Among Democrats, the weeping, gnashing of teeth, and finger-pointing is in full bloom today. For Republicans, it’s all gloating, triumphalism, and “Told you so’s.”

Comments from readers of the New York Times Room for Debate blog, Ezra Klein’s blog on Washington Post, and the political polliing and analysis blog FiveThirtyEight:

If Democrats cannot pass health care reform under the conditions available over the past year (60 senators, 255+ House seats, an AMA endorsement, and a new president) it cannot be done. No voter should ever listen to a Democrat promising health care reform again. They had their chance, and they couldn’t deliver.

The only viable option is to pass the Senate bill and then tweak it later using reconciliation. If they can’t do it, they don’t deserve to hold power.
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Democrats should realize that folks are concerned about spending, about the size of the government, the size of the debt and that the guy they elected in Nov ’09 promised fiscal discipline and change. We’ve seen scant little of that.

My guess is that what ultimately sunk health care was the LA Purchase, the Cornhusker kickback and the sweet deal the unions received on their Cadillac plans…all deals done behind closed doors. I would go so far that the union deal last week stuck the fork in Coakley and propelled Brown to victory.
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The defeat in Massachusetts was an indicator that voters there already realized that the Democratic Party wasn’t holding up its end of the bargain. Democratics in Congress and the White House broke their bargain to seek health care reform last January when they decided to start by making deals with industry and their colleagues rather than doing spade work in their constituencies.

Obama’s web site never solicited any input from voters other than to ask for sob stories — they just instructed them to support whatever the inside deals had been struck. Democratic Senators told their constituencies that they had to wait until Baucus was done before they would talk to them about health care.
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The whole exercise has been a sellout of basic Democratic principles. Democrats in Congress will no doubt find some way to pass “something” but that something won’t be reform or the overhaul that most people wanted to see. By focusing on politics rather than principle, the Democrats have squandered the mandate they were given last fall. Unfortunately, it is Democratic voters who will bear the consequences of their actions.

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How can a team that communicated and positioned their message so brilliantly well during the campaign be so horrible at communicating wen in office?

Rahm and Axelrod must be giving him bad advice. The inner sanctum needs a shake-up.

I hope Barack spends some time with Bill Clinton dissecting what is going on.

The administration has to get a lot more aggressive on messaging.
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I am an indepedent voter in Massachusetts, the moment I heard that Scott drives a used truck with 2,000,000 miles on it and Scott’s mother is on Welfare, I decided to vote for Scott. He is one of us, a working poor Caucasian, and he will work for us: millions working poor Caucasians in Massachusetts.
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Don’t the results from Massachusetts prove beyond a doubt that what we need to do in this country is institute some form of rule according to the General Will. Do the people really know enough to know what is good for them or for the public at large? Don’t they need to be ruled by those who do know the general will and are willing to take steps to put it into action? Google “the general will” and learn.
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Democrats can always be counted on to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
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It’s more than time for Democrats to get a backbone! I have donated to the party for the last time until I see some major change in this party of jellyfish! They’ve really managed to squander away the impact of the 2008 election.
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While political writers ascribe the Democrat loss in Massachusetts and inability to perform, to a lack of organization or holding together, the truth is perhaps far simpler. Democrats perceive the individual as not as important as the government.

Republicans believe that the individual is important. The individual is the essence of capitalism and the essence of our nation…we have risen to world prominence on the backs of individual great inventors, innovators, entrepreneurs, and hard workers. Democrats want “the government” to reward those who can’t. Republicans want to empower the individual to achieve. That is what America is really all about. And, “We the People” know it.
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The Democrats’ real problem is that they’ve forgotten the value of incrementalism. You don’t build and maintain a majority by undertaking several huge legislative efforts at once. The American people distrust politicians who claim they can keep track of so many moving parts, and rightly so.

Had Democrats been willing to compromise on some Republican reforms over the years, perhaps there would be more good will built up and support for some incremental Democrat ideas could be found.
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The one thing the Democrats can learn from the GOP is – it’s all politics, all the time.

The GOP has been in campaign mode since they got beat in 2008, taking their message – such as it is – to the electorate and not really even trying to participate in government.

Obama needs to realize this and take them on. This GOP is still a bunch of losers. Their economic policy is Bush era, their perspective on the issues is backward-looking and destructive for this country.

Obama and Congressional Democrats need to craft clear, popular legislation that will move this country forward and put GOP obstructionists in the naked position of opposing legislation that’s clearly right.

