I realize John touched on this earlier, but since we only had 500 comments, I don’t think it’s been fully discussed. If Coakley loses today, in what way will it be Obama’s fault?
Showing up too late to support her? Crappy health care bill that pisses voters off? Pissing off the base?
What am I leaving out?
(This is not entirely facetious, it’s possible that there is something that the WH could have done differently in this race.)
Feel free to speculate on Village narratives too: too cold and aloof, misreading the mandate (I expect to hear that one a lot)….
Update. If you could pick just one philosopher with whom to rebuke Obama, who would it be?
Quinn
If only he had been more bi-partisan in his approach…
Pangloss
We voted for Obama because of his magic wand and pixie dust. Where the hell is it?
arguingwithsignposts
In absolutely no way is this Obama’s fault. Crappy candidate ran a crappy campaign, didn’t seek out assistance until the last minute, and elections are at least in part funded/helped by the DSCC/DNC.
Lesson: take nothing for granted.
arguingwithsignposts
@Pangloss: Don’t forget the unicorn ponies and brand new bicycles.
DougJ
Coakley has made some extremely tone-deaf comments. I see that as the biggest problem here, FWIW.
Zifnab
I was a little confused on how the WH was in charge of getting Massachusetts Democrats elected. Winning as a Dem in MA should be a no-brainer. You just have to campaign a little. Coakley didn’t. She put her name on the ballot and went back to bed. That’s hardly Obama’s fault.
General Winfield Stuck
Obama secretly funded Hitler.
Thought I’d Godwin this thread early on just to the ball rolling.
Then go Galt.
DougJ
Thought I’d Godwin this thread early on just to the ball rolling.
I actually saw Godwin last week, though I didn’t get a chance to speak with him. More on that later…
seabe
As I stated on Booman’s blog:
I think it’s overpowering evidence that the “rural” Democrat style GOTV is a dying strategy. She’s running her campaign exactly like Deeds; not on policy, but where she focuses her resources. Deeds tried doing what Warner did: focusing on the western regions of the state, and winning significantly in Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Hampton areas.
Rather than focusing on urban areas, she went to Plymouth, Worcester and Norfolk. With Massachusetts, this is horrible strategy. She should have poured a lot more in the urban areas like Boston. If you win Boston with at least 50% with decent turn out, it’s hard to imagine how you’ll lose a state-wide election. You’d have to lose other areas by like 20 or so points, and break even in others (break even in areas that are pretty damn liberal and lose by 20 or so points in those suburban areas).
This is why Capuano was a much better option.
Martin
Magical unity pony carries certain supernatural responsibilities, you know. It’s his fault the same way it’s Jesus’s fault that I didn’t get an iPhone for Christmas.
General Winfield Stuck
@DougJ: Yea, she claimed the Taliban was gone from Afghanistan.
My Purl the Parakeet called bullshit on that one.
Jamey
If only Obama had spoken more in negro dialect… or at least not been born a Muslim.
Philosopher’s take, contra Obama? Gotta be Jonah Goldberg. For reasons I needn’t elaborate.
jurassicpork
Jean Paul Sartre. He would old school Obama on the absurdity of trying to snuggle up to Republicans.
As regards the election in my state:
Today’s runoff election to decide who will be the junior senator of my state features more douchebags than Amsterdam’s red light district.
Houston
Maybe, just maybe, Obama’s moderation felt like sand being kicked into the face of Massachussetts’s more liberal Democratic base. If I were a Massachussetts voter, I’d be hard pressed to give a shit one way or the other. The health care bill looks nothing like what I feel was promised by both Obama and the National Democratic Party. Afghanistan looks nothing like I imagined it might with Obama calling the shots. Oh yeah, we’re still 100,000+ strong in Iraq. Oh, and what about Gay rights? Oh yeah, we need to be patient and one day they’ll brush the crumbs from the table for us to feast on.
Screw the Democrats. They’re no better than the Republicans. They both work harder for corporations than they do for middle-class workers such as myself.
norbizness
It’s not his fault she hired Jack Pardee as her campaign manager.
BenA
I’ve gone round and round on this… and I think it boils down to: people are pissed off, and pissed of people do irrational things… like stay home when they should go out and vote, like vote against their own interest, like pay for ads that work against their own interest.
The Democratic party as a whole has done a lot of things to piss people off: Like not passing health care reform. I think a lot of people around the “progressive left” over think the actual substance of the reform… a lot of people just know that fuck all has been done, and there’s a lot of negative stories around what has been done.
And of course this is a Mass. issue…. ultimately the Democratic Party in Mass. has produced a pretty flawed candidate. I think they all just assumed it was a given that any Dem was going to win in a land slide for because it was Ted Kennedy’s seat.
Oh yeah and the economy still sucks.
Sam Hutcheson
Aliester Crowley.
Pangloss
All we need now is DNA samples from Immanuel Kant and Ayn Rand.
Fern
I guess there is no chance of waiting to apportion blame until such time as we know whether she’s lost?
Legalize
One philosopher? Jesus. Duh.
Martin
Democrats didn’t vote for Capuano. That’s the real issue here. Democrats need to figure out whether they’re voting policy, electability, demographics, or what have you. Why didn’t the Coakley supporters, since there were substantially more than Capuano had, show up to help her campaign? If memory served, no small component of Obama’s win was the fact that Obama’s supporters worked their asses off relative to even Hillary’s supporters, and certainly relative to McCain’s.
Mk3872
Every election other than POTUS in this country is primarily local.
Rather than focus on Obama, maybe the whole problem is the Senate where a super majority is now the only way to pass legislation .
If Brown wins, Dems will still have a HUGE majority.
Yet bcuz the GOP is allowed to fillibuster everything, having a 59 member caucaus is STILL not enough.
That’s just crazy …
arguingwithsignposts
That’s easy: Nietzsche.
Because conservatives are a bunch of nihilistic assholes.
Malron
I think people need to take note of how POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin is carrying the GOP’s water this morning by hitting every media outlet to push the meme that Martha Coakley’s already lost the senate seat. As I was in the car at about 7:30 AM est I heard him on the Bill Press Show trashing Coakley because she held a fundraiser in DC that lobbyists attended. Press never noted that Brown did the same thing, nor did he mention the Tea bagger rallies Brown attended while claiming he never heard of of the teabag movement. Just now I saw Martin on MSNBC repeating the same lies while Tamryn Hall just sat there and nodded at everything he said. Just sickening.
But you know what? If Coakley does lose today, at least it will force the Democrats to stop promoting the Myth of 60 by negotiating with lunatics in both parties and start passing legislation with 50+1.
ribber
One aspect of this race can be put on Obama: If instead of having Baucus putz around with trying to get to first base with Republicans on the finance committee futilely for TWO MONTHS, if instead they had finished the healthcare bill last year and it was signed, sealed, delivered, Brown frankly would not have a platform. What gave him a boost is that he became the hail mary pass for stopping final passage, and with that, every opponent nation-wide started pouring money and attention to him.
If HCR was done and off the table, this race would have been a yawner.
Roger Moore
If only Obama hadn’t assassinated Kennedy in the hopes of getting an O-bot lackey into power, none of this would have happened.
minachica
I think Orange Cat says it all.
via Comrade Mary in the Open Thread
Napoleon
Coakley has been a lousy candidate. It has nothing to do with Obama (who polling shows is popular in MA). If she looses its mostly for idiosyncratic reasons, and to the extent it is not it is because of the economy, which simply isn’t Obama’s fault.
As to philosophers of course it would he Dubbya’s favorite, Jesus.
Randy P
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like this race only hit the radar screen of the left blogosphere around last Thursday, when we started hearing “OMG, OMG, Teddy’s seat is going to a wingnut!” Was I just not paying attention or did it fall of the radar screen of the national party?
Martin
@DougJ: She’s not a bad person, she’s just a bad candidate. Sometimes that’s fatal, however.
What sorta pisses me off is that the MA public doesn’t see the same stakes on this election as the other 49 because MA has made a reasonable pass at HCR on their own. Their future doesn’t look quite as bleak, and the urgency just isn’t there.
From the sounds of it, turnout isn’t bad today, which is an encouraging sign.
Violet
Philosopher? Thomas Hobbes.
As for the race, everything is Obama’s fault. That’s just how it works. Unless something good happens, in which case it’s more shared glory.
Legalize
I blame Obama for robbing the Teabaggers of their 1st amendment right to not have a socalist, blackity, nazi, commie, Kenyan, Islamohomo for a president. None of this would have happened if the presidency hadn’t been stolen from Sarah! by ACORN and George Soros.
