Usually, we wait until the morning after an election to offer a post-mortem, but unless the polls are completely whacked, it doesn’t seem like there’s much doubt about what’s going to happen.
After all, Florida Democrats aren’t even waiting to engage in their regular after-election ritual of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching. While the Republican juggernaut rolls on, Democrats play the blame game. Yet another shakeup in the Dems’ leadership appears inevitable as they search for answers on why Republicans routinely kick their butt.
It’s not that complicated, though, especially when viewed through the lens of this election.
Democratic candidates repeatedly lectured voters on what they should care about in the major races.
Meanwhile, Republicans focused on what voters actually care about — a big difference.
And do we have to say it? It was, is, and always shall be the economy. A candidate who can’t win the kitchen table argument will probably lose. Democrats still don’t understand that.
That’s not just me saying that. Sunburn, the excellent morning newsletter from Florida Politics, had a New York Times piece about this situation.
Among other things, several prominent Democrats worry that their party has not fully acknowledged the pain of rising prices — or effectively pointed the finger at Republicans over the higher costs.
And as former President Barack Obama said, “If there was an asteroid headed toward Earth — it’s going to land in like two weeks — if you went into the Republican caucus and said, ‘What do you want to do?’ They’d say, ‘We need a tax break for the wealthy.’”
After all, for as big of a schmuck as Donald Trump is, the stock market boomed on his watch. It didn’t seem to matter to Trump supporters that people on the lower end of things struggled in his make-billionaires-richer economy. He was a master of illusion.
Democrats believed they had a winning issue with abortion rights. Polls show that most Floridians want to protect a woman’s right to choose, but that’s not all they believe.
Millennials believe the economy left them behind and that rents are too high. Voters also believe gas and food cost too much. Seniors wonder if their nest egg will give them enough cushion through retirement. Dems looked bumfuzzled when the GOP labeled them as socialists and reaped large support from Latino voters.
What did Democrats come back with?
Abortion, mostly. Oh, Senate candidate Val Demings liked to remind us every day that she used to be a cop, thinking it might resonate with those convinced Democrats are soft on crime.
It was a gross miscalculation. She wasn’t going to pick up Republican support with that tactic, and it cost her the chance to attack Republicans on kitchen table issues.
Yes, Gov. Ron DeSantis was adept at inventing boogeymen so he could slay them. But his bigger message was that Floridians enjoy more freedom than they would under Democrats, and he was relentless in hammering that theme.
While that may be true, Charlie Crist didn’t emphasize that more than 82,000 people in Florida died from COVID-19. DeSantis turned a deadly pandemic into an economic issue by repeatedly telling everyone that he opposed lockdowns, ignoring advice from medical experts who know more about deadly viruses than he does.
So while DeSantis and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio plan their victory parties, Democrats can only grumble. They need to do more than point fingers at each other, though, lest they descend into deeper irrelevance.
First, they need a younger and deeper bench.
They also need to plan — right now — for how many times in 2024 they can repeat, “Rick Scott wants to eliminate Social Security and Medicare.”
The only question is, are they capable of doing that? Or will their need to fixate on what they say people should care about overwhelm them again?
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