Democrats Have Lost Big Almost Everywhere

Reason Magazine brings us this story from Eric Boehm which details the massive losses that the Democrats have seen since 2010. From then till today the Democrats have lost all sorts of offices all across the country in states large and small so that they are now in the weakest position they have been since the 1920s.

It’s not just the Presidency or offices in D.C. If one is to judge by the total numbers across the nation, the Presidency of Barack Obama has been the worst disaster the Democrats have ever seen since the civil war.

Just a little over two years after they used their control of the state House, state Senate, and governor’s mansion to pass a bevy of progressive policies—one of the nation’s highest minimum wages, tighter gun laws, and huge spending on rural broadband internet, to name a few—Democrats will be the minority party in both chambers of the Minnesota legislature next year.

They are the latest victims in a four-cycle-long electoral tidal wave that has flooded state legislatures with Republicans and cost Democrats nearly 1,000 seats, leaving them able to dictate policy in only a handful of states. Helped along by some friendly redistricting and a national backlash against the federal government, Republicans will continue to set the policy agenda in the majority of states, have a crucial backstop to protect their congressional majority, and are potentially one more successful cycle away from being able to exercise the ultimate power in U.S. politics: amending the Constitution.

In Minnesota, Republicans erased a 38-28 Democratic majority in a single election and will enter the 2017 session with a one-seat majority in the state Senate (they flipped the state House in the 2014 midterms). Aside from Donald Trump’s shocking win in the presidential race, the outcome in Minnesota might have been the biggest surprise of election night, but it fits within a national trend. Democrats are struggling to hold legislative majorities, even in typically blue-ish states like Minnesota.