Redshirt
Bumper sticker spotted a couple of nights ago in MA: “End Obama’s Endless wars”.
I was dumbstruck. The car was filled with other lefty type stickers. So I suspect I passed a Firebagger.
Egads. We’re doomed.
McGeorge Bundy
For my philosopher I choose…
WITTGENSTEIN
That is all.
Why oh why
I don’t know how you can not blame this loss (if it happens) on Obama and the Democratic Senators. The economy is bad, but this is Massachussetts.
Whether it is more Obama’s fault, or Reid&co’s fault is debatable.
Philosopher: Niebuhr (trick question!)
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Interesting question. After a Moyers show last year in which the various shortcomings of the body politic in this country were cussed and discussed, I thought I was getting to an understanding of the problems.
But I’ve changed my mind. I’ve come to think that the American middle class is just lazy and spoiled, and wants at the same time to treat government as an unwelcome guest in the house, while expecting the guest to show up at the door with gifts, tools to help with the extra room addition, and rent money for the use of the guest room. Meanwhile we talk about the guest as if he is crazy, evil, and signularly bent on our own personal destruction.
Reagan was wrong. Government is the solution to the problem, but the key is that government works only when citizens appreciate what good government is and get involved to make sure that we actually have good government. What we are doing here is a great example of what’s wrong. Daily, obsessive bitching and whining about every fucking thing you didn’t get from the Concierge Government you had conjured up out of your magical thinking, is not really helpful. You might want to go out and put in some campaign signs, make some phone calls, meet some candidates …. all the stuff, by the way, that the morons we make fun of every day have done diligently over the years to build their political machines and tend to them.
We love to blame the president. The media. The opposition. Whatever. But the problem is us, and you can start with the “us” that hangs out right here. If everyone here worked as hard at getting personally involved in making stuff work better, as we do to bitch every day about how it isn’t working better ….. well, you get the idea.
By the way, didn’t Broder write an annoying column or something today?
Could the WH have done something better? I honestly don’t think so. If Coakley loses it will be because a lazy and inattentive Mass Democratic Party dropped the ball, from where I am watching the game.
Pangloss
Didn’t Obama campaign on developing a cure for Ted Kennedy’s cancer? If he had followed through with that promise, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
That’s easy. I would choose George W. Bush’s favorite philosopher, Jesus, to rebuke Obama.
NobodySpecial
General John Schofield.
“The veteran American soldier fights very much as he has been accustomed to work his farm or run his sawmill; he wants to see a fair prospect that it is going to pay.”
I’d add that American politics has that small similarity to the soldier, and Obama has sucked at getting people to believe that all their work is going to pay.
Martin
@Randy P:
This race got tied to HCR. If we had a bill by now, nobody would have cared about MA (I don’t agree that it should be this way, but it would). As the reconciliation has dragged out, suddenly it dawned on people that the stakes in MA were pretty huge.
SpotWeld
Would Mark Twain count.
Mr Furious
Posted at the tail end of the open thread, but appropriate here:
Yeah. And that’s Obama’s fault. And this will help.
This election is turning into The Darwin Awards.
Adding: As arguingwithsignposts said earlier, that guy is an idiot, and comparisons with 60s with Vietnam, riots and firehoses and Kent State is beyond absurd—but the fact that he somehow blames the dischord on Obama just boggles the mind.
Elie mentioned that people who claim “I voted for Obama, but…” are often full of shit, and I have to hope this guy is too.
I mean, if that what Dennis Sheehan really believes, then obviously he never voted for Obama, right? Clearly he gets his information from Limbaugh and FOX News…
or the Washington Post…CNN…Time…The New York Times…
Ah, fuck. We’re doomed.
Cain
@Houston: <blockquoteScrew the Democrats. They’re no better than the Republicans. They both work harder for corporations than they do for middle-class workers such as myself.
Jeez, dude. So I guess you just want Republicans back in power right? That’ll show the Democratic party, right? Douche. You’re the one who loses. Believe it or not, we all have to contend with the blue dogs who de-railed healthcare. I don’t know why the Democratic party fields republican lite senators and representatives but that’s where you have to target if you want some kind of grand liberal love nest in the grand U.S. of A. I suggest you shut your gob and get people to join the democratic party.
cain
artem1s
If HCR was done and off the table, this race would have been a yawner.
gotta go with this. If the bill was passed already, no matter how bad, no one would be paying attention to this race. Instead you’ve got both the GOP and the pixie dust independents thinking that they can still kill bill by being obstructionists and rolling out to the polls in force.
Dennis-SGMM
I blame the Magical Unity Pony for going AWOL during the Most Important Election in the History of Mankind.
kay
@Fern:
I’m with you, Fern. It’s hard enough losing, when you actually do.
I don’t know why people want to spend a solid week eagerly anticipating losing.
I call this “premortem” in my office. I force them to wait to point fingers until we actually lose.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Well, the Republican was right, it was never “Teddy’s Seat.”
And that stupid lazy and arrogant attitude probably explains why the Dems up there have dropped the ball so many times in this game. They should have been working as hard for that seat as they would if they’d never had it before in their lifetimes. What, did they think that the voters would just give them tenure? WTF?
flounder
I blame Michelle’s ‘Whitey Bulger Tape’.
TenguPhule
Good ol Ben Franklin, who would deliver a verbal smackdown as to why he hasn’t started hanging the Republicans in job lots for being traitors to the nation and a danger to all free thinking individuals.
Uriel
Didn’t Ayn Rand render all other philosophers moot?
I was under the impression that Galt’s speech in Shrugged had rightfully consigned all those jesuses and heideggers and buddas and what not to the trash heap of history as the moochers and looters they obviously were, but you seem to be suggesting otherwise.
You’re confusing me.
ploeg
For the record, I’m more concerned with what Obama is going to do about the situation, if it actually happens. I always figured that Obama was the sort of person who could learn from mistakes and change what he does in a positive way (for example, by weighing the value of his advisors’ opinions and acting accordingly).
I’m sure that we’ll see whether that perception of mine was correct shortly.
Zifnab
@Malron:
Well, they might do that. Or they might go back to tilting at windmills and sucking up to Olympia Snowe.
Cain
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: <blockquoteBut I’ve changed my mind. I’ve come to think that the American middle class is just lazy and spoiled, and wants at the same time to treat government as an unwelcome guest in the house, while expecting the guest to show up at the door with gifts, tools to help with the extra room addition, and rent money for the use of the guest room. Meanwhile we talk about the guest as if he is crazy, evil, and signularly bent on our own personal destruction.
Yep. I’ve had discussions with a lot of people and this is the conclusion. The american workforce has gotten lazy. Reagan and congress fucked things up royally. (we can’t just blame Reagan for this) If you look at the kind of things that american workers have done over the long stretch and what they were willing to do, that’s some awesome shit. These days my wife can’t even get people at her office to do work.
cain
Libby
I’m pushing a different meme today and asking people to try group synergy. Visualize victory. *See* the headline, “Coakley Wins!” and hold it in your mind today. It couldn’t hurt.
Napoleon
@Mr Furious:
When I see quotes from people like him if there was a way to prove it I would be willing to bet $100 that the guy is lying and is just a wingnut spewing bs to slime the Dems. Keep in mind that is exactly how we got Joe the Plumber, except in his case he ended up getting enough scrutiny that it came to light that everything about his initial comments to Obama were BS
morzer
Philosopher: Yogi Berra. It’s deja vu all over again.
The reason Democrats lose is that we don’t build the right institutions and structures for getting a unified message out and repeating it ad nauseam. The right-wing has done this and now controls the media narrative to an alarming extent.
J.W. Hamner
I kind of want to rant about how it’s all on Mass Dems who didn’t bother to get informed about the candidates or even show up to vote in the primary… but then I didn’t know who I was going to vote for until the day of either, and assumed that even though Coakley seemed really lame that she’d win by 20 points.
JoePo
The philosopher I would pick is a humble desert handyman named Jesus. He said something about burying talents to render to Caesar what is his so that you can drive demon pigs into the sea or some bullshit.
FormerSwingVoter
How’s the old joke go? “I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”
Maude
OT Christie is govenor of NJ
I wonder how long he’ll last.
slag
I don’t know jack about Massachusetts politics, relatively speaking, so I don’t really know the answer to this question.
That said, I know there’s no way I could bring myself to vote for a Republican anytime soon. In fact, we had a “reasonable Republican” running against a crap Dem on the ballot here last election, and I just left it blank. I was not alone.
