Clinton beat house democrats

[Virginiá]

I'm not really convinced this less-than-stellar performance is the fault of Clinton's strategy. She did make an effort to decouple Trump from the GOP to attract disaffected moderate/suburban Republicans (going by some of those Romney districts that flipped, did it work?) , but how does that damage Democrats? It's not like Clinton attacked her party. At the end of the day, voters still chose between the two parties, except maybe in the minds of some independents/Republicans, Trump mattered less. It was still Democrats who failed to appeal to them. Plus, downballot Democrats made their own extensive efforts to tie their opponents to Trump.

Now, if you want to argue that just by Clinton being our nominee was damaging, I might agree. Her baggage became the party's baggage, and after 8 years of a Democratic incumbent president whose tenure triggered quite a lot of polarization and animosity, Democrats did not have a lot of room to maneuver. If there was any year where we needed to put up a well-liked and relatively scandal-free candidate, this was it. Evidently even against someone as awful as Trump.

[Virginiá]

Mainly late October, literally at the last minute, while previously praising Paul Ryan for 6 months beforehand.

Advertisements, particularly tv ads, do not have a long "shelf-life" in the minds of voters, and in the fall the media becomes increasingly saturated, so it's hard for any single ad campaign to really have a serious, long-lasting effect unless they are something like an information campaign about a new scandal the target is having.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1532673X09353507
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/20/political-ads-not-as-powerful-as-you-or-politicians-think/?utm_term=.03a919555255

Honestly, politicians seriously need to scale back their reliance on TV advertising. I think there are enough studies now that suggest that it is mostly useless, and probably only effective if you air extensive ads running up to and during early voting/election day. Clinton's case is a good example of just lighting money on fire. Even if her ad campaign bought her 1-3 points in votes at some point in October, the Comey letter probably destroyed that by turning the people she convinced via ads against her again. Point is: Maybe ads get you some support, but minor or major late-breaking revelations can take it away almost instantly.

Personally I'd rather see the party invest many millions in constant year-round organizing (in rural/exurban areas as well), instead of parachuting in during elections only.