3 Democratic delusions: Michael Medved

[WestVirginiaRebel]

USA Today:

As Democrats try to regroup after their recent presidential defeat, they tend to delude themselves on three crucial points.

 

First, they seek comfort in Hillary Clinton’s popular vote margin of more than two million, marking the sixth election of the last seven in which a Democrat won more raw votes than his or her Republican rival. But this meaningless “winning streak” masks a far more serious losing streak: in the last 50 years, over the course of thirteen presidential elections, Barack Obama is the only Democratic nominee to reach a solid popular vote majority of 51% or more — and he did it twice. Going beyond Lyndon Johnson’s landslide against Barry Goldwater in 1964, you’d need to reach all the way back to Franklin D. Roosevelt to find another Democratic nominee who connected with an unmistakable majority of his fellow citizens. In the intervening 72 years since FDR’s last race in 1944, Republicans won decisive, majority victories seven times.

 

This overview not only undermines Democrat claims to majority party status, but argues against the notion that they can blame November’s loss on an especially unpopular candidate. In fact, Hillary Clinton’s percentage of the popular vote (48%) was typical of other recent Democratic candidates like John Kerry in 2004 (48.3%), Al Gore in 2000 (48.4%) and even her husband, Bill Clinton, in his successful 1996 re-election bid (49.2%). Hillary actually won a much larger proportion of the electorate than Bill did in his first presidential win, where he commanded only 43% against George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot.

 

In other words, most recent Democrats seem to have a ceiling when it comes to a percentage of the popular vote. Barack Obama alone broke through that barrier when he shattered an even more important boundary and inspired unique excitement as the first non-white major party nominee in US history.

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The Blue Delusionals.