In the run-up to the November 4 midterm elections, Democrats filled e-mail inboxes to the brim with messages that ranged from panicky to pleading.
The subject lines revealed the desperation of the Democratic establishment as it tried to drum up money and support: “heartbreaking shame”, “deep trouble”, “devastating loss”, “Terrible news”, “we're BEGGING”, “begging … BEGGING”, “kiss any hope goodbye”.
If nothing else, the daily — sometimes hourly — cyberspace freak-outs from their various campaigns served to illustrate the Democrats' central, relentless, numbing message for these elections. It had nothing to do with celebrating the party's successes — because there are none.
All the Democrats had to offer their supporters on election day was abject fear about the consequences of a Republican victory. In the end, Republicans swept polls, winning control of both houses of Congress.
Get ready for a tide of commentary about how the US really is a conservative country after all, and the Republicans have a mandate — despite the fact that voter turnout dropped in most states — to do pretty much anything they want.
For certain, that will be the Republicans' message, along with their right-wing echo chambers at Fox News and the like.
But nothing of the sort is true. This year, establishment Republicans managed to defeat most primary challenges by the fanatics of the Tea Party, but they did so by adopting the reactionaries' political agenda.
Though they may not always advertise it in campaign speeches, the Republican candidates expected to win today have right-wing positions — on issues like corporate tax breaks, Social Security privatisation and the like — that are deeply unpopular.
It is no wonder that only 29% of people have a positive view of congressional Republicans, compared to 47% with a negative view. But the Republicans rode a single theme to victory: opposition to the presidency of Barack Obama.
Thus, the real question is not how the Republicans ran away with this year's elections. It is how Obama and the Democrats gave away their huge political advantage from the past two presidential election years.
In 2008, Obama won the White House amid a political sea change after eight years of George Bush and the Republicans. Expectations for Obama's presidency were sky high.
Meanwhile, Democrats were in charge in Congress and confident they would stay there. Even in 2012, while enthusiasm for the Democrats was more muted, Obama won easy re-election against a Republican candidate who was the personification of how out of touch his party was.
That was then, and this is now. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll released on the eve of the election, Obama's favourability hit a career low of 44%, compared to 60% at the start of his term last year. Democrats in Congress also have record-low approval ratings, though the Republicans are even more widely despised.
So what happened? The answer is simple: The presidential candidate with the slogan “Yes We Can” is now a one-and-a-half term president with a record of “No We Didn't and Still Won't”.
Instead of appealing to the people who swept Obama into office on a wave of hope and optimism — the people who supported health care for all or an increase in the minimum wage — the Democrats tailored their proposals and policies for Corporate America.
Instead of confronting the Tea-Partying Republicans and exposing them as out of step with public opinion on most issues, the Democrats caved and conceded on one question after another.
The net result was that mainstream politics was dragged further to the right, toward the Tea Party maniacs — even with a “liberal” Democrat in the White House and total control over Congress for two years of his presidency.
One stark illustration of how this has affected the Democratic Party base: the biggest decline in Obama's favourability rating this year came among Latinos — a 19 point drop since the start of the year.
Latinos were a critical part of the big turnout for Obama in 2012, in large part because Obama promised to pursue legislation for “comprehensive immigration reform”. After their drubbing in the election, it seemed certain that Republicans would allow a bipartisan compromise — far too weighted to border security and punitive measures to suit immigrant rights advocates — to pass. But the Republicans blocked the bill anyway.
Obama promised he would issue executive orders to implement the main provisions of the blocked immigration bill — including a long-awaited moratorium on deportations of undocumented immigrants with children born in the US.
But Obama went back on his word once again, announcing that he would not take action until after the elections. The anti-immigrant racists won the day once more — because of Obama's surrender on an issue where he has plenty of support.
Obama not only failed to live up to the expectations for his presidency, he crushed them.
This is the inevitable outcome for a pro-business party that represents the status quo in Washington. It is a time-tested rule of the US political system: Democrats running for any office of significance say one thing to win votes, then do another to serve Corporate America. Broken promises and dashed expectations are par for the course.
Still, one thing that is striking about this particular election year is how little the Democrats think they have to say to their supporters to win their votes.
Take the issue of racism. Six years after the election of the first Black president, discrimination and inequality are every bit as much a part of the fabric of US society as ever.
Not only that, but the first Black president has said as little as possible about racism and the African American community — even as issues like racial profiling, police violence and the criminalisation of Black youth brought the question into the national spotlight.
Nevertheless, leading Black political figures like Reverend Al Sharpton — not to mention Obama himself — don't hesitate to chastise Black people about the need to get out and vote. In a recent appearance on Sharpton's radio show, the president downplayed the problem of new restrictive voter ID laws that have the effect of limiting Blacks' right to vote.
The real problem, Obama said, was Black apathy: “Most of these laws are not preventing the overwhelming majority of folks who don't vote from voting ... The reason we don't vote is because people have been fed this notion that somehow it's not going to make a difference.
“It makes a huge difference. The fact of the matter is that we've now had four years of a Republican House of Representatives because in 2010, Democrats didn't vote and Republicans did.”
In other words, Obama's message to Black people is it is their fault the Republicans won.
The Democratic Party relies on the support of Black voters at election time, but it does nothing to deserve that support. The Democrats may pose as the party concerned about racism and inequality, but they are just as likely as Republicans to view the issue through the lens of cynical political calculation, not principle.
So in some races, Democrats used the issue of Ferguson and police racism to try to pressure Black voters to go to the polls, while in other races, the “party of the people” was silent on the issue — out of fear that saying something could alienate white voters.
The conclusion about the election is not that the Republicans won the day over the Democrats, but that the US political system as a whole is rigged to work against the interests of working people.
We need an alternative to the two-party duopoly — and it will need to come from outside the Washington system.
[Abridged from A US Socialist Worker editorial.]
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