Democrats Need to Rebuild Their Bench

Charlie Cook: “Barack Obama’s two White House vic­tor­ies ob­scured dev­ast­at­ing losses in 2010 and 2014 on the state level in both le­gis­lat­ive and gubernat­ori­al races. An aging con­gres­sion­al lead­er­ship and little turnover due to high reelec­tion rates caused stag­na­tion in the House, prompt­ing many up-and-com­ing Demo­crats to leave be­cause they saw no near-term pro­spects for ad­vance­ment.”

“Those state-le­gis­lat­ive losses amoun­ted to des­troy­ing the seed corn for the fu­ture in the lower cham­ber, and gubernat­ori­al losses de­pleted the ranks of fu­ture Sen­ate and pres­id­en­tial as­pir­ants.”

“Scour­ing the coun­try like base­ball scouts look­ing for new and un­re­cog­nized tal­ent is something that the Demo­crat­ic Party hasn’t done in years. Rather than just re­cruit­ing for spe­cif­ic races, the party needs to find and groom pro­spects for fu­ture races. Many of the com­pre­hens­ive train­ing pro­grams that the Demo­crat­ic Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee sponsored in the 1960s and 1970s are a shad­ow of what they used to be, if they ex­ist at all.”