Omaha World Herald: Democrats look for way out of electoral drought

[OmahaBlueDog]

Not too long ago, Nebraska seemed like a two-party state.

Despite a growing GOP registration advantage, red-state Nebraska wore a lot of Democratic blue.

In 1990, for example, Democrat Ben Nelson defeated an incumbent Republican for governor. Meanwhile, both of the state's U.S. senators and one of three House members were Democrats.

But a generation later, with Nelson last week announcing his retirement from the Senate, it's entirely possible that by the end of 2012 Democrats will find themselves shut out of Nebraska's top state and federal offices.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20120101/NEWS01/701019905/1009597#democrats-look-for-way-out-of-electoral-drought

[RandySF]

1. I blame the Clinton-era DNC

A the risk of starting a fight, it was the DNC under Bill Clinton that abandoned the entire ticket below president during the 1990's. And while Clinton was reelected in '96, we suffered additional losses in the Senate. Howard Dean started to fix things and we were electing Democrats to local offices all over "Red America". Now, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is determined to repeat the same old mistakes.

[OmahaBlueDog]

2. Terry McAuliffe was the worst DNC chair, bar none

..and to the extent that we have the Clintons to blame for McCauliffe, I'll agree with you.

To be fair, I think the jury is still out on DWS, but she's no Howard Dean. Tim Kaine was a McCauliffesque disaster.

[mazzarro]

3. Sometimes, I have the nagging thought that the democratic party

Leadership and all have become compromised completely to such an extent that the rank-and-file is being led by the nose. It seems that whenever a non-member of the compromised leadership comes up with effective antidote to the backsliding of the party and rev-up the rank-and-file, the compromised leadership steps in and effect some kind of change that returns the situation to status quo. Case in point, the replacement of Howard Dean immediately after the Obama election by a what I consider a DLC'er - for that matter! It seems that they are basically playing the "good cop; bad cop" with the rethuglicans for us the commoners who are sitting there enraptured by the reality plots.

[ThomThom]

4. we need Dean back or someone that can duplicate what he did

Why are Dems so clueless on this stuff. The repugs are in free fall and the Dems don't seem to take advantage, they should be moving to corner the fools and take them down but instead they go along with tax cuts and economic policy that has been proven time and time again to be a failure. I just don't get it.