Remember when you jumped through hoops a couple months back when Kennedy died, and changed the law (again!) to make sure there was a Democrat in office- that was the kind of arrogance and sense of entitlement that led to tonight’s defeat. Some of us tried to point that out then.
I know a lot of you are really upset about the loss, but if people want to be honest about what happened tonight, this is not the fault of progressive activists (despite the fact that I am incapable of behaving maturely and insisted on being a jackass on twitter). This is not the fault of the adminstration and Barack Obama, because if Coakley had Obama’s numbers in Mass., she would be the next Senator.
This is about an arrogant state party, a horrible and lazy candidate who was unprepared and unmotivated, out of touch with the voters, incapable or unwilling to put in the work and shake the hands and massage the egos and put in the hours, and they got their asses handed to them. I’m sure the exit polling will give us more information, but right now it looks to me that this was about the fundamentals of running a good campaign. Coakley and company didn’t adhere to them.
AxelFoley
Well said, John.
Oh, and over at Kos, some are already blaming Reid and Obama for Coakley’s loss.
Predictable.
HRA
I heartily agree with your summation, John.
maye
As they say in Al-anon, you might be right.
rob!
STUPID STUPID STUPID
RAT CREATURES!MA DEMOCRATIC PARTY!jnfr
You can always find people at Kos who are saying pretty much anything. It’s a big room.
I am sad for Teddy Kennedy tonight.
TooManyJens (was Jen R)
Hear, hear.
And to the Democrats in Congress: suck it up and do your goddamn jobs. We can hear you gearing up to use this defeat as an excuse not to. Stop it.
Brien Jackson
Um, what? The only thing they changed was allowing the governor to appoint an interim Senator before the special election was held. The idea that said change had a dispositive effect on the outcome of the subsequent special election is pretty far-fetched, albeit not as crazy as blaming it on the White House Chief of Staff.
Lizzy L
Well said, yes. Nevertheless: bummer, bummer, bummer, bummer, bummer, bummer.
I’m going to avoid my radio, (no TV to worry about), and all the political blogs except maybe this one until the poo-flinging and yodeling and posturing and noise stops. About a week, yah think?
eric k
Yep,
Once you cut through all the BS the bottom line is she seemed to think “its MASS, the primary is the election I’m home free”
So when is this seat up? 2012? Hopefully one of the many strong Dem Congressmen will run and get this doofus out.
Annie
This is what makes me want to take a fall and get the same pills that John got.
The next few days are going to be unbearable as progressives go after each other, and the administration. Republicans and conservatives don’t need to do a thing — although they will be all over the media. All they need to do is sit back and let progressives do their job for them. And, progressives will — they are nothing if not consistent, and at this point — losers.
meh
Nice of Jim Webb to declare there shant be any more votes on health care until the cosmo is sworn in…sometimes democracy sucks.
General Winfield Stuck
Not me./ Not one bit. I will be if HCR gets scuttled because of it, but I don’t think that is going to happen. And though I don’t know anything whatsoever about Mass politics and the dem party there, everything I’ve read confirms Mr. Cole’s account of things.
How much smarts, and how much less hubris does it take to know you can’t skip out 4 weeks of a 6 week or so campaign period and hope to win in the atmosphere that always occurs during the first two years of a your new party taking power in DC?
Boggles
kommrade reproductive vigor
This is excellent news for McCain!
Less if a blonde woman goes missing.
MikeBoyScout
On point John. Thanks. In times like tonight it is good to know one is not alone with such thoughts.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Yeah. I think I’m going to avoid the news and political blogs for the next couple weeks. Maybe I’ll catch up on video games. The republican noise is going to be deafening, possibly even worse than the Democratic handwringing and circular firing squad.
AxelFoley
I think this is what pisses me off the most. Ordinarily, I could give a fuck about some other state’s Senate race. But, with this being Teddy’s seat, health care being his life’s work, and us being this close to having heatlh care reform, this–THIS–is how Massachussets repays Teddy? By putting an amateur porn star teabagger in his seat?
Fuck Massachussets. Fuck ya’ll to hell.
And I hope the Yankees continue to skullfuck the Red Sox.
Jager
When Romney started to pull good numbers against Ted Kennedy in the ’94 Senate campaign, his pitch was: he was an outsider, a successful businessman and he would change the culture in DC. In the weeks before the election it was 50-50 in the polling. Ted woke up, got off his butt, shook hands, campaigned his ass off all over the state and really kicked Mitt’s ass in a debate…he won with 58% of the vote. Coakley was around in those days, so were the rest of the Mass Dem power structure…guess they forgot about how Teddy won an election that was 50-50 a few weeks out!
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
Agreed.
This doesn’t have to be a foreshadowing of November if we don’t allow it to be. Although if things stay as they are, or get worse, it will be a HUGE throw-the-bums-out election where incumbents of both parties will lose their jobs en masse. Seems like a good year for independents to run for office, unfortunately we don’t have campaign finance reform.
Bottom line? Find great candidates and run good campaigns.
SteveinSC
You are one incredible naif. Jesus what a moron.
Sentient Puddle
Y’know, inasmuch as this whole thing was based on anti-incumbent sentiment, the incumbent here is Deval Patrick, not Obama. Or maybe the state party and not Patrick. In any case, it ain’t fucking Obama. This was not a national race, and that’s something that needs to be pushed hard.
Kryptik
I’m going to enjoy the handwringing from Washington Dems about how if we only governed from the right, and not let those goddamn DFHs in Congress ruin the party, and how we’ll never get anything done now that we only have 59 Senators in the caucus.
Well…until I have a sober moment, of which there won’t be many if this shit keeps up.
Morbo
INB4AUGUST. I say that because, again, he was totally right.
Will
Unfortunately, there apparently wasn’t any performed.
kid bitzer
this sucks.
but just pass the fucking hcr. do whatever it takes. pass the senate version as is, or run over jim webb with a tractor, or do whatever it takes.
pass hcr, now. the rest will heal in time.
Amy
Claire McCaskill tweets
Does she realize that the Democrats have a big majority in the Senate?
Lisa K.
I am so discouraged right now, I could cry. Massachusetts, the keeper of the Kennedy legacy, elects a teabagging Ken doll to office.
You work and hope for something better, you get excited about a movement once in your adult whole life (that started with the election of Ronald Reagan), and then you are turned around and kicked in the teeth.
Fuck it. I am done with all of it. Democrats are the most incompetent group on the face of the earth, and I do not think I can support such idiocy anymore.
D-Chance.
Why, Cole, didn’t you get the memo?
Excuse-o-meter option #3: Massachusetts doesn’t matter.
Lisa K.
@zoe kentucky in pittsburgh:
Good luck with that.
tc
I’ve been getting messages from the Coakley campaign all day. I need to make phone calls. Go drive people. Show up at polls.
It is now 10:00. The polls have been closed two hours, and it’s been 30 minutes since she conceded the election. And I have heard zilch from the campaign. I am not surprised. I talked to a voter who had donated to her campaign during the primary and never heard back from her. I talked to another voter who had asked for a sign for his lawn, and never heard back. Worst campaign I have ever seen.
Amy
Don’t do it. Stay in the arena. It’s frustrating but if you leave it, the wingers keep winning.
Stephen
Did anyone follow the primary? From what I’ve read Coakley strikes me as a remarkably weak candidate, at least once she got the nomination. Did she put up this apathetic a campaign in the primary?
Ailuridae
Wait, what?
Edit: What Brien Jackson wrote.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Yep, I pretty agree with this assessment — which is going to make it even more annoying to read/hear pundits nationalizing their analysis over a race that appears to have been decided over local/state factors.
.
West of the Cascades
@Brien Jackson: The problem wasn’t just that they made this change this year, but that a few years ago the same muttonheads changed the law to create a special election six months after a vacancy specifically to thwart Gov. Romney from making an appointment. It’s the arrogance of the MA Democrats in tweaking the Senate vacancy-filling law each time the current law is inconvenient for the Democratic Party … an arrogance which, as John stresses, was amply reflected in Coakley’s miserable campaign and failure to put even a minimal effort into trying to win.
No one to blame for this mess but Coakley and the state party.
Lisa K.
@Annie:
They have been doing that for months. Why stop now?
Mumphrey
That’s about it.
Somebody needs run against her in the next primary. And just keep hitting her over and over and over for having gone to the fucking Caribbean for 2 or 3 weeks in the middle of what some of us stupidly would have thought was an important U.S. Senate campaign. I mean, what the hell? If she didn’t want the job, why the hell did she run for it? She already didn’t have that job. She didn’t have to run for it and lose, just to be extra-special sure she didn’t somehow get it by mistake. Well, now if there’s any justice, there’s another job she won’t have to worry about holding after the next election: Massachussetts attorney general.
I switched off the television a minute ago, while she was giving her concession. I heard her say something about “hard work”, and that was all I could take. What a pathetic politician.
Skepticat
I’m sad, very disheartened. There may well be quite a few people in this commonwealth who discover shortly that one must be careful what one wishes for, but we’re stuck for several years. If only the Dems will listen to TooManyJens and grow a pa … er, get their acts together.
ellaesther
Aw, fucking hell.
Somewhere, Teddy Kennedy is very, very sad.
Fuckity fuck fuck.
(That’s all I got. Sorry it ain’t much).
Elie
“So let us mark this day with remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled.
Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
From Obama’s inaugural address – just a year ago…sigh
Lets keep it going…
beltane
@AxelFoley:
This.
Kryptik
@Amy:
It’s kind of hard to maintain the optimism to stay in the arena when Dems have all but assured us that, after facing repeated stonewalling from the right in both parties, the solution to this stunning loss is….to govern further to the right, and that it’s all the fault of the Dems moving so far to the “soshulizt” left.
God, fuck this, I’m getting a bottle to crawl inside of.
Lisa K.
@Amy:
Right now, I don’t really care. Nothing we do seems able to stop them. It is like the whole country is a caricature of Deliverance.
drillfork
I’ll actually take the noble, reasonable centrist position here:
All of them — from Coakley to Obama (the president is head of his party, ya know) — assumed she’d win, and acted accordingly.
The end.
eemom
what did your “jackass”ish Tweets say?? C’mon, we need some cheering up here……
Kryptik
@Amy:
It’s kind of hard to maintain the optimism to stay in the arena when Dems have all but assured us that, after facing repeated stonewalling from the right in both parties, the solution to this stunning loss is….to govern further to the right, and that it’s all the fault of the Dems moving so far to the “soshulizt” left.
God, fuck this, I’m getting a bottle to crawl inside of.
Anne Laurie
@TooManyJens (was Jen R):
Seconded. As if the Blue
JellyfishDogs cared what we thought.chris
Not very original, I know, but what Digby said.
Steph
She deserved to lose. (Even my town went for Brown, and we’re fairly lefty.)
If she had eeked out a win, the Dems would have been complacent. They need a serious wake up call. Maybe this is it. So long as they don’t follow dickwad Lieberman’s “go center” sage advice.
The next couple months should be interesting.
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
Fuck it. I am done with all of it. Democrats are the most incompetent group on the face of the earth, and I do not think I can support such idiocy anymore.
Wait, hold on a second, this was one lousy election with one very poorly run campaign. Coakley had 6 weeks to run and only actively campaigned for 2 of them!??! That is so beyond phoning it in that she didn’t even pick up the phone to make the call, instead she just thought “why bother? I’m in Massachusetts, I’ll win this in my sleep.” Bad campaign = bad outcome. No surprise there.
At the very least this might be a wake-up call for anyone who doesn’t realize that things can go to shit if we don’t work together, find common cause and always be ready to fight like hell. It’s not a bad thing.
AB
@SteveinSC:
He’s talking about current approval baseline, not the Nov 2008 election. I had to reread that. The point is that against Obama’s approval in Mass., Coakley got rolled anyway.
John S.
Yes, clearly having a 59 seat majority in the Senate, a 256 seat majority in the House and the White House makes Democrats the biggest fucking losers of all time!
LIBERALS, STOP BUYING INTO RIGHT-WING FRAMES OF REALITY.
Kryptik
@zoe kentucky in pittsburgh:
The thing is that Washington Dems have learned a lesson in this. The problem is that it’s the exact wrong lesson. Just like always.
Ailuridae
@West of the Cascades:
We all know that history. We don’t know what that has to do with events of a couple of months ago that Cole addressed in the post.
tc
Stephen,
Coakley was stealthily (and classlessly) running for the seat even while Teddy was still alive. By the time Teddy died, she had the party bigwigs wrapped up, and a huge warchest. Even with that, though, the progressive and dynamic Mike Capuano came very close to bringing her down, with her polls plummeting in the final week of the primary. But none of the truly negative stuff about her – her weak record on sex crimes, her foot-in-mouth habit on a campaign trail she clearly disdained – none of that came out until this month.
For that matter, she didn’t apparently bother to do any negative research on Brown. So during the debates, he could just walk away with statements like, “I drive a pickup with 200,000 miles on it,” even though he is a lawyer with five homes.
Amy
Of course Democrats are going to move to the right when a Republican wins a big race. The result makes them think voters prefer Republicans because, wait, they voted for one.
All this was supported by the Kill the Bill types who claimed that there was no difference between Obama and Bush. Moving the overton window, don’t cha know.
General Winfield Stuck
@Lisa K.: Remember the Cole going Galt thing a week or so ago and then 10 posts follow. I do that once or twice a week from blogging and politics. Like someone else said, sometimes just the decision frees the mind enough to keep on truckin’. I believe this to be true :-)
WereBear
She was a terrible candidate. I can only assume the primary contenders were even worse?
She just made the longest concession speech I’ve ever heard. In a monotone. WTF?
Anne Laurie
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
If I were ten years younger & fifty pounds lighter, I’d be stalking Ann Coulter right now.
Elie
@Steph:
So tell me Steph, how does this wake up call help the Democrats or the interests we supposedly care about? Sure, she may not have been a great candidate, but Brown is a better result? Really? Help me understand the calculus involved that results in the win for an ignorant, self promoting, right winged fucker. Did you like the last result we had with that on a national level to reprise that for your state? Really? So, we have to loose a village to somehow win in the end?
Sounds lame, and sad and stupid apologia to me. Yeah, like some folks in Mass really don’t understand the term
” common good”….yoiu want to play high risk pocker with the lives of those uncovered with health insurance?
Well I guess you and your state showed us a thing or two
Chris Johnson
Pretty much what John said. Amazing considering that apparently Teddy Kennedy’s staff and proteges were incredibly politically savvy, hard workers and the dead opposite of this.
HST talking about McGovern had it nailed. To be not evil won’t win you enough votes. Being on the right side gains you nothing. It becomes all about being able to light up the crowd and connect with them on an emotional level, which has nothing to do with ability to govern (or ability not to be skin-crawling evil, for that matter)
You run with that for long enough, you end up with Jonestown and corpses marinated in cyanide and flavor-aid.
Doesn’t change the fact of THAT’S HOW IT’S DONE.
If you can’t use the social, brainless crowd-pleaser level to get some of your real agenda done, you don’t get anything.
Let’s see if anybody out there can hit the rabblerouser level in such a way as to remind people we are striking a path between difficult, grudging progress, and collapse, torture and madness.
Kryptik
@John S.:
The problem isn’t whether we buy into it or not. It’s whether our goddamn party leaders do, and they’ve made it pretty blindingly obvious that they have.
gwangung
Excuse me, and I’m sorry for the following harsh language, but..
FUCK THAT
Some weak sister ran a bad campaign and got defeated? You get discouraged because voters recognized stupidity and refused to reward it just because it had a “D” behind the name? Worst reason I ever heard of to get discouraged. (Now if you were discouraged because Coakley sat on her ass instead of campaigned, I might understand, but still).
The response is to get up and find smarter, better candidates. Get THEM into office. Don’t accept any wanker that waves a “D” as a candidate. Get GOOD people in there. And don’t let the bastards on either side get in your way.
jcricket
Fuck Jim Webb. Shove a curling iron up his butt.
