"Under President Obama, Democrats have lost 900+ state legislature seats, 12 governors, 69 House seats, 13 Senate seats. That's some legacy," tweeted Purple Strategies managing director Rory Cooper, a former congressional staffer for Eric Cantor staffer and an alumnus of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Likewise, the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza, a recurring MSNBC guest and no rabid right-winger he, has an analysis piece today headlined "The 2015 election tightened the Republican stranglehold on state government."
"It's hard to overstate how important those GOP gains — and the consolidation of them we've seen in the last few years — are to the relative fates of the two parties," Cillizza insisted, adding, "While the story at the national level suggests a Republican Party that is growing increasingly white, old and out of step with the country on social issues, the narrative at the local level is very different. Republicans are prospering at the state level in ways that suggest that the party's messaging is far from broken."
The tired "increasingly white, old and out of step" line aside, Cillizza clearly is right to point out that solid GOP gains at the state level prove the party can win elections, influence policy, and build up the next generation of federal candidates for House and Senate races.
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So what did MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews do for the first post-2015 election program? He – and guests Howard Fineman and Perry Bacon – ignored the writing on the wall for Democrats, preferring to paint Matt Bevin's surprise win in Kentucky as something of a byproduct of this year's rise of anti-establishment Trumpian populism in a conservative state that has long been trending Republican in its politics.
Never mind, of course, that a large part of Trump's popularity – and that of fellow political outsider Ben Carson – is tied to intense dissatisfaction with President Obama's handling of his job as president.
By contrast, kicking off his program in the following hour, MSNBC host Chris Hayes did note the Republicans' incredible dominance in state and local government in the age of Obama –see graphic above, via the Washington Post – as he introduced his guests Howard Dean and Michael Steele to discuss the "Political Chaos" in the U.S. heading into the 2016 election cycle:
Video: Unlike @hardball_chris, @chrislhayes notes 900 Dem seats Obama has lost across the Union. #elections pic.twitter.com/VlmXE1IgJ5
— Ken Shepherd (@KenShepherd) November 5, 2015
