It’s no secret that during the 2014 midterm election cycle, President Obama acted as an anchor on vulnerable Democratic candidates, weighing them down with his policies and tarnished brand.
As a result, many now-failed candidates fled from the president, seeking to put as much distance as possible between themselves and his White House.
Now, only two days after the Republican Party’s huge electoral wins, the GOP is wondering why the Democratic Party did not rely more on Obama to sell its candidates’ messages.
“They sidelined their best messenger,” National Republican Senatorial Committee Executive Director Rob Collins said Thursday during a discussion on the Republican Party’s successful bid to unseat Democratic candidates across the county.
GOP officials understood clearly that the president was hurting many Democratic candidates, but they were still honestly surprised to see him sit out a good portion of the 2014 election cycle, RealClearPolitics reported.
From the report:
NRSC Communications Director Brad Dayspring noted that many of the failed Democratic candidates, including outgoing-Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, rarely (if ever) tried to make the economic argument for their re-elections. Rather, he noted, they relied on strategies pulled straight from the president’s 2012 election playbook, including the invocation of the so-called “war on women.”
Udall “never made” the economic argument for his election, Dayspring said.
“It was something we never understood,” he added.