So, I guess, overall, I think this administration could have done a slightly better job of defining Republicans as the enemy to progress that they are. People have short memories. And if this election had happened a little earlier, I doubt Brown would be in the position he is in. But if the Obama Administration had taken a slightly harder line with Republicans earlier on, I think his popularity would have held and Republican popularity would have sunk further.
But I could easily be totally wrong and armchair quarterbacks never win a game and all that.
Brien Jackson
@Martin:
Coakley won strictly on name recognition. That’s a big part of why I’m not a huge fan of special elections.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Cain:
Reminds me of my office. I tell people, you know, as soon as I walk in the door in the morning, I can feel the stress and the apathy.
And they say, you’re right, TZ, as soon as you walk in, we feel the stress and the apathy too.
So, there ya go. Can’t get any sugar these days.
JD Rhoades
A lesson which we should have learned from Hillary Clinton and John McCain, both of whom campaigned as if they were entitled to the office.
Chyron HR
Wait, there’s an election today? I thought Obama was a dictator–like, Hitler crossed with Stalin. Well, in that case I blame Obama for even allowing a free election in his fascist police state.
Mumphrey
@ BenA:
Yes, I think you’re on to something here. I live in Virginia, and I wondered what the hell we Democrats were thinking, not showing up to vote in November. I know Deeds got blamed for losing: people said he didn’t campaign after the primary, while McDonnell did, and said that was dumb. What this overlooks is that McDonnell had nobody running against him for the nomination, and Deeds had to win a 3-way primary, which took a lot of money. While McDonnell was already running in the general election, Deeds had to raise money for 2 months. By the time he had enough, he was already too far behind.
I happen to think that Deeds was a good candidate for Virginia–the best of the 3 Democrats who ran. He’s not as liberal as I’d choose my governor to be, but I don’t live in Maryland or Vermont, I live in Virginia. He fits in right about with Webb and Warner. And he lost in 2005 to that very same McDonnell by about 300 votes–in a statewide election for attorney general.
I canvassed for Deeds last fall, and I met a lot of people who should have been willing to go out and vote, but who said, “I’m not voting at all this year.” People were lazy or disillusioned, and now we get to live for 4 years with a reactionary asshole presiding over the state.
When people get pissed off, they do dumb things.
Laura W
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense.
~Rumi
/youbetcha
The Grand Panjandrum
Sure today’s election is important, but maybe, just maybe, a little perspective is in order. A Port-au-Prince woman was pulled alive from the rubble of her workplace after six days of being buried.
RAM
I don’t know about voters in Mass., but I’ve been truly disappointed at Obama’s refusal to see the laws enforced, particularly regarding torture, illegal surveillance, and the criminals who nearly brought down the world’s finances. I had hoped for much more from someone who appeared to take the rule of law very seriously.
That said, I’m not sure why any of that would make me vote for a moron like Brown, who is apparently enthusiastically in favor of all of those odious things, and against Coakley, who admittedly seems like another in a string of weak Dem candidates whose argument for election seems to be “It’s my turn.”
I think the enthusiasm gap is real and growing and I’m puzzled why Obama’s brain trust seems to think there’s political hay to be made by pissing off the Dem base.
SGEW
I know you’re being sarcastic, but I’m actually trying to take the question seriously, and I’m at a loss.
Foucault, I suppose, but I sure as hell don’t agree with Foucault.
Bertrand Russell, maybe?
Laura W
@Laura W: FYWP.
Can’t even deal with a line break in italics?
~NotRumi
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Laura W:
Must be time for the annual BJ Rodney King Memorial Can’t We All Just Fucking Get Along Day.
Malron
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
Right now on MSNBC there are some American parents attacking Obama, claiming he isn’t doing enough to find their 4 children. Really? 3 million people struggling, trapped, losing limbs, confused, no infrastructure, government collaped and you’re attacking the president because he doesn’t stop the relief efforts and look for your kids?
JoePo
@The Grand Panjandrum: NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ONE-
OFF SPECIAL ELECTIONS. THEY AND THEY ALONE WILL TELL US IF OBAMA IS EITHER CARTER OR HITLER.
/Firebagged
Sentient Puddle
Speaking for the present, one media narrative I’m sick as hell of hearing about today is the social networking meme. Scott Brown has ten times as many followers on Facebook and Twitter! He’s clearly got it won! Because yes, that 95% of people following him who don’t live in the state* get a vote in this election!
This stuff just goes to show that the media really has no idea how social networking plays into campaigning. I think they just assume it’s something that can replace a GOTV machine when really, it’s actually a cog in said machine.
*Totally unresearched number that I pulled out of my ass just now, but probably close to accurate.
Michael D.
DougJ:
You know the answer to this, Doug. The White House needed to be whiter.
BenA
@Mumphrey:
It seems like your average voter in this country is a lot like my six year old… for him to eat a meal without a fuss, he’s absolutely got to love it. It’s got to be his favorite thing ever. He’s not going to eat something he thinks is just okay. If people are absolutely thrilled with a candidate they just sit at home or forget to vote.
The other thing that pisses me off about the race is if Coakley loses a lot of FDL morons will be happy about and say: “See we told you so…” as if they’re not partially culpable for the loss… and for fucks sake the entire Bush II presidency… these are the same losers that gave us the Nadar vote in 2000.
It annoys me to no end that my father is absolutely right: The Dems would rather be “right”, than win.
Rhoda
The idea that a moderate liberal agenda in Washington has destroyed the Democratic Party is straight up bullshit. Folks aren’t voting Republican in MA b/c of that; but because of the economy.
The idea that the President not fighting to the death for the public option in health care reform is killing democrats is bullshit.
This is all very simple. The President proposed a stimulus bill, that stimulus bill was too small. It still BARELY passed and Nelson, Snowe, Collins, and Specter immediately crowed they’d reduced it and took out a 100 billion for the states. (Bet Arnold could have used some of that in Cali, ditto for Patterson in NY and Perry in TX.)
Then he took over the autos because killing them would lead to a depression in the Midwest and kill hope of recovery.
Then he turned to health care which was fine until Baucus stalled that mother up in the summer; during which the Republicans AstroTurfed the tea parties into the hearts and minds of the MSM happy to have a shiny bright movement opposed to Obama to cover.
During all this: I don’t remember seeing progressives sell the stimulus or Congressional Democrats sell the stimulus. I don’t remember Congressional Democrats selling the auto bailout. I don’t remember Congressional Democrats even doing the easy stuff like tying the fact Republicans held up unemployment insurance and Cobra extensions.
No one, aside from Pelosi IMO, has had Obama’s back. And the progressive netroots have mostly echoed right wing memes to tear down the president; which the MSM happily regurgitates. So the administration (and by proxy the party) is being attacked from the left and right. And the middle just sees NOTHING being done. Because while the House passed the president’s agenda; the Senate’s done nothing. Which IMO is why the DCCC has had a better record on special elections and been winning EVEN in this shitty environment. House democrats stand for something and get shit done. It’s the senate destroying the party.
In all of this: No one has been attacking the Republican party. Everyone’s firing on the democrats. And that is why Republicans can cloak themselves as moderates and run against the party in power while fighting to stop all the legislation people mandated in 2008 from happening.
Everyone knew after the stimulus that the Republican party went all in on the obstruction plan to depress the democratic base (which is larger) and build enthusaism among it’s base and kill hope for recovery or any good being credited to the Democrats. Senate centerists from red states where still afraid to move forward without cover from them and didn’t face the fact that it wasn’t coming until this fall; by then it was too late.
So, we are here IMO not because of the White House’s actions but because of the Senate’s inaction.
Given all that; Obama and his team should have done financial reform first and shot the bankers on Main Street. Then done health care. Because all of the above would be true; but the Republicans would have showed their true colors and independents would recoil (see insulting bank tax that should be higher and coupled with a transactions tax). The White House would also be able to do a second stimulus if that had happened and bailout wouldn’t be associated with this administration. That was the big mistake of 2009 that the administration made from where I am sitting.
FlipYrWhig
@kay:
Isn’t that amazing? And is there any doubt that we do this on the left?
My theory is that the reason is this: Because if you’re one of the first people to expect the worst, and things go badly, then you’re smarter than everyone else. On the other hand, if you’re one of the first people to expect the best, and things go well, then you’re just a fanboy.
We have overdeveloped Toldyaso tendencies.
General Winfield Stuck
Who else?
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@SGEW:
I think the pendulum on Foucalt is swinging back ……
Heh.
Okay, different Foucalt.
Christ, I can’t believe I made that lameass joke.
