OPINION

Dems lose another one

The Democrats' long losing streak continued last week in a Southern suburban district that Donald Trump barely won last fall. The party's great hope for the Georgia seat was a $24 million man whose victory would have likely had a seismic impact on Washington's direction, rattling Republicans in Congress already nervous about the president.

The Democrats simply lost. Again.

The party has been on a historic run over the past eight years--all in the wrong direction. Since Barack Obama's breathtaking victory in 2008, Democrats have been wheezing their way through one political defeat after another.

Across the country, Democrats are weaker on the state level than at any time since William McKinley was president. They control fewer governorships than at any time since Woodrow Wilson was in the White House and have forfeited more seats to Republicans in the U.S. House than at any time since Herbert Hoover was elected.

The party's latest setback has only heightened its internal tensions, with some calling for the ouster of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). But an even bigger challenge for Democratic leaders will be managing the intraparty fight between left-wing heretic hunters and more moderate forces hoping to rebuild Franklin D. Roosevelt's coalition of ideologically diverse allies.

Democrats must start thinking locally. Tip O'Neill famously said that all politics are local, and the liberal Boston speaker of the House practiced what he preached. Because of it, O'Neill's party dominated national politics for decades by recruiting conservatives in the South, moderates in the Midwest and liberals in large industrial states. That embrace of ideological diversity kept Republicans in the political wilderness for 40 years, and I saw the strategy's impact firsthand during my time in Congress, even during a period when Republicans were in control of the House.

Republicans lost control of Congress in 2006 when their views were out of step with all of New England and most of the Midwest. In that election, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), then the leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was canny enough to put aside ideology and recruit pro-gun, anti-abortion candidates to pick off conservative seats that would have otherwise been out of reach. Today the situation is reversed, with many Democratic leaders and activists more focused on ideological purity than on regaining political power.

Continuing on that course will lead to even more Democratic defeats, and to what Democrats fear most: more support in Congress for Trump.

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Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, hosts the MSNBC show Morning Joe.

Editorial on 06/26/2017

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