Obama has decimated the Democratic Party

[Mehmentum]

Remember in 2008 when everyone was saying that the Republicans were doomed?  They were saying it again after 2012.  After 2004 and 2010, everyone was saying that the Democrats were in deep trouble. Notice a pattern? Every time there's a wave election, people say the loosing party is doomed.

Calm down.

Yes, the Democrats do have problems at the state and local levels (and during midterm elections), but the defeatism I've been hearing for the past year is ridiculous.

 

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A century ago the Senate was effectively chosen by State legislatures and no better than those legislatures.  The Seventeenth Amendment made the Senate electable by the People of the States, thus ensuring that the Upper House was democratically elected. Now the State legislatures mostly have effective control of the content of the state delegations to the House of Representatives through control of the boundaries of districts.

The trick is to concede a few districts to the "wrong" Party and dilute the rest.  Republicans can thus ensure that small cities that might vote "wrong" are diluted in a rural hinterland that votes "right". If at the opportune time the State legislature goes one way it can entrench Congressional representatives of its choosing. 

Even worse is that state legislatures get to chose the state level districts as well.  I.e. they can gerrymander themselves in place.  The only way Democrats have to break this cycle is to win Governorships.

States where the governor has veto power over redistricting, there are multiple districts to draw, and districts aren't drawn by commission:
2015: KY, LA
2016: MO, IN, WV, NH, UT, OR
2017: VA, NJ
2018: HI, NV, NM, CO, TX, OK, KS, NE, AR, IA, MN, IL, WI, TN, AL, GA, SC, OH, MI, PA, NY, MA, RI, ME

Color (not Atlas colors, sorry) is which party currently holds office, bolded states are what I think Democrats should focus on taking/holding. 

[Mehmentum]

Remember in 2008 when everyone was saying that the Republicans were doomed?  They were saying it again after 2012.  After 2004 and 2010, everyone was saying that the Democrats were in deep trouble. Notice a pattern? Every time there's a wave election, people say the loosing party is doomed.

Calm down.

Yes, the Democrats do have problems at the state and local levels (and during midterm elections), but the defeatism I've been hearing for the past year is ridiculous.

 

The problem is that the Democrats aren't the party they used to be.  Back in the 90s (when I was growing up), pretty much every state was fair game for Democrats, not just the states on the West Coast, the Northeast, or Midwestern Rust Belt.  Even states like Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina could be won by Dems at the gubernatorial and state legislature level.  Hell, the South was Democrat TERRITORY!  It took over a century for North Carolina's legislature to go red, for example.  Nowadays, because the Democrats decided that saving the whales, taking away guns, and appealing to minority identity politics was more important than trying to make sure their white working class and lower middle class base continued to vote for them, they've lost the South and some of the Midwest.  They're now viewed as the party of the West Coast hedonists, Northeastern elitists, or Beltway snobs.

You haven't actually refuted anything I said.  Democratic weakness in Republican states isn't the cause of the 2010 and 2014 landslides.  The appearance of weakness in those states is the result of those landslides.

If you only look at the 2010 and 2014 elections maps, your description is accurate, but look at 2012's Senate and Gubernatorial maps.  In the Senate, Democrats won Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Montana, and West Virginia, all of these are Republican states.  They also won Montana, Missouri, and West Virginia Governorships. 

What happened to the overwhelming vitriolic hatred of Democrats in 2012?  It certainly didn't seem to hurt the Democrats too much that year.  If the Democrats are so screwed, how could they have so overwhelmingly won an election only a few years ago?  The answer is, of course, that the Democrats aren't screwed.  They weren't screwed after 2004 or 2010 either.  And the Republicans weren't screwed after 2008 or 2012.

After all 4 of those elections, tons of people were spelling doom for the losing party.  And in literally every single one of those elections, the following election was a landslide in favor of the party who lost.

[Mehmentum]

Anyway, I actually did the math on this.  Did Obama decimate the Democratic party?

I decided to compare Clinton, Bush, and Obama's electoral performance, both on the ballot and down ballot.

What I did:
1.) Added up all the EVs the president won in their 2 elections, and divided by 1076 (the number of EVs up in those two elections.)

2.) Added up all the governorships each party won during the president's tenures (from their first election, to their last midterm election.) Divided by the total # of governor races.

3.) Did the same for Senate and House seats.

4.) Added these four numbers together.  Because of the way I divided, each of these four numbers has equal 'weight'.  I multiplied by 25 to express this number as a percentage.

Here are the results:

Clinton:
EVs: 749 (v. 327)
Governor: 40 (v. 62)
Senate: 66 (v. 73)
House: 879 (v. 856)

Electoral Score: 51.7% (v. 48.2%)

Bush:
EVs: 557 (v. 517)
Governor: 51 (v. 54)
Senate: 65 (v. 68)
House: 884 (v. 852)

Electoral Score: 50.0% (v. 49.9%)

Obama:
EVs: 697 (v. 379)
Governor: 41 (v. 61)
Senate: 68 (v. 71)
House: 839 (v. 901)

Electoral Score: 50.5% (v. 49.5%)

Analysis:
Obama and Clinton perform identically in Senate and Governor's races.  Its in the House where Obama really suffers.  Democrats in the House got slaughtered once they lost the House, while in the 90s Republicans mostly held narrow majorities.  This is likely because Democrats mostly controlled redistricting in 1990, while in 2010 Republicans were in control.

Bush does the worst mostly because of his razor thin electoral college margins.  If you discount EVs, he'd actually do best out of the three.

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I don't quite buy it. Bush's numbers look bad because of the last two elections - Republicans were able to quickly recover in 2010 and win most of what they lost back, then gained even more in 2014. Bush pissed people off, but I think Obama lost a large chunk of the old Democratic base (primarily in the south) that won't come back.

Bush's numbers don't include 2008, (and Clinton's don't include 2000).  Though it would make sense to count 2008 as part of Bush's performance.  I wanted to be able to compare the three administrations, and I didn't want to have to wait until 2016 to get Obama's final score.

Anyway, while Republicans won their seats back, its hard to justify crediting Bush with that.  Bush can't be credited with winning back seats in 2010, so it doesn't really make sense to give him leniency for losing the seats in the first place.