How to make Democrats a winner

While leading Democrats wrestle in real time with lessons learned from the Hillary disaster, they won't want to hear that this is a large problem requiring a longer view and process to engineer a fix. The word "engineer" is purposeful as it implies skilled and artful crafting based on having performed an audit of the Democratic Party processes and organization.

Winning the presidency is not necessarily a win for the party. Obama proved that. He won based on organizing skills and intellectual brute force. He won by winning hearts and minds with smooth talk. His policies and actions rescued the economy and nation from certain disaster.

However, the Democratic Party failed to hold control of the Congress. It failed in the district and state trenches to gain confidence in their competence to manage communities. All politics are local, and Democrats forgot that.

Obama didn't help the party by establishing Obama for America (OFA) either. That side-brand usurped the clout of the Democratic Party host. Subbranding dilutes the national political organization.

Along the way, the Democratic Party's leadership, such as Deborah Wasserman Schultz, failed to do what the party needed her to accomplish. First, she needed to deliver Florida. Second, she needed to deliver women. Third, she needed to provide minorities of all kinds. She failed.

A short article cannot provide all that the party needs to address, but it can point to several things:

1. Produce superior qualified candidates by a new higher standard. (Define that)

2. Produce a superior platform to which constituents and candidates can align with confidence (Define that too)

3. Audit the entire Democratic Party processes and organization from top to bottom. (Hire a performance auditor)

"Dems grapple with lessons from Clinton disaster
BY NIALL STANAGE - 12/12/16 06:00 AM EST

Democrats are grappling with how to draw the right lessons — and avoid the wrong ones — after an extraordinary presidential election. 

Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster for Democrats, who want to ensure nothing like it happens again. But Clinton’s popular-vote lead over Trump is so large that it complicates the question of how to recalibrate for future elections.
Clinton led Trump by almost 3 million votes as of Sunday, according to a Cook Political Report tracker, with some final results still to be tabulated. More than 128 million votes were cast for the two main candidates nationwide, and Trump emerged as the victor by winning three Rust Belt states by margins of roughly 11,000 (Michigan), 23,000 (Wisconsin) and 44,000 (Pennsylvania).” 

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/309483-dems-grapple-with-lessons-from-clinton-disaster

James George, Author and Independent Journalist