The popular will is there. The message needs to be far better.
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I called the president as a mysterious wrong number from the beginning. Now, I guess, it turns out Harry Reid spotted him as a viable candidate. I think part of this legislative problem is that Obama was not a senator at heart, was a present-voter on the state level, did not attend all his committee meetings–even Reid said he thought Obama was bored being a senator. I think he is now bored being president…I call Mass the Revenge of the Clingers. Listen to us. The people. We are not necessarily for the Republicans, either–but someone needs to lead here. Not speechify or piously accept “the buck,” but run things.
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I am not sure that this has anything to do with the Democrats, per se, and with the disgusting horse trading that was going on in Congress on every single issue that was put before them this year (and for too many year prior to that). Too much political posturing and protection of the status quo rather than being serious and tackling the big issues. I wouldn’t read too much woe into this for Democrats nor would I suggest the Republicans read too much victory into it, either. The interesting thing will be to see what happens in a race where the incumbent is a Republican and not a Democrat. The mood seems to be to get rid of whoever is in office.
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Who says the Democrats are timid? They are rather fierce when it comes to defending corporate interests. The problem is that most Democratic voters are under the illusion that this still the party of FDR, leaving aside the question of how committed to working class interests this patrician was. So when the Democrats of today (Carter, Clinton, Obama) seem to have a failure of nerve in attacking corporate interests, the reality is that they never intended such an attack in the first place. Democratic voters then become demoralized and stay away from the polls, leading to new Republican majorities. After a few years of Republican Party malfeasance, a new mood of “throw the bums out” emerges. And so it goes. In other words, you have the “will of the people” being demonstrated constantly, when it is still Goldman-Sachs, Exxon and IBM running the country by pulling the puppet strings of whoever is in the White House.
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It’s really no mystery. The “democrats” include an exponentially larger cross-section of society – from far left liberals to slightly left of center centrists, and today many centrists. Getting any kind of consensus from such a broad group is, as we’ve seen, nearly impossible.

The GOP has essentially become a very narrow group – extreme conservative christians and far-right proponents. Many center-leaning conservatives do not associate themselves with that group. Getting concensus from such a ideologically narrow group is much easier.
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The House should pass the Senate’s bill and then fix the problems through reconciliation. Anything else puts the vanities and fears of individual House members over the very real needs of the people who put them in office.
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Friends, it’s not a mystery…we know the answers, sen-elect Brown is giving them to us. Today he said what’s happening in the US is “bigger than the president,” meaning that democrats, republicans, and independents are upset at the closed-door, back-room deals. They want what Obama promised: transparency. He had a year to deliver and came up dry. The answer? For democrats, republicans, and independents is simple: try someone else for a change.
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None of this would have happened in Senate Dems had any semblance of party discipline. They let Baucus take an entire summer over a process that everyone but him knew was going nowhere and they let Lieberman keep his chairmanship despite slapping them around time and again.

The day that the Dems enforce party discipline and can effectively put a message across is the day the GOP are finished. Unfortunately, that day looks a long while from coming.
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this just shows how screwed up and dysfunctional our current system of government is. if you can only pass anything with a SUPERMAJORITY then nothing can ever be passed.
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I also see a bit of the “kick the dog” problem going on here. The Republicans have been kicking the Democrats. The Democrats have been kicking their voters. The voters are kicking their own willingness to vote. We have a bunch of learned helplessness all around.

The question of course is why the Democratic politicians are such willing targets of Republican abuse.
The proper response from the Dems is, “we have not yet begun to fight!” What we get instead is, “Sorry our troublesome supporters forced you to abuse us. Is there anything we can do to make you Republicans feel better?”
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I will never vote for a Republican again — ever — but that doesn’t mean I have to vote for Democrats. I don’t have to vote at all. You can joke that you don’t belong to an organized political party, but this has gone far past funny. Lousy candidate recruitment in your own backyard, lousy campaigning, a ridiculous level of static at all levels of the health care debate, appalling oversight of the pass-through money under the TARP program. Who needs it? Where did we get these morons?
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Republicans, Independents and many Massachusetts Democrats don’t want Obamacare. Why would they want to see rates climb still higher, experience less service, or fund other states efforts to realize full insurance coverage?

I have no problem with someone being a loyal Democrat. I mostly disagree, but that’s besides the point. What’s troubling is the left’s finger pointing away from the core problem; Obamacare is a dog. Blame Coakley, blame angry tea party participants, but never contemplate that liberal legislation is flawed. The hubris of the left, wrapped in self sanctimony and righteousness is appalling.
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Everybody here seems to be missing something. I don’t believe health care is what gets people upset. They are upset about the economy and the fact that the only demographic that is not hurting right now is Wall Street fat cats.

When in fall 2008 Obama supported the bailout, I was worried he was gonna lose the election. He didn’t (perhaps because his opponent also supported the bailout) but he may still have lost the presidency. He is tarnished by his administration’s association with Wall Street while right wing Republicans have managed to paint themselves as the anti-bailout populists. That nobody in his circle seems to get this is a huge and perhaps tragic failure. Would the Democrats have lost the seat of Geithner had been fired and the Wall Street tax been enacted months ago? No way!

Posted on January 20, 2010 at 4:20 pm
http://economybeat.org/health-care/massachussetts-the-day-after/
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Categorised under : health care , politics
Tagged with : Massachussetts election , Scott Brown