The Fix
The decimation of the Democratic Party, visualized
By
Philip Bump November 10 at 5:22 PM
There's a certain type of pedant who gets mad if you use the word "decimated" inaccurately, the accurate usage being that it refers to the culling of a tenth of something, hence the prefix
deci- which, as we all know, is a Latin-born numeric reference blah blah blah pedants am i right
When I use the term "decimate" in reference to what's happened to the Democratic Party in the era of Barack Obama, I admit that I am using the word in a way that would annoy those same pedants. After all, the number of Democrats in Congress and in state leadership positions has dropped far more than 10 percent since 2008.
Chris Cillizza
wrote about the sorry state of the Democratic bench after Tuesday, pointing out that a bad situation got much worse with the Donald Trump-driven failure of the party at the polls. Think of a political party like an Army. To have effective generals, you need to bring leaders up through the ranks. If everyone keeps getting killed off on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of any given November, you're not going to be able to win many battles. The Democrats gained two Senate seats -- in a year that it was long assumed they would regain control of the chamber.
Since 2008, this is what the Democratic decimation has looked like. (Data sources are below.)
yelled at Donna Brazile, who took over as chair following the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz this summer.
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"Why should we trust you as chair to lead us through this?" he said, according to HuffPo's Jennifer Bendery. He went on to accuse Brazile of having "backed a flawed candidate," Hillary Clinton, and having "plotted through this to support your own gain and yourself."
"You are part of the problem," Zach reportedly said.
We tend to focus on the loss of the presidency as the example of Democratic failure. That's blinkered. Since 2008, by our estimates, the party has shed 870 legislators and leaders at the state and federal levels -- and that estimate may be on the low side. As Donald Trump might put it, that's decimation times 50.
No wonder Zach got mad.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ecimation-of-the-democratic-party-visualized/
