At The Democratic Strategist, Ed Kilgore writes:
Beyond 2013, the huge strategic challenge for Democrats is finding a way to win a midterm election where the turnout patterns inherently favor the opposition, thanks to the unusual alignment of the two parties with elements of the electorate that do (older white voters) and don't (younger and minority voters) tend to participate in midterms, for reasons that have little or nothing to do with the issues on the table. Over-enthusiastic assessments of the value of the Obama GOTV operation--even assuming it can be deployed by the party as a whole in a midterm--may underestimate the difficulty of a very different landscape, aside from the historical evidence about the exceptional difficulty of "sixth-year" elections for the party holding the White House.
There's little doubt political scientists and historians will long view the Obama 2012 campaign, like its predecessor, as a "new departure" in political strategy, tactics, and mechanics. But it's less clear whether it can immediately carry over into Democratic successes in the years just ahead.
