Howell Raines reviews an analysis of the 2012 campaign by the Washington Post’s Dan Balz. Balz is clear about the Dems’ current political assets, including a serious lead in the party’s use of technology.
Balz argues that the 2012 “collision” between President Obama and Romney set the pattern for future contests in several ways, starting with a nation hatefully and equally divided along socioeconomic and party lines. Moreover, the technological mastery of the Obama team, which caught its opponents flat-footed, has created a radically elevated standard for campaign management that neither party can ignore. Balz also shows how wrong the Republicans are to believe that the problem is not their message. He argues that their veneration of austerity has severed the GOP’s connection with swing voters in the middle class. This suggests that if the party sticks to its balance sheets, the Democrats may achieve a hegemony similar to the Republican ascendancy ushered in by Ronald Reagan’s 1980 landslide. All these points are arranged around the unifying theme that the new American demographics mean disaster for an insistently white party with its base in the Deep South and the Rocky Mountains. ...WaPo
Add to that a genetic weakness on Romney’s part, a weakness — Raines reminds us — that Mitt shared with his candidate father: Romney was self-destructive and blind to his own weaknesses. I’d add that seems to be a problem with his entire party, not just his family. You really have to do more than believe you’re the best. You actually have to be the best.
Cross posted from Prairie Weather
screw graphic via shutterstock.com