It insulted so many of our voters that they did not defend him and they paid the penalty.

Clinton had nothing to do with it. Remember that Warren campaigned for these same candidates as well.

Don't want to disturb the bumble bees.

I posted this in reply to another thread but it's just as valid here I think.

Look at Connecticut. An unpopular and sharp elbowed Democratic incumbent (Malloy) was ripe for the picking, the pukes and kochroaches invested millions to help Tom Foley (R - rich asshole from Greenwich) try again to take the office. In 2010 Malloy beat Foley by something like 1%. This time around people began writing him off in the spring.

Instead of following the logic of other Democrats, Malloy had Barack and Michelle Obama in for fundraisers and rallys. He talked about the new gun laws that the ammosexuals thought they'd use to beat him and actually told people he was proud of enacting them. He talked about Progressive principles like an increased minimum wage and mandatory sick leave.

He beat Foley by a larger margin than he did in 2010 and Connecticut also sent back all five of their Democratic congresscritters with fairly easy victories.

I really hope the party and the committees figure out how stupid the puke-lite tactic really is but recent history doesn't seem to be on our side.

May I quote you on this sir, I didn't know?

I think it's a winning formula, at least for traditionally blue as well as for most swing States.

On edit:
Foley didn't do himself any favors in this race either to be honest. He was a horrible candidate and I think that the election would have been a lot tougher, but not out of hand for Malloy if the Republicans had of actually nominated somebody that wasn't a complete idiot.

The President and First Lady campaigned for. The First Lady campaigned heavily for Bailey in Iowa.

thanked them in his Victory Speech.

BRIDGEPORT -- Allies to the end on issues such as gun control and the minimum wage, President Barack Obama helped Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy make his last stand Sunday in Connecticut's most populous city.

Given the rock star treatment by 1,900 people during a rally at Central High School in Bridgeport, where he entered to raucous applause and the U2 song "City of Blinding Lights," Obama said the first-term incumbent has been a loyal friend of his administration who can be counted on to stand up for the middle class.

MOre..
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Obama-rallies-crowd-for-Malloy-in-Bridgeport-5865142.php

Malloy didn't run away from ACA or Minimum wage, either.

I somehow was not aware that the President had actively campaigned with Malloy, and frankly, I thought he'd lose the election. Clearly, there was a margin there that came out in CT and not many other places, and I suppose that I could attribute that to the President's visit, motivating voters who were not so similarly encouraged in other places where Obama was not invited.

We lost lots of races... not just a few Senate seats. They didn't all run away from the president.

Maybe not all but way too many and letting the M$M get away with blaming Obama is shameful, it is time for Demarcates need to grow a pair and stand up for all of the good things Obamas presidency has done.

It's just as easy to say (for the Senate races at least) that too many moderate Demorats were unable to run away the President and toward their constituents because they were not permitted to demonstrate their independence on issues that were important in their state. They therefore lost when their opponents had too easy a time of pinning them to policies that they opposed.

Do you think Grimes would have won if Obama had campaigned with her? Nunn? Pryor? Carter? Davis?

Your position has been posted about 10 times since 11/4 and still doesn't pass the laugh test.

then more people might have voted. The turnout was the lowest in over 70 years that is why we lost not anything Obama did as the press wants us to think.

Or are you just trying to stir the pot?

is it signal payer no but we can build on it like we did with Social Security, two woman on the Supreme Court one being hispanic, got rid of don't ask don't tell and supports gay marriage, has held up Keystone for the last 6 yrs, pushed immigration reform through the Senate saved the auto industry and keeper us from have another great depression....

candidate, or if the candidate had run on Obamacare?

so how can it be said that Obama was "Thrashed" "whooped" " Destroyed"

We were not able to hold the Senate because of the low voter turnout including very low turnout of people ages 18 to 30
Obama was not to blame when our own candidates ran away from him

other than by the chicken shit candidates on "our-side" who trashed his polices. Obama was not on the ballet this whole "the midterms are a vote against Obama" is a Repuke talking point that needs to be put to bed.

of Democratic party 'officials' and congresscritters.

In 2006 he was the hottest ticket in town and got an early taste of Primary life criss crossing the country campaigning for the coming Dem wave. He racked up a ton of chits for his coming run.

after 2008, the loyalty went into the toilet. Chits the 'loyal party members' refused to honor. Starting with Pelosi and Reid.

... He wasn't up for election! Don't listen to the Corporate M$M, OR NPR. Just because they say shite like that doesn't mean it's true. Review the fairy tale about The Emperor's New Clothes.

Obama's loss.. and those who get sucked into the vortex.

Funny how no one invites her. But they should.
Ask her to explain wth happened.

the shithead haters on the left or right can do about it.

They can kindly suck eggs while I laugh in their faces. We elect the president for four years, dumb-dumbs. Not two.

