Democrats are facing an existential threat far worse than Russia

Electors gathered across the nation on Monday to formalize the results of November’s presidential election, even as Democrats continued to search for answers to explain Hillary Clinton’s defeat. The loudest explanation they’ve settled on to date involves Russian hackers, a claim that obscures a far more structural problem facing their party.

The problem is that even though Democrats won the popular vote, they did so almost entirely without support from Middle America. Clinton managed to lose counties, districts and states that Democrats have won for years, underscoring the depth of the party’s weakness.

{mosads} Some of those are obvious. Clinton managed to lose Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, none of which have voted for a Republican since 1988. (That record extends back to 1984 in Wisconsin.)

The picture presented by that map extends to local results across the country. In Iowa, 31 counties that voted for President Obama switched in this election to President-elect Trump. In Michigan the number was 12, and in Wisconsin, 22. Even in deep-blue Minnesota, 19 counties switched from Obama to Trump. Clinton just won 9 counties in the state, 11 fewer than Sen. Walter Mondale managed to win during his landslide 1984 defeat.

In all, Clinton won just 487 countries compared to 2,626 for Trump.

The landslide didn’t end with the presidency. Republicans are set to begin next year holding majority control in a record number of state legislatures.

Coming out of November’s election, Republicans hold governorships in 33 states and control 67 of the country’s 98 partisan state legislative chambers. Democrats hold a majority in 31 chambers.

The voters responsible for this are a diverse group demographically.

Trump won 53 percent of men, one point more than Mitt Romney in 2012 and five points above Sen. John McCain in 2008. But he also won 8 percent of the African-American vote, two points better than Romney and four points better than McCain. He also fared better among Asian and Hispanic voters than either of his predecessors.

Clinton, on the other hand, lost voters who had previously went for Democrats from every demographic. That included winning 88 percent of African-Americans, five points less than Obama in 2008. She received 65 percent of the Hispanic vote, six points worse than Obama in 2012.

She even underperformed among millennials: Just 55 percent of voters aged 18-29 voted for her, eleven points worse than Obama in 2008.

It’s certainly possible that Russian hackers undermined Clinton’s campaign, though evidence to that effect is presently scarce. (The Obama administration has yet to act on it, if it exists, and even members of Congress have yet to receive a briefing containing that conclusion.)

Nonetheless, the group that did the most to undermine Democratic electoral prospects: Voters across the frontier.  Americans in the Midwest, the South, and the Interior West mostly rejected Democrats in this election. The party managed to win in its traditional coastal strongholds, including California and Washington, D.C. But that isn’t quite enough to win a presidential election, and will never be adequate for winning state legislatures to the extent Republicans managed in this election.

When Democrats have finished with their hysterical, reductive finger-pointing at Russia, they would do well to think about how they can get back to offering solutions capable of helping them to win again among average Americans.

Preya Samsundar (@Psamsundar) is a senior editor for Alpha News.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.