Why do Democrats immediately have to go into hidey-hole mode every time a Republican wins something? We still have 59(ish) Senators and a huge majority in the House.
But I guess now’s the time to give up on everything that even the most moderate of Democrats want. We lose a seat, so it’s time to go all tax cuts, pro-torture, war with Iran and gut any regulations. No new taxes, no repeal of Bush tax cuts, and let’s eliminate the estate tax.
It’s obviously what 100% of the people in America want, judging by Brown’s 100 to 0 win over Coakley, which was clearly voted on by 100% of the people in the entire US.
Steeplejack
@Lizzy L:
Fix’d. Or whenever our Chinese overlords nip the whole free speech thing.
Slaney Black
John: You have NO F***ING IDEA how deep this goes.
Appointment? Yeah, I guess. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!
The state legislature. Don’t even get me started. They’ve made a buffoon out of every single governor of my living memory. Especially the Democrats. There’s a reason MA keeps electing Republican govs.
And the Democratic primary. I was a Republican when I still lived in MA, so I have no idea how it works. But somehow the hack-annointed candidate wins every time. Shannen O’Brien, anyone?
Oh, god. The state party is just brutal. You really have to read Howie Carr religiously to understand it.
Donald G
John, I can be partly philosophical about Coakley’s loss tonight. Tonight, I’m wondering if we’ll see similar ineptness among West Virginia democrats if and when Robert Seabird… er, Robert C. Byrd passes. Right now, WV republicans only seem to put up token opposition against Byrd, when they bother to run for his seat at all. Part of me worries that the democratic bench in WV just isn’t that deep to get a good replacement for the old feller.
Amy
Larry Sabato is congratulating Webb for saying they shouldn’t move on hcr until Brown is sworn in.
WTF.
Karen
@Kryptik,
They have yet to learn the lesson that the Republicans haven’t learned yet, thank goodness.
All politics are local. Every vote is about how will I benefit with you in office or how will I suffer if your opposition wins.
Brown didn’t win. Coakely lost. Period. It’s her own fault. Not Obama’s.
p.a.
Just a horrible candidate. Back in their heyday of 2002-2003 the Repubs. talked about ‘castrating’ the Dems. so they would be happy in their minority status. Seems more and more that the *snip* took, just not the minority status. I predict tomorrow there will be at least a modest exodus of rats from a perfectly sea-worthy Democratic ship. How to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. To use on of John’s phrases, even when they’re in the minority, we’re ruled by the “grifters, flat-earthers, and birthers”.
Oh yes, Brown labeled himself an independent voice. Anyone want to take that bet?
mai naem
I have three people in my life who I measure the political temperature with. I am a liberal so I figure I really can’t see things without bias. Anyhoo, all three people are straight dem low information voters. They may get po’d at the Dems but they won’t vote against them. This is the first time that I have heard two of them talking about voting against the incumbent in the next few years. A lot of it is based on their own economic circumstances. Some of it on the health care issues, all three are pro-reform but think the current one if crappy reform(very poor sales job by the Dems.) Some of it on the financial crisis and lack of accountability.
Brien Jackson
@West of the Cascades:
So? I still don’t see any evidence that anyone gave a shit about the state legislature changing the rules.
Incidentally, I don’t know where he got it from, but Tweety said Coakley lost amongst voters who had a favorable view of Obama.
Lisa K.
@John S.:
Please do not talk down to me. I know from whence I speak. This party has been my home for 30 years. Nobody snatches defeat from the hands of victory like democrats do. That 59 seat majority was won when people had real hope that Democrats would not eat their own face, like they have a long history of doing. Do you think, if every seat was up for election today, there would still be that big a majority?
Dennis-SGMM
@Elie:
Lets keep it going…
Isn’t it necessary to get it going before you can keep it going? If Congressional Dems had shown the same enthusiasm for HCR that they showed for, say, the war in Iraq or the Wall Street bailout the Massachusetts special election would have meant nothing to their legislative agenda.
SteveinSC
@AB: What I am referring to is if Obama had got down in the trenches like Lyndon Johnson or Hubert Humphrey would have, shown fire and called on his supporters to defend him from the tea baggers, this disaster wouldn’t have happened. The Obama-bots here can’t see shit. I first came here some years ago following a blog link. Cole had his head up George Bush’s ass, so I moved on. I came back here to check up on the asshole view again, but was surprised to find a transformation. Now Cole has his head up Obama’s ass. Same principle, different ass. (By the way, I put my money where my mouth was, $1,000 to be exact, for Obama when I believed the bullshit, but I at least have enough sense to read the fucking handwriting on the wall.)
mey
Amen, JC.
phoebes-in-santa fe
Okay, it’s time to START HERDING THE CATS again.
Democrats have got to sit back and think about what got us the victory in November, 2008. What were the coalitions who came together? What were the issues that we all banded together to support? Where were we two years ago?
We have mid-term elections in less than 11 months.
Obama and his administration have done a pretty good job in their first year in office. To all the “progressives”, no, it wasn’t all what you wanted. But Obama was not on the campaign trail, he was sitting in the Oval office, dealing with real issues and real people.
Let’s pull together, progressives to Blue Dogs. Let’s face up to the real world of politics and try to elect more Dems in Nov 2010. Let’s get out there, ring doorbells, write letters to the editor
and get our message out there.
We cannot allow our great country to return to Republican non-governance. They love to win elections but they don’t like to actually govern.
Cry tonight about Coakley and the possible lost HCR. Then, tomorrow, let’s start again. Let’s talk to each other about the politics of reality and how we can get there.
Slaney Black
@WereBear: No, her primary candidates weren’t necessarily worse.
Capuano was no Rudolph Valentino but he’d have had the good sense to at least go around and shake hands.
Coakley won because a) she started lining up support before Teddy was even dead b) it was a short campaign and she had the best name rec c) the state hacks like her and all things being equal they decide who wins the primary, and most of all d) lingering Hilltard loyalists saw her as an HRC surrogate.
Just Some Fuckhead
I blame Ted Kennedy for dying.
Or Coakley for not doing a nude spread.
I go back and forth on that.
General Winfield Stuck
@Lisa K.: I wasn’t talking down to you Lisa K,. I was trying to give you some comfort and space to feel what you do. I often fail at this. sorry
bend
@ Axelfoley:
Here Here
And my Lakers are going to kill the Celtics in the finals this year
Anne Laurie
@Sentient Puddle:
Fixed. It’s only a national tragedy if the national Democratic party lets the ratfuckers and the FNC blowhards get away with it… which, of course, all too many ‘respectable centrists’ will be more than willing to do.
Annie
@jcricket:
“Why do Democrats immediately have to go into hidey-hole mode every time a Republican wins something? We still have 59(ish) Senators and a huge majority in the House.”
They don’t. But the problem is that the Democratic Congress been in a “hidey-hole” for a long time now…
kid bitzer
#76
yup. tomorrow we go back to work.
and item number 1 is to pass the health care bill.
just ignore all the liebermans and kristols and people telling us to move to the center. it’s just noise.
do the right thing; pass the legislation that the country needs. get hcr done.
Emma
Steph: Unfortunately, what you gave the Blue Dog democrats was cover to scuttle health care. I do understand your frustration and the need to smack a whole political party upside the head — but you’ve smacked the rest of us a big one, too.
I’m depressed tonight. I may regain my fighting spirit tomorrow, but tonight… never mind.
Sleeper
It should go without saying that the primary person responsible for this fucking disaster is Martha Coakley. Her campaign, her responsibility to make the sale. She is first and foremost to blame here.
But she’s not the only one.
Considering how the White House had embraced the 60-vote-strategy in the Senate, one would have thought that both the West Wing and the DNC would have been breathing down Coakley’s neck 24-7 making sure she won this in a walk. Tim Kaine doesn’t seem to be half the party chairman that Howard Dean was, so far. Maybe this all was going on behind the scenes, and maybe Coakley and her people were so stubborn or blind that they refused to take any help. That’s not much of an excuse. If the White House and the national party can’t win a war of wills with a state attorney general, then we’ve got really serious problems.
This is a bad night, no getting around that. It’s not going to be helped by suddenly declaring that the result of this election didn’t really matter anyway. Obama and his team need to wake up and draw the right conclusions from these three defeats (NJ, VA, and MA) – that Solomonic baby-splitting bipartisanship pleases NO ONE, that given a choice between a real Republican and a fake one the voters will almost always pick the real one, and that since the rightwingers will NEVER, EVER, EVER support him, no matter how many fucking shout-outs he gives to Ronald Reagan or One America or reaching across the aisle, he might as well dance with them that brung him. You’ll never fire up Democrats by apologizing for Democratic ideals.
I hope they get the message. I’d love to see the guy I voted for back, and I’d love to see the West Wing political operation morph from the fucking Apple Dumpling Gang back into the Delta Force we saw during the campaign. And yes, I’m sure I’ll be told that Obama campaigned on this and he’s slow-and-steady and the perfect can’t be the enemy of the blah blah blah. Okay, everyone has the right to keep their head in the sand if they want. Denying there’s any problem has always been a great way to overcome that problem, so have at it.
General Winfield Stuck
@Annie:
It’s the hidey-hole Ronald Reagan dug for them, and now his ghost keeps it open for easy entry.
John S.
Sorry for talking down to you Lisa K., but I can’t stand the smell of despair.
To answer your question, if every seat was up for election today I think the Democrats would still have a majority in both houses of Congress and the White House. Perhaps not as large, but a majority nonetheless.
If you know so much about politics, then you should know not to extrapolate this one awful result (another right-wing frame). All politics are local, and there is no fucking way in hell the Republicans have a deep enough bench to duplicate this hundreds of times over.
Do you really think that the Republicans have a Scott Brown to run in every election? Do you think that every Democrat is as spectacularly awful as Martha Coakley? I sure as fuck don’t.
wilfred
Let’s not overdetermine this result. We managed good but Martha played bad. Simple as that. Stupid ‘ho.
Let’s keep on doing exactly what we did yesterday. Yeah.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@SteveinSC: If Hey Hey LBJ How Many Kids Did You Kill Today and the guy who gave us the ’68 Democratic convention plus President Dick Nixon are the two Dems you’re looking towards for inspiration, then I don’t know what the fuck to say.
Comrade Luke
John, I agree with you completely.
My question is: For much of the last week you’ve been castigating people who were against this candidate, many of whom listed the same issues as you did above. Did you agree with them, but wanted a Dem in no matter what, or have you come to this conclusion in the last day or so?
Two other comments:
This woman was ATTORNEY GENERAL? WTF?!
Also, I keep hearing about how we need to field more and better Democrats. Is this what we have to choose from? This woman was a horrible candidate. And over here in Washington we have a box of rocks as a House representative, yet he’s been able to beat progressive darling Darcy Burner. Twice.
One of the things that is going unaddressed imo is that in both the Obama and Clinton adminstrations, they did (and have so far done) square root of fuck-all in party building. Is that by accident or design?
Elie
@mai naem:
but, but, but — does the Republican Party offer your friends a real solution to their concerns? Really? apparently they have forgotten that what happened a little over a year ago is governing their results right now — and that Republicans brought that on…
To be fair its way time to get it on with highlighting that reality among the voters. If O doesnt do that, apparently the idiots cant seem to remember
Boston Yankee
Most of the previous comment does not square with what happened. Obama promised change. We got anything but!
Voters wanted an expanded Medicare. They got expanded insurance co-pays and an excise tax if you do use your health policy.
Voters got wars that will go on beyond nine years. Wars that will cost nearly a trillion a year.
Obama ran a hell of a campaign . It’s a shame that once elected he had no idea of what he wanted to do . Hell, he put dimwit Baucus in charge of health care. And then he had his chief of staff tell the base to go get screwed.
Irony Abounds
I repeat what I alluded to in an earlier thread. The Dems go frmo 60 to 59 and everyone, I mean EVERYONE, considers that they have lost control of the Senate. This is unfreakingbelievable. Just what the fuck is wrong with this country? Why the hell are things so screwed up. With the number the Dems have they should be passing everything left and right, but they are just a bunch of wussies who can’t get out of their own way. Screw them. They don’t deserve to run the country. I want a real coalition party of responsible moderates to take charge from the dolts on the extreme and get something done. As much as I hate Republicans, at least they have a clue about getting their agenda accomplished, even if their agenda is destroying this country.
Kryptik
@Sleeper:
Unfortunately, Sleeper, if the fact that Dems let Bayh get in front of the camera so quick and say Dems were too far left, it’s assured that they learned the EXACT OPPOSITE of that, like they always do. Instead, they learned that they must continually apologize for being Dems and instead act further right, because obviously we were all such damn commies that the public abandoned us. Forget the repetition of right-wing lies constantly, nope, we lost here because we had too many DFHs in Congress.
Mayken
@Lizzy L: way more than that unless Pelosi and Reid have more stones than I think and get HCR passed before Brown is seated.
SteveinSC
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: Dick Nixon? Where in the fuck did that come from? And if you use your brain instead of your mouth, you would recognize that Johnson knew how to kick Republican ass on their own playing field. Now go reread history and when you grow up, try again.
Lisa K.
@gwangung:
LOL, when you have been watching these guys self-destruct for 30 years like I have, then you can pep talk me.
This is not about Martha Coakley per se. No matter how terrible a candidate she was, she should have been able to beat a teabagging Republican in the bluest state in the nation after Vt. But she didn’t, and in MA it has to be more than just a bad candidate. This is about Jim Webb going on national TV five minutes later to put his foot on the throat of his own president’s agenda. This is about a populace that just treated Ted Kennedy’s legacy as though it were Ned Beatty in Deliverance. This is about a dysfunctional group who, with a country practically begging them to lead in a different direction, so far have not had the balls or organization to do so.
So, yeah, I am discouraged, and I am tired, and frankly I have seen this game before. And I don’t need you telling me that just getting good candidates is all it will take to turn it around.
John S.
Wow, and you think the rest of us have our heads up our asses?
LMAO
jwb
@Amy: Geez, that’s a non sequitur by McCaskill. If the other Dems are thinking that way, they really are doomed.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’ve had a particularly productive day today so I’m in a real good mood. Hanging around here is a little depressing so I’m gonna go look at teen porn or something. But in the meantime, let me help put it in perspective for ya.
We had 57 Democratic senators before today and after today we’ll still have 57 Democratic senators.
jwb
@Lisa K.: We know what they are going to say, so why let it bother us?
Seanly
WTF? I posted a comment and nothing. My intertubes suck.
Anywho…
John’s right.
Even with a so-called supermajority nothing seemed to be happening. So now Republicans can block everything, but WTF will really change?
I’m gonna keep voting for Democrats. Forget voting for yellow or blue dog over Republicans – I’d vote for a dead one over the R’s. I agree with zero percent of the Republican agenda. I see the Democratic Party as the only vehicle for getting any progressive agenda – even a watered down one from my sociaIist dream.
Brien Jackson
@SteveinSC:
You realize it was the liberal activists who ended Johnson and Humphrey’s political careers over Vietnam right? I think we can now declare that LBJ revisionism has jumped the shark.
General Winfield Stuck
1540508″>Boston Yankee:
yea, I hear ya man. That ObamaRahma Master’s of the Universe ain’t panning out like we were told. sigh
Lisa K.
@John S.:
You know, John…I don’t really give a shit what you are sick of. You seem to think it was all about this one election and this one bad candidate. (Do you really think a pro-torture teabagger would have won this seat in 2008?) I differ with you in that respect, and unless our president and Congress learns really fast we are going to be right back where we started in 2000.
SteveinSC
@John S.: Two John Coles on this blog? But if the shoe fits….
AxelFoley
@SteveinSC:
Dude, STFU. Please, just STFU.
tc
Comrade Luke,
This is going to be hard to believe, but she actually is smart and a good attorney general. She’d have made a good, wonkish senator, too. But a really terrible politician.
