In the recent midterm elections, progressive policies won at the ballot box, while many Democratic candidates lost.
Many of those Democratic candidates ran on “centrist” (i.e. “corporate”) platforms that distanced themselves from core Democratic policies and positions. Now they are learning that lots of Democrats decided not to vote for them, while the Republicans they were trying to appeal to still voted for Republicans.
Oddly, despite Obama's overall success, candidates chose to distance themselves from their own President and many of his progressive policies — like health care reform, protecting the environment, and giving the millions of immigrants who are here without documentation a path to legal residence and citizenship.
Granted, the right wing media and Republicans in Congress who are beholden to it have been on a 6 year, scorched-earth campaign to smear the Obama brand; irrespective of factual accuracy or how he has actually performed as President.
But for some reason, Democrats candidates didn't seem to consider the possibility that maybe being embarrassed to be a Democrat is not the best way to appeal to the Democratic voters.
Voters who elected Obama in 2008 and 2012 expected delivery on change appropriate to the 21st century. The fact that the Democratic members in both houses failed to get behind the President when they had the votes to deliver changes in Education, Healthcare, and Energy Policies is not only bad governing, it's bad campaign strategy.
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