"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses." John F. Kennedy
Most of you know me as the Allentowndude primitive. This type of post would of course been deleted at DU. I'm a liberal on more than a few issues, that being said outside of the internet bubble I have quite a few conservative friends. HCR is a disaster and it is costing the democratic party dearly. At the suggestion of Franksolich I'm cross posting this here.
When the party passed the stimulus and promptly moved onto the Health Care Reform debate in 2009, I scratched my head a little bit. Back in March the Obama administration seemed to be heading in the right direction. The party and the President seem engaged on the economic crisis and the President was polling in the low 60% in the approval ratings.
Flash forward to January of 2010 and the President is polling anywhere from 50% to below 50% nationally. In the bluest of blue states he is down to 55% for Massachusetts. I've been reading media reports all weekend and there are a few things I can read from what is happening in Massachusetts. A 7 month debate on health care when unemployment increases 4% nationally in the U3 number and even more in the U6 will do that to a political party.
1) Coakley has run an awful campaign. Absolutely horrible. It is off message, the candidate has skipped engaging the public, and she underestimated her opponent. Yesterday candidate Coakley in a very Catholic state suggested that Devout Catholics shouldn't work in an emergency room when pressed on a question of birth control. She rolled out Vicki Kennedy when her opponent was saying the seat doesn't belong to the Kennedy family but to the people. She is bringing in the heavy weights (Bill and Barack) in the last weekend and frankly that always appears desperate. On the flip side, Brown has run a near flawless campaign. The most troubling part of the Suffolk poll is favorabilty. Coakley at 49% Brown at 59%. There is some hubris from the Coakley campaign till this weekend. Assuming you are going to win a general election in bad economic times because your state is a traditional democratic strong hold is idiocy at the finest.
2) If the Suffolk poll is to be believed, 48% of voters oppose the Federal HCR bill and 61% believe the governement doesn't have the ability to pay for it. 90% of those polled believe we are still in a recession. The President recorded robo calls last night for Coakley's support of HCR. 38% of Mass voters view it as the number one issue, 44% view the economy as the number one issue. Mass is sitting at about 9% unemployment for a U3 number, slightly below the national average. 48% of the populace oppose the HCR bill, so trying to prevent it's passage might be their #1 issue. Making robo calls for a bill that half the populace opposes the weekend before a special election is a giant blind spot by the party. Sometimes I just scratch my head that these were the same guys who ran such a brilliant campaign in 2008.
3) GOTV will be interesting. There are very effective GOTV directors in both parties that come from Mass, however their experience in the democratic party is primarily concerned with primaries for state wide elections. 52% of Mass voters are unaffiliated or 3rd party by 2008 voter registration statistics, 11% are GOP and 37% are Democrats. Judging Coakley's absolute incompetence in the rest of the campaign, I doubt she's ID the independent supporters well. They can send in all the cavalry they want to, if they don't know who they are targeting outside of the party, they got some trouble. I'm reading different reports about the Bill Clinton rally. While it was a widely attended event, it appears there was a substantial number of Brown activist who showed up outside the event. Not a good sign.
If Coakley loses on Tuesday or if it is very close, the following will be the talking points from the White House:
1) Coakley ran a bad campaign. This has no bearing on the President's agenda or his popularity.
2) The President did not engage in the campaign till the last weekend. See point number 1.
3) This election was not about Health Care reform and was a reaction to the recovery not being fully seen on Main Street. This has no reflection on November 2010. The last point being nonsense since the opponent ran against the health care reform bill. If you can't sell this bill in Mass, a state that already has a mirror of it, you know how popular it will be nationwide.
In reality, a loss or a narrow win is a reflection on the national party's popularity. In 2009 we lost a Governor's race in blue NJ and got slaughtered in purple Virginia. The strength of a party is not that your strong candidates win elections. Maybe it speaks to the awfulness of the two party system but 20% of your candidates are home runs, 20% of your candidates are good, 40% of your candidates are just ok, and 20% of your candidates are poor. Your strength is determined when you can push your ok to poor candidates over the finish line.
We shall see how this plays out in 2010. HCR could be seen as a miserable failure politically if the party's decision to take its attention from the economy onto health insurance results in a resuscitated GOP and electoral losses for democrats. Judging by the bill's content, it will probably be a miserable failure policy wise, and any attempt to "fix it later" will be blocked by less democratic seats in the US House and US Senate. Not that, that matters. The campaign finance situation in the US currently almost assures us that this bill in present form will be status quo for quite sometime. If something benefits a large business interest, it will take a national revolt for the congress critters to do anything, because as the right hand is saying we need to fix this, the left hand will be taking campaign cash from the interest that need to be dressed down. A wise man said you cannot serve two masters, and you can't.
In politics an ugly win is still a win, however ugly wins can be signs of things to come. Which is what may happen in Massachusetts. The fact that it is Massachusetts might be the only thing that saves the 60 votes. A 51% win by Coakley will be spun as the greatest win in history. Anything under 55% is bad news. The one bright spot in the past 3 months of electoral losses was the Bill Owens victory and even there, our candidate didn't get above 50%.
Of course, those on here with the stomach to still post on DemocraticUnderground will see the same denial we've seen since around August. Bad candidate (she won statewide office in 2006 with 73% of the vote), nothing can be extrapolated from this race (a loss or a close call in one of our base states for the seat held by a recently deceased party icon), Barack Obama is still very popular (despite a 7 point drop from his electoral victory in the recent polling in Mass and the opponent making this about Barack Obama). You all know that even a loss of Barack Obama in 2012 would be spun somehow as not his fault by the non-reality based community.
I've been seeing a disturbing trend in democratic politics since around June of 2009. Right around the time, people started to realize that Barack Obama's victory wasn't the end of the republican party. Arrogance is the only word I can describe for it. I honestly think people started to believe their own press releases. Think the HCR bill is a gift to the very corporations that caused the health care crisis? Stop whining, we are making history, Barack Obama would not do that etc. Think that the economic recovery efforts have been too focused on bailing out the very people who crashed the system and reform efforts stifled by the party? Stop whining, you don't understand economics, the recovery is only 1, 2, maybe 3 months away at the most, we saved the world. Do you feel that civil rights issues have been totally abandoned? Stop whining, you cause us to lose elections in swing areas (amazing how the leadership appear pretty capable of doing that on their own), do you want a Palin Presidency?
When your number one defense against administration or congressional action is pretending your supporters are stupid and don't see your greatness, you are in for some trouble.
It sounds terrible, but I don't care that much about the results of this race. With 60 votes, our Senate has been totally incapable and inept of addressing any of the enormous problems we faced in 2009. I don't believe they are going to prove themselves any more capable in 2010 either. Lots of window dressing, no substance. I'm under no delusion that the GOP will be any better. However, when you fail as representatives of the people, your party loses elections. In a two party system, that means the other side wins elections even if their solutions are no better or worse than the ones being offered by the incumbent party.
Get ready folks, 2010 will be a year of long knives and when people in the party are looking for a scape goat, the liberal activist community is generally the group the party has put on the altar since President Carter's loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980. The failure of those in Washington to actually do things to help the common man, will be verboten as a discussion point. Remember, they've been making progress, turning the ship around, stopping the skidding car, saving the world, playing 3-d chess with a Klingon. While the rest of us, are just a bunch of whiners.