Please don’t hate me.
donovong
No matter what happens, the people of Massachusetts will get what they deserve. However, the rest of the country make just take it up the ass because Coakley is a lazy idiot.
Oy…
Laura W
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: And in the spirit of the day, I dedicate this one to you. Because I know how much you love it when I talk about wine:
Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king and choose the purest, the ones unadulterated
with fear, or some urgency about “what’s needed.'”
Drink the wine that moves you as a camel moves as it’s been untied, and is just ambling about.
~Rumi
And now I’m taking my just-untied-bad-camel-self and ambling up the mountain to work.
Martin
@Malron:
Ah, so Coakley losing will magically make the filibuster disappear. I didn’t realize that. Can I come to your reality? Mine kinda sucks.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Hmm. Tossup between Homer Simpson, and Professor Irwin Corey.
Michael
Obama’s not a benign daddy leftie decree signer. It is like totally his fault.
Nader would have just signed everything into existence, easy peasy lemon squeezie.
CalD
I think for all the talk from big P Progressivers that healthcare reform doesn’t go far enough, this kind of illustrates that a lot of people are feeling pushed leftward to pretty much to the breaking point. That and the fact that the economy sucks and economic downturn tends to hit hardest at lower income and education levels make it kind of a tough market for Democrats.
People are who don’t pay much attention to anything but sports are only remembering they were better off two years ago and have long since forgotten who’s fault that really is or that they were a lot better off than that before Republicans rode into town in 2000. So they’re looking for someone to blame. People tend to be grumpy in January in the northeast anyway.
Elie
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
If Coakley looses I blame the citizens of Massachusetts — their inability to see the stakes and possibly for catastrophic stupidity and short sightedness…
We are in a strange place in this country right now…very strange
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Laura W:
What goes better with camel: Red, or white?
If I had my life to live over again, I think I would just drink more and work less.
Noonan
No matter what happens tonight we already know who the real winner is: John McCain.
colby
“The health care bill looks nothing like what I feel was promised by both Obama and the National Democratic Party. Afghanistan looks nothing like I imagined it might with Obama calling the shots.”
What you “feel” was promised? What you “imagined”? Yeah, that right there is exactly the problem. Instead of paying attention to what Obama and other Dems said they’d do, you paid attention to your feelings and your imagination, and then you’re so so SO frustrated that Obama and the Dems did mostly what they SAID they’d do, instead of exactly the thing you concocted in your own mind.
Martin
@CalD:
This has nothing to do about being pushed leftward as it isn’t a rebuke against HCR. It has everything to do with people feeling as though progress isn’t being made, which is 80% the fault of the GOP and 20% the fault of asshat Democrats, and pissed off people do stupid things, like vote for the guys that are actually pissing them off.
Mumphrey
@ Mk3872 & Malron:
I could be wrong about this, but the problem in the Senate is that nobody even needs to filibuster. We’ve all seen Jimmy Stewart as Jefferson Smith, bravely standing alone up there, and fighting the good fight, and we think that’s what it means, only it doesn’t. There have been legitimate filibusters, where one guy rants for hours; Strom Thurmond did if for 25 hours straight or something about 40 or 50 years ago; I think he was fighting–what else?–a civil rights bill.
But what we have here is a Senate that has a rule that 60 senators need to vote to let a bill or resolution or confirmation come up for a vote. That’s 9 more than 50 + 1. They can’t just say, “Well, hell, let’s just junk this 60 vote thing and pass this with 51!” The rules won’t let them do that. They’d have to change the rules, which is a big deal and awfully hard to do in the middel of a Congress.
I know it’s tempting to blame Obama or Reid or whoever and tell them they should just play hardball with the Republicans, or thell the Republicans, “Fuck off,” but it doesn’t work that way.
Now I think the Republicans have badly abused the 60 vote rule, and the Democrats should do something about it in 2011–though I don’t know how hard that would be, especially if they have fewer seats than they do now–but the way things stand now, it takes 60 votes to pass bills, and since the Democrats have 60 on the nose, and the Republicans are hellbent on standing in the way of every lasst thing, that means that the Democrats need every one of those 60 votes to get anything to a vote. That means they need Lieberman and Nelson and Landreiu and Bayh and Lincoln and Pryor, and that means Lieberman and Landreiu and Nelson, et al., can ask for the moon, and Reid and Durbin are pretty much stuck: they have to give it to them or the bill dies and we get nothing. That’s why the health care bill sucks right now: they had to give away so much to those people to get 60 votes.
Alex S.
I’ve heard that the Brown campaign had an early internal poll showing him only 13 points behind Coakley. His campaign focussed on an under-the-radar strategy, with low turnout and a small but highly energized base. They did a lot of internet campaigning which is hard to take notice of. And his plan almost succeeded. But the democrats woke up and began fighting against the trend. And this “trend” is basically just more republicans tuning in, not really a lot of democrats voting for Brown. Some of the polls showed an electorate with an Obama approval rating of below 50% – in Massachusetts. And we also know that Obama’s approval rating among democrats nationwide is still around 90%, and his overall approval rating is around 50% which is not that far away from the 52,5% of the election. These things are all signs for an extremely low democratic turnout.
However, the turnout is going to be huge today, much bigger than expected. Coakley will win.
And her campaign should have reacted faster, but it’s also true that the policies of the Obama administration are to the right of Massachusetts, almost everything is…. You can say it’s Obama’s fault – you can also say it’s the Senate’s fault. It’s basically everyone’s and noone’s fault.
My philosopher: David Hume.
bayville
Why does Jon Stewart hate
CoakleyAmericaObama?srv
When your administration depends on having a certain number of Senators, you better be up in everyone’s ass about who gets a nod, and pick the best DNC head you can.
Obviously for the MUPpet crowd, Kaine was better than Dean.
Best of luck with that.
Rhoda
@Mumphrey:
It does work that way; but Democrats won’t do it. Bush had 50 Republicans willing to blow up the senate filibuster to pass his bills. The caucus moved the way Rove or Cheney told him to tell them to move. Obama doesn’t have that; while Nelson will vote cloture for Bush on anything you have him refusing to do that for Obama. Same with Bayh and several others whom Durbin canvased to get them just to vote cloture and then go their way. They won’t do it. That show boat mentality is why Democrats don’t get shit done in the senate. Pelosi has real sticks to whip folks into shape in the House, Reid doesn’t.
I think the that’s the heart of the problem. And why Obama doesn’t have the leverage Bush did; which sucks. It also sucks a lot of folks don’t recognize this and blame him anyway.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@colby:
Correct. Obama didn’t “promise” much of anything except that he’d be in favor of a public “plan” which was vaguely described as a subsidized choice or set of choices available to the un- or underinsured. And that we’d attack the preexisting conditions monster.
If anything has damaged healthcare reform, it has been the overreaching of progressives during this process, trying to rig the game in favor of the most aggressive measures right out of the gate. I’m sure this opinion is not popular around here, but there it is. “Public Option”, even as a marketing device, was just dumbass, and did more harm than Death Panels could ever do. Christ, even a second year marketing student would have advised calling it “Expanded Medicare.”
AkaDad
This special election doesn’t seem too important for me to go and clear the inch of snow off my car.
Elie
@Rhoda:
Good comment.
The only thing I slightly disagree with is that O should of tackled financial reform first. He needs an even more functioning Congress than now to do that. He needs the power of the Congress and the Executive to get financial reform done — as big as the healthcare dragon and interests are, multiply by two for the financial sector..
He also needs the victory on healthcare passage to get traction on the financial players..
Just my opinion
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
Okay, what I meant was, I’d drink more.
Fuck the working part.
The Moar You Know
Obama’s failure to be sufficiently liberal, especially his failure to endorse man-on-pumpkin sex, has forever cost him the endorsement of the pumpkin-fuckers.
This lethal strategic error has cost the Massachusetts special election, the 2010 elections, and will cost us the presidency for decades to come.
Why, oh why couldn’t you have been more publicly in favor of man-on-pumpkin sex, Obama?
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Elie:
Unpossible. They knew that they had basically the first half of the congress’ term to get HCR done. That left no room for much else. There was never any other option.
mr. whipple
Every day, in every way, it’s Obama’s fault.
Brien Jackson
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I don’t get what this means. Yes, rescue efforts in Haiti are important, but who holds 1% of the votes in the upper chamber of the legislature of the most consequential state in the world is also pretty important.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Fern:
If she wins, it will be delicious for any number of reasons. But the tea party line will still be that everything is Obama’s fault, except the stuff that’s Rahm’s fault, and goddammit if we’d just elected Hillary like we were fucking supposed to we wouldn’t be in this mess at all.
