“The congressional Democratic caucus has to deal with very different constituencies and very different pressures,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist who heads the Center for Leadership & Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington.
“The result is a message that is not coherent enough to take to the campaign trail. The Democrats can pass legislation that can define the party, like Obamacare or the ‘cap-and-trade’ environmental bill, but that is much different from a presidential candidate going from a group of activists in one state to a group of activists in another state in pursuit of the presidential nomination.”
