Obama’s Legacy: Democrats Lose 1,030 Seats and Governorships in Eight Years

Democrats lost big this year and they have Barack Obama to blame. While Obama was busy pushing his own liberal agenda, he left his party floundering — and losing.

President Barack Obama often cites numbers like these while boasting about his tenure in the White House: 15 million new jobs, a 4.9 per cent unemployment rate and 74 months of consecutive job growth. But one number almost always goes unheard: more than 1,030 seats.

That’s the number of spots in state legislatures, governor’s mansions and Congress lost by Democrats during Obama’s presidency.

The statistic reveals an unexpected twist of the Obama years: the leadership of the former community organizer was rough on the grassroots of his own party.

The Democratic Party has languished in Obama’s shadow for years and is now searching for itself.
‘What’s happened on the ground is that voters have been punishing Democrats for eight solid years — it’s been exhausting,’ South Carolina state Senator Vincent Sheheen said. He lost two gubernatorial campaigns to Nikki Haley, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for ambassador to the UN.

Obama’s election was heralded as a moment of Democratic dominance — the crashing of a conservative wave that had swept the country since the dawn of the Reagan era.

Democrats believed that the coalition of young, minority and female voters who swept Obama into the White House would usher in something new: an ascendant Democratic majority that would ensure party gains for decades to come.
The coalition, it turns out, was Obama’s alone.

After this year’s elections, Democrats hold the governor’s office and both legislative chambers in just five coastal states: Oregon, California, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware. Republicans have the trifecta in 25, giving them control of a broad swath of the middle of the country.

The defeats have all but wiped out a generation of young Democrats, leaving the party with limited power in statehouses and a thin bench to challenge an ascendant GOP majority eager to undo many of the president’s policies.

To be sure, the president’s party almost always loses seats in midterm elections. But, according to experts, Obama’s tenure has marked the greatest number of losses under any president in decades.

Barack Obama ran on a platform of change in 2008. He probably didn’t have this kind of change in mind. He didn’t lead to a progressive revolution. Instead, he pushed the country back to the right.

Source: Daily Mail