Rhoda
@Elie:
I think that at the start of his presidency, with the most power and the mandate he had, and the meltdown fresh in people’s memories he would have had an electorate ready for blood and on his side. He would have campaigned for the financial reforms he needs and would have had more enthusiastic support across the board IMO.
And it would have been hard for anyone to go against that.
And a victory there would have paved the path for health reform.
Cat Lady
@Libby:
I filled in that little black oval with the most intensity I’ve ever done anything, with hope and a prayer, FWIW. We’ll see.
There are way more signs, more and louder sign holders, more energy and more enthusiasm for Brown in general.
IF Coakley loses, here’s why I think: Brown’s wife is a long time popular and respected reporter on Boston’s most popular TV news. She’s been a fixture in living rooms all over the state for many years, is active in a lot of charitable organizations and isn’t a Fox-type bubblehead. She’s a huge asset. His daughter was an American Idol finalist, and has performed all over the place around here since then. They’re local celebrities, but small town and approachable, and all attractive in that TV-genre way.
Martha Coakley is… not. I was invited to a house party for her back in early December and was ready to go, then found out she wasn’t going to be there, she was sending someone from her campaign staff. It put me off, but not enough to not vote for her this time. At the rally I went to for her last night, she still seemed diffident. People around here are frustrated, impatient, grumpy and tribal, and are voting as a protest vote. And, the wingnuts on sports radio are impossible to ignore.
I blame Bush for everything. Heckuva job.
16shellsfromathirtyaughtsix
If you run crapple candidates they lose. Whoda thought!
ruemara
It’s Obama’s fault because he never told the DNC/DSC to “Man up, bitches! There’s a fucking war on!” He should be smacked down with verses from Heidegger on truth and beauty for all eternity.
FlipYrWhig
@Rhoda:
I disagree with this, just because health care is so complicated and stands to gore so many different people’s precious oxen; if you’re really trying to do health care as a policy, you have to do it in the narrow window where you’re positioned to have 60 votes.
There are a lot of other things you can try to do chiefly to show the Republicans being obstructionists and assholes, but that’s a different matter than actually trying to get something done. Cracking down on banks and forcing Republicans to defend them would indeed make Republicans look bad; but I don’t think it would change their behavior.
And my sense is that the blogosphere and media liberals would be very excited about Obama’s attempts to fight the good fight against the obstructionist assholes, and energy would be up, and enthusiasm would be up, but not a lot of genuine policy-making would be happening. I think Obama wanted to use this moment to do the grandest, hardest, sloggingest, most acrimony-generating thing on the agenda.
Brien Jackson
The Gang of 14 says hello.
Michael
Obama needs to be there personally with a shovel and a pick, personally accompanied by Jack Bauer so that people can be roughly questioned about the whereabouts.
And it would be so, if Obama weren’t a n****r.
eastriver
Obama could maybe have visited a couple of times. The first time the right after the polling was looking bad. But it’s her fault, obviously.
And let’s not forget that the media CLEARLY want Brown to win. This will position their promos perfectly for the runup to midterms; GOP surging, etc.
I hope everyone had the chance to catch Nooner on Morning Joe this morning say, and I don’t paraphrase, that Brown was “an American.” As opposed to Cloakley? No, guess again. Obama? Yeah, now you’ve got it. (You could see her catch herself after it slipped out. She smoothly shuffled the conversation elsewhere. Racist cow.)
((Note to Doug: if you want to break the 500 comments mark, you’ll have to make your post waaaaaaay more inflammatory. More along the lines of: I think Cloakley’s loss is TOTALLY Obama’s fault. Don’t anybody DARE tell me I’m wrong. And I’m looking at you, BTD and General Winfield.))
cleek
if a Messiah cannot perform miracles, is he really a Messiah ?
what is the sound of one party voting?
Comrade Jake
Put aside for a moment the outcome of this one. The facts are we had a Democratic candidate running who was basically forced to defend the health care bill from the beginning. In Massachusetts.
Something is seriously wrong with that picture. But instead of fixing the problem, all of us are going to try and fix the blame. Good times.
Jamie
I think if Coakley loses it will be due to her unfamiliarity with the dominant media culture. It made her look somewhat inept. She might have done well in a race where she wasn’t the only one.
mr. whipple
And you can keep telling people about it, over and over and over again.
However, when you are wrong, no one cares.
TWP
@DougJ If Coakley loses it will be her own fault for simply expecting a traditionally Democratic seat would automatically go to her. Working for it was not in her plan. There’s no excuse for a bad candidate running a bad campaign.
But if we learned anything from Deeds, it should have been that you have to get to work early and often in this tough environment. It’s not very clear that the WH or the DNC or Coakley learned that lesson at all. They sat around until it was too late. You reap what you sew.
I do think you and John Cole really need to wise up to the fact that Democrats & Independents are pissed out there. And they are pissed at Obama. They feel that they were going to have someone in the White House that was fired up and ready to go. That was going to fight for their interests and do the right thing. After the constant disappointments: zero torture investigations/prosecutions, public option, medicare opt-out, excise tax, lame bank regulation, zero bankster investigations/prosecutions, tax-cheat Geithner, lame loan modification policy, no cramdown, PHARMA deal, etc., you have a lot of Ds who are disillusioned and could care less who wins the next elections. They aren’t interested in voting and are just trying to get by.
You can say they shouldn’t be. You can say they need to buck up and get their shit together and support these candidates via ActBlue and swallow shit and support the passing of healthcare…but that ain’t happening. When you don’t provide fuel to energize the base, you get Democrats who will sit on the sidelines. It’s that simple. You guys may not like it, but it’s time you recognized it.
I agree that people are wrong when they lay blame on Obama for not being who they wanted him to be…that’s unfair. But when big campaign promises are broken and bipartisanship become the sole goal (over good policy), you reap the consequences. And the consequences are a lot less Democrats at the polls.
You may not like it, but that’s the reality right now. It’s up to the Democratic President and Congress to change that reality. Stay the course ain’t working.
BTD
It’s the DFHs fault. Always.
KCinDC
It’s obvious that the media narrative (reinforced in a bipartisan manner by the conservative Republicans and conservative Democrats who are brought on for balanced commentary) will be that Obama has been too much of a wild-eyed socialist and must move immediately to the right and give up on all this foolishness about health care reform, environmentalism, or punishing innocent rich people.
That’s why I’m utterly baffled by the people who think causing electoral losses for Democrats will somehow send a message that they need to stop being Republican Lite. When has that ever come even vaguely close to working?
matoko_chan
Glenn Beck’s mentor insane conspiracy theorist Cleon Skousen.
He is the polar opposite of Obama’s thoughtful machiavellian pragmatism.
Of course……Skousen was too crazy even for the Mormons.
Umm…I just don’t think Brown gettin’ elected is all that huge. He would create a semi-permanent filibuster but that would just force the Dems to avail themselves of the escape valves built in to the system…..like reconciliation….and probably force some sort of filibuster reform eventually.
I think HCR will still pass.
Michael
Are you sure you filled in the correct one? ;D
And now that I’ve planted that worrying little seed in your mind, here’s an earworm for accompaniment to the worry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYwEHLRmILY
angler
Coakley may actually win this thing, and win or lose why keep fuelling the infighting? Here’s a novel third entity responsible for Coakley’s woes: Republicans.
matoko_chan
And think of the advantage now to Team Obama on immigration reform.
Picture the conservatives filibustering that.
The Blue Dogs become immune from voter backlash, and hispanics and latinos flee Marco Rubio and the GOP like scalded cats.
FlipYrWhig
@Rhoda:
One of my biggest frustrations with Senate Democrats is that they are very easily cowed by the prospect of media criticism. They didn’t dare filibuster everything Bush wanted because it would make them look bad. But Senate Republicans don’t worry that filibustering everything Obama wants makes them look bad. They’re just dicks, and they own that dickishness, and it has very little effect on how they’re perceived by the public.
darryl
Then your feelings don’t match reality. Actually, though there are a few differences, the bill looks mostly like what the campaign promised:
*Exchanges
*No recission
*No exclusion for pre-existing conditions
*Subsidies to help buy insurance
*reimburse based on patient outcome
*Exployer Contribution
*expansion of medicaid
That’s the bulk of the Obama campaign’s health care plan, and it’s the bulk of the Senate bill.
Tsulagi
@bayville:
ruemara
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: Oh yeah. THIS. In spades, quadrupled and screaming from the rooftops.
