It clearly is. I can't imagine any other reason for it. Just look at the data.
People may feel good about Republican mantras, like low wasteful spending and low taxes, but that's about it. Every time an actual bill comes up to a vote, Democrats are on the popular side of the issue.
And it's clear the problem isn't that the democrats lost the swing voters. That became clear when we got the lowest turnout since people were too busy fighting in WW2 to vote. The problem is democratic voters didn't show up. I don't see how those democratic voters are going to show up any other way.
There's really no other explanation that fits the data. It's possible they don't need to take up new policy positions, but they do need to back them with a stronger conviction.
The only thing I would add is that I believe this needed to be done on a national level, not an individual campaign level, because there's a fundamental lack of trust in the party as a whole right now all across the country.
I agree turn out sucks, that's not the campaign's fault. Dem voters just don't show up, they haven't and won't in midterms.
I just find it funny that we whipsaw back and forth between dems are amazing campaigners to dems are lousy campaigners.
the voters aren't there for dems to win and if you think that 'owning accomplishments' (2010 says hey!) or running farther to the left I don't know what to tell you. Your pushing what you want onto what happened. Like I said, its a mirror of the 'we need a more conservative candidate" on the right Its the go to reason because its solution is what you already want and have wanted and you fit the data to that (our base didn't turn out so we need to double down on them!)
Republicans in the south and much of the midwest have become the democratic party of the 20th century. The only choice, with the debates happening inside the party, not between dems and republicans (rubio vs. cruz on immigration, cotton vs paul on fp). Its become cultural and its solidifying and dems are letting it by retreating to their costal enclaves when they lose. GOTV isn't working by any large stretch (though I think there have flaws in my interaction with dem campaigns on how they're running this)
I think the best thing is outreach to middle america and a shift by the party away from focusing on cultural issues, there's no need for the candidate to make such a big issue out of them like udall did. We won the gay marriage debate, we're going to win the pot debate, people understand the war on women and by and large we have their vote. We're alienating white suburban voters who don't really care much on these issues and feel that we have no plan, because we don't. We don't need them in presidential years but we sure as hell do in midterms and much of the liberal blogosphere is really ignorant of why they vote they way they do and why they're voting republican.