major-league talent, but also in its triple-A recruitment prospects. It amounts to a setback, Democrats say, that will almost certainly require more than one election cycle to repair.


At the start of the 2014 campaign, Democrats envisioned an election that would produce new national stars for the party in at least a few tough states – Georgia Sen. Michelle Nunn or Kentucky Sen. Alison Lundergan Grimes, for instance, or maybe even Texas Gov. Wendy Davis. Even if the party fell short in those “reach” states, Democrats hoped to produce new heavyweight blue-state Democrats – Maryland Gov. Anthony Brown, the country’s only black state executive; or Maine Gov. Mike Michaud, who would have been the first openly gay candidate elected governor.

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Any of them could have landed on a vice presidential short list in 2016.

Instead, all of them lost.

Joining them were numerous down-ballot Democrats widely viewed as future contenders for high office: attorney general candidates in Nevada and Arizona who looked like future governors; aspiring state treasurers in Ohio and Colorado who could have gone on to bigger things; prized secretary of state candidates in Iowa and Kansas as well as countless congressional hopefuls around the country.

Arizona Rep.-elect Ruben Gallego, a state lawmaker who will be one of the few Democratic freshmen in the next Congress, said the party will need to redouble its efforts at recruitment and voter registration in order to bounce back. Along with other state and local Democratic leaders, Gallego predicted that city- and county-level officials would be the best place to look for ground-level Democratic recruits in the years ahead, thanks to the party’s strength in urban America and these officials’ relative insulation from national trends.

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“The way we rebuild is really by having a deep investment in our local city council races and state races, by really starting to recruit and pipeline strong local candidates,” said Gallego, a 34-year-old Marine Corps veteran. “That’s where your good congressional candidates in the future are going to come from.”

Some Democrats hope their better-performing candidates will take another try at statewide office – and soon. New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said he would encourage Democrats like Nunn and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Jason Carter to seek rematches in “a more favorable climate in 2016 and 2018.”

“People were swept out this year because of the red tide,” Buckley said. “I can envision them running again in a few years.”

Democrats, many of whom argued Wednesday that the election’s painful outcome reflected little more than off-year voter apathy, cautioned that there were a few bright spots on the recruitment front. They elected at least three new House members who could stand for statewide office: Gallego, Florida Rep.-elect Gwen Graham and Massachusetts Rep.-elect Seth Moulton, a decorated veteran who took on an incumbent Democrat during primary season.

And a pair of new governors, Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf and Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo, have the potential to prove themselves as national figures. In a few states, Democrats add, they have already established powerhouse figures with obvious statewide and national potential, including several of California’s constitutional officers and the mayors of Los Angeles and Chicago.

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It’s too soon, some argue, to conclude that the party’s recruitment pipeline is depleted: In 2004, Democrats struggled across the map and elected only two new Democratic senators. One of them, however, was Barack Obama.

But the relative paucity of Democratic recruitment prospects stands in stark contrast to the Republicans’ overflowing talent pool. The GOP will come out of this election controlling at least 31 governorships and as many as 54 Senate seats, many of them held by 2010 wave-election babies who are already positioning themselves for the presidency.

Even among the Democrats who squeaked by in tough races this week – Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper – few party leaders and presidential strategists see the seeds of national greatness. It’s one more reason why the Clintons loom so large in the Democratic coalition; more than ever, if Hillary Clinton decided not to run for president, it’s entirely unclear who could fill the void.

Despite Democratic stoicism in Washington, there was palpable anxiety this week among the state and local leaders to whom the task of regrouping a scattered party will actually fall. In states home to some of the party’s bitterest 2014 losses, there were recriminations against individual candidates and the down-ballot consequences of their shortcomings.

In swing-state Florida, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn – whose party has not won a statewide constitutional office since 2006 – said he felt “keenly frustrated” by the Democratic wipeout on the statewide level. Skating into his own reelection contest early next year, Buckhorn faulted party-switching democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist for the party’s defeat this year and urged Democrats to recruit candidates who can credibly present themselves as problem solvers.

“People have just said, a pox on both your houses,” said Buckhorn, a possible candidate for governor in 2018. “In the case of Florida, we had a very flawed Democratic nominee and it didn’t help. If we had a nominee who had been consistent throughout his or her career, the outcome of this race [for governor] would have been different.”

Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler, who lost the Democratic gubernatorial nomination this year to the since-defeated Anthony Brown, called the results of the election a “shock to the party.”

“It’s a bucket of ice water being dumped on the heads of the Democratic Party in our state and we have to regroup,” said Gansler, a former chair of the Democratic Attorneys General Association. “We lost the governor’s race relatively decisively, and so I think we need to reflect as a party on message and candidates.”

Other Democrats who struggled against the 2014 tide took a more stoic view of the results.

Ohio legislator Connie Pillich, who attracted national financial support for her state treasurer’s race, described Democrats as a “resilient bunch” despite getting locked out of every Ohio constitutional office for a second straight cycle.

“I don’t know what we could have done differently. We ran a real competitive race,” Pillich said. “It’s certainly a disappointing year but it’s also a wake-up call that we need to be focused and we need to work harder.”