Take this simple test: Make a list of everyone the Democratic Party has blamed for losing the White House 2016s. (It may actually be easier to make a list of everyone the party hasn’t blamed).
In any case, is you do, you’ll find one name conspicuously absent from the list: that of Hillary Clinton.
On Monday The National Journal’s Ron Fournier exposed this omission in one simple tweet:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Comey's fault
Media's fault
Putin's fault
Obama's fault
Staff's fault
Voters' fault #DemocraticFaultLines @mikebarnicle @JoeNBC
— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) December 19, 2016
The folks at MSNBC’s Morning Joe used the Fournier tweet as a jumping-off point to an important discussion about the Democrats’ seemingly constant state of denial, wondering why the Dems would choose to blame anyone (and everyone) not named Hillary Clinton.
Dems point fingers in the election aftermath: @JoeNBC asks, 'Is this a Democratic party in denial?' https://t.co/wbNR4v4NOe
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) December 19, 2016
If you’re keeping track, Clinton’s Democratic supporters and the media (forgive the redundancy) have blamed the FBI, James Comey, the non-mainstream media, Russian hackers, Vladimir Putin, Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner, Barack Obama, and the voters themselves.
Elise Jordan, a former advisor to Senator [score]Rand Paul[/score] (R-Ky.), makes an astute point when she notes that the Democrats seem to be laying the groundwork for a repeat of all their recent mistakes. She argues that by choosing to ignore its real problems, the party is setting itself up for a tremendous fall come 2018.
It gets worse. According to the panel, Hillary’s supporters aren’t the only ones in denial. The former candidate is as well.
It’s just this utter incapability for self-examination.
It’s the Russians fault. It’s Comey’s fault…. It’s Obama’s fault. It’s fake News’s fault. It’s the media’s fault. She took another gratuitous swipe at the media saying it was our fault.
But what all of this allows them and the Democratic party to do is to avoid the tough questions about why they lost and how they alienated such a large bloc of voters that they needed to win.… And the fact that none of them saw this for the election this was.
In fact, the 2016 election just barely ended, and already some respected pundits are wondering if the GOP isn’t destined to win a major supermajority in Congress come 2018.
The GOP’s strong 2016 election showing raises a crucial question: Do Republicans have any chance of netting eight Senate seats – and a filibuster-proof majority – in 2018?
The upcoming Senate class is unusually unbalanced. Only eight Republican Senate seats are up for election in 2018, compared to 25 Democratic seats (including two independents who caucus with the Democrats). Ten of those Democratic seats are in states carried by Donald Trump.
By any measure, Democrats are on the defensive in the next fight for Senate control. A three-seat Democratic midterm gain, which would give the party a majority, looks virtually impossible given the seats up this cycle.
Cross-posted at Constitution.com
