You know what the narrative is going to be. "Democrats need to moderate their policies. They were too liberal."
But that's total bologna. The GOP won this election despite having approval ratings themselves in the low 20s. Their "more conservative" policies won them no support.
People in this country hate the GOP. If your approval rating is 21%, even a lot of Republicans hate the GOP. The public hates their extremism, their attempts to take away Social Security, their attempts to pander to the rich, their warmongering, their own sloppy management of the budget, etc.
People voted for the GOP this cycle because Democrats didn't get much done. Obamacare was progress, but it only truly affected a limited amount of people. And even for the people it did help, Democrats basically ran away from it. Where was Obama, on the stump, leading the media narrative, berating the kind of savage mindset that leads Republican governors to block healthcare expansion in their own states? This move was a national outrage. You can't just blame the media. If Democrats make this an issue, it will be an issue. It should have been a daily outrage the way Fox News was freaking out about Ebola. Yet Democrats ran from it.
What about immigration reform? They didn't get anything done.
The most successful Republican attacks on Obama this cycle were done from the left. Obama didn't create jobs. Healthcare is still too expensive after Obamacare. Obama's domestic security policy is neoconservative to the point that it's Draconian. The biggest dropoffs in D support this year were from counties with poor white voters. Democrats ceded any moral progressive ground they had by selling out to elites. You can't just count on poor people to vote for you if you give policies that benefit them lip service but don't change anything for the better.
The most apparent defense to this that comes to mind is, "Obama was hamstrung by Republicans in the House."
But voters don't understand that. They see the President as the man in charge. The guy who gets the government to do what he wants. If the guy in charge is fighting for them, they don't care if he breaks rules to get stuff done. They just want him to get it done. There's a reason Chris Christie and Scott Walker have populist appeal despite their anti-populist policies. They fight for their agenda no matter who gets in their way. They lie about their agenda helping people outside the investor class, but their appeal is in their bravado, not their policies.
Democrats needed to come up with a concrete plan to revamp our infrastructure and create jobs. Like FDR with the new deal. Or Eisenhower and the interstate highway system. They needed to come up with specifics, such as how many jobs it would create in each state, what exact projects they wanted to fund, and they needed to bang and harp on it every minute of every single day (just like Republicans harp on Benghazi) in order to get it passed. The public won't care about government debt if they have a decent job. Pay for it with a tax on capital transactions. Make Republicans own it when it comes to denying people jobs. Even though bills are supposed to start in the House, have Obama craft the bill and jam it down every single congressional Republican's throat until they pass it or own the fact that they're blocking progress.
Don't give in on the sequester. Frame it as Republicans trying to take away jobs.
Instead of this, we get a referendum on Democrats, even though the public hates the GOP. The GOP's policies are deeply unpopular. The public knows they favor the rich over their own interests. But the only way for them to get back at Democrats for getting nothing done is to vote against them. How bad can it get if Democrats are fighting for the same corporate interests that Republicans are? Do you really think poor voters without jobs are going to be swayed by rhetoric alone? Do you think young people are going to be motivated to vote when their student debt situation has gotten worse? Sometimes elections aren't about persuasion. They're about doing stuff.