@TWP:
I don’t normally do this but, shut up. Just stuff that piehole right up because the blither of progressives and democrats and independents feeling resentful of Obama is near pure bullshit. You feel that way, fine. I don’t, and the democrats and independents who have him at over 50% approval don’t either.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Why are we so goddamned fixated on having 60 Senators anyway? Are we that scared of a filibuster? Or are we scared that there are enough Blue Dogs and Liebermans to b0rk the passage of anything?
No, I haven’t been following it that closely, because I enjoy life…
mr. whipple
I thought that was the progressive line.
Oh, wait…..
Joel
Obama will be at fault for not convincing Ben Nelson to represent a less conservative state. Maybe he and Olympia Snowe could do the switch-a-roo. This is written into the Constitution!
gwangung
@TWP: You’re writing as if this was a unique situation. It’s not. It’s entirely predictable and, to a very large extent, not avoidable. ANY shortcoming would deflate the enthusiasm balloon–and it’s well known to Republicans. They have a very easy strategy: obstruct and wait for fickle popular support to deflate. What that leaves them is still a large hole for them, but it’s a lot more manageable.
I don’t think there’s any way to avoid this (and is in very large part the reason why off year elections favor the out of power party so much).
tworivers
There’s no question that Coakley’s incompetently run campaign blunders (e.g. the Curt Schilling gaffe, the overall AWOL approach to the campaign – e.g., acting as if victory was a bygone conclusion) are the primary reason she finds herself in such a terrible position today
That said, I agree with Houston that people in MA are disappointed with what Obama has delivered so far. His promises during the campaign to change how business is done in Washington and to no longer let special interests run rampant have been belied by his actions in office. His sweetheart deal with BigPharma, his abandonment of the public option, his no strings attached bailout of Wall St. – all of these things sound to alot of people like business as usual, not change you can believe in.
Saying all this doesn’t that mean I’m a Scott Brown supporter, mind you. The dude is an empty suit (handsomely vacuous in the Willard Romney mode) whose Bush-era prescriptions of the economy (tax cuts, less regulation of business. etc.) are laughable. Not to mention his disturbing and crazy emergency contraception amendment, his skepticism about global warming, and his enduring love for Guantanamo.
But I guess I can see how many MA voters (esp. ones not paying very close attention to all the candidates’ positions) may be tempted to turn against the Dems. The entire state is run by Democrats and has been for years (excepting some Republican governors). Current Democratic Governor Deval Patrick (a friend of Obama’s, and a person who ran a similarly themed inspirational campaign) has gotten very little accomplished and is deeply unpopular. There may be some fatigue with Democrats promising things that they end up being unable to deliver on.
Add to this some smugness on Coakley’s part (acting like victory was a bygone conclusion), a poorly-run campaign (what does she stand for? I live in MA and I still don’t really know) and the end result is looking increasingly like a narrow Brown victory. Which will suck most egregiously.
Martin
@srv:
Well, yeah, there’s that. The GOP has changed the rules to where 60 votes is key. Maintaining that 60 shouldn’t be left to chance.
gwangung
@Joel: Yeah, pretty much….
bayville
Has anyone pre-blamed Nader yet? Michael Moore?
If not, let me be the first.
Malron
Its good to see Alan Grayson, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi shooting a gaping hole into the “if Coakley loses, health care is dead” meme. Grayson says he thinks she’ll win, but regardless of who wins we’ll still be able to get health care passed. Grayson isn’t letting the MSNBC bobblehead goad him into saying anything to trash Coakley.
eemom
@Mumphrey:
I live in VA too. I also thought Deeds was a decent candidate who was unfairly maligned by the firebagger crowd.
Mostly, I am furious as hell at every Obama voter who didn’t drag their ass to the polls that day.
There is NO excuse for not voting. NONE. EVER.
Malron
@Grumpy Code Monkey: G, I’m calling it the “Myth of 60” meme.
Martin
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
It’s not a question of being scared. It’s that 70% of all legislation that has come up in the Senate since Obama was elected has actually been filibustered.
steve davis
Just one comment about Obama and Baucus “putzing around for two months instead of getting the bill done,” I’d like to note that in order to get the finance bill out of committee, it needed at least one Republican vote (don’t know why this is, exactly, but something Parliamentary about it, apparently), so the “two months putzing around” was necessary in order to get Olympia Snowe to vote for the damned thing. In short, no putzing would have meant no bill.
Uriel
Mildly humorous aside- A few minutes ago fire fox did the whole “unable to contact the server at” thing, and I misread one of the options as “Could the server be experiencing high demand or a temporary outrage?”
My first thought was, yeah, that probably explains it.
Shazza
I just wanted to interject that in NJ, the people HATED Corzine. They blamed him for the high taxes and lack of employment (nevermind what Whitman started). When he lost to the Republican Chris Christie, the MSM started with the ‘ohhh this is HORRIBLE for Obama’, totally overlooking the fact that people weren’t happy with Corzine. Same for Deeds. Sounds like I’m hearing some of the same stuff here, putting her in the same league with Deeds. If you’re a crappy Dem candidate and your constituents are unhappy with you, I’m sorry but no amount of wonderful speeches from our charismatic Prez will make you vote for someone you’re not happy with. I really hope she wins though.
Cain
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: <blockquoteHmm. Tossup between Homer Simpson, and Professor Irwin Corey.
I would have just picked Eric Cartman. “Screw you guys, I’m goign home.”
cain
TWP
@ruemara Fine, I’ll shut up since finding fault and laying constructive blame with Obama’s decisions here seems to be verboten. Let me know when there’s a break in the “Obama does nothing wrong” feedback loop and I’ll join back in.
madmatt
Fuck barack…I don’t remember Bipartisanship being a plank during the campaign. Why do rethugs get a free pass to feed their base but not dems? Thanks for nothing BO
Cain
@Brien Jackson: <blockquoteThe Gang Bang of 14 says hello.
Fixed.
cain
BombIranForChrist
Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!
Also, questions like these are a bit of a Rorshachhahach test, no? There are probably several credible reasons that lead to the core of the problem, and we pour ourselves into the one we like the most. To use a really bizarre hydraulics / mining / dental metaphor.
maye
I think I’ll blame Robert Gibbs. His communication shop sucks. I know he never got a vacation after the election, but shit, the misinformation about healthcare spewing from The Right has gone unchallenged all these months.
Whatever happens today, Obama needs a whole new PR team. Stat.
Deborah
Today I find my hope that Coakley wins has little to do with governance and just comes down to wanting to watch everyone spin out as they try to explain that when they talked about a double digit Republican blowout, what of course they meant was a close race, that being what the polling showed.
cleek
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
even if they weren’t scared of it, 60 votes are needed to bring a bill to a final vote. the filibuster is implied. nobody has to actually talk anymore. if there aren’t 60 votes for cloture, the bill can never make it to the upperdown vote.
Davis X. Machina
William of Ockham. He’d at least keep it short.
Redfury
Ayn Rand
FlipYrWhig
@TWP: The health care reform bill was the biggest, most important thing, and had a lot of moving parts, and what happened was that far too many people who _could_ have been out there supporting it decided to fixate on the parts they didn’t like. So people are totally confused about how they actually stand to benefit _on balance_ from how it should work, because the entire discussion has been dominated by two kinds of voices, those saying that it’s some kind of fundamental breach of American liberty, and those who take special pleasure in saying “shit sandwich.”
I truly don’t think that very many not-plugged-in people know the good points of the bill. And it’s not like Obama hasn’t been out there talking them up. But the way it’s talked about in the news and online is rarely focused on the good points; in fact, it’s almost entirely focused on the topic of how to finance [something] without really explaining what [something] even is. My guess is that if you polled people in an open-ended way on the question, “What is this health care bill intended to accomplish?” you’d get a lot of confusion. I include myself; I don’t quite have the “exchanges” and all that sorted out, and I’m sure there are tons of other things I’m missing.
So we’ve had a year-long discussion of a big policy change that’s been consumed by the ways that it sucks and is expensive to pay for. Rah.
ruemara
@TWP:
When you give up on having a benevolent dictator daddy as president.
SGEW
@eemom:
I missed a local municipal election once because I had a 104° fever, and couldn’t get out of bed (and my preferred candidate was more or less running unopposed) . . . so I wouldn’t say “none, ever ever,” necessarily. ;)
BigSwami
My favorite philosopher:
Jesus Christ.
Jay
Special elections and midterm elections are base elections. Did something happen that depressed the base?
