Sage advice for Hillary Clinton
It's been almost two weeks since their stinging defeat in midterm elections, but Democrats are still licking their wounds and trying to figure out where they went wrong. They don't have much time to extract the right lessons: The 2016 presidential campaign will begin in earnest any minute now.
So I consulted two Democratic sages, each of whom played a central role in electing the last two Democratic presidents: David Axelrod, who worked for Barack Obama in 2008, and James Carville, who worked for Bill Clinton in 1992.
Their advice aimed primarily at Hillary Rodham Clinton, who they both assume will run boiled down to two basic precepts.
First, don't take the 2016 election for granted; it's wide open, and either party could win.
Second, the overriding issue on voters' minds is the economy specifically, the stagnant lot of middle class workers. The candidate with the most convincing remedy for that problem is likely to win.
Let's take them in turn.
It may seem obvious that you should never take a presidential election for granted. But some Democrats have suggested their party has a virtual lock on the electoral college because more minority voters and young people will turn out in a presidential year.
Wrong, Axelrod said at a panel sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. Take no comfort in the demographics, he told the audience, because history suggests it's very difficult for a party to win after an eight-year run.
There have been seven presidential elections in the last 60 years when voters could extend a party's hold on the White House beyond eight years. They declined to do so six out of seven times. The sole exception was in 1988, when George H.W. Bush defeated a weak Democratic candidate to succeed Ronald Reagan.
Of course people are going to want some kind of change, said Carville. No one is going to say: I want the next four years to look like the last eight.'
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Sage advice for Hillary Clinton