Story about President Obama campaigning in Maryland and Illinois, both of whom lost.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/10/20/president-obama-is-back-on-the-campaign-trail-in-extremely-obama-friendly-places/

This was discussed at the time, and was roundly discounted by the DU crowd as being anti-Obama. But I think we can see that the crowds were not there to see the President. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2799603/crowds-walk-obama-speech-rare-campaign-trail-appearance.html

Another story highlighting the President campaigning in Maryland in Illinois, where the people loved the President. http://jamiedupree.blog.ajc.com/2014/10/19/obama-finally-hits-2014-campaign-trail/

Republicans won Maryland. http://www.cnn.com/election/2014/results/state/MD/governor

Republicans won Illinois. http://www.cnn.com/election/2014/results/state/IL/governor

So what else do you have? Because the facts just don't support your narrative my friend.

My point is that the Republicans ran against Obama and too many Dems did as well but it was not Obama who lost it was the whimp ass Dems who were afraid to back their president who lost not Obama he is still in office and will not be running again.

President Obama said to make no mistake, his policies are on the ballot even if he is not.

Now, you can't have it both ways. You can't say my policies are on the ballot, and then announce that the election was not a reflection on him. To use a poker analogy, he put the chips on the table. Then when the game was over, to claim he hadn't actually bet that money is at best a bit disingenuous wouldn't you agree?

Democrats who ran with him lost. Democrats who ran away from him lost. The Republicans won huge. There is an old saying, you can't fix it if you don't know what is broken. To find out what is broken requires that you first take a long, hard, and honest look at what happened. Often it takes a year, or more, before we can say with any certainty why an airplane crashed. Those reports are about the most brutally honest evaluations that you can find. They find error in pilots, errors from the companies, errors in the design and manufacture of aircraft. Then they set about fixing the problem, to try to keep it from happening again.

Your meme is that Obama didn't lose, because he wasn't on the ballot. Pfui, that is disproven by Obama. Democrats who ran away from him lost, so did several who ran with him. So that meme is lost. You can't save President Obama from this, and we shouldn't try. We should learn from our mistake, and we should move forward as a party to make ourselves, and our electoral chances better.

So why did we lose? We lost because we had no national agenda. We assumed that the Fast and Furious, Benghazi, faux IRS outrage, and Government Shutdown scandalmongering from the Republicans would harm them to the point of unelectability. Even when polling showed that wasn't the case, the Democratic Party did nothing to create the national agenda that works just about every single time it's tried. Instead, we hooked our wagons to two arguments.

1) Republicans suck, and are hugely unpopular. True, before the election the polling had Republicans sitting on about a 27% approval rate, Democrats were not significantly more popular sitting on 29. So we could say that Republicans were only marginally more popular than a sharp stick in the eye, we could say we were only marginally more popular than they were. But that ignored the fact that both parties were wildly unpopular.

2) Republicans were engaged in a War on Women. We even trotted this out to use it against Female candidates. Senator Udall of Colorado used it so often they started calling him Senator Uterus.

We ignored the economy, we ignored the populist issues that we as Democrats could have, should have run on. Our national agenda was "They suck" while ignoring our own suckage in public opinion polls. So we got handed our asses on election night.

I love and respect President Obama. I have nothing but the best of wishes for him. But I will not try to re-write history to protect him. Because there was a Democratic Party before he was President, and we will have one after, if we acknowledge that the party is larger than any one man, or woman. We need to learn the lessons from this electoral defeat, and that means taking the blinders off, and taking a brutally honest look at the election, not making excuses to protect someone who can't run again. Otherwise we'll waste time, and energy, in a failed attempt to protect him, and lose in 2016, which would be far worse IMO.

I am saying that he was not "Thrashed" "whooped" " Destroyed" and no candidate that I am aware of who ran from Obama won and at least one who very actively ran with him won.

Jeff Merkley pointed out his differences with President Obama more than once. He won in Oregon.

Corey Booker won in New Jersey, and how many times has he been derided on this very site for his opposition to President Obama?

There is two right off the top of my head.

I'm sure I could do some more research, but the Democrats who won, did so not because of, or in spite of President Obama. They won because they ran better campaigns than the average, or faced weaker opponents such as Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico.

However, when you look at it from a national point of view, especially when President Obama put his policies on the ballot in his own words, it was a thrashing. You can't undo the bet after it's made. You can't change the stakes after the game is played. President Obama put his policies on the ballot. Now, if he said that because he thought that would get the supporters out to vote, or because he thought that the Democrats would win the Senate, I don't know. But he did. He set the stakes, not me. He could have laughed and said that the last time he checked he wasn't on the ballot anywhere. He could have avoided the question, but instead he played into the Republican game, setting the stakes in such a way where he could either win a big boost for his agenda, or lose it. He gambled with that agenda, not me.

I am not saying Obama did not lose what I am saying the size of the loss was well within the range expected in a off year election in any Presidents 6th year and I would not call it a "thrashing" As well I feel that standing for something instead of run away from the leader of your party is a better way to go.

Wisconsin.

controls the White House. I suppose there may have been off-year elections in which the sitting president's party increased their seats in congress, but I can't think of such a situation right now.