Kryptik
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Numbers don’t matter when perception is king. And the perception, fed by Republicans, fed by Dems, propagated and regurgitated by the media? Dems are fucked, because they ‘only’ have 59, and it’s there fault if Republicans vote monolithically and block every legislation and nominee. Because hey, Dems just couldn’t be bipartisan, they’re own Blue Dogs said so.
Brien Jackson
Howard Dean would have done all of Coakley’s scheduling from Washington, and personally drug her ass to Fenway Park to make her shake hands with every person in Boston.
Yeeeeaaargh!
Mayken
Can we kick frackin’ Lieberman to the curb now? Seriously, what is the difference between 59 and 58 in the caucus? We’re going to get f*ck all done now anyway. Might as well stop empowering the douchbag!
Lisa K.
@jwb:
What they say is not the point. I don’t watch any cable or any right wing sites. How they govern is the problem. It pisses me off that we had them on the mat and let them back up. Right now, they should be on their backs screaming Uncle! and we let them back up.
Elie
@Dennis-SGMM:
Agree
But how much can you control given the realities in place?
We had a Congress flaccid and rank with corruption and inactivity. Ya going to make them into a war machine for justice and the little guy from being rich corporatists in one year? How do you work that, man? Again, you are in a hole, a deep hole, and your tool is your hands and your will — how do you work that to come out of the hole clean and with a crown on your head and not a hair out of place?
We had illusions. We ALL had illusions about what we had in place as Democrats and how resilient and strong our system would remain after decades of abusive and corrupt governance. And generations of young folks brought up to think of government as “the problem” — whether liberal or conservative — a common notion. We actually thought that we could turn it on and off like a switch. We know better about that now, and that by itself is pretty valuable, all pain aside
Xanthippas
Since we apparently need 60 Democrats to get any completely basic shit done in the Senate, I guess this is an unmitigated disaster.
Mike in NC
Fascinating. I grew up in Boston and turned 18 in ’72. Couldn’t wait to run out and vote against Tricky Dick Nixon, at a time when most Americans were still deeply in love that that fucking maggot, with his “secret” plan to end the Vietnam war, law and order, etc. How did that all turn out, by the way? If only Mencken were alive today and blogging…
jwb
@Kryptik: That’s why you stay in the game. The whole point of the game from the assholes’ perspective is to get people to be disgusted and give up. Don’t let them win.
p.a.
What follows is not a comment on today’s election- Coakley sucked. It’s a comment on a lot of what has gone down since the 2009 inauguration. Does Obama realize that he is not only President of the United States; he is also the leader of the fucking Democratic Party and as such is responsible to insure a strong organization from the county level on up. I know all about “I’m not a member of an organized party- I’m a Democrat.” But Jesus Christ, this guy is supposed to be a Chicago pol? Maybe he should try calling out a wobbly Democrat in public just once, you know? Just to see if it works.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@SteveinSC: Since you apparently failed Reading Comprehension 101, let me take this down in smaller chunks so you can possibly understand it: ‘Using Lyndon Baines Johnson, the man who passed sweeping civil rights legislation and less sweeping domestic policies by sticking us in a quagmire that killed tens of thousands of American soldiers and God knows how many Vietnamese, and Hubert H. Humphrey, the man who caused a fucking riot by swiping the nomination for President only to lose the general election to Richard The Prorotype Republican Asshole Nixon, as hallmarks of effective Democratic governing is highly fucking illogical.’
SteveinSC
@Brien Jackson: Jesus, how to miss a point in 50 ways. Johnson went to New Orleans and with a flashlight on his face, standing in the water, told the people, I am your President and I am with you. That is emotion and Obama needs some of it.
maye
yep.
They can either let Jim Webb, et. al., have their way, or they can grow some balls and pass some kind of Medicare buy-in via reconcilation with 50 plus the VP.
I’m not seeing any other choice. Either go sulk in a corner and suck your thumb until 2012, or come out swinging.
FormerSwingVoter
It’s better to have this sort of wake-up call in January 2010 than it is to have this sort of wake-up call in November 2010.
Lisa K.
@Seanly:
I agree with you. I will not stop voting, but only because I would subside on a diet of raw sewage before I would allow even one Republican vote to go unchallenged, not because I like much of what I am seeing from my own party.
Brien Jackson
WTF? The Senate gave the President the authority to appoint the chairman of the Finance Committee? How the fuck did I miss that?
SteveinSC
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: Try looking up the latin words non sequitur and no, don’t thank me.
John S.
Yes, Lisa. For today, that’s exactly what it was.
I’m not going to attempt to further talk you out of a foul mood – you are certainly entitled to it. But I can guarantee you that in a few months, tonight will be a distant memory…and you’ll have new reasons to be furious with the Democrats.
: )
Steve H
Thanks John for explaining this outcome to me. I thought one should vote for the candidate that comes closest to agreeing with one on matters of war and peace or economics or social justice. I didn’t realize that the really important criteria is handshaking , ego massaging and vacation time. I thought Mass voters liked Teddy for his politics but it turns out, you and they vote on how important the candidate makes you feel. Well congrats I’m sure you and Sen. Brown will enjoy each other as long as he comes by and shakes your hand every 6 years.
Sleeper
@Sleeper: Yikes. Where did all those italics come from?
CDT
“Yes, clearly having a 59 seat majority in the Senate, a 256 seat majority in the House and the White House makes Democrats the biggest fucking losers of all time!
LIBERALS, STOP BUYING INTO RIGHT-WING FRAMES OF REALITY.”
The problem is now that I buy into that frame — I don’t — but that the administration and party leadership do. In some ways this could be good. Clearly we were doing little with the nominal 60-vote majority, since the votes were iffy and everybody was inclined to grandstand to provide the last vote. Now we’ve got 59. That’s either one less than it takes to get something mediocre done, or more than enough to get something done if leadership gets aggressive.
John S.
Maureen Dowd, is that you?
Elie
@Just Some Fuckhead:
LOL — You might be right!
Kryptik
@jwb:
When you only have so much power, and your leader’s solution after a bad loss is to ignore you and those similarly minded more, I’d say they’d pretty much succeeded.
I’m still going to vote Dem. I have really no other option but to. But there’s really so little point to being an activist anymore. There’s just no win to be had. Not even a small victory.
CaseyL
This.
Thisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthisthis
Dear god, I wish my party had gumption. Dear god, I wish my President was willing to kick ass and take names. And, dear god, I wish Sturgeon’s Law didn’t apply to voters and politics.
Funkhauser
Also, Shannon O’Brien sucked. Something about the primary process or nomination process in MA, in which the Democratic candidates all knife each other and the last survivor emerges – and gets no help from the previous competitors – stinks.
And then the “who, me? campaign?” and “Curt Schilling is a Yankees fan” garbage.
I’ll be cheering for Mike Capuano to re-take the seat in 2012.
Violet
Wherever he is, I think Teddy is laughing. And now, freed from his mortal coil, I suspect he’s pouring himself a nice single malt and enjoying the comedy of it all.
The Dems are idiots. Coakley ran a crap campaign. No surprises here.
Sleeper
@Kryptik: Yeah, that’s the lesson they seem to learn every time they lose, unfortunately. Fuck, I hate Evan Bayh.
Bill
Some truth to Johns analysis, but dont kid yourself.I was listening to the local newsradio and heard local Democrats calling in to say that they voted for Brown because whats going on in Washington has to be stopped.(healthcare, stimulis, lack of compromise,etc.)So if this message is selling in MA then it’s going over big around the country.
I always felt that Obamas election was too little too late, and this vote has confirmed it.We are an ungovernable country.Americans long ago lost the political vocabulary that is needed to analyse our country and without it any teabaggetry nonsense will do.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@SteveinSC: Do you have anything to add over your support of the Vietnam War and losing to Dick Nixon, or should I just chalk up your surrender now?
Lisa K.
@Kryptik:
This.
Brien Jackson
@SteveinSC:
Johnson also lost office after one full term and didn’t even try to get re-elected. And he threw the election to Nixon by demanding Humphrey not criticize his Vietnam policy. Probably not someone you want to emulate politically in the long run.
gex
@General Winfield Stuck: For what it’s worth, I thought that a beautiful piece of insight.
SteveinSC
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: See my response @124, wash, rinse, repeat.
NB: You lose.
Ailuridae
@Comrade Luke:
Yes, we need to field more and better Democrats. And there was a great progressive Democrat in the primary in Capuano. he lost to Coakley.
Coakley was a shitting campaigner and would have likely not stood out as a Senator (and Capuano would likely have been one of my three favorite Senators with Franken and Brown) but she was clearly, undeniably preferable to her opponent in the general election.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Brien Jackson: B-B-But… flashlights!
Steeplejack
@SteveinSC:
You misread his comment. He meant Hubert Humphrey was “the guy who gave us the ‘68 Democratic convention plus President Dick Nixon,” not that Nixon was a Democrat. It wasn’t well phrased, but the meaning seemed clear to me, especially since you were the one who brought up Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey.
General Winfield Stuck
@Lisa K.: Well, this isn’t a governing thing, at least what happened in Mass tonight. I won’t make excuses for dems, as I agree with a lot of your angst and analysis. But dems aren’t republicans, never have been, and if they were we would call them republicans and every one would be the same.
Dems have never walked in lockstep, at least since the political metamorphisis brought on by the Southern Strategy wingnuts started in the 60’s. They are largely anti-that, the dems we have today, with a few listing between that bright blue/red state line. And it only takes a few to get below the omnipresent 60 votes needed in the US senate. Jim Webb and Bayh and a few others, not to mention non dem Holy Joe is all that is needed to stop the show, or legislation that brings about the change we all want on this side.
But I do take heart, that by and large the vast majority of dems in the Senate/House, and likely over 50 in the senate, are pretty solid in their want to do list, as far as being progressive and liberal minded. So I don’t think the current situation is that bad in any sense other than the filibuster being what it is.
Brien Jackson
@CDT:
What’s going to passed with reconcilliation? In some ways I don’t think this is that big of a deal, because the stuff that isn’t going to pass now (C&T, EFCA) weren’t going to pass anyway. But let’s just stop this “we lose by winning” bullshit now. It’s, well, bullshit.
SIA
@Lizzy L: At least. Until the SOTU maybe.
Zach
Massachusetts was literally the only state that I heard frequent complaints from during the Obama campaign about phone banking and whatnot. Looking on the bright side, positives from this election (although I’m not as crazy as some to claim it’s a net plus):
1. Top by a long shot: this win emboldens the tea party crew. Anyone wanting to win a GOP primary will have to sign Glen Beck’s loyalty pledge before racing to court Sarah Palin and Scott Brown for their endorsements. Absent a horrible opposition campaign, I’m still confident that a majority of Americans are horrified by this sort of thing, even in the reddest states.
2. It will shake up the party in Massachusetts
3. It will motivate Democrats to start campaigning today for the fall elections; if the party’s various outlets don’t start organize like crazy right now and capitalize on the fear of losing any more seats, it’ll be a huge wasted opportunity
4. Mitt Romney is probably in a huge pit of depression right now because he would’ve cleaned up in this race and would be relevant again (and could run for President in 2012 as a Senator).
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@SteveinSC: So you have no defense then. Gotcha. Surrender accepted.
Sleeper
@Lisa K.:
I’m reminded of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid just after the 2006 elections, practically tripping over one another in their rush to get to a microphone to loudly promise that under no circumstances would they even think about looking into impeachment. It’s baffling to me why these dumbasses continue to extend that kind of courtesy to a group that wouldn’t cross the street to piss on us if we were on fire.
They do it EVERY TIME.
They NEVER LEARN.
Are they deluded? Whipped? Part of the fix? For the life of me, I can’t understand. Who would aspire to a political career that consists of getting wedgies from the other team for 20, 30, 40 years? I mean is it the money? Or maybe it’s just the easy money. Maybe they just don’t want to have to work for it.
Political incompetence. Boy, I don’t know.
Zach
Also, Cliff May at National Review on the lessons from this election for Democrats: “1) Americans want real health care reforms – not the dog’s breakfast that’s on the table now.”
Yes, because Republicans obviously would’ve voted for a different health reform bill. When one party tells the other what they should be doing differently, it’s inevitably bad advice. Sort of like how it’s always a mistake for Obama to give a big speech.
terry chay
I’m not too sure too many people cared about the interim senator thing. In polling the voters seemed angry about issues like “health care” “sending a message” “backroom deals between the unions and congress” etc.
The actual reasoning for voting against, while specific, is both illogical and very poorly articulated (esp when MA already has statewide universal health care), which suggests that something more emotional is going on with the electorate.
I think there is a large undercurrent of racism (brought on by general disastisfaction) to the extent that I think a lot of white lower-middle class people are now feeling disempowered—and are angry enough to go to the polls. Also, how bad Coakley did in Boston (both in terms of the lack of minority turnout and the abysmal over/under for a city), makes sense in that light.
Given that, the state Democractic party is probably the most at fault, since they should have seen this coming, instead of thinking it would be inevitable that Kennedy’s seat would stay blue.
…
One other thing I find interesting is that a lot of us pan the Republican strategy of fuck-over-the-country-as-much-as-possible, but here, at least, it seems to have met great electoral success.
Country First!
jwb
@Lisa K.: I would say it wasn’t just our politicians, it’s the whole Democratic/progressive movement. Everyone’s running around screaming on blogs and playing inside politics; nobody’s tending to the actual roots, organizing people in a real way and shit.
Ailuridae
@Mayken:
This is a good idea.
Mattsky
If the Dems like John Cole blame this all on Coakley they will have learned NOTHING from this election. They will walk into a huge disaster in November. This election was a wake up call. John you’re going back to sleep.
Lisa K.
@General Winfield Stuck:
Yes, I know. But I still hate it, and right now I just need to curl up with a bottle and cry myself to sleep. I will be better in the morning.
Oh, and to Schilling, from me, a lifelong Red Sox fan-I would sacrifice every memory of the bloody sock and the whole entire fantastic 04 comeback-one of the best times of my life-if you would just crawl off somewhere and fucking die.
different church-lady
Actually, you’re right about the Mass. Dem. party and Coakley’s campaign, but you’re wrong about the law.
All the law did was clear up ambiguities about the interregnum, not change any firmly established rules. I would have been in favor of it even if it had been a republican replacing a republican seat that had become open.
terry chay
@Zach: I don’t buy that the Tea Party feels empowered. If anything, it shows that the Republicans have found some way to enforce some sort of discipline here.
I guess the lesson is: if you want party discipline, just make sure the candidate is a white male. :-)
FoxinSocks
Not sure if it did any good, but I might’ve left messages for my rep and a few others telling them, very politely, to suck it up and vote for the Senate bill. I feel better, if nothing else.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mattsky:
I would ask for a lesson from you of what we need to learn. But I fear we have already been blessed with such a lesson at least eleventy hundred times the past few months.
Lisa K.
@Mattsky:
Yes, I agree. My own opinion is that yes, Martha Coakley may have been a bad candidate, but still she is a symptom, not a cause unto herself.
Mary
@Lisa K.: Hugs to you Lisa. It’s been a rough night.
Brien Jackson
@Sleeper:
I’m thinking it was probably because:
A) Impeachment would have been futile, given that you’d have no more than 50 votes for removal in the Senate
B) It almost certainly would have blown up in their faces. After only one impeachment in 41 presidencies to having two impeached back to back? C’mon.
C) They had the 2008 election pretty much in the bag. Why even play with fire for something you couldn’t possibly have gotten anything out of?
Or were they supposed to use reconcilliation for the Senate vote?
nepat
Trueness. This.
I live here in MA and what you need to understand is that not even the Kennedys themselves rallied behind Coakley until it became clear that she was blowing it. They were quiet through the primaries (except for out-of-stater but close to Uncle Ted, Caroline Kennedy, who openly supported Alan Khazei). And it didn’t help that Coakley basically launched her non-campaign before Ted had even passed. There was the Draft Vickie Kennedy period (brief) and the holidays and the ridiculously short runway and, it needs to be said, the steady and disciplined Brown campaign that worked the grassroots hard while the Dems fiddled and diddled.