FlipYrWhig
@darryl: Your list is the kind of thing I was talking about in my last comment. I’m pretty sure that very few people could compose that list on the fly. And it’s a huge part of the reason why people feel dispirited about the health care bill, because it’s been hard to latch onto the good points, and IMHO it’s because old and new media alike have _made it_ hard to latch onto the good points.
Citizen Alan
@srv:
This. I think there is plenty of blame to be spread around for this fiasco, but if you are the President of the United States and your entire political agenda depends on maintaining a 60-40 margin in the Senate because you have explicitly accepted the premise that a supermajority is required to move any legislation, then I think it kind of behooves you to keep an eye on little things like special elections which are notorious for weird, unpredictable results. It was a special election that put Schwartzenagger into office and he’s still there nearly 8 years later. If I were Obama, I don’t think I’d have slept a wink since Teddy died so long as there was a Republican candidate within 30 points of Coakley.
pk
People can find any number of reasons why Coakley will lose. But the bottom line is that if the people of Massachusetts have such shit for brains that they think a suitable replacement for Ted Kennedy is a right wing nut who poses nude displaying his pee Pee, then Massachusetts, the democrats and the country richly deserves what it gets.
cat48
Number one issue on local polls was: Jobs/Economy; not health care, per Boston Globe. Health care was always second in polls. The Villagers will say health care though. They know better than the public what the “real mericans” want and it was health care killed. They need to talk to Speaker Pelosi who stated yesterday in SF “Let’s remove all doubt–there will be health care reform–one way or the other.” Alrighty then. Got it. She does tend to get things done when she says she will.
Obama needed to create more jobs for the unemployed so the electorate would be in a better Dem mood. Let’s sic Machavelli on the Kenyan in the WH. Romney is on my TV calling him arrogant right now and he knows an arrogant black man when he sees one. Amazing how baby boomer white males often see that character trait in him. Hmm.
AkaDad
Glenn Beck
Dennis-SGMM
Back when the iron was hot and just about everyone was enraged at the bankers it would not have been very difficult to pass, say, the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, or to repeal the CFMA and then move on to health care. Obama would have had a legislative victory and some momentum. The same for some form of simple and direct mortgage relief.
Instead, if the Mass. special election is lost the administration and the party may go into the fifty state elections this year with exactly dick in the way of major legislative achievements. “We almost passed Health Care Reform” doesn’t lend itself to today’s bumper sticker politics. All of the chess playing and “machiavellian pragmatism” may get you the votes of chess players and those who appreciate The Prince, but that’s about it. The great number of voters who appreciate neither chess nor Machiavelli will likely hear that Republican Golden Oldie; “Are you better off now than you were two years ago?” and vote accordingly.
0whole1
> Update. If you could pick just one philosopher with whom to rebuke Obama, who would it be?
Harpo Marx. And a dozen hardboiled eggs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RocGJA3Mi1M
Brien Jackson
@tworivers:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/122165/obama-approval-highest-d.c.-hawaii-vermont.aspx
Now granted, that’s from last August. Still, a 73% approval rating is very high, and I can’t imagine it’s come down that much in 4.5 months. We’re going to need a new meme, or more up to date evidence anyway.
NR
@eemom: Your anger is misplaced. You should be angry with Obama, Deeds, and all the Democratic leaders who didn’t give those voters a reason to show up.
Paris
Hannah Arendt. ‘Rebuke’ means ‘to put to sleep’, right?
Alex S.
@Davis X. Machina:
haha
blackwaterdog
@Mr Furious:
I wonder who’s fault it is. Who did everything to to obstruct him from day one, while he did everything to reach across the aisle. What TV network hit him maliciously 24/7. What pundits didn’t give him even 100 days.
Right Wing idiots.
Keith G
Thinking out loud, as it were, so be gentle – ish.
I think it is too early to tell if, or how much of, it is Obama’s fault. A key notion is:
The absolute truth of this will be clear with time. Being brave at heart, I think it is a mixture of both. Throughout the campaign, I made a habit of underestimating Obama (who I supported since his official entry in 07). Lately, I appear to be over estimating his abilities.
Villagers and other bottom dwellers are often heard to comment after a presidential election: “Can he turn the corner from campaign mode the governing mode.” I heard this a bunch after the 92 and 08 votes. WTF?
St. Ronny never switched off the campaigning….never. He united a party and built extra-party support by continually going to the people, continually using the theatre of his office to persuade. That was Roger Ailes (and others) job fer christ’s sake.
Obama has chosen a different strategy, a different methodology. He is accountable for the results of his choices. It it too early to tell if a more up tempo game could have put more pressure on recalcitrant Dem and kept the regulars in MA and throughout the country more energized and a n more potent political force. I am quite surprised and saddened that the Obama ground organization was not kept busy, waiting for the next call out.
For better or worse, Obama seems to have chosen a set of behaviors that are “un-Reganesque”. While many see benefit in that choice, there are downsides. At base, it is part of human psychology to want to be lead, to be revved up and given a mission, to feel important. So far as president, Obama has chosen not to use this.
That may be where some of the fault lies.
Brien Jackson
@Dennis-SGMM:
Considering there were 41 Republicans, Ben Nelson, and 57 other Democrats in the Senate then, yes, it would have been quite difficult.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@TWP:
Then frankly, we deserve to lose. Forever.
Bush’sCheney’s most pernicious legacy is the idea of a unitary Executive that can just issue edicts and expect everything to go its way. Obama cannot single-handedly fix every goddamned thing the Republicans have fucked up over the last decade, and expecting Obama to personally inspire everyone to get up off their goddamned petulant asses and work is unrealistic and childish.Right now, today, you’ve got a choice between an Oscar Meyer baloney sandwich and a heaping plate of buzzard shit. Don’t bother asking for filet mignon (or a vegetarian/vegan equivalent) because it’s not anywhere on the menu. Holding your breath and turning blue because you don’t want the baloney sandwich just means you’re going to wind up with the buzzard shit. You may not like it, but it’s time you recognized it.
Unfucking the country after six years of unhindered Republican misrule is going to take years if not decades, it’s going to take small steps, at least half of the country is going to have to be dragged along kicking and screaming (if not actively biting), and if we allow the Republicans anywhere near the levers of power again before we’ve rebuilt all the walls they tore down we will go down in flames. If we lose this opportunity (even if we don’t take full advantage of it) because Obama wasn’t sufficiently goddamned pure enough then we deserve to be mocked for all eternity.
Brien Jackson
@Keith G:
I know it makes me a dirty elitist establishment hippie basher and all, but I rather prefer that the Democrats remain adults, and don’t embrace the Reaganist chilidishness of the modern GOP. Granted, it does put you at a political disadvantage.
scudbucket
@FlipYrWhig: it’s been hard to latch onto the good points
This is a good point. But it also says something about the Dems in Congress – specifically the Senate – that no one has come forward to publicly explain its costs and benefits in a clear way. Obama has mentioned some of this stuff a few times, but really, we need (or needed, wrt to Ma.) someone in the Senate to do this. Don’t you find it interesting that no one wants to claim ownership of this Bill?
I’m not criticizing the bill here, just that the lack of good messaging has let the GOP and the anti-mandaters get out front and run like hell.
geg6
@srv:
This. A thousand times, this. Dr. Dean would have been all over this. Tim Kaine sucks donkey balls.
Brien Jackson
You know what really annoys me? People who say “if the base doesn’t show up.” The base always shows up, that’s what makes it the base. If you don’t turnout out and/or vote for Democratic candidates you can’t call yourself the base.
Tim I
Everything is Obama’s fault!
Didn’t you get the memo from Jane?
NR
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
You’re right. If only the Democrats controlled Congress too, then we could really get somewhere. It’s too bad they don’t.
eemom
@NR:
that is the essence of what I mean by no excuse.
Your statement is bullshit, pure and simple.
Every citizen has the responsibility to vote, every time, no matter how apathetic or disillusioned they are by the leadership. Why? Because every time, someone is going to win, and we’re all going to live with the result.
It’s a fucking no brainer, imo.
gwangung
@geg6: Hm, yes. Detailed oriented managers (only partially Obama’s fault, to the extent that he supported and got him into office; but, at some point, you have to let go and let your people do their jobs with your trust)(which, apparently, was not repaid well).
Davis X. Machina
Only nearly everyone was enraged at the bankers — the most signal exception being their representatives in Congress, specifically in the Senate, particularly the Republicans.
Meaningful regulation of FINE is the one thing the Congressional GOP is calculated to die in the last trench for — it’s their core constituency, it’s their money. If they lose that, they’re gone. They can always race-bait the rubes back to the ballot box.
