C-pig primitive whistling past the graveyard

[franksolich]

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7528137

Oh my.

CaliforniaPeggy  (1000+ posts)        Thu Jan-21-10 12:12 AM
#10 TOP PRIMITIVE OF 2009; THE C-PIG PRIMITIVE
Original message

Today's LA Times: The Lessons of Massachusetts? Anger 

The electorate is increasingly restive, and it's not just about the Democrats.

You can bet that political strategists in both parties will be parsing the meaning of the Massachusetts senatorial struggle for some time to come. If there was a slam dunk left in American politics, it should've been the Democrats' ability to easily retain a Senate seat they'd held for 57 years in what has become essentially a sea-blue state. Instead, they lost.

Given its importance in the issue of the moment, the Massachusetts vote is going to be analyzed as a referendum on President Obama's healthcare reforms. Increasingly, it does seem as if this first-year president made a profound strategic mistake by pressing forward on healthcare while simultaneously trying to contend with the worst global economic crisis since the Depression, exit one war in Iraq and gear up to fight another in Afghanistan.

Truth to tell, the president and his surrogates have done a lousy job selling the electorate on reform. Social Security and Medicare are our most popular social programs because they have two crucial attributes: they cover everybody, and their benefit to the individual can be explained in one declarative sentence.

By contrast, the benefits of healthcare reform are diffuse. In this nation of 300 million, only 30 million people are without health insurance. That's a scandal and, frequently, a tragedy for the uninsured. In political terms, however, the problem is that most of what the other 270 million will gain from reform seems marginal and remote.

But if the lessons gleaned from Massachusetts stop with healthcare, something far more profound and potentially disruptive will have been missed. There is a deep and increasingly restive anger stirring in the country. Its focal points at the moment may seem to be healthcare and "big government," but if there were a Republican in the White House, they might just as well be tax cuts and "limited government."

The fact is that the president and both parties' congressional delegations have approval ratings under 50%. (So do California's Republican governor and Los Angeles' Democratic mayor; the Legislature doesn't even have a rating.)

More at the link: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ru...

Warpy  (1000+ posts)        Thu Jan-21-10 12:18 AM
#09 TOP PRIMITIVE OF 2009; THE DEFROCKED WARPED PRIMITIVE
Response to Original message

1. Shot across the bow

I've been saying for months that a corporate ****up of health insurance reform would have most of them on the unemployment line in 2011.

It seems I was just about on the money.

Nah, probably not.

thunder rising (1000+ posts)        Thu Jan-21-10 12:21 AM
Response to Original message
 
2. The issue is NOT HRC. The issue was the year of watching Republicans roll over the left base that left the base cold. We just don't want to participate if we're not included. Howard Dean was correct, the base is demoralized.

"Looking ahead." vs "Nobody is above the law". I was willing to go along if it got us somewhere, but after a year, with nothing produced worth mentioning is ridiculous. It would be laughable if people weren't dying.

Which base is demoralized?

This base is pretty happy.

yava (187 posts)      Thu Jan-21-10 12:46 AM
Response to Reply #2
 
6. in Massachusetts, you don't win against ... liberal thinking democrats and the Red Soxs at the same time.

You make the former abstain from voting and you make the fans vote against you.
She was arrogant and detached.

Two lessons not to confuse:

1) dont alienate your base (the mainstream in Massachusetts would be considered the left in most of the rest of the US).

2) dont go against the red soxs fans in their home state or baseball fans in any state.

PDJane  (1000+ posts)      Thu Jan-21-10 12:30 AM
Response to Original message
 
3. what it proves to me is that the folks who voted for Mr. Brown are voting for the enemy in the hopes that he'll fix what is wrong with the Democratic party. Brilliant,

Jade Fox  (1000+ posts)        Thu Jan-21-10 12:46 AM
Response to Original message
 
5. Trite, inch-deep political analysis.....

Haven't we had enough of that?

So the problem, according to this guy, is....anger. Anger about....stuff. Okay.

It's probably way too soon to have any real understanding of what went wrong in MA. Possibly it can simply be chalked up to our biggest political problem in this country (and it ain't anger): ill-informed voters.

Yep.  Given the 2008 presidential results, 52% of the voters appear to be ill-informed.

That's a little more than half.

CaliforniaPeggy  (1000+ posts)        Thu Jan-21-10 12:49 AM
#10 TOP PRIMITIVE OF 2009; THE C-PIG PRIMITIVE
Response to Reply #5

7. Well, you're more than entitled to your opinion. 

I found the editorial interesting and thought-provoking.

And that's why I posted it.