Obama was not "Thrashed" "whooped" or " Destroyed" as too many people are saying.

I was just pointing out the obvious.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz was saying that Democrats were going to win big and even pick up some seats in the House. People here were cheering that it was the end of the road for McConnell. I was saying that we were going to see a Republican Senate with 52 seats. I was called a pessimist, depressing the vote, and spreading RW talking points for that. Even I wasn't expecting to lose North Carolina or Colorado, and I was the pessimistic one.

The NY Times had it at 52 seats two days before the election. Huffington Post had it at about 65% that the Republicans would win the senate, but nobody, and I mean nobody saw 54 seats coming. And make no mistake, that is going to be the most probable result after the Louisiana Runoff and Cassidy wins.

How bad would the defeat have to be before you were willing to say that it was less than optimal?

Until we grow a backbone and stand behind our president we will continue to slip away

The Governors of Maryland and Illinois are now Republicans, that's after Republican Blagojevich was impeached and jailed for corruption in Illinois. Durbin didn't really campaign with Obama, but won. Franken didn't campaign with the President, and won.

It's not about a man, it's about policy. It's about ideals. When you campaign on them, you have a much much better chance of winning. 51% of the people thought that national issues mattered. So the argument that all politics are local isn't exactly true. http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025735745

Issues matter, not the man who isn't on the ballot. That's the point we need to learn.

it shouldn't be too difficult to do a complete and thorough analysis of how the 33 or so senate campaigns and the 435 house campaigns went. It's not that hard to analyze each and every seat to see how and why each candidate won or lost. Same goes with the governorship and all state legislative seats. It's not big data. It's high school civics project level data. Do a thorough analysis and then we can stop this nonsense bickering. We will have the definitive explanation of why candidates won or lost.

our base stayed home they were not motivated to go out and vote, I believe it was Democrats running as Republican Light that was the main reason for the lack of motivation

Only in some races? My post was to address the OP who claimed that in some races, lack of turn out was a problem, and in some other races, the D candidate ran as a GOP-lite and so on. Find out for each and every campaign and apply the corrective solution to each campaign.

LOL.

This was an election largely of red areas and gerrymandered districts. We weren't going to do well. If Obama had been on the ballot, turnout would have been higher and we would have done better, so I don't think the blame belongs with him. If they would have used him for campaigning, the Democratic candidates might have done better as well.

Yes, stand up for the good!!

The Democratic Party was beaten, horribly, because it stood for nothing and tried to be too much like the Republican Party, again. The people who would like that sort of thing were already going to vote for the Republican Party anyhow. Most of us who vote every time held our noses and voted for the Democrats as usual. The voting laws in my state made it so I had to go down the list and check off each and every Democrat and I did so dutifully. I miss straight ticket voting, but I will fill in the oval for every single Democrat.

I don't understand why some people want to make everything about Obama. I don't think Obama had much to do with how the midterms went. It was Democrats who ran lackluster "I will vote like a Republican too" campaigns and Republicans voting with their hatreds like they always do.

What does "the Obama" mean in your OP at the end there? Is that a typo or what? It stood out to me for some reason, lol.

FYI - I started the thread after I heard the term on tonights network news that "Obama was thrashed in the midterms"

Instead of embracing him as the parties leader, I read about the candidates trying to appeal to conservatives. I guess they don't notice that conservatives are the least likely people to vote for them behind moderates and liberals. Progressive policies won on a lot of ballots, hopefully the party leaders will listen this time.

No Democratic candidates ran "trying to appeal to conservatives".

The people making such statements don't really believe in moderates and other independents. If you don't hold with every progressive policy preference... then you're not a Democrat.

What actually happened was that they tried to appeal to the same moderates who have been the deciding votes in those states for many years.

Those red states are "red" because they have many more conservatives than progressives. It's only by winning both progressives and moderates that we ever win there.

No wonder your post is laughable.

...the DU consensus has been that Obama has been a worthless, DINO, sellout, corporate-fascist, GWB2, failure that liberals hate. Expressing almost any positive sentiment for Obama was sure to get you flamed to hell. The same could be said of the ACA.

Then, we lose an election.

Suddenly, all the Monday morning quarterbacks claim that not embracing Obama, his record, and the ACA was the death knell for Democrat candidates.

Consistency is not one of DU's strong points.

popularity plummeting, unpopular president and all that RW rubbish. The repubs laid out the rules, dems played by them only to find repubs cheated (as always).

I’ll call her Mary - 33-year Coloradan… politically astute and liberal to the bone. She takes her voting rights seriously and never misses an election.
She is a huge Obama supporter, but her candidate (Mark Udall) runs away from him.
The media pounds at this fact relentlessly.
Mary is beyond disappointed and really, really pissed at Udall.
So pissed, in fact, that on election day Mary leaves the “U.S. Senate” section on her ballot blank.

Her reason? "He didn't deserve my vote".

At age 33, I might have done the same thing.