December 05, 2014 10:28 AM UTC

What Democrats Need Is More "Colorado Model"

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• by: Colorado Pols

FOX 31's Eli Stokols reports on an interesting development as Democrats nationwide look to recover from an overall bruising 2014 election cycle–Colorado Democratic Party chairman Rick Palacio has been appointed to a select panel to "triage" the state of the Democratic Party nationally, and position itself better for victory in 2016:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, appointed Palacio, the only state chairman taking part in the project.

He will join nine others: Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, Donna Brazile, Democratic bundler Naomi Aberly, strategist Maria Cardona, attorney Marc Elias, Teddy Goff, an architect of President Obama’s digital campaign strategy, branding expert Maneesh Goyal and AFSCME’s Lee Saunders.

“It’s an honor to serve in this incredibly important role and I’m eager to begin this project,” Palacio told FOX31 Denver Thursday. “While Colorado Democrats had significant wins and losses, this last election was not good to many Democrats across the country.

“The American people believe in core issues championed by Democrats, so the job before our party is to make sure those issues are communicated effectively while identifying ways to build upon the infrastructure that exists to ensure voters are engaged in future elections.”

As Stokols reports, the effort is not all that different from Republican Party "post-mortem" analysis after their rough 2012 election cycle–a process that by all accounts improved the GOP's vote engagement efforts this year. After the full weight of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee under Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet was applied to the U.S. Senate race in this state, Sen. Mark Udall's strategic mistakes are a valuable lesson in what not to do with major opportunities like Cory Gardner's audacious backpedal on abortion.

But compared to the rest of the nation for Democrats after this tough election, Colorado still has many positive lessons for Democrats, having weathered another "GOP wave" with fewer losses than Republicans would have preferred. The fact is, Gardner's and Gov. John Hickenlooper's victories this year both have as much to do with their resilient positive message as their ability to overcome attacks. Likewise, the ability of Colorado Democrats to limit losses in state legislative races in this heavily Republican year is a feat that Democrats would like to need to replicate in many other states.

So for Palacio, this assignment is likely to involve some teaching as well as some learning.