And Coakley. Man, Coakley. It’s like a Young Conservatives of America version of Weird Science where, instead of creating a hot chick, two pimply white high school hall monitor nerds develop a software program that generates a Democratic candidate that is ridiculously easy to beat. Out comes Martha Coakley. That’s how lame she was.
DPirate
Of course it is not about who is the better candidate.
SteveinSC
@Brien Jackson: Let’s just call a truce. Obama is in trouble, and we all know it. He will have 58 Dems in the Senate and can’t invoke cloture, he will get no help from the domestic polictical terrorists (aka Republicans), he will be hectored by the blue dogs and the MSM will pillory him without mercy. He will be viewed as weak and ineffective. Health care is dead and with it DeMint is triumphant. A wounded President now faces the prospect of severe damage in the Midterms. Progressives must view the future as bleak, indeed.
tc
Zach,
You’re wrong on number 4. Romney is permanently toast in Massachusetts, after he ran his presidential campaign making fun of the state. And he was a terrible governor. Too.
Also, don’t forget another hidden bonus from this election: Brown is almost certainly toast as of 2012, and Capuano will rock in to office with a hard-knocking defense of what liberalism can bring to this country. That’s much better than what we’d have had with Coakley.
Texas Dem
Wouldn’t you hate to be the speech writer preparing Obama’s state of the union address? Talk about pressure. I mean, nothing’s riding on that speech except the future of the Dem. party, the Obama presidency, and, probably, the country. And if he had a draft ready to go, he’s going to have to rip it up and start all over.
gwangung
Again…
FUCK THAT
Yeah. I’ve been here 35 years. Working on civil rights, minority representation and developing minority representation in the business and entertainment world. And to be blunt, I HAVE been talked down to by people very much like you who think they know better than I do.
Don’t tell ME about getting nowhere, because you’re being damn patronizing when you do.
Now, get up off that floor and figure out what your next step is. Take a break if you need to, but tomorrow is still there.
Brien Jackson
@Lisa K.:
Jesus Christ. When she was getting criticized for all sides for not campaigning enough, she publicly mocked the very idea of meeting voters. For fucking real. She mocked the idea of shaking hands with voters. We’re not just talking about a poor campaigner, we’re talking about an historically bad campaigner, who apparently lost amongst even voters who have a positive view of Obama.
joe from Lowell
At least the Democrat who sits in that senate seat for the next 30 or 50 years will be better than Martha Coakley.
I can’t wait until 2012. It’s going to be a battle royale in that primary.
Mary
@FoxinSocks: This is the best advice yet. We yellow dogs need to call our reps and tell them to vote for the Senate bill.
I shudder to think what Hamsher and Norquist plan to do with those stupid pledges they had the progressive reps sign.
Elie
@jwb:
THIS.THIS.THIS
and we had better fix it.
Bangin key boards is just fine but unless we are back at the grass roots, we are dead in the water…
You cannot mail this in. You cannot turn it off and on like a light switch. And… you had better have the long game in mind…
If we cannot, will not do that, we can count on the deep brain r formation to assure us of Republican rule forever. Cause in the absence of thinking, and of higher cortical input, we are at best reptiles hissing over mates or territory and the biggest hisser gets it all
Comrade Luke
@Ailuridae:
How is he great if he lost to someone who everyone agrees was a terrible candidate?
Uriel
Hey all you gloomy gusses! What’s all this than, ey? Turn those frowns upside down! I, personally, am totally psyched!
Get ready for Kucinich/Dean 2012, baby!
In your face, blue dogs! Ponies, health care and ice-cream for everyone! Hip hip hooray! The MSM are finally going to call Neilson and Bacchus out on the carpet for their faux-centrist antics and start pushing that overton window so god damn far to the left, you’ll need a telescope to spot it’s previous position! Psych, rethugs- three years of stalemate means WE F’NG WIN!
Happy days are here again! The skies above are clear again!
So let’s sing a song of cheer agaaaaai-
Fuck it. I can’t delude myself about this crap anymore. And I’m + more than I should be.
I’m tapping out. Call the match.
Lisa K.
@gwangung:
I really do not know what your problem is, but I frankly am not interested in being sworn at and belittled. I can call my ex-husband if I want that.
You deal with stuff your way, I will deal with it mine. Sounds like we have both been around a while and do not owe each other explanations of our motives.
Now, in your own words-fuck off, k? At least, stop trying to pick a fight where none exists.
Brien Jackson
@Comrade Luke:
That’s the awesomeness of special elections.
Zach
@terry chay:
Republicans thinking they have Glen Beck’s army in their pocket is exactly what’s dangerous for them (breaking my own rule above, by the way). There will inevitably be a popular backlash against his insanity and the more idiots it washes away the better.
As far as empowerment goes, search “tea party scott brown” on twitter. They’re claiming credit for the whole thing. The biggest plus for Republicans is that whoever is running Brown’s campaign is way more competent than the A team called out for GOP campaigns today.
Elie
@gwangung:
:-)
Me likey
SteveinSC
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: Are you blind as well as dumb? Perhaps you have a problem keeping up with posts. See if you can find your own answer to this question by perusing the entries. Hint: You don’t have to look far.
General Winfield Stuck
@SteveinSC:
No he is not. Not by any historical standard of a first term president at this point. His approval is around 50 percent nationwide and that is well within the historical norm. And the times we live in are historically bad, at least economics wise. The only people who think he is in trouble are those who want him to be. People like republicans, and YOU.
Sleeper
@Brien Jackson:
Because it was the right thing to do. Bush committed impeachable offenses. It is their job to investigate things like that and act accordingly. It is not their job to get re-elected.
People are going to look back at Bush 50 years from now and shake their heads in disgust and wonder what the fuck we were doing letting him get away with EVERYTHING. We let him get away with it because, once again, for Democrats doing the right thing was just TOO. DAMN. HARD.
Damn them for not doing anything, and damn us for letting them take the easy way out.
Lisa K.
@Brien Jackson:
And my opinion of that is that even given her badness, she was running against a pro-torture right winger for Ted Kennedy’s seat. No matter how bad she was, in another year she still would have won.
You can curse at me all you want, but it still does not change my opinion.
FormerSwingVoter
Why do we fall?
So we can learn to pick ourselves up.
Elie
@Texas Dem:
Ha,ha,ha —
Indeed, its so impossible it should free him up to just be serious and right on…
(I would personally like him to kick some ass, but I am weak and without due discipline) – I think that he should evaluate his DLC team (Kean) and also get a few heads on platters for this fuck up. Holding aside the comments on the administration, how did the KENNEDYS let this lame ass even RUN — they must be ready to slit throats and carry out carcasses…
The ruthless o-meter is going up a notch or two after this for Democrats
Kryptik
@FormerSwingVoter:
Except the Dem leadership’s answer would likely be “Because walking is the wrong way to go about it, we should learn to slither so we never end up falling in the first place”.
gwangung
That’s a lesson to learn.
beergoggles
@terry chay: It’s the very fact that MA has healthcare that played into the Brown campaign. Brown’s spiel was that federal healthcare bills will weaken coverage safeguards and increase premiums on MA voters while MA voters will have to foot the bill for healthcare for the rest of the country.
MA might be liberal, but there’s only so much taxes the voters are willing to pay. We voted down the income tax repeal but at the same time voted for capping how high the income tax can be.
Unless you’re a single issue voter like me, Brown was definitely the candidate with the better arguments for why federal government needs to be deadlocked into uselessness.
Lisa K.
@SteveinSC:
I do not think Obama is in trouble yet-people still seem to like him and he is not far off the mark from where Bill Clinton was at this time. And do you remember the smashing Republican presidential victory of 1996? No, I don’t, either.
But I do not think his party is doing one damned thing to help him out. If he wins any more fights, he is going to have to do it on his own.
Sleeper
@General Winfield Stuck:
We’ve had our disagreements in the past, and I don’t want to start yet another round of trading personal insults. But in all seriousness – is there ANYTHING that could happen that might convince you that Obama, or the Dems in general, might have screwed up in this case, or ever? You have to see, I mean you HAVE to see, that this is going to be used as an excuse by the Democratic Senate to avoid doing anything at all from now until the election. And that the White House is going to lean even further out the window to reach out to Republicans. Do you think that won’t happen?
I’m not trying to start a fight, I just don’t understand how people can keep up that kind of attitude.
Joel
If, two years ago, someone had told me that Obama would be president, and that the Democrats would be despondent about losing the 60th seat in the Senate, I wouldn’t have believed it.
SteveinSC
@General Winfield Stuck: I would have expected better from you. Can you count, say up to and including 58 and 60? Have you been asleep for the last 9-10 months? There has been no wavering by the republicans and that means 40 now 41 “No” votes on anything of substance related to economic justice, war and peace, bank reform, tax fairness, environment, green industry, energy independence, etc. And you think he is (we are) not in trouble?
TooManyJens
@wilfred:
Goddamnit, I thought the whole reason we couldn’t talk about footwear in the comments was so that people couldn’t use that particular sexist insult.
jcricket
BTW – Lincoln and Nelson are toast. All the blue-dogging in the world ain’t gonna save them now. I hate to say it, but good fucking riddance. If not for their dilly-dallying and bullshit politics we’d have had healthcare reform months ago.
Silver lining is that maybe if the teabaggers take over the Republican party completely the public might understand that there’s a difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Believe me, I know there’s a difference, and Democrats could make this case themselves – but they don’t. Instead we get a situation where a ton of low-information voters buy whatever lie (“let’s cut gov’t spending b/c households tighten their belts when money is tight”) the Republicans spew out. And a lot of progressives/liberals are (sadly) dejected and fail to show up.
BDeevDad
@terry chay: I love how the press is oohing and aahing the great turnout, forgetting it is about 900k less than 2008. But I guess it’s Obama’s fault that he can get out the vote and MA state Democratic officials cannot.
Elie
@Joel:
Now there is some perspective!
Wow! Weird but true…
So, what next?
Flugelhorn
Wow.
Did anyone get the number of that bus that just ran over Coakley?
I mean… 52-47%? What a trouncing!
How is that possible when that seat was held for decades by one of the most liberal democrats to walk the face of the earth? In Massachusetts? Surrounded by Blue all over the place even?
I mean, WOW! Did they not lob up enough of a softball for her? Gave her her own special election even! Prohibited the Governor from appointing someone, as was his right. Well… until the Democrats changed the rules at the 11th hour, anyway.
How could this possibly happen? I am gobsmacked.
On another note, your boy is one and done. Start looking for your 2012 candidate now. Take a page from Ted’s play manual and run against your encumbent in the primary. Think of it as an homage to Teddy. It is the least the dems can do for him since they somehow squandered ALL THAT GOOD WILL and lost his seat to a Teabagger. Am I right?
Schadenfreude baby. Schadenfreude
Comrade Luke
Capuano, the guy who lost in the primary…to Coakley.
General Winfield Stuck
@Sleeper:
Didn’t you read Cole’s post and my first comment agreeing with it. Sure dems screwed up, the ones in Mass. This was a state election with local politics involved. Obama went there to campaign, a state where he has 60 percent approval. And it didn’t help. What does that tell you? So if your trying to sell Obamafail on this one. Sorry, I ain’t buying.
Lisa K.
@jcricket:
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Might as well get a real Republican in there so at least we know up front what we are dealing with.
AxelFoley
@Sleeper:
Could you tell us how Obama is at fault for the poor candidate the Dems of Mass chose for this race?
Does Obama have to hold every fucking Democratic candidate’s hand for whatever election is going on in the country? When are Dems gonna run competent races of their own?
Obama campaigned for two fucking years, but everyone wants him to run everyone else’s race.
Fuck that shit. The man’s got a government to run.
He’s no longer candidate Obama. He’s President Obama.
Paul
@John S.:
Yes, clearly having a 59 seat majority in the Senate, a 256 seat majority in the House and the White House makes Democrats the biggest fucking losers of all time!
LIBERALS, STOP BUYING INTO RIGHT-WING FRAMES OF REALITY.
I second that emotion. It’s time to play some hardball. I am very interested to see what’s in the State of the Union address.
gex
@TooManyJens: Well what to do? A woman displeases you in some way. You have but two choices: call her a ho or call her a bitch. Should there be any other way to criticize women? Clearly not.
BDeevDad
@Paul: I’m copying that in all it’s glory.
Lisa K.
@Paul:
These are Democrats you are talking about. They won’t even fucking impeach chronically criminal chief executives or investigate torture on their own territory.
Uriel
@gwangung:
Yeah, admittedly this is a much better frame than the one I seem to be operating under. And I’m sure that, by tomorrow, I’ll be right there with you.
But, at this point in time, it just seems a bit distant and hard to see.
Jorge
My kids are home schooled.
I get my water from a well and my waste goes into a septic tank.
I have great private insurance and a 401k.
I work for a pharmaceutical company.
All I want from government for myself is freedom, good roads, and safe streets.
I vote Democrat out of the belief that we have a responsibility to help people as much as we can and that we should vigilantly look for new solutions to our problems.
Barry is still my guy for that. But as far as the rest of them, well, let’s just say at this point we’d probably be better off with 55 in the Senate, Reid in retirment, and a young upstart like Mark Warner running things.
TooManyJens
@gex: Hey, it’s not like the bitches are *people*.
TWP
@johncole, while I agree that this loss is partially due to a really bad candidate, I think this would have happened to whatever D they tried to put in there. This is a wave….this is a lot of anger…and people are pissed. And guess what, to show their anger, they are voting for “the other guy”. They’ve seen Obama defend the banksters, pharmaceutical companies, etc. and they’ve had it.
The first warning was NJ and VA. This is the second warning. If Democrats and Obama don’t get that the populist anger out there is boiling over, they are going to be steamrolled on November.
It’s so depressing to see so many people in this forum talk about how bad Coakley was and talk about how popular Obama is and has great approval ratings and it’s everyone else’s fault. You guys are missing the bigger picture. Especially you, John.
jcricket
@SteveinSC: I’m with you – this country is in deep fucking trouble in the short-term. Republicans either don’t give a shit or are wholeheartedly into being completely wrong on every issue of substance.
This is what gets me. Not just healthcare reform, but on every single issue that matters to the people of the US – there is not a single thing that Republicans are proposing that will do anything but hurt. Any “market-based” solutions to healthcare reform or environmental regulation will, of course, make the problem worse in perhaps catastrophic ways. Any Republican attempt to drive out immigrants will just hurt our economy and global standing. Republican-lead deficit reduction right now? Expect a double-dip recession. Spending cuts? Bye bye Social Security, infrastructure, public transit, etc.
I predict the most we’ll get out of the next few years legislatively is some pork-barrel politics, more corporate subsidies in the guise of “jobs” and maybe some more tax cuts. Whee.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Flugelhorn: You obviously remember 1994.
Do you also remember 1996?
General Winfield Stuck
@SteveinSC: You’ve been wanking this trope all night here. Obama “wounded” don’t think so. This was a local failure in a state where he has 60 percent approval. It was a referendum on the dem party in Mass, nothing else. And there have never been 60 dems to be filibuster proof. Cole predicted morans like you would be around selling this snake oil, and he was right, for once.
You said Obama is in trouble, he is not. Take the concern troll rubbish somewhere else.
BDeevDad
@gwangung: Next step?
Lisa K.
@General Winfield Stuck:
I agree that it is not Obamafail per se. But I do think it is Democratfail on a larger scale than simply the local one.
Sleeper
@AxelFoley:
When his whole damn agenda is built around having 60 Democrats in the Senate, because everybody is tiptoeing around reconciliation as if they were too embarrassed to bring it up, then YES, he should be holding every fucking Democratic candidate’s hand. If he wants to get any legislation passed, that is.
This is obvious.
Lisa K.
@Jorge:
Agreed.
SteveinSC
@jcricket: Thanks for the support. I’ll have to tell you I’m starting to get the hopless feeling I had back in 2004.
