"Today, We Are All Walter Mondale". Democrats learned the wrong lesson from 1984.

[JDPriestly]

94. Who won and who lost in 2014.

Here is the list of Democratic senators who won in 2014:

Del. Cooney
Hawaii Schatz
Ill. Durbin
Mass. Markey
Mich. Peters
Minn. Franken
New Hampshire Sheehan
New Jersey Brooks
New Mexico Udall
Oregon Merkel
Rhode island Reed

Conservatives like Landrieu in Louisiana lost

In Kentucky, Grimes ran relatively conservatively distancing herself a bit even from Obama and lost. Of course she had a very difficult challenge to unseat a well established member of Congress.

http://www.politico.com/2014-election/results/map/senate

Here are the states in which Republicans won the Senate races:

Alabama, Alsaska, Arkansas, Colorado (we could have won that seems to me), Georgia, Idaho, Iowa (lost a Dem. seat there), Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana (lost a Dem. Seat -- conservative Landrieu), Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.

We lost in conservative states, but we lost a very liberal Senate seat in Iowa, however, we mostly lost conservative seats like in Louisiana.

The issue is whether we get our voters out better when we run very liberal or very conservative candidates. Al Franken in Minnesota is an example of our running a strong liberal and winning. Same in Oregon.

We need to regain the Senate and House. And I think running more liberal candidates motivates voters to come out. We lose when we run middle-of-the-road, boring candidates or conservatives like Landrieu.

I remember a time when Southerners voted Democratic on economic issues. That was before LBJ signed the Civil Rights laws. As soon as LBJ did that, the Republicans started their southern strategy. I hope that our country is now beyond that kind of bigotry. Maybe we can start to make inroads in the South emphasizing both racial equality and economic fairness.

But without a message of economic fairness, I don't think we can do well in conservative states. That is because those who don't care about economic fairness will vote Republican anyway.

The Third Way philosophy is not working well.

I agree that Gore won in 2000. I think I posted that somewhere here. Officially Bush won, but I think Gore won. Still, there was no general strike or huge fight over the fact that Bush was awarded the White House although he lost. I don't know whether people would accept that now.

I believe that Kerry won in 2004. I did election protection in Southern Ohio in 2008. I was in a polling place in which two precincts voted, one African-American to a great extent and the other white or mostly white. The machines for one of the precincts broke down, and the voters had to wait quite a long time to vote. Guess which precinct it was? If you don't have voter protection volunteers on the ground encouraging voters to stay, they will leave to go to work, take care of their children or just lose patience.

Kerry needed better voter protection organization in 2004. I really think he won, but I could never prove it. I was not in Ohio in 2004.

Just accepting the hypothesis that the DLC way wins is foolish.

I'm campaigning for Bernie and the enthusiasm for him is just something I have never seen for any candidate. Of course, I am in liberal California, but still this is something I have never experienced. And I first started registering voters in the McGovern campaign. I was out of the country some years and came back and worked walking my precinct starting with Clinton's campaigns. So I have a lot of experience and have never seen anything like the Bernie Bern.