Moulitsas: It comes down to turnout

In 2012, Republicans reacted to their dramatic losses by looking inward, realizing they needed to better attract women, people of color and young voters in order to remain nationally viable.

Then, the 2014 midterms rolled around. And to hear their leaders tell it, everything is fine with the GOP!

{mosads}Except it isn’t. The party’s fundamental flaws are still intact. All this past Nov. 4 showed is that Republicans can win in a record-breaking low-turnout environment, and that — as expected — base Republican voters are far better at turning out than base Democrats. 

Of course, Democrats are now embroiled in their own soul-searching, trying to figure out what went wrong. But in two years, as in 2012 and 2008, Democrats will likely win big again, take back the Senate (thanks to a favorable map and presidential-year turnout), and they’ll think everything is fine. And, once again, it will be the GOP’s turn to make sense of its loss. But all we’ll have learned is that Democrats, as expected, benefit from a high-turnout election. 

In short, Republicans win only when few voters turn out, and Democrats win only when turnout is high. It’s a problem both parties need to fix, but neither will. Why should they, when the election two years down the road will obviate the need for change and validate the entrenched interests in each party?

It really is a matter of two Americas, with each party dominating one of them. In 2012, almost 60 percent of voting-age adults turned out to vote. While votes are still being tallied in 2014, it looks like barely 36 percent turned out. Not even 20 percent of American adults voted for Republicans last week — hardly a national mandate. Democrats don’t deserve a pass, though, given their failure to muster even the GOP’s pathetic numbers. 

So we now have a boom and bust cycle, where the nation’s two major parties trade off big victories every other cycle. But this status quo can’t indefinitely work for either party. 

If Republicans can’t make inroads into the broader American electorate, particularly among growth demographics, what chance do they have of winning the presidency? For all the benefits of holding Congress, no one doubts which prize is the biggest. Yet, despite the heavy GOP electorate, Republicans still lost ground with women vis-à-vis the last midterm cycle. (Republicans won the female vote 49 percent to 48 percent in 2010, and lost it 51 percent to 47 percent last week.)

For their part, Democrats will be hog-tied, with an obstructionist Congress blocking President Obama’s policy proposals and keeping Democrats timid, in perpetual fear of that hostile electorate every fourth year. And if they don’t right their ship by 2018, Republicans will hold key governorships heading into 2020 redistricting, making it harder to undo aggressive House gerrymanders in states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

So what to do? 

For Republicans, it’s clear: develop a more inclusive agenda that doesn’t alienate young, brown or female Americans. Implausible as that might sound, if they want to win national elections, they will have to appeal to a national audience.

For Democrats? Democratic-friendly demographics represent the majority of registered voters. Turn them out like in presidential years, and Democrats win easily. So Democrats must motivate and energize them in the off years and show those voters that the party is fighting for them — then perhaps they’ll fight for the party. 

But until one party changes, expect successive wave elections in a new era of boom and bust cycles — and alternating party soul-searching every two years.

Moulitsas is the founder and publisher of Daily Kos.