Sleeper
@General Winfield Stuck:
Thank you. I have my answer. There’s nothing whatsoever that Obama could do to make you think he made a mistake.
Fair enough. Your opinion and you’re entitled to it. Thanks for your candor.
Elie
@Paul:
My only caveat is that the target audience is the people out there and not the MSM or beltway. If he gives in to the ol angry hostile game, does he lose even more out there where even though folks were not as enthusiastic, they still think he is an ok dude to run things…
There has to be patience and deep integrity and accepting that who you are and what you stand for is just going to have to be enough and you can sleep well enough at night if you are that…
I also say this: despite Obama’s cool, cerebral exterior, there is white hot fire and passion in this man…he will have to figure out how to let it out for the good without scaring the pants off of the little white folks, but it is definitely there and I am sure he is churning right now with how to let it out —
gwangung
If that’s so, then the message the populace is truly giving is “Move right.” Because they voted right. And any party has to follow that.
Joel
@Elie: Well, the special election cost the Democrats ~10 months of supposedly filibuster-proof majority. A lot of bills will be passed with little fanfare, much like last year (expand SCHIP, dropped the Cuban visitation restriction, provide child care assistance, increase NIH and Department of Interior funding, stopped the AIDS ban, etc.) The jobs stimulus will pass, because the Democrats will play the populism card here. The big loss will be climate change legislation, which I think will be hopelessly deadlocked, but I also felt that this was the case before the election.
Since climate change is probably my personal top issue amongst these, it makes me pretty depressed. But I realize that we’re fighting a massive uphill battle here.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Lisa K.: I can’t disagree. Building momentum from ’06 on was one thing. Maintaining it after we got into power…
jcricket
@Lisa K.: Had they acted differently and honestly during the HCR debate I might have felt differently (every Democrat counts, when you think of things like cloture motions, committee seats, etc.). But if the best we can do is a Democrat that defeats our signature agenda piece, is still hated by their own state and brings down winnable seats in other states, we don’t need them.
It’s sad that Nebraska is becoming so reactionary (Arkansas too), but if those states want to go solid red and we can counteract that with more solid blue elsewhere (long-term I think this is a lock) then we’ll be fine.
As someone somewhere else said, thank god for minorities. If this were a whites-only voting regime we’d have a military dictatorship right now.
General Winfield Stuck
@Lisa K.: I have been saying for days that dems are getting complacent on the electoral politics side of things. And when they do that, they begin to get fractuous and start squabbling amongst themselves. The silver lining could be a needed wake up call to tighten up and focus on focusing on the real enemy, the wingnuts, and making them pay for their total obstructionism. If they don’t, they and us will get what we deserve, nothing good.
gwangung
You mean the 59 votes he used for the stimulus?
I’d take you seriously, but given that you used “reconcilliation” I don’t think you quite know the ramifications.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Sleeper: So you don’t want a President but just a campaigner-in-chief, ’cause that’s what you’ll need to handhold the Dems. So who is running the Executive Branch in the meantime? Joe Biden?
Sleeper
@TWP:
Agree 100%.
SteveinSC
@General Winfield Stuck: Please, let’s all agree to agree that Cole’s opinions are neither devine nor immutable. And it appears that Obama’s ass is big enough for your as well as Cole’s heads.
jcricket
@SteveinSC: I’m getting that feeling that lead to the whole “fuck the south” attitude (not sure if that’s 2000 or 2004).
We face real problems, ones that’ll take decades to address (if not longer). And there’s not a single thing Republicans are proposing that will help. In fact, they’ll make everything dramatically worse, esp. in the case of things that need immediate attention (like climate change).
But a huge portion of my fellow whities think that “taxes” are bad and “throw the bums out” is a coherent voting philosophy. So they get the government they deserve (a dysfunctional one that serves only the corporate interests with enough money to lobby well).
Like I said above. Thank goodness for minorities (I’m a Jew, so I’m in there somewhere). And keep on breeding fellow non-christians, non-whites, gays, recent immigrants, etc.
Uriel
@TooManyJens: No- the very objectionable word in question is the plural of ho. With the optional “e.”
I know it seems arbitrary- but, unfortunately, the ways of the moderation filter are mysterious, and not to be understood by us mere mortals. It is our lot to merely sit back and appreciate the sheer beauty of the thing.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@TWP: So to show their displeasure with the ‘banksters’, they’re voting… for the party of banksters and deregulation that led us into this mess to begin with.
I’m missing something here.
John Cole
Look, I agree that they need to re-engage the public, and I would not be surprised to see a strong banking bill come out of this.
But as to the quality of the candidates, you are just making shit up to suit your narrative. Corzine was HATED in NJ- they blamed him for damned near everything, and he was polling behind 20+ points months before the election.
Deeds was also a weak candidate- we all were agreeing with each other on the night of the damned primary that Moran was the best choice, but at least McAuliffe lost. Deeds was a boring middle of the road local pol who ran a middling and boring campaign that lacked definition.
And then you have Coakley, who, as the stories start to come out, will shock you with her ineptness. She took a larger break from politics over Christmas than anyone on this blog, and she was running for office.
Just stop making shit up about those other candidates- they were all flawed candidates, and we were saying so well before the election, and in two of the three cases, on the date they won the primary. I’m not the one revising history here- you are.
Sleeper
@Lisa K.:
As I said earlier, Obama has some but not all, and surely not most, of the responsibility here. The blame must be shouldered by the candidate first and foremost. But as the President of the United States, and the leader of the party, surely Obama has far greater capability to influence the outcome of races like this than individual senators and governors. I can’t believe anyone would even dispute that.
We’re not trying to make Obama look bad by making this all his fault, General, we’re hoping he takes some DRASTIC ACTION to keep the “Republican Resurrection” meme from taking hold by addressing the party’s shortcomings rather than finessing them or insisting that nothing’s wrong.
TWP
@gwangung: I disagree…if you read the vote literally, you are correct, it seems to say “Move Right”. But I think there are two things that aren’t commented a lot: “Protest Votes” and “Disillusioned Non-Voters”. Protest votes are Ds and Is that voted for Brown to send a message that they are angry at the Government for not fighting for them (foreclosures, jobs, etc.). And Disillusioned Non-Voters are the core Ds that stayed at home as an indirect protest. These are gays, civil libertarians, union workers, etc. who are very angry at Congress and the Administration for policies and are disillusioned with their party. There are no exit polls on them…because they aren’t there. The only voices we hear are the loud, tea party fuckheads. And so, as usual, the MSM conventional wisdom will be: “move right Democrats”.
Ugh.
CDT
@Brien Jackson:
“What’s going to passed with reconcilliation? In some ways I don’t think this is that big of a deal, because the stuff that isn’t going to pass now (C&T, EFCA) weren’t going to pass anyway. But let’s just stop this “we lose by winning” bullshit now. It’s, well, bullshit.”
You’re missing the point. For many of us, the sort of health care reform that was achievable by attracting the 60th/least progressive vote in the Senate was perhaps a modest improvement over the status quo substantively, but a likely political disaster. Now that the Democrats no longer have 60 nominal votes, either a) nothing will happen at all, because Republicans will continue to filisbuter and the Democrats will not try reconciliation; or b) the Democrats, lacking any shot at 60 votes, will try reconciliation instead, in which event you may actually get a better bill. I think there’s an argument that being freed from the assumption that they can or need to get to 60 may actually produce better legislation.
So long as they have the courage to use reonciliation, then the bill passed is controlled by the 50th most liberal member of the Senate, rather than the 60th. That’s a big difference.
Elie
Okay, okay…. for those of you who want some of us to admit that the Dems and Obama “screwed up” somehow, what is your next move for us?
Ok — some of you: stop health care reform until we get single payer?
Make sure that the financial sector tows the line or else?
And do you think that by undercuttting the administration, this is more or less likely to happen now? So the “mistake” is just this administration’s?
If your point is that “we showed em a thing or two” — now how do you make good on what you wanted by knee capping the administration? Do you think it would have been a) easier or b) harder, to accomplish that with a win in Massachusetts?
Do you think that the constant carping and criticism from the left had a) a lot, b) some or c) little to do with the outcome and a) invigorated, b) somewhat stimulated or c) depressed the opposition?
Come on now — no cheating!
Flugelhorn
@Joel:
Not to pick on you in particular here, but this is sort of the problem with Dems. When out of power, you all work towards the goal of getting into power and you really do a good job of it. Then when you get it, you all break down into your fractious little groups. In the end, you have no sense of the big picture. All you care about is your little piece of the pie and you want it to get eaten first.
Environment! Its getting too damned hot!
NO! Women’s rights and abortion!
NO! Gay Rights and Gay Marriage!
NO! Universal Healthcare for everyone!
NO! WAIT! There are whales over here that need saving!
NO! DAMMIT! We have to get out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!
NO! Gun Control! Discrimination! Death Penalty! Blah, blah blah…
When it isn’t your little pet issue, you do not get behind it. You are not passionate about it. Some of you even resent that “Someone else’s” issue gets treated before yours and you turn your back on the movement until someone in power decides to shine the spotlight on your little fiefdom.
It is no wonder this happens when you appoint people like Pelosi to carry the flag.
It really is amazing to watch.
liberty60
A couple of things to consider-
Who has the long term momentum?
People like John Cole, Charles Johnson, and Sully are moving in what direction? For every one of these bloggers there are thousands of ordinary people (like me) who have grown disgusted with the conservatives.
How many defections are going the other way? None that I am aware of.
We had a weak candidate, and the other side is fired up.
If I were to try and burnish my nerd cred, I would say last November was Episode 4- A New Hope; tonight is Episode 5- The Empire Strikes Back.
Joshua
@Stephen: As far as I can tell, she won the primary solely because, as State AG, more people had heard of her than Capuano or Pagliuca. I know coworkers who voted for her in the primary, and none of them could give me a concrete reason why.
This whole special election was just a clusterfuck from the start. I blame the voters as much as the party, really. Not many people really gave a shit, because they assumed it was a done deal from the start and that it didn’t really matter. Well, it SURE MATTERS NOW, DOESN’T IT?
Lisa K.
@General Winfield Stuck:
And the thing is, WE HAVE THE GUY TO DO IT. When he speaks directly, his approval rating goes up 15 points and his opponents look petty and small. IMO he is a very badly underused weapon in this fight.
General Winfield Stuck
@SteveinSC: I agreed with Cole BECAUSE ANY DAMN FOOL WITH HALF A GODDAMN BRAIN WOULD. That apparently does not include dumbass PUMA’s like you.
shortstop
I seriously doubt that one in 100 voters even knows that Obama has played ball with pharma. Don’t confuse widespread, vague rage over the bank bailouts (uncoupled, of course with any understanding of what would have happened without them) with most voters knowing a goddamned thing about the HC bills, what’s actually in them and how it got there.
Brien Jackson
@CDT:
Um, no. The House is going to pass the Senate bill in its entirety, and some changes might be made later around the margins with reconcilliation. Losing the 60th seat is not a magic wand to get those fairy cookies you thought reconcilliation had to offer.
jcricket
@CDT:
I would agree with you, except that Dem Senators (and some Reps) are already falling all over themselves to basically claim they won’t do a damn thing b/c a dude won an election.
What makes you think they’d have the cajones to try reconciliation? That takes Republican-sized stones, apparently.
I would love for us to do that. Our conservative Senators (Lincoln, Nelson, Landrieu) are toast anyway. Lieberman’s gonna be more Republican than ever (strip him tomorrow). How could that possibly be worse than doing nothing for the next year? Or simply giving in and doing whatever Republicans want, despite their continued minority status.
Lisa K.
@Flugelhorn:
Still better than war and torture and recession, which is what happens when we appoint people like you to carry the flag.
gwangung
@TWP: Oh, I’m not disagreeing with your analysis. But how do you divine motives and separate protest votes from a true move to the right? Usually, that’s exit polls, but that wasn’t done here.
And I agree the conventional wisdom is “Move right.” And I agree that’s stupid; it should be “ATTRACT the middle.”
But faced with the choice between attitudes and concrete behavior, it takes intelligence to ferret out the correct course. And as we’ve seen, the running candidates….aren’t that smart.
Sleeper
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
He’s a smart man, I’m sure he can walk and chew gum at the same time. Saying he can either govern or campaign but not both is a false choice.
wasabi gasp
O Hillary!
Sleeper
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
It’s called cognitive dissonance. Voters demonstrate it all the time, unfortunately.
liberty60
@Sleeper:
Bullshit. Respectfully, but bullshit.
In addition to running the country, representing the free world, managing two wars…Obama is singlehandedly responsible for vanquishing the Republican Party and the conservative world and overseeing every Senatorial and Congressional race- hell, why not the election of Orange County Municipal Water District at-large Ombudsmen?
God,I guess he really does fart pixie dust!
We have state and local Party organizations for a reason- to recruit good candidates and run them effectively. Coakly and the Mass. Dems didn’t, and were on the losing end of a protest vote.
They shoulder it all.
General Winfield Stuck
@Lisa K.: If you go back to almost any first term president at this point, except Bush due to 9-11, there is a period around about now when shit is scattered and looks bad and unsmooth. It is historically almost like clockwork. We do have the right guy in the WH to turn it around like Reagan did, and Clinton. He did pretty good getting himself elected, the first black guy, and still with a decent poll approval number, even in this tough period. The guys that got him here ain’t dummies, they will know what to do as well as anybody would.
The Truffle
@AxelFoley: Ack! I had to get away from there! Kos is turning into a big fucking pity party.
John, why don’t you become a pundit or an op-ed writer? You’d be so much better at it than some of the clowns in the media.
CDT
@Elie
“Okay, okay…. for those of you who want some of us to admit that the Dems and Obama “screwed up” somehow, what is your next move for us?”
Follow the lead of Jim Webb and pull HCR off the table in favor of a huge jobs stimulus bill properly sized according to people like Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz. Cal the GOP bluff, and say that you are putting off the controversial health care bill so everyone can work toegher on jobs. Include a huge high-speed rail compnent as an energy independence component. This isn’t that hard. If Obama does this, then I might start paying attention again to those who claim he’s playing 11-level chess. Until then, he’s just Jimmy Cartner.
General Winfield Stuck
@liberty60: Troll attack -Reinforcements arrive, thank the FSM. Carry on!
Sleeper
@gwangung:
Okay, so the Democrats HAVEN’T spent months groveling to various moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats in order to get that 60th vote on health care reform, because 59 votes is good enough and Brown’s win is no big deal. Right?
deadrody
Keep it up John. It was the State party ? Are you out of your mind ?
Tonights vote was absolutely about the national political landscape and a complete and total repudiation of the Obama socialist agenda. Keep on thinking it was a weak candidate (again) and a poor campaign (again) and all the fault of an arrogant state party and we can repeat this entire process again in November.
Coakley was out of touch with the voters because she was lock step in agreement with Obama’s agenda. THAT is what is out of touch with voters.
If she had Obama’s numbers indeed. If a fish had wings it would be a duck. Whatever.
Oh and PS, there was no exit polling.
Brien Jackson
Oh for fuck’s sake. You want the first majority leader to pass anything resembling universal healthcare to retire so you can replce him with a business friendly conservadem who has no experience moving lefislation through the Senate or relationship built with other liegislators? And with 4 fewer seats?
Jesus Christ people can be fucking stupid.
TWP
@John Cole: We’ll just have to agree to disagree. I completely agree that all 3 candidates were weak (Coakley being the worst). I’m not debating you on that. And I’m not trying to make shit up. What I’m saying is that this is an angry wave and that it’s NOT JUST THE CANDIDATES. It has to do with a ton of disillusioned Democrats and protest votes (see my comments above). This is what is driving this wave. The Tea Partiers are the same yahoos that were around during the McCain/Palin nuthouse rallies. If they’ve gotten bigger, it’s not by much. But they are benefiting from the Ds that you agree need to be re-engaged by Congress and the WH. That’s the bigger picture.