C_Lawyer09 (624 posts)      Thu Jan-21-10 12:55 AM
Response to Reply #7
 
9. I thought it was provocative

Also the author did a great job of explaining, by analogy why people can't relate to health care reform. I'd never thought about the question in that context, and I think it is illuminating. You have to SELL the MAJORITY on how they benefit, and sadly 30m without, is not enough to sell them. Thanks for posting!

leftstreet  (1000+ posts)      Thu Jan-21-10 12:53 AM
Response to Reply #5
 
8. Nothing went 'wrong' in MA. Hell, even AxelDickhead wasn't surprised
 
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/local/politics/201...

The Obama strategist volunteered praise for the Massachusetts Senate campaign run by the Republican, Scott Brown, and seemed to find nothing good to point to in the Democratic effort. He said he didn't want to "delve deeply into post-mortems on the day people are voting."

Axelrod appeared to reject the criticism that he and his team had been taken by surprise and should have done more to head off a Democratic collapse. He said it was "not exactly a revelation to us" that voters are angry and anxious after a year in which millions of Americans have lost their jobs and millions more see no evidence in their lives that the economy is recovering.

Axelrod also said that there were "local issues at play" in Massachusetts and that the Republican had run "a very clever campaign."

"As a practitioner in politics, my hat's off to him," Axelrod said.

[Karin]

All this analysis the pundits are doing!  They gaze at their navels and wonder what went so horribly wrong.  It's not rocket science, all they had to do is what I did.  Go to the Boston Globe and Herald websites, and read the thousands of comments from the citizenry.  They are sick of living under liberal tyrrany was how one gentleman put it. 

[The Village Idiot]

oh Please.

1. Taxes, Mass already has RomneyCare and why should they pay double to make it national? Mass already has a doctor shortage because it.
2. Economy, taxes and regulation and even unions have retarded the Mass economy to the point it is always lagging, even in better times
3. Coakley; Amirault and curling irons, spawn of satan, was running months before Teddy died, signs were out days after the funeral
4. HCR not popular, Obama less and less popular

red soxs?

[Carl]

PDJane  (1000+ posts)      Thu Jan-21-10 12:30 AM
Response to Original message
 
3. what it proves to me is that the folks who voted for Mr. Brown are voting for the enemy in the hopes that he'll fix what is wrong with the Democratic party. Brilliant,

You are dumber then a steaming pile of fresh dog s**t.

[Karin]

Carl, it drives me crazy how everybody with an opinion just keeps getting it wrong, wrong, wrong.  All they had to do was read the internets for awhile!  It's like when people puzzle over the Teaparties.  "What is their problem, exactly?"  Just read the freaking signs, that's all there is to it!!!

Anyway, the more they get it wrong, the quieter I am (except in my own living room), because it will be their doom. 

Frank, right before the Mass election, you kept saying "nothing to worry about, primitives, your Dem candidate is sure to win."  Was that to lure any lurkers into stay-at-home complacency? 

[USA4ME]

The electorate is increasingly restive, and it's not just about the Democrats.

If by that they mean that the electorate doesn't like the Marxist policies of liberal Democrats, and are fed up with liberal Democrats and Republicans who act like liberal Democrats, then they would have a correct analysis.

Otherwise, they would be wrong.

.

[franksolich]

Frank, right before the Mass election, you kept saying "nothing to worry about, primitives, your Dem candidate is sure to win."  Was that to lure any lurkers into stay-at-home complacency?

I'm taking the Fifth on that, madam.

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.

[Ralph Wiggum]

8. Nothing went 'wrong' in MA. Hell, even AxelDickhead wasn't surprised

They're already throwing Axelrod under the bus?

[DumbAss Tanker]

If by that they mean that the electorate doesn't like the Marxist policies of liberal Democrats, and are fed up with liberal Democrats and Republicans who act like liberal Democrats, then they would have a correct analysis.

Otherwise, they would be wrong.

.

I'm sure there will be a lot more sophisticated analyses, whether they are ever allowed to see the light of day by the MSM or even the people paying for them is another question, but I have a suspicion that the substance of the Health Care Reform bills was not as big a factor to the MA voters as the process that has been used to get them where they are - one-party rule, secret back-room deals, immense bribes, unexplained and unexamined legislative booby-traps hidden in thousands of pages of text that 'Have to be voted on immediately' before the ink even dries and anyone has a chance to figure out what they mean, and things of that sort.  The Democrats' simple prioritization of HCR over and above economic recovery seems to have played a huge part, too.

[Wineslob]

Posted on: Today at 04:21:15 amPosted by: Karin 
Insert Quote
All this analysis the pundits are doing!  They gaze at their navels and wonder what went so horribly wrong.  It's not rocket science, all they had to do is what I did.  Go to the Boston Globe and Herald websites, and read the thousands of comments from the citizenry.  They are sick of living under liberal tyrrany was how one gentleman put it.   

To a Liberal the idea that anything they did was horribly wrong is an impossibility.


I hope they keep thinking that way.