Death of a Party
This post originally appeared on the Capitol & Washington blog by my friend Cam Savage. I thought it was worth re-posting here. While partisan, Cam does make some very salient points that are worth considering.
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With the announcement that Indiana House Democrats will not return to their duties at the Statehouse Monday, it is now evident that we are witnessing the last gasp of a once great Democrat Party in Indiana.
Devastating losses in the 2010 elections accelerated the party’s decline. They lost two Congressional seats, four state senate seats, and twelve seats in the state house of representatives, and as I’ve chronicled before, decimated what little bench they had.
Gone are bright young stars of the future, Ellsworth, Van Haaften, and Oxley the younger. Gone is the old warhorse Baron Hill. Now extinct are the once powerful southern Indiana conservatives, Robertson, Bischoff, Lewis and their ilk. Demographic and philosophical changes have contributed to the extinction of this subspecies of Indiana Democrat.
Having carried the party on his back for two decades, Evan Bayh has exited stage left. Mayor Weinzapfel wants none of it; he’s out. Things are so dire, party regulars pin their hopes to Joe Donnelly, a thrice-elected Congressman from South Bend with no statewide network or even recognition, who survived the 2010 elections only by dually attacking his own party and his opponent in one of the most negative campaigns in state history. Urging Donnelly to run for statewide office in 2012 is a tacit admission that, were he to run, he would lose his seat in the next election.
Indiana Democrats, with 53 of 150 seats in the legislature, three of eleven representatives in Congress, and no statewide constitutional offices since 2005 are on the verge of becoming a permanent minority party. Less a party really, than a coalition of special interests that exists only in urban centers, university towns, and decaying rust-belt communities and subsists on the dwindling forced dues of union workers.
What voter, if given the opportunity to peer into that hotel conference room in Champaign/Urbana, would willingly choose those forty people to run the state?
Michigan City’s Scott Pelath as the face of the party? What have Republicans done to deserve such good fortune?
We are witnessing the death rattle of the Indiana Democrat Party.
It is time for Dan Parker notify the DNC that the Democrat Party is surrendering its position in Indiana. Their leaders have sought sanctuary in Illinois. A voter-imposed exile in a holy land of high taxation, debt, expansive government and public corruption.
Politics, of course, is cyclical. With every political death there is hope of resurrection. It has happened before. Evan Bayh was once the party’s messiah.
But the retention of throwback politician Pat Bauer as their leader augurs their confidence in their own future and delays the possibility of a resurrection. Whether Bauer and company physically return to Indianapolis soon is immaterial. Without a change in course and leadership, Indiana Democrats need to become accustomed to living in exile.
