Doug Wiken was right: in her "exit interview" with Judy Woodruff on PBS NewsHour last night, Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin did not mention losing her Democrat base with her Blue Dog politics as a factor in her defeat in November. Given another shot, Herseth Sandlin says she would do it all the same, challenging the liberal Democrat agenda and focusing her messaging on Independents.
In the interview, Herseth Sandlin does mention that she wishes she had had more resources to "turn out voters more effectively in certain parts of the state." She also mentions "high expectations" that folks had for President Obama. Both of those notes sound like hints that Herseth Sandlin gets the disaffection among her Democratic base.
But then Herseth Sandlin says that voters were looking for "compromise, consensus, and bipartisanship"... an odd assertion, given how hard it is to use those words to describe Kristi Noem's Republican firebrandery. Herseth Sandlin imagines independent voters were "craving" bipartisanship from President Obama and Congress. She continues to defend the Blue Dog position, saying "...we're the ones that are sort of ridiculed from the right and demonized at times on the left, lambasted from the left." She then warns Republicans not to overreach "the same way many more liberal members of the Democratic Caucus over-read our mandate after the 2008 election."
Herseth Sandlin says "no one ever wants to take their political base for granted." But ultimately, in this exit interview, she offers little for her Democratic base. She speaks of her defeat entirely in terms of not reaching out enough to Independents, not offering enough of what the center wants.
Yes, I blogged hard for Herseth Sandlin and voted for her this year. I neither regret nor apologize for that advocacy. But I understand the feeling of many South Dakota Democrats that, as demonstrated by Herseth Sandlin's statements last night, we can't even get our own party leadership to put our political priorities first.
As I said several days before the election, when you stand for nothing-you stand alone. When SHS failed to vote the right way on credit reform, student financial aid, and health reform, she gave no reason for most Democrats to vote for her, let alone provide volunteer support for GOTV. What we got in Ms Noem was eye candy, poor fiscal math, and a lack of understanding that most selfare(welfare and selfishness) flows to the wealthy and powerful. I voted for SHS not because she voted right on most issues for me-she didn't. But because she still had intellectual skills far greater than Noem and with proper leadership/encouragement/advice I feel she would have seen the errors or her way.
In my opinion, Herseth-Sandlin lost because some voters -- enough to make the difference in this case -- wanted to put the brakes on the march to socialism. They voted against Democrats in blind fear and fury. Herseth-Sandlin was a "collateral casualty." In a normal year she would have won.