It reminds me of your post earlier today about the GITMO death revelations in Harper’s. You understood the practical political realities of Obama’s “look forward, not back” policy choices. But you have come around to the belief that some that that shit can’t be swept under the rug.
In a weird way, the same goes here. The banksters, pharma, foreclosures, half-ass stimulus, bi-partisan reindeer games, et al can’t be swept under the rug and we all move on. There’s too much anger out there and there has been no outlet. That outlet has now become the ballot box and whoever is in power. Unless Ds and Obama can find a way to win back all those voters they and he has lost over the past year, November is going to be a bloodbath.
SteveinSC
@General Winfield Stuck: Were you awake enough to note the fact, earlier posted here, that I sent $1,000 to Obama’s campaign not Billary’s? Troll and PUMA indeed! And by the way were you with Cole on Bush? Brain, brain, anyone seen the General’s brain? It’s small and very easy to miss, shiny and like new, since it’s rarely used.
Elie
@Flugelhorn:
Well, you have a point. But who said democracy is nice and tidy like the authoritarian way you Republicans like things to go. Who needs free will or freedom to think or hold distinct “views” in your world? There is only one “view”on your planet and you are all wired in to a single opinion that stands up to whatever other information asserts itself..No thought is required
Yeah, we are messy and imperfect. But you are mind control and death to freedom of independent thought..
I’ll take mine, thank you.
burnspbesq
@ellaesther:
Not sure we need any more than that. That pretty much sums it up. What a fiasco.
What’s the over/under on how many days before Pelosi rams the Senate version of the bill through the House. If it’s more than three, I’ll take the under.
Midnight Marauder
@John Cole:
I believe you are speaking about ineptitude such as this:
That shit just blows my mind. Of course you couldn’t see this joker Brown mounting his comeback– you didn’t even know it was happening! Literally, you were absolutely ignorant of this fact. No tracking polls?! Stunning, simply stunning.
I can’t remember a time in my young life that I was actually excited for a State of the Union address. I think President Obama is going to just fucking kill it. Pitch-perfect, right on message, smacking down nonsense and assclowns left and right, laying out the bold if not very uncertain course forward; I think he sets the tone to really start kicking some ass in 2010 and lets the other folks with the Democratic Party uniform on know, “Hey, it’s time to get our shit together and get some good things done. Enough with the tomfuckery.”
I also think that somewhere, President ObamaRham is probably having Jim Webb’s grandmother kidnapped, if only to teach him a gentle lesson about “message control.”
“That’s a nice grandmother you got there…It would be a shame if something happened to her…”
+7
General Winfield Stuck
@SteveinSC: You sending money to Obama has nothing to do with being dumb as a sack of hammers. Yes, I’m looking at you.
And once again to repeat my response to your pig ignorant statement that Obama was in trouble. He ain’t.
And PUMA has been upgraded to beyond Hillary Clinton. It is any all purpose pinhead looking for anything whatsoever to wank about Obama fail. And in your case, about dumb enough to do it while sending money at the same time.
Get back to me with something Obama is actually responsible for screwing up. It ain’t the dem loss in Mass.
And no,. I have never been a republican. And hated Bush from the time of his debates with Gore. You are such a tired Heather.
Darryl
If that happens it’ll be a Christmas miracle.
I hope it does. Then I hope Pelosi walks over to the Senate, rips off a chair leg, and beats Joe Lieberman into a greasy spot.
Flugelhorn
@Elie:
I will gladly leave you to it. After all, why would you want to learn how to govern when you can just pick each other off until you lose power again? At least then you will have something to unite around and can start the cycle all over again.
The reality is, Dems do much better with Republicans in charge. You make alot of noise and the Republicans, who actually know how to run a government, eventually get to your more important points when you get loud enough and make the necessary changes.
Dems are not front runners. They make better ankle biters.
Brien Jackson
But hey, Markos is plastering “reconciliation” all over Twitter and reminding us of how The Awesome Bush got Social Security and Medicare privatized with only 30 votes in the Senate. Also too. Or something.
So everything is great. Kucinich 2012!
gwangung
@Sleeper: Well, I merely pointed to a concrete instance in the near past where 60 votes were NOT gathered, yet something passed. I guess that’s not important to your point.
However, there are alternative strategies (much less desirable to be sure, but they exist).
Sly
Look like I picked the wrong week to quit
smokingdrinkingamphetaminessniffing glue.Elie
@Flugelhorn:
Govern! A Republi-cant? Govern?
Bwahaaahaahaaa haaahaaa — Not makee sensee…. cannot compute…
General Winfield Stuck
@Brien Jackson:
There is so much stoopid going on in the left blog ethers, that if we could bottle it, we might could fuel a rocket ship to Alpha Centauri and leave this bone dumb rock.
Mattsky
@General Winfield Stuck
May be you and John Cole will believe the people in this focus group? Well it is doubtful since it was on FNC it will be discounted as crap.
Sleeper
@liberty60:
Oh, come on. This is just more of the “full plate” excuse. Obama hires people to do things for him, you see. Like every other politician in world history. That’s why we hired him, because we trusted his judgment as to who he’d have working for him and as to what overall big picture directions he’d give them, and as to how to deal with crises. Yes, as party leader, it is ultimately his responsibility to beat back GOP fuckers like Scott Brown. And Christ, that doesn’t mean he has to personally fly to Massachusetts and hand out flyers on a street corner and make coffee for the volunteers. But keep an eye on the race. Put somebody on it who IS going to make sure things are happening.
Why not the Orange County Municipal Water District at-large Ombudsmen? Because they don’t have the 60th vote on the signature piece of Obama’s agenda, that’s why.
I want to stress that really, I see this more as Tim Kaine’s fault, and the Mass Dems’ fault, than Obama personally. As I said, he hires people to oversee areas of responsibility. Tim Kaine should have moved to Massachusetts for the duration and put this to bed. He’s the party chair, and he’s 1-for-4 at this point. Especially after losing VA and NJ, there’s just no excuse at all to let this one get away. I don’t think Kaine should keep his job after this. It’d be one thing if he was such a singular talent that we couldn’t do without him, but, if has such talent he’s done a bang-up job of keeping it concealed so far.
Of course ultimately, Obama hired him as DNC chair. Or made it known he preferred Kaine for the job, whatever. So he does have that overall responsibility for how this turned out. Will he fire Kaine, or put the screws to him to get things in order? Will Kaine step up and clean house on his own? It has to embarrassing for him to be outperformed as party chairman by the likes of Michael Steele.
liberty60
@Darryl:
And on that hopeful note, I bid you a good night….
Ailuridae
@CDT:
That jobs bill Stiglitz and Krugman want won’t get 52 votes. Now, that’s something you might want to force a filibuster over. FWIW, the house jobs bill thats already passed is pretty good.
CDT
What TWP said. What’s changed in the last few months is not that there are more tea-baggers, but that there are more of us liberals who are underwhelmed with the change we’ve seen so far, and not amenable to the argument that we must support the likes of Evan Bayh or something even worse may come along. Of courst the teag baggers are insane. But the business community that controls the GOP agenda is not going to let them run too far afield. And if the Obama administration is simply implementing the business community agenda anyway, it seems like less of a catastrophe to lose the 60th vote in the Senate than you might otherwise think. Our side is led by Gen. McClellan.
General Winfield Stuck
@Mattsky: Well, you’re in luck. As I have already been accused today of carrying FNC water by one of our resident progressive overlords.
But i refuse to carry Frank Luntz’s water for anything less than 2 million dollars and a lifetime supply of Plastic Unicorns. And I go thru them pretty quick, so it’ a lot of ’em.
Elie
@Sleeper:
“Will Kaine step up and clean house on his own? It has to embarrassing for him to be outperformed as party chairman by the likes of Michael Steele.”
I think that is a truly fair question and one that needs to be addressed… This was TED KENNEDY’s seat and needed 1000 percent attention and focus. Kean must be really pissed (I hope).
Lots of dead bodies after this one…Coakley’s career is done and some folks at the DLC as well. I can just imagine Rahm’s language tonight
Sleeper
@Flugelhorn:
HAHA!!!!!
Should not drink while reading this blog. Iced tea, right out of my nostrils and all over the keyboard. Oh, fuck, what a mess. Thanks for the laugh though.
Keith G
@Sleeper: Thanks. You saved me a whole lot of typing.
TWP
@General Winfield Stuck: You asked for something Obama has screwed up on, here’s a list:
1. Hiring Tim Geithner
2. Allowing AIG Bonuses
3. Making a deal with Pharma
4. Allowing Baucus group to jack around for 2 months
5. Demanding Lieberman keep his chairmanships
6. Not Firing Tim Geithner
Is that enough for you or are you going to make fucking excuses for these gold-plated decisions?
Sleeper
@gwangung: Unfortunately, the heady days of early ’09, when Democratic audacity was its zenith, seem to be long gone. It’s now just accepted as fact by too many who ought to know better that without 60 votes nothing can be done.
JGabriel
Mattsky:
A very sound principle.
.
Elie
@CDT:
McClellan? What century are you in man? McClellan spent the first year of the war drilling his army until Lincoln replaced him with Grant. Then things got going
Better dial into NOW…or maybe have fun in the 19th century — your choice
And if you truly want a Republican both in values and methods, you should vote that way and get off this site…
Nothin worse than trying to see a Republican wannabe slumming with us Democrats. No. We dont see the world like you. Dont wanna see the world like you do
Brien Jackson
How many people blaming Tim Kaine for this were giving him credit for Democrats winning NY-23?
Mattsky
@General Winfield Stuck & JGabriel
I didn’t expect anything less. The people of the Bay State have spoken, lets ignore them. Good night General Winfield Stuck & JGabriel.
Elie
@Brien Jackson:
Sorry Brien — get your point but you know this was a big one way more important than NY – 23. And in all fairness, I am sure that Kean knows that too and is probably not having a great night tonight
Sleeper
@CDT:
Wow. That’s a really good comparison, actually.
Fortunately for us the GOP Lee hasn’t shown up yet. They’re still futzing around with the likes of Braxton Bragg and John Bell Hood. So far.
Brien Jackson
@Sleeper:
That’s because…you can’t do anything without 60 votes.
Sleeper
@Brien Jackson:
uh.
Was anyone giving him credit for that? I thought everyone just blamed the teabagging Boo Radley they ran against us.
Brien Jackson
@Elie:
I think both of them probably have a common thread; the candidate who lost was pretty terrible. Hoffman might have had a legitimate chance, but he went out of his way to shit on Dede, and permanently alienated a good chunk of her initial supporters, limiting his ceiling. And there was that whole incident where he insisted local issue were totally irrelevant. Always a good idea to tell voters what issues they don’t actually care about. In Massachusetts you had a totally inept campaign that took weeks off in the middle of a short campaign and mocked the idea of sinking so low as to go out and shake voters hands. The moral of the story? Even in safe seats, not having terrible campaigners running is still important.
Sleeper
@Brien Jackson:
Oh, you should go talk to gwangung, in that case. Apparently 59 is just fine.
danimal
I leave the intertubes for a few hours and this Masshole wins a senate seat and the imminent end of civilization has begun? Folks, this stuff is cyclical and the teabaggers run is about over. The GOP alwaysover-reaches and they will turn the crazy up to 11. Centrists and independents are in a pissy mood, but they really don’t believe in the GOP at all.
The Dems will be fine if they stick to the essentials, finish the health care bill, polish the pointy ends of our rusty populist pitchforks and get out to kick some bankers in the balls for the next 6-9 months. The battle isn’t over; it’s barely just begun.
General Winfield Stuck
@Keith G: Ok, I give up. It’s largely Obama’s fault, he should have sent the Delta Force up to Mass and kicked some royal ass, and Tim Kaine should have over ridden the dem machine in Mass and made them pick Capuano.
But now that this armageddon has been done, it is time for Obama and the dems to be more like Bush and the wingnuts and walk in lockstep and sing Jody took my girl songs marching double time to victory, victory, victory.
You win, I am convinced of your rightness. Can’t fight city hall and the brilliant thoughts of Mr. Sleeper and his call to arms. Have at it. Stuck out.
for a while.
Elie
@Brien Jackson:
Agree with you there and somehow, someone needs to be looking at that and accountable for that…It IS Kean in part but others too…
Man, would I hate to be going up to the WH for the big “debrief”. My imagination says that Obama would be tense, cool but more or less restrained but that Rahm and others would be slicing his bacon, finely and serving with his liver in a beurre blanc
TWP
Here’s my question: Who’s afraid of Barack Obama?
If we all agree that the HCR should be passed by the House immediately (so it doesn’t have to go thru Senate again) how is the WH going to get the votes? The irony is that I think the Progressive wing would go for passing the Senate bill, but I think after tonight, Blue Dogs are MIA on HCR. They are running away from their votes like the plague.
Does anyone sincerely believe that Obama has any leverage with Blue Dogs to get their votes. I certainly don’t. Tell me I’m wrong.
Brien Jackson
@Sleeper:
I think he’s forgetting that Snowe, Collins, and then-Republican Specter all voted for cloture on the stimulus bill. And multiple Republicans voted for cloture on Ledbetter and SCHIP expansion.
Brien Jackson
@TWP:
There’s a lot more members of the House, and they have to run every 2 years, as opposed to every 6 in the Senate. Consequently, that makes it much, much, easier to browbeat members of the House into supporting leadership than leveraging Senators.
General Winfield Stuck
@TWP:
Haven’t you heard, I surrendered. Obama fail. run hils or dennis. I will vote for them, cause I won’t vote republican. You win.
Mnemosyne
@CDT:
Did you know that Evan Bayh is up for re-election this year?
You’d think the people and organizations who have been screaming “more and better Democrats” for the past three or four years would have been, you know, doing something to get a better guy into office. So far, crickets.
bedtimeforbonzo
@meh: Right now, Jim Webb is acting as a sane and practical Democrat who seems to think the will of the people means something.
Barney Frank — former quite an odd couple with Webb — pretty much said the same thing as Webb.
Wake up, Obama apologists!
Wake the fuck up!
CDT
@ Elie:
“And if you truly want a Republican both in values and methods, you should vote that way and get off this site…
Nothin worse than trying to see a Republican wannabe slumming with us Democrats. No. We dont see the world like you. Dont wanna see the world like you do.”
You asked for suggestions on how we lifelong Democrats make lemonade out of lemons. I suggested that we put aside health care reform and instead focus on passing a very liberal stimulus bill, using the conservative phrasing of Jim Webb to support passage of something that even Stiglitz and Krugman would love. Somehow, in your mind, that makes me a Republican wannabe. Jeebus. No wonder our side is losing.
Bob In Pacifica
When democracy fails fascism succeeds.
Elie
@TWP:
I dunno–
If they are running away from HCR — where are they running TO? What is the next act?
I think that you scenario has some reality, but cannot hold up. This big Momma is way too far into labor and there is no where to go for that baby but out – ready or not…
If this thing was going to be killed, it was way back when. Now, to kill it, they would ALL go down…
They may be sweating through the screams, but they will be on hand for the delivery
Chuck Butcher
@Brien Jackson:
I can’t help but love it when a stupid fuck like you comes around to kick snot out of the left with the same stupid lines.
How many years and dead kids did it take for you to catch up to the left about ‘Nam? 4 yrs and 30K dead?
When did you get the idea about Afghanistan & GWB fucking that?
How long did it take after shock and awe for the awe to wear off in Iraq?
You fucks are always 4-6yrs late and blame the fucking left because you’re too busy kissing ass to pay attention.
How long did it take for StRR to dawn on you?
Who the fuck do you think turned out for piss ant Coakley? Yeah, the fucking left and who do you think manned the phones etc? Too bad there’s no poll data coming to teach you assholes the same lesson over again…
The short version is fuck you, you complete dumbass
and your wanker pals, too.
bedtimeforbonzo
Make that: Frank forms quite an odd couple with Webb.
And speaking of Obama apologists, liberal blowhard Keith Olbermann spent an entire hour serving up sour grapes on MSNBC.
Weak.
