I'm in a bad place.

[Savannahmann]

10. All the money doesn't seem to be buying much

The most expensive midterm election in history. Yet, the lowest voter turnout since World War II. Money doesn't seem to be winning, or losing massive voter turnout. You could argue that if the Republicans had record turnouts in all their races, or even any of them. But you can't, so all the ads, all the flyers, all the robocalls, all of it was wasted.

So if the money doesn't matter, what does? This is the age of the Internet. Most people look things up, they don't ask friends, family, or co-workers what is going on. They get email messages with news stories. They visit sites to see what is going on. Fox news has fewer than a million viewers most days. So even Fox isn't reaching very far when you consider most states had more voters than Fox has viewers.

So what does matter? Performance. Let's say you buy a car you expect is going to be really fast. You go to the line, confident that your expensive car will totally smoke the other car. The light goes green, you stomp on the gas and the other car pulls away from you. You are furious, disappointed, and you feel betrayed because your efforts got you nothing in return. The same analogy can be applied to any sport. Look at the sports writers who mention the incredible salaries that the players make when the team is losing. The idea is simple, an investment of time, or money, should result in some sort of return.

The Democratic Party is a coalition, by necessity. We have Environmentalists, Womens Rights Activists, Labor Union supporters, Privacy advocates, Civil Rights activists, and any other group you care to imagine. The problem is we can't please them all, and we've made too many promises to all of them. Civil Rights activists expect the Justice Department to reign in the police involved shootings of unarmed individuals. Instead the Justice Department provides additional funding for the departments, and more weapons and additional training. Privacy Advocates expect the NSA and FBI spying to be reigned in. Instead, it is covered up and those who speak of it with knowledge are persecuted.

Then there are those who by helping, we betray another group. The environment needs help, we all know that. Yet, honestly the coal and oil industry is unionized. So those unions want to know what you're going to do to help the members who turned out and voted for you. If you are too kind to the unions, you help destroy the earth, and the Environmentalist movement departs and takes their support with them.

So what can we do if we aren't going to appeal to certain groups? I mean, it's obvious now that by placating one, we offend another, and that diminishes our support to the point where we lose badly.

We must begin to watch the polls, and identify the things that people actually care about. Core issues that are populist in nature, and give us the political power to nudge those other things along the way. We can't just cut coal, because doing so destroys several unions we need. But we can't let it go on. So we make it possible for job retraining, and bringing in alternative employment to areas that will be affected by the coal reductions. We have to present more complete, better thought out plans. Because if we don't, we're going to continue seeing an erosion of our core support, and it's going to be the death of our party.

One poll may not be a good indicator of public opinion. But many polls showing the same thing means you're an idiot if you ignore it. Politicians are temporary employees. The public can and does fire them with little or no warning. We have to work to get hired, and we have to work just as hard to keep the job when we get it. We can't take votes or voters for granted. We have to earn every single one of them with hard determined and focused work. Finally, we have to remember that we represent them, we don't command the voters. Our elected leadership works for the voters, and can be fired by the voters too.