Why Dan Malloy Won Reelection And Mary Landrieu Will Lose Her Runoff... By A Lot

Animals smell fear-- and it emboldens them. Tuesday most Democrats did the right thing for America and humanity by voting against the Keystone XL Pipeline project. The calculus about how much more poison the earth could take wasn't on the minds of the fearful Democrats who crossed the aisle to vote with the Republicans and their Big Oil allies. Their calculus was about winning reelections (some, like Mark Warner for example, in 6 years) and political advantage back home and with campaign donors in return for failing to find the intestinal fortitude it would take to display some courage. In Wednesday's National Journal Josh Kraushaar plays up a Beltway interoperation of what happened as Obama dividing the Democratic Party.

President Obama's biggest problem over the next two years may not be coming from recalcitrant Republicans, but from members of his own party blanching at his activist agenda over the final two years of his presidency. While the midterm election results suggested widespread dissatisfaction with the president's policies, Obama nonetheless is planning to press forward on several polarizing decisions in his final two years. It could help advance his legacy, but come at the expense of the Democratic Party's long-term health.

Three of the administration's biggest agenda items-- threatening a veto of bipartisan legislation authorizing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, reaching a nuclear deal with Iran, and issuing an executive order legalizing millions of illegal immigrants-- divide Democrats, and unite Republicans. If the president moves forward with all of them, it would aggravate fissures in an increasingly-divided Democratic Party. And it would put Hillary Clinton, his party's expected 2016 standard-bearer, in an uncomfortable position even before she announces her candidacy. She's already avoided taking stances, if not outright rejecting the direction Obama is heading during his final two years in office.

The dirty secret in Washington is that while Obama (rightly) blamed Republicans for holding positions to the right of the American electorate, the president is pursuing policies that are equally as far to the left.

You can get very rich living inside the graft and corruption-greased Beltway. Money flows everywhere. It isn't worth it. "Approving construction of the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline may not be the most consequential legislation," he continued, "but it is symbolic of the lengths the administration has gone to avoid a postelection bipartisan accomplishment. Embattled Sen. Mary Landrieu, on the ballot next month in a Louisiana Senate runoff, has been furiously lobbying colleagues to approve the pipeline, and won support from 14 Democrats in an unsuccessful vote Tuesday. A new USA Today poll of adults, conducted last week, found strong support for it-- 60 percent backing construction of the Keystone pipeline, with only 25 percent opposed. This month, the Pew Research Center found even 44 percent of Democrats supporting it, with 46 percent opposed. When Republicans take control of the Senate in January, it's expected to pass with at least 63 votes." Sad... but that's what happens when people move to Washington.

Dan Malloy is the governor of Connecticut, far enough from the Beltway to dispense with a very different kind of a advice to his fellow Democrats-- in the words of David Freedlander: grow a pair. Early polling data on Malloy's reelection race this year was not, to put it mildly, auspicious. He was down or tied in almost every poll-- in several by as much as 7 points. That didn't turn him into a DINO or make him quake in his boots.

In his first term, Dan Malloy enacted a hugely ambitious progressive agenda. This fall, he ran on that record-- and won. Now he’s got some advice for his dejected fellow Democrats.

When Dan Malloy was elected governor of Connecticut in 2010, he was the first Democrat to win an open race in the Nutmeg State since 1980. It would have been reasonable to expect, then, something of a cautious approach, one wary of shifting political winds in an otherwise reliably blue state.

Instead, Malloy enacted one of the most ambitiously liberal agendas of any governor in the nation, from higher taxes on the wealthy to a higher minimum wage, guaranteed paid sick leave for workers, protections for gays and immigrants, strict new gun-control laws, looser marijuana-possession laws, allowing the unionization of daycare workers, and outlawing the death penalty.

The result? A 25,000-vote victory out of more than a million cast in Malloy’s reelection bid against Tom Foley.

Now, having barely survived in a race that was not conceded, Malloy has some advice for his fellow Democrats. But first he wants to clear up a few things.

“‘Barely?’ Let’s stop with the barely. 6,400 [votes], that was the barely,” he said in an interview, referring to his even squeakier 2010 race, which he won by half a percentage point against Foley. “Twenty-five thousand-- that was a landslide!”

If his fellow Ds want similar results in the wake of a bloodbath of an election that was the 2014 midterms, Malloy says: “They can’t run as Republicans. Democrats can’t run away from what they have done. If there is a message out there, it is that we failed to embrace our successes because we thought that it would remind people that we are Democrats. Well, guess what? I am a Democrat. And I ran as a Democrat.”

Too many Democrats, in the face of national headwinds, ran as Republican-lite, Malloy said. And now many of those Democrats are heading home after long careers in public life, with some losing easily winnable races.

“What I think happened is people underestimated the ability of the voting public to put things in context,” he said. “If you are going to have a contest and it is going to be about who is the grayest, then Democrats lose. But the world is more black and white than it is gray, and if you fail to point that out, then don’t be surprised that you lost.”

In Connecticut, Malloy was saddled with underwater approval ratings since his first year in office, when he instituted the largest tax increase in state history. As the campaign season heated up, his opponent hammered away on the issue. Malloy was unconcerned, he says.

“I always felt that when we got to a serious contest in October, we would be OK as long as we stayed true to our principles and talked about what we accomplished,” he said. “Tom Foley wanted it put out that there we raised taxes. And he talked about it month after month after month after month. But once people started to pay attention, I pointed out what we did with the money, which was lower the crime rate, increase graduation rates, invest in infrastructure, create a Housing Department, create an Energy Department, create a Department of Aging. We did all of these things. It was the right policy, and ultimately people came around.”

Democrats elsewhere, he says, were scared of making contrasts, of owning up to their record and saying, “This is why we did what we did.”

“You didn’t point out the difference between who you are and who the other people are,” he said. “Because the other people are the people who drove the economy into the ditch. The other people are the people who want to make the rich richer and, quite frankly, if that makes the poor poorer, that is OK with them. And if you don’t point that out, don’t be shocked that people get confused.”

During the campaign, Malloy didn’t just embrace his record and his party. He did what only a few Democrats were willing to do: Embrace Barack Obama. The president headlined a rally in Bridgeport in the days before the election, at a time when other candidates, like Alison Lundergan Grimes of Kentucky, wouldn’t even cop to voting for Obama in his reelection bid.

“I was never going to run away from the president,” Malloy said. “It was not even in consideration. I support the president. I think the president has been right. I mean, look at the numbers, look at the job growth, sustained job growth-- the greatest in American history. The. Greatest. In. American. History. Why didn’t people run on that? So you know that a bunch of political people say, ‘Well, it is not deep enough, and some people are hurting.’ OK, but talk to the people who have benefited. That is a better way of doing it than the other way.”

Yesterday, in a letter to his supporters, Congressional Progressive Caucus co-Chairman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who was reelected handily, 55.6-44.4%, took a similar line. "There’s no one single reason why we lost two weeks ago," he wrote. "The pollsters and the pundits all have a million reasons. But, here’s what I know. When Democrats articulate our values, we win. When we try to be Republican-lite, we lose. In 2008 and 2012, we ran as Democrats. We talked about our values-– peace, justice and equality for all. We won. This year, Democrats across the nation joined the attacks against our party and our values. What happened? We lost. Big. So, where do we go from here? We build. We build a stronger Progressive Caucus in the Congress. We empower the grassroots. We push progressive legislation. And, we deliver real results. Then, we’ll prove to all our voters who stayed home that we really are on their side."