My post mortum, FWIW...........

[socialist_n_TN]

Not an expert, but I've seen a lot of elections in almost 60 years of life and this is what I think happened.

People were tired of W's incompetence and that caused them to doubt the ENTIRE Reagan legacy. So they started electing Dems in '06 and it culminated in the '08 landslide. WE HAD A CHANCE TO BEGIN TO OVERTURN THE REAGAN REVOLUTION. People (even Reagan Dems and some Republicans) were ready to look at something different. Maybe they weren't entirely convinced, but they WERE ready to look. Last year was the time for bold initatives and Dems blew it. Not because they didn't get things accomplished, but because they didn't lobby for it all. Obviously, they wouldn't have GOTTEN it all, but it would have been another education nail in the coffin we were building for the Voodoo economics that has been the Gospel for the last 30 years.

Instead of asking for Medicare for All, we even took the incredibly popular Public Option off of the table and thereby lost our BEST chance to at least EDUCATE the voting public about what our BEST policy position on health care would be. We should have asked for and lobbied for a stimulus package that was weighted towards public service JOBS and NOT tax cuts. A 21st Century WPA. Instead we didn't even ASK. Again another lost educational opportunity to show what government COULD do for the public if not for RW Congressional obstructionism. The list goes on and on. In 2009 people WOULD HAVE LISTENED! But we didn't even try.

BTW, I KNOW that we wouldn't have gotten much, if any, of these REAL reforms through Congress in the face of united Republican and occasional Blue Dog opposition, but that was not the point. The point would have been to EDUCATE the voting public on what we COULD do, THEN take the best compromise we could get. And we didn't do it.

So the public decided that the Dems were no better and no more competent than the Repubs and gave them another shot. BECAUSE WE DIDN'T TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO EDUCATE THE VOTING PUBLIC BY LOBBYING FOR OUR BEST POLICY POSITIONS. We started with the compromise position when we COULD have gotten that anyway and had a more educated electorate.

[deutsey]

1. It mystifies me that the Democrats are so inept at communicating with/educating the public

They have no one who understands what it means to have an effective communication strategy?

That's the way it seems to me.

They always seem so taken off gaurd by GOP/conservative attacks and instead of countering them, allow them to fester without addressing them or make feeble, reactive gestures. I won't even go into their proactive communication strategy (one that puts the GOP on the defensive for a change and advances a traditional Democratic agenda), because they don't have one, apparently.

[socialist_n_TN]

2. That's another hangover from the Reagan.........

sea change. Liberals/Dems got so used to keeping their heads down and not rocking the boat that they forgot how to fight political battles. During the 80s "liberal" became a dirty word and it was an albatross hung around Dems at every opportunity. So Dems got so used to NOT emphasizing their roots, that they forgot HOW to fight back. A whole generation of Dem politicians came of age when you could only get elected by keeping a low profile and NOT being a Democrat. It's still affecting us today.

I'm old enough to actually REMEMBER the "daisy" ads against Goldwater in '64. Now THAT was an effective political ad and VERY hard hitting.