How did Dan Maffei lose to his congressional seat to Ann Marie Buerkle?

Gustav Niebuhr, a journalism professor at Syracuse University, asked this question when he spoke to the Skaneateles Democrats earlier this month in the district office meeting room. His presentation was titled “Now What? Looking Back on November 2.”

As a journalist, Niebuhr wrote for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times, covering religion in America as a cultural phenomenon. He still writes on occasion for the Washington Post online. Niehbuhr noted that up until about a year ago, Democratic registration had been growing in Onondaga County at the expense of Republican registration – to the point of parody.

“How didn’t [Maffei] see this coming when he had four times the amount of money?” Niehbuhr said.

Niebuhr pointed to the Citizens United Decision of January 2010, giving credit to Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, “which I think you all know opened up the idea that money is speech, and you cannot limit it in campaigns,” he said. “Therefore corporations and unions can contribute as much as they want and they don’t necessarily have to disclose [that] they are in so doing.”

Niehbur predicted that the high number of political ads on T.V. that resulted will continue to grow.

“Anyone who’s interested in the grassroots concept of democracy has to factor that in,” he said. “Which means, I think, looking at other ways of getting messages out and also at ways of organizing people. And thinking hard, hard about how you get people to the polls, because ultimately that is what wins elections.”

Niebuhr sees Nov. 2, when the House was taken back by the Republican Party, not as a trend, but as an event to learn from.

He brought up some “points for Democrats for ponder,” starting with Gallup Poll statistics showing President Barack Obama’s approval rating at four arbitrary dates from March to December – his rating started at 49 percent in March and dropped to 46 percent in June, where it remained in December. Obama’s disapproval rating started at 46 percent in March and was down just 1 percent by December.

“They’re not moving,” he said.

He also noted that according to a Bloomberg survey of 1,000 adults, six weeks after the midterms, 48 percent of Americans held a favorable view of the Democratic Party, while 43 percent held a favorable view of the Republican Party. The same poll showed that 37 percent viewed the Tea Party movement favorably, while 41 percent did not.

Niehbur felt these numbers should not be too surprising.

“We don’t need surveys to tell us that the issue Americans care about most is jobs,” he said. “We may need to be reminded that they want the two parties to work together.”