Thank you to President Barack Obama for leaving office with the Democratic party in ruins. The past eight years have decimated the political party at all levels.
After Obama was first elected president in 2008, he enjoyed a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, an eventual supermajority in the Senate, and Democrats had full control of 20 state governments. The victory of "hope and change" led to comments that the Republican party was dead and in the wilderness.
Flash forward eight years and the Democratic Party is now in the wilderness.
Democrats lost 63 house seats, 11 Senate seats (not including Independents), 13 governorships, and nearly 1,000 state legislator seats. Despite the devastation at the state and federal levels, Democrats still had control of the White House. Liberals and Democrats alike were confident that Obama would hand over the White House to Hillary Clinton–until Donald Trump pulled the upset of the century and won the presidential election.
The GOP will now have complete control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, and 33 states have a Republican governor. In 25 of those 33 states, Republicans control the legislature as well. In contrast, there are only five states with complete Democratic control.
The Obama years have not been kind to the Democratic Party, and for that, President Obama was honored with the 2016 Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year Award.