Brien Jackson
@Elie:
I’m thinking the people who ran the Coakley campaign are going to have a tough time finding jobs next cycle.
Elie
@CDT:
Well, maybe you just have not accepted yourself yet. That happens and there are a number of support groups that can help with those tought acceptance struggles.
Much sympathy to you
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Brien Jackson: Sincerely, Bob Shrum
Sleeper
@General Winfield Stuck:
…see, was that so hard?
Uriel
@General Winfield Stuck:
FIFY.
I hope you don’t mind if I ask you to leave me and the millions of other Americans who will get steam-rolled into powder in the process of this little purity battle through no fault of our own the fuck out of that little equation.
I get what you’re saying- but the distinction needs to be made.
Citizen Alan
@tc:
I am prepared to bet $50 right now that, barring a major scandal of a sexual nature, Brown will get reelected to a full term in 2012. The Democratic Party is plainly incapable of learning anything, anything, from its missteps, least of all learning that it needs to work for people’s votes instead of just seeing an entire state as a magical Liberal fairyland which could never conceivably vote Republican. I would not be a bit surprised to see Coakley nominated to run against him. That’s how inept and stupid the Dems are, both in Mass and nationally.
Quiddity
People seem to forget that if Arlen Specter hadn’t switched parties last year, there would never have been 60 Democratic votes in the Senate for anything. Let’s assume Specter stayed Republican. How do you think health care legislation would have played out? Bribes to the two Maine senators? A rule change making cloture a 55-vote requirement? Split the bill into a reconciliation part (for the more “progressive” parts that deal with taxes and spending) and a regular bill for the popular parts (mostly dealing with recission and pre-exist).
It’s almost as if, by barely having 60 votes (now lost), the strategy of using those 60 votes was always a risky one, with defeat a single senate vote away, with the additional aspect of significant compromises with the a-holes like Lieberman and Nelson.
I’m not happy Brown won, but I wonder if having 60 votes for a few months wasn’t bad in the long run because of how it influenced the strategy for passage.
Brien Jackson
@Chuck Butcher:
Huh? I never said the left was wrong to hate Johnson for Vietnam, I just pointed out it was pretty fucking stupid to claim that LBJ pandered to the left and got them to hunker down in the trenches with them and that the left loved him.
Brien Jackson
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Meh, Shrum’s not that bad. Just kind of unlucky.
General Winfield Stuck
@Uriel: Consider it done.
but it really doesn’t matter what I write does it?
Brien Jackson
@Citizen Alan:
Just $50?
General Winfield Stuck
@Sleeper: When Sarah Palin or John Thune, or Mitt Romney get sworn in, then you can thank me. It will mean so much more then.
Cassidy
Fuck you very much.
Nick
@CDT: and when the public punishes the Dems because they accuse them of playing politics with a jobs bill, we’re going to do what?
Oh that’s right, blame them for not taking over the cable news network or something.
Uriel
@General Winfield Stuck: Sorry, I didn’t see this:
Now you get it! Hillary/Kucinich ’12!
Change I
couldn’t get into the white house if i sold every soul in Haiti to Satancan believe in!Huzzah!
Kryptik
@Citizen Alan:
The problem is not that the party is incapable of learning.
It’s that they’re incapable of learning the right lesson. You’re almost guaranteed that they will take away the exact WRONG lesson from trials like this. Face ridiculous amounts of right-wing falsehoods in the media and a stonewalling Republican party in both houses? The obvious answer is that WE’RE NOT FAR RIGHT ENOUGH, AND THAT WE NEED TO DUMP THE DIRTY HIPPIES.” Of course.
That’s the take away from this. The problem isn’t so much that we lost a seat. Again, we really never had that much of a real supermajority in practice. The problem is that, like clockwork, the Dems come to the wrong answer. They say 2+2 is 4. Reps say 2+2 = Fish. Media overplays the Rep answer…and the Dems, rather than saying that the REpublicans aren’t even using math, instead decide maybe 2+2 really DOES equal fish. And liberals die just a little more inside.
moe99
Well this is depressing.
Nick
@Chuck Butcher:
So I guess this ends the “you need the base to win” argument, huh?
kathequa
John, I agree with what you have said. Jon Stewart sums it up quite nicely also:
Yeah…
Uriel
@General Winfield Stuck: Sorry- I was trying to be semi-ironical and such. Guess it didn’t come through.
Like I said, I get your larger point- I just wanted to make the counter point that all of this effects a lot of people who couldn’t care less about the pissing matches of the various ideological camps.
I tend to think you do understand that more than many here- the phrase just rankled, and seemed a convenient jumping off point. But, i admit, I was something less than artful there. Mea culpa.
bedtimeforbonzo
@SteveinSC: @SteveinSC: Not good form to knock Cole or, as you call them, Obama-bots in this forum. But, brother, you are right.
“It’s the economy, stupid.”
President Obama, for all his smarts, for all his great speech-making ability, forgot that and staked his entire first year, his entire political capital on HCR that is now DOA, while millions upon millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes, the wages, their self-esteem — all while Timmy and the Great O took special care in making Wall Street whole; in fact, in putting the Masters of the Universe, the very robber barrons who wrecked the economy in the first place, back in charge and rolling in the dough.
Sure, Coakley was a weak-ass candidate. But for those who give President Obama a free pass — you ain’t payin’ attention.
Then again, the Great Obama does give great speech, as I’m sure he will again next week with the State of the Union.
Give me a solid program to address the foreclosure crisis in this country, Mr. President — not your laughable, disgraceful HAMP that once again put the ball in the court of the banks and mortgage companies.
I’ve heard enough of this man’s empty speeches to last a fucking lifetime.
Citizen Alan
@John Cole:
Bwah! Oh, thank you, John. That bit of trenchant satire cheered me up greatly. “I would not be surprised to see a strong banking bill come out of this.” That’s priceless.
Quiddity
Obama and the Democrats in Congress should get moving on Cap and Trade legislation. That’s my prescription for recovery from the Coakley loss.
bedtimeforbonzo
@Just Some Fuckhead: Good one.
I don’t think the nude spread of Coakley would have helped, however.
bedtimeforbonzo
Dean-Rendell in ’12.
General Winfield Stuck
@Uriel: Oh no dude, i did not take your comment as a shot at me. :-)
bedtimeforbonzo
Adding insult to the injuries the Democratic Party suffered Tuesday night . . .
As Brown gave his acceptance speech — a victory won in a state with a 3-to-1 edge in Democratic registration, and a Coakley loss that clearly signified Independent dissatisfaction — the crowd chanted:
“Yes, We Can! Yes, We Can!”
On the bright side, Mr. Brown’s daughters are easy on the eyes.
Now that’s Change We Can Believe In.
Or something like that.
bedtimeforbonzo
@Citizen Alan: No, that’s not priceless, it’s stupid. Again, someone hasn’t been paying attention.
bedtimeforbonzo
Don’t worry, Timmy: Wall Street is still in charge.
Citizen Alan
@Brien Jackson:
Do you not know how many Democratic campaigns Bob Shrum led to ignominious defeat? I’m sure there are Democrats in tight races all across this nation that are calling Coakley’s campaign staff right now to get them on board.
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Dammit, you beat me to it.
bedtimeforbonzo
At least when Hillary Care failed it did not take this long.
Get the economy going, President Obama, and craft a better foreclosure-assistance program than your laughable, disgraceful HAMP, which has actually made the crisis worse.
And in next week’s State of the Union Address, park the hubris and show a little humility.
Dean-Rendell in 2012.
Citizen Alan
@Brien Jackson:
In the same way that the Washington Generals have had a long run of bad luck against the Harlem Globetrotters.
cat48
Chris Matthews & Lawrence O’Donnell just said they both talked to the Mayor of Boston today. He doesn’t like Coakley & doesn’t want her to have the Senate seat.
The Mayor said his office did not do their normal GOTV because they didn’t want her to win. He had a lot more votes he could have brought out and did not.
So, there you go. The Mayor of Boston decides who will be the Senator because if you win Boston………..He considers Brown a seat warmer.
Nick
@Kryptik: I see it a little differently, and forgive me, I worked at ABC for a while, so I know this
It really is more that Demcorats say 2+2 is 4, Republicans say 2+2 = Fish and we in the media have endless discussions about how 2+2 probably is fish and blast the Democrats are wasting all our time trying to convince us it’s actually 4, so the Democrats just eventually throw their hands up and say “ugh fine, it’s whatever you want it to be”
Ailuridae
@Citizen Alan:
Covered. I’ll additionally cover that wager two orders of magnitude higher. Let me know how to contact you to escrow if you want to bet larger than $50
bedtimeforbonzo
@John Cole: Yeah, all of these candidates are just bad, bad, bad, and the Great Obama is, well, great, great, great.
I think we get the message.
I imagine Delaware AG Beau Biden — Joe’s son — is a bad candidate and the Biden name is dirt in my home state. And Mike Castle is just the bee’s knees.
That must be why local polls show Biden losing to Castle (Mike Castle!) if the election were held today for his old man’s former Senate seat.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Chuck Butcher
@Nick:
There is an endpoint where you lose them, but for 50 years you’ve been kicking them and like a dog they keep coming back because there is nowhere else to go – or more fools are born to replace them. Almost the entire DNC apparatus is well left of candidates in general, the top is about the only exception. The same is true of the Obama apparatus which is linked to but not folded into DNC (for reasons I don’t want to go into other than it contains Independents)
That is the ongoing operation, the ground troops and callers that exist from one election to the next. Campaigns almost always run their own show with DNC providing backup and access to volunteers. (by DNC I mean the national and state parties)
Nick
@bedtimeforbonzo: hmm
http://www.swingstateproject.com/diary/5910/desen-biden-up-5-on-castle
Nick
@bedtimeforbonzo: hmm
http://www.swingstateproject.com/diary/5910/desen-biden-up-5-on-castle
Uriel
@bedtimeforbonzo:
Oh for christ’s sake, will you people just put this kind of crap away for just one fucking day?
No one here has been arguing anything like this what-so-ever. At all. Period. The end.
The fact that you keep throwing shit like this against the wall in the hopes that it sticks speaks far more to your desperation to make a point- any point at all, regardless of it’s validity- than it does to discredit even the most o-bot-i-est of o-rahm-a-trons that post here.
Cripes- how and when did all these petulant children show up all of a sudden. It’s a god damn shame.
Brachiator
@John Cole:
You nailed it, dude. Coakley ran the same kind of campaign that Hillary Clinton ran in the Democratic primary — and how did that work out?
Coakley’s defeat also reminds me of the California recall campaign. Lazy pundits kept referring to California’s pro-Democrat demographics, and ran all kinds of polls suggesting that the Democrats had nothing to worry about, but few newspapers (the San Francisco Chronicle was a notable exception) bothered to actually interview real people, and were totally blindsided by the manifest “no confidence” sentiment that many had for incumbent Gov Gray Davis and for Democratic Party Lt Governor Cruz Bustamante, the ultimate lame hack politician, and Democratic alternative to Gray Davis.
Instead of cultivating the Massachusetts equivalent of Teddy Kennedy or Barack Obama, the party hacks chose a dull party loyalist. And sadly, they may have misread a degreee of sexism among Massachusetts voters, some of whom apparently could not vote for a woman for Senator.
Brown’s victory is a setback, but not a disaster. Will Democrats learn from this, or double down on their stupidity?
Inquiring minds want to know.
DaBomb
@Uriel: They are like parasites almost. Once there’s an infestation, that’s it. They are here to stay.
Ailuridae
@Uriel:
Cripes- how and when did all these petulant children show up all of a sudden. It’s a god damn shame.
I suspect its the Maddow effect with no offense to her as I think she’s pretty great for the medium she works within.
Uriel
@General Winfield Stuck: Cool.
I reckon that of late, I’m generating more than enough ill-will around here intentionally to ignore the times when I might be doing it by accident. Good to know this wasn’t one of the latter.
Uriel
@DaBomb: I’m really hoping that isn’t the case. But I have to admit, that hope grows more distant by the day, of late.
Uriel
@Ailuridae: Maybe. But if so, that would be a shame. She’s really one of the only voices I can respect on the national level. I’d hate to think she’s being saddled with lampreys of this sort.
gwangung
Smart people would learn, but there are not a lot of competent people in politics (and some of those we drive out of the game ourselves).
moe99
I’ve read 300+ posts here tonight, and I have yet to see folks remember back in the Lamont/Lieberman race where the same thing happened. Lamont won the primary and then took a, what, two week vacation? And his lead disappeared as a consequence of hubris. The same sort that Coakley and her campaign showed.
Obama was called in way too late in the game to turn the tides for Coakley. Nor can he be expected to be able to do this sort of political wizardry on his own. The state Dem organization got fat and complacent. And it shows.
Coakley reminds me a little bit of Washington governor, Chris Gregoire, who had to have two recounts of the votes back in 2004, before she could be declared the winner with 200 or so votes over right wing zealot, Dino Rossi. And she was AG in WA for 3 terms before she ran for governor–with a comparably crappy campaign style similar to that of Coakley’s.
I am still in the doldrums that Coakley lost, but looking for silver linings. Only thing is, no rose colored glasses please. I’d like to remain in reality for the forseeable future.
The Ace Tomato Company
Dear Democrats: If you don’t want to completely collapse, I would recommend a couple of things:
1) Stop acting like a bunch of pussies and lead. For 1-year you’ve controlled the presidency and both houses of congress. You may have to step on a few toes and hurt a few feelings, but people elected you to get a job done. So far, you haven’t done this and instead sit around and complain about how you’re being hampered. People just aren’t going to buy this shit when you have supermajorities. You need to employ every trick in the book to put your agenda through. The public hates (and remembers) weakness far more than they dislike hardball tactics to pass legislation. For the past year, you’ve given the public nothing but a steady diet of weakness which has been capitalized on, and turned into, general opposition to your policies.
2) Try to pass HCR before Brown is seated and use reconciliation to make changes later.
3) Continue to push for big financial reforms and screw anybody who stands in your way. Call out all bluffs from Republicans and some Democrats and force them to filibuster these bills and use this against them mercilessly.
4) Start hitting back. I am still stunned that Democrats have immediately assumed the position of whipping boy beginning in Jan 09. For the past year I have seen Republicans saturating all traditional media outlets spouting insane nonsense, but I rarely see Democrats defending themselves and going on the offensive. You don’t have to stoop to their level or try to win every news cycle, but for fuck’s sake, hit back every once and a while. Try controlling the narrative for a change.
In summary, stop being a bunch of weenies and stop using “but, but…Republicans are mean and won’t let us pass anything” as an excuse. The public gave you mandates to lead, not to bitch.
If the Democrats don’t pull their heads out of their assess after this, then they deserve to keep losing.
arguingwithsignposts
Personally, I’m waiting for our first Playboy centerfold senator. Isn’t there a porn star running against David Vitter? Sauce for the goose and all that.
and, oh, yeah – F**k you, Massachusetts.
salacious crumb
Im just happy Coakley lost. I want that health insurance lobby funded bill to die in the Senate. Fuck filibuster proof majority.
Wormtown
I live in MA (wormtown); John is absolutely right. The democratic party is arrogant and a big, old-boys club. I cringe everytime I leave my polling place and see the D after my name; and consider switching back to U (of course in MA you have to be unenrolled, you can’t be Independent).
She ran a terrible campaign; but I will add that I think it is very hard for a woman to be elected in MA, despite the liberal reputation. Romney beat Shannon O’brian; Patrick beat Kerry Healy; and now Coakley.
bob h
I am hopeful that in a few days, once the Republicans have stopped crowing and strutting, someone will have the courage to point out that our disintegrating private healthcare system is still there, bleeding us dry. Maybe some of the millions of people outside the system who were counting on these reforms will start to speak up. Maybe someone in the AMA, AARP, The Catholic Bishops will speak out.
I wouldn’t be surprised if parts of the healthcare industry itself, who face a bleak future without reform, also make themselves heard.
