Recommended Reading by Michael Barone

I like it when a big shot validates what I have said. Well, not exactly what I said. I am saying that the policies, the governance and the personality of Barack Obama are destroying the Democratic Party. Barone does a much better technical analysis and he addresses fragile coalitions and tired ideas and tired candidates. The situation is much worse for the Democrats than the media are letting on.

(1) This was a wave, folks. It will be a benchmark for judging waves, for either party, for years.

(2) In seriously contested races, Republican candidates were generally younger, more vigorous, more sunny and optimistic than Democrats. The contrast was sharpest in Colorado and Iowa, which voted twice for President Obama. Cory Gardner and Joni Ernst seemed to be looking forward to the future. Their opponents grimly championed the stale causes of feminists and trial lawyers of the past.

Democrats see themselves as the party of the future. But their policies are antique. The federal minimum wage dates to 1938, equal pay for women to 1963, access to contraceptives to 1965. Raising these issues now is campaign gimmickry, not serious policymaking.