Xenos
@bob h: The Catholic Bishops have some explaining to do. Purity over birth control and abortion is what started this round of legislative gridlock back in August.
Brien Jackson
@Citizen Alan:
Well no. More in the way the Colts couldn’t beat the Patriots for a few years. Shrum has a ton of wins in non-Presidential races, so it’s not like he doesn’t have any idea what he’s doing, and he’s got some decent things to hang his hat on in Presidential politics too. He wrote Kennedy’s 1980 convention speech, he engineered Gephardt’s 1988 win in Iowa, as well as Kerry’s comeback in the primaries. It’s not his fault There were 50,000 candidates in the 1988 primary, or that Ralph Nader got nearly 3 million votes in 2000, or that Kerry was for the $87 billion before he was against it.
brantl
I’m sorry, John. Some of this IS bullshit. Obama should have backed her sooner, and often. A special election should have been held and should always be held, if there’s more than 1/2 year left, and anything’s going on in the Congress, and something always is. Should she have run harder? No doubt. But there should have been a special election, hands down.
Lisa K.
I feel a little better this morning, but not much.
I hope the Democrats take Joe Conason’s advice, but I have very little faith they will do so. What a bunch of fuck ups.
Brien Jackson
@Brachiator:
So we gave up on that whole “special elections are awesome” kick or something?
kay
@Brien Jackson:
OT, a little, I guess, but I’m interested.
What do you see for the health care bill?
Worst case: if you had to narrow it to pass it, what would you cut? I’m having trouble narrowing. Interconnected, and all. The only portion that appears “stand alone” (to me) is the regulatory end, and even that depends, to a certain extent, on “universal” coverage.
CDT
@ Ace Tomato:
“In summary, stop being a bunch of weenies and stop using “but, but…Republicans are mean and won’t let us pass anything” as an excuse. The public gave you mandates to lead, not to bitch.”
That’s it, exactly. What have accomplished with our super-majorities? Extension of a bunch of Bush policies. Great.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but i’m really looking forward to that first DNC mailer explaining how I need to contribute to some close Senate race in order for the party to re-establish that filibuster-proof majority.
@Elie: I’m not sure why you think that those who criticize Obama from the left are Republicans, but if the Republicans are now left of Obama, perhaps I need to give them another look. Obama certainly governs well to the right of, say, Richard Nixon.
NovShmozKaPop
Yes, but also about stupid, stupid, and yes REALLY [BEEP]ING STUPID voters who cannot understand that you come out and vote even if you are not inspired. Political inspiration is a drug, it’s nice but you don’t always have it, just get out, vote, and at a minimum try to keep things from getting worse!
The Truffle
@Lisa K.: That’s a good link. I am waiting for Obama’s SOTU address, by which time the election will prolly be forgotten.
Remember, this does hurt, but it’s no 2004.
Brien Jackson
@kay:
Nothing’s going to pass the Senate. That’s just not feasible. You can maybe get a somewhat modest expansion of Medicaid through reconcilliation, and maybe some direct subsidy money to help other people offset the cost of insurance, but that’s about it. The House is going to have to decide whether they want to move the ball forward, or wait another 20 years to take another crack at this.
bedtimeforbonzo
@TWP: Quite reasonably said.
bedtimeforbonzo
@TWP: Quite reasonably said.
Chris Johnson
If we do get a bloody revolution it won’t be teabaggers- I’m picturing teabaggers manipulating things and taking advantage of the disintegration of the system to constantly return to power and loot the ruins, right up to the point of total collapse (which we’re not quite at, give it eight years)
Finance escalates to thousands or ten thousand times the ‘capital’ than there is actual wealth in the world, and implodes, causing mass unemployment.
Government does get drowned in the bathtub in the sense of nothing gets done anymore. Everyone’s roads are broken, everyone’s car gets eaten by potholes, you can’t get parts because nobody can afford them so there’s no demand… all social safety nets become local. Some become whites-only or otherwise feudal in nature.
Climate energy continues to increase through warming and polar ice melting, causing a marked increase in really outlier weather (which is what happens) so we do end up getting 160 degree heat waves for a week etc not to mention hurricanes five times the force of what we’ve seen.
You could say this will lead to fundie mania and another Dark Ages, but it’s just as possible we’ll pull a Haiti- since the Republicans will be holding the bag, the revolution will be leftist. Right now, the Democrats are holding the bag so the ‘warning’ looks rightwing, but that’s an illusion. It’s really just rumblings of total system breakdown.
bedtimeforbonzo
@Nick: The Castle-Biden race will be close, very close, despite the fact that Delaware has been Biden country for as long as I can remember.
From RealClearPolitics, four polls taken during the same time frame as the one you cited:
Delaware Senate – Castle vs. Biden
Polling Data
Poll Date Sample Castle (R) Biden (D) Spread
RCP Average 9/30 – 12/2 — 44.5 42.8 Castle +1.7
PPP (D) 11/30 – 12/2 571 LV 45 39 Castle +6
Susquehanna 11/10 – 11/15 850 LV 40 45 Biden +5
Daily Kos/R2000 10/12 – 10/14 600 LV 46 45 Castle +1
Rasmussen Reports 9/30 – 9/30 500 LV 47 42 Castle +5.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, Delaware is not New York — or Massacusetts. Polling here will always be infrequent compared to those media centers, although I suspect that will change since Big Joe’s race is obviously up for grabs in yet another key Senate seat.
Fwiw, Castle was a milktoast governor here and has been a milktoast legislator in the House, never getting my vote, unlike Beau’s old man who has earned my vote, and money, in every race he has ever run — except for the White House, for which he got my vote, but not my money.
Castle has received no backlash for voting against HCR.
bedtimeforbonzo
@Nick: The Castle-Biden race will be close, very close, despite the fact that Delaware has been Biden country for as long as I can remember.
From RealClearPolitics, four polls taken during the same time frame as the one you cited:
Delaware Senate – Castle vs. Biden
Polling Data
Poll Date Sample Castle (R) Biden (D) Spread
RCP Average 9/30 – 12/2 — 44.5 42.8 Castle +1.7
PPP (D) 11/30 – 12/2 571 LV 45 39 Castle +6
Susquehanna 11/10 – 11/15 850 LV 40 45 Biden +5
Daily Kos/R2000 10/12 – 10/14 600 LV 46 45 Castle +1
Rasmussen Reports 9/30 – 9/30 500 LV 47 42 Castle +5.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, Delaware is not New York — or Massacusetts. Polling here will always be infrequent compared to those media centers, although I suspect that will change since Big Joe’s race is obviously up for grabs in yet another key Senate seat.
Fwiw, Castle was a milktoast governor here and has been a milktoast legislator in the House, never getting my vote, unlike Beau’s old man who has earned my vote, and money, in every race he has ever run — except for the White House, for which he got my vote, but not my money.
Castle has received no backlash for voting against HCR.
bedtimeforbonzo
@Nick: The Castle-Biden race will be close, very close, despite the fact that Delaware has been Biden country for as long as I can remember.
From RealClearPolitics, four polls taken during the same time frame as the one you cited:
Delaware Senate – Castle vs. Biden
Polling Data
Poll Date Sample Castle (R) Biden (D) Spread
RCP Average 9/30 – 12/2 — 44.5 42.8 Castle +1.7
PPP (D) 11/30 – 12/2 571 LV 45 39 Castle +6
Susquehanna 11/10 – 11/15 850 LV 40 45 Biden +5
Daily Kos/R2000 10/12 – 10/14 600 LV 46 45 Castle +1
Rasmussen Reports 9/30 – 9/30 500 LV 47 42 Castle +5.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, Delaware is not New York — or Massacusetts. Polling here will always be infrequent compared to those media centers, although I suspect that will change since Big Joe’s old seat race is obviously up for grabs in yet another key Senate seat.
Fwiw, Castle was a milktoast governor here and has been a milktoast legislator in the House, never getting my vote, unlike Beau’s old man who has earned my vote, and money, in every race he has ever run — except for the White House, for which he got my vote, but not my money.
Castle has received no backlash for voting against HCR.
The Raven
More specific analysis of the local Boston situation.
“All politics is local.” Croak!
bedtimeforbonzo
@Uriel: From the Land of “You People” — Today’s NBC/Wall Street Journal: 54 percent of Americans feel the country is headed in the wrong direction.
And that is the among the good news for the Great Obama.
Re: “No one here has been arguing anything like this what-so-ever. At all. Period. The end.”
Not quite.
Dean-Rendell in 2012.
bedtimeforbonzo
@CDT: Well said. We who criticize the Great Obama are commies. Or something like that. Sad — and my party laughed at Republicans for their failure, their absolute reluctance, to criticize GWB.
Rick Taylor
@Sleeper
__
I agree, the DNC deserves a big portion of the blame as well. Isn’t part of their job to make sure that candidates win? And so it ultimately is Obama’s responsibility; he chose the head of the DNC who replaced Dean, and many of the staffers came from his campaign. The buck stops with him.
bedtimeforbonzo
@Ailuridae: Actually, in a rare state of shock, Maddow seemed more tone deaf than Olbermann last night. Last I checked, the NYC paramedics had yet to dislodge KO’s ass for the Great One’s ass.
bedtimeforbonzo
Axelrod just now on MSNBC: “I would argue that there is a general discontent about the economy right now.”
Glad he got the memo.
bedtimeforbonzo
Gibbs, joining Axelrod on the White House lawn for a live interview on MSNBC: “There is an anger a real frustration, people’s jobs being shipped overseas.”
Good to see these guys are catching up the economy.
Now I know who crafted Mr. Obama’s laughable, disgraceful HAMP.
CDT
@bedtime.
“It’s the economy, stupid.”
“President Obama, for all his smarts, for all his great speech-making ability, forgot that and staked his entire first year, his entire political capital on HCR that is now DOA, while millions upon millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes, the wages, their self-esteem—all while Timmy and the Great O took special care in making Wall Street whole; in fact, in putting the Masters of the Universe, the very robber barrons who wrecked the economy in the first place, back in charge and rolling in the dough.”
That’s dead-on. People aren’t stupid, and they saw three things happening at the same time: Health turning into a big corporate giveaway, the Democrats flailing, and Wall Street being made whole while everyone was left to fend for themselves. I’d bet there is something of an inverse relationship between support for HCR and wall Street’s recovery. The stimulus was always too small, and no doubt one reason Obama decided not to push for more was that he was trying to preserve some Republican good will for HCR. Remember how he catered to Olympia Snowe on the stimulus package by agreeing to forego some aid to states and cities? That worked out nicely.
We really suck at delivering results. That pisses off liberals and turns off independents and persuadable Republicans, who appreciate strength. We need a dramatic course correction. The answer is not cap and trade; with due respect to Quiddity, that would be another disaster portrayed as another distraction from the economy. Health care was always of more immediate concern to voters.
Dump health care, talk bipartisan, but push the biggest and most liberal stimulus bill conceivable. The Republicans have been lying about the cost of HCR. Use that to your advantage, and treat the purported cost of that as “found money” now available for stimulus purposes instead.
That’s what we should do. What we will do, of course, is switch to budget-balancing mode, do a bunch of hand-wringing, and prolong the economic agony. On the bright side, if Obama starts enough wars, we can get an economic stimulus inadvertently.
bedtimeforbonzo
@Rick Taylor: Thank you for the link. Kaine’s first defeat, but he has time to recover, except as the story suggests, he is little more than a mouthpiece for President Obama. Howard Dean did a very nice job as a Kaine’s predecessor and the former Virgina governor would be wise to seek his counsel.
bedtimeforbonzo
@Rick Taylor: Thank you for the link. Kaine’s first defeat, but he has time to recover, except as the story suggests, he is little more than a mouthpiece for President Obama. Howard Dean did a very nice job as a Kaine’s predecessor and the former Virgina governor would be wise to seek his counsel.
bedtimeforbonzo
@CDT: Jobs, jobs, jobs.
And keeping families in their homes.
I can’t think of any reason why a president with all of the political capital Mr. Obama had to spend this time last year would not have spent every waking hour putting his first-year focus on jobs and the foreclosure crisis, rather than playing pattycake with Olympia Snowe and Mitch McConnell and Charles Grassley.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and keeping families in their homes — that would have been real Change from the Bush presidency and it would have kept Republicans at bay, and I suspect the news last night would have been different.
Instead, unemployment numbers kept getting worse and Wall Street’s numbers kept getting better — a disconnect even a low-information voter may notice, something he or she probably notices every Friday they get their paycheck, assuming they still get a paycheck, and every moth they write out the check for the mortgage payment to Wells Fargo or Bank of America or Citibank, assuming they still have a mortgage.
CDT
@bedtime
“I can’t think of any reason why a president with all of the political capital Mr. Obama had to spend this time last year would not have spent every waking hour putting his first-year focus on jobs and the foreclosure crisis, rather than playing pattycake with Olympia Snowe and Mitch McConnell and Charles Grassley.”
I can’t, either. No doubt somebody on this thread can explain how this has all been part of some brilliant, 11-dimensional chess that we weak-minded, secret Republican wannabes just can’t understand.
Wouldn’t it have been nice to force Republicans to run against the idea of helping Americans get back to work and stay in their home, rather than against a bill that forces them to buy expensive health insurance from rapacious private companies.
We have one party with no brains, and one with no balls.
Flugelhorn
@Chris Johnson: I would just like to point out that you are an idiot.
@bedtimeforbonzo: The word you are looking for is “Milquetoast”.
That will be all.
kay
@Brien Jackson:
Thanks. So, in your view, the House approves the Senate bill verbatim or it’s over?
That’s not actually my worst case, but thanks. My worst case is they all run away screaming in abject terror and do nothing.
I keep hearing they should just pass the insurance regs, but that doesn’t make any sense. If they bar refusal based on pre-existing conditions without near-universality, premiums are gonna go way the hell up.
I can’t take this apart. I keep running into how one provision is conditioned on passage of another.
bedtimeforbonzo
@Flugelhorn: Thank you, Flugelhorn. Milktoast may be just as bland and weak, but it definitely requires more vowels.
bedtimeforbonzo
@Jules Crittenden » Republican Party Time: Well-written, insightful post on your blog, even if it does lean right. Sometimes the truth hurts.
bedtimeforbonzo
@CDT: . . .
“We have one party with no brains, and one with no balls.”
Which is why I supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries, little doubt that she has a bigger set.
bedtimeforbonzo
Turn on MSNBC.
President Obama is giving a speech right now, saying he will sign a directive aimed at tax cheats.
The man looks like he aged 10 years overnight.
Being president is a bitch.
SteveCan
Dear John ….
You really need to seek medical help.
Corner Stone
@Midnight Marauder:
Back away from the bowl friend. Just back away.
Brachiator
@CDT:
I agree with you about jobs and the economy. However, a big stimulus bill would be a waste of time. The White House has focused too much on restoring Wall Street and financial markets, but they don’t have a clue as to what to do about the economy. The Departments of Commerce and Labor should be leading the charge for economic development, instead of the Treasury boneheads.
The only thing really worth a damn in the stimulus bills has been the extension of unemployment benefits, but this is like treading water, it doesn’t do anything new.
The White House has also get up off its behind and roll out some effective banking and financial markets regulation. If they really had balls they would force down credit card interest rates.
Health care reform — I don’t know. They really overcomplicated reform. I’m just baffled at how they screwed the pooch on this one.
The Democrats must be getting advice from NBC on how to screw up a good thing and a ruin a strong hand.
TheLastBrainLeft
Doesn’t anyone think that this Coakley loss may be directly related to the idea that most people do NOT support the liberal healthcare reform? Seems that this moderate can see that quite clearly.
AxelFoley
@Mnemosyne:
This! This! A thousand times, this!
Their silence speaks volumes.
Oh, but it’s easier to blame Obama, instead of rolling up their sleeves and doing work–even though Obama himself said many times he couldn’t do this alone.
AxelFoley
@bedtimeforbonzo:
Heh, very fitting username.
Ziya Fortunato
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