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G:
Serious question: when has it worked for a Democratic president to “go to the people”? By that I mean getting Republican members of the House or Senate to vote for a Democratic priority item because the people they represent demanded it. I’m having trouble thinking of a public outcry that succeeded in moving votes leftwards.
The Raven
I wouldn’t say “fault,” but Obama’s policies have discouraged the Democratic base and activists, while encouraging the Republican base and activists. See, for instance, here.
NR
@eemom:
And what I’m telling you is that when people don’t think it matters very much who wins, they won’t show up to vote.
Creigh Deeds ran a milquetoast, center-right campaign, and this led the Democratic base in Virginia to believe that there wouldn’t be much difference between him and McDonnell. Maybe there would have been a big difference. Maybe Deeds would have been a lot better – but the responsibility was on him (and to a lesser extent, other Democratic leaders) to get out there and make that case. They failed to do so.
gbear
@eemom: YES!
Dennis-SGMM
@Brien Jackson:
That’s odd, Bush got most of what he wanted with an 18 seat majority in the Senate. Maybe that inarticulate pseudo cowboy was just a little bit better at communicatering than Obama.
That aside, which tangible achievements are the Democrats going to publicize to convince non-Obot voters to give them their votes this November? We’re dealing with a voting public that has the attention span of a gerbil, an opportunistic press, and opponents who fight dirty – “We’ll get around to the good stuff,” is not going to cut it.
Jules
It’s Obama’s fault because he did not get Martha a boss truck to prove that she was a real American like Brown.
asiangrrlMN
@eemom: Agreed. Jeebuz, it’s the least fucking thing we can do. Are we so pampered and privilege that we won’t even vote unless everything is exactly to our liking and we are wooed like courtesans? I have never been a coveted demographic and never will be, and yet, I vote all the damn time. For one thing, it’s the very least I can do in order to be able to bitch about government.
@Grumpy Code Monkey: This, this, a million times this.
God. It’s so frustrating. Believe me, I have issues with Obama and I am not an O-bot, but looking at the political landscape, there isn’t one realistic candidate I would take over him. As far as Coakley, she really is the lesser of the two evils for me. But you know what? That makes her the lesser of two evils. There is a degree there, and the two cannot compare. Brown is vile, disgusting, stupid, and not fit to be a senator.
Locally, I would have voted third-party if I could have for senator. I like Al, and he’s pleased me beyond measure since assuming his seat, but he didn’t thrill me in the campaign. However, I knew it would be close because we Minnesotans love our third parties, so I voted for Al Franken.
I like the agitating from the left, and I think some of the commenters here have good at laying down thoughtful arguments against HCR, but in general, the hardcore progressives don’t offer any real world solutions. That frustrates the hell out of me because most of them are not the ones who will be affected if HCR is killed.
The Raven
If it’s a civic responsibility to vote, why not make that the law, like it is in Australia?
licensed to kill time
__
Why, it would be the famous Village philosopher SomeSay, of course.
asiangrrlMN
@Dennis-SGMM: Might that be because Democrats were willing to roll over and play dead for W.? I think it might. We see how a solid block of Republicans can wreak damage on the congressional system. One of the biggest strengths and flaws of the Democratic Party is the bigggggggg tent. One of the biggest strengths and flaws of the GOP is their ability to stick to the message no matter what.
@licensed to kill time: Heh. Thanks for the laugh.
@The Raven: Hm. I actually like this idea.
FlipYrWhig
@scudbucket:
I think people do want to claim ownership of the bill, but the media discussion has been tremendously skewed towards the things that people complain about. I was in favor of the public option but one effect that whole brouhaha seems to have had is establishing that the most significant feature of the bill is something that it lacks. And that made the whole process look and feel like a succession of losses. But that’s the way we are; we like to be disillusioned.
Brien Jackson
@Dennis-SGMM:
Bush got two tax cuts through reconcilliation, a completely unfunded entitlement expansion, and an education reform bill that had a lot of intial Democratic support. Other than that, what did he get done on the domestic policy front?
Tim I
I also blame Major League Baseball.
Casey Stengel is my philosopher of choice.
Dennis-SGMM
@Jules:
If your centerpiece legislation hinges on the outcome of the election then you buy the fucking truck. This “above the fray” crap drives me nuts.
salacious crumb
i want Coakley to lose. i want this health care bill in its current form to die. Obama compromised way too much on this bill, and gave in to the health care lobby. and he wasnt tough enough with the banks. and he is gunning for war with another muslim country, Iran. he has given way too many concessions to Israel.
Dennis-SGMM
@Brien Jackson:
So that makes it 3-0 so far for Bush – doesn’t it?
Libby
@Cat Lady: Thanks for voting. I’m not a resident of MA anymore and now have the pleasure of being represented by Virginia Foxx in the House, so it’s hard to imagine anything more embarrassing than that.
And I didn’t know about Brown’s connections at all. Haven’t really followed the race much and as someone said upthread here I think, there hasnt been much to follow. Everyone was ignoring this race until the media decided the Dems would lose.
I think she was the worst choice the Dems could have made at primary, but I still would have voted for her if I lived there. I have to admit though, one of my biggest reasons for wanting her to win is simply so the smug pundit/pollsters will be wrong.
Keith G
@Brien Jackson: It does not reflect on you at all, but what if, given the state and complications of our society, some version of what the Reagan Admin did in its image, PR, and political machine is necessary for effective governance?
FlipYrWhig
@NR: One superficial thing McDonnell and Brown have in common is that they’re more energetic (and better looking) than their opponents. Marco Rubio is in the same mold. Think of how the insiders have been touting John Thune. I think this is the Republican response to Obama vs. McCain: run a better physical specimen.
(Offer does not apply to Chris Christie.)
Brien Jackson
@salacious crumb:
Um, if Coakley loses, the House is just going to pass the Senate bill as is. Do pay attention please.
neil
Obviously, if Coakley loses – the blame belongs to nobody but her. Obama’s stop shouldn’t have been necessary.
If she had gone out there and campaigned for the four weeks following the primary in December – instead of going underground all that time – and had she made “accountability from Wall Street” the main issue of her campaign rather than, essentially “Health Care Reform stands in the balance and I’m the 60th Vote” (when the majority here HATE the Senate bill) – I think the Wall Street issue would have resonated with voters here, who are almost to the point of pitchforks and torches with the Too Big to Fail Boys. (Capuano, for one, understood this completely.) Why Democrats have been so reluctant to tap into that bit of populist anger escapes me, but it’s a huge tactical blunder. They are leaving the “populist” field to the Teabaggers, and the Republicans – who despite having no leg to stand on, nor any clue as to who the real villains are in the piece, may still, incredibly, be able to capitalize.
But if you really want to piss off voters – any voters – I don’t care where they are, or what their political persuasion is – just “assume” you’ve got their vote already and don’t need to work for it.
Just assume that they’ll just come out in the middle of the cold, ice, and snow of a New England January, and vote for your sorry ass because….you’re such a refreshing change from the usual? Because your eloquence is so moving? Because you’re the next incarnation of JFK? Because Democrats are supposed to just support any old Democrat because The Machine decided to throw in the kitchen sink to support you in the primaries?
That sort of presumptuousness angers voters – period. Coakley just figured she deserved our votes and didn’t see the need to tell anyone why.
This is far cry from Ted Kennedy’s attitude. No matter how desultory the opponent (and over the years, Ted only really had a couple of serious challengers – Ray Shamie, and Mitt Romney), Ted Kennedy campaigned hard, debated hard, and took our votes dead seriously. He knew we didn’t necessarily have to come out to the polls. He knew there was nothing automatic about our votes. He never made the mistake of taking the electorate for granted – and he was a Kennedy fer chrissake, and the next best thing to flippin’ royalty in these parts.
Martha is decidedly not royalty – but she and “her people” thought she had the Senate seat in the bag. If she loses, hubris will be her undoing. This isn’t even a political mistake a rookie would make, because they, by definition have an uphill fight on their hands from the very start – but it is a mistake a machine politician would make.
All that being said, business in my usually sleepy polling place in my postage stamp of a town on the North Shore of Boston seemed to be rather more brisk this morning than usual. I’ll take that as a good omen.
Coakley by 3 to 5%. If I’m right, I’m gonna play the lottery. I plan to watch the returns and drink heavily.
Brien Jackson
@Keith G:
Having a political machine is important, but what Reagan did vis-a-vis the intersection of poltics and policy goes quite a bit beyond that, as evidenced by the fact that the GOP barely even pretends to be interested in responsible governing when they have the majority.
Paula
Hey, let’s say we take people at their word (both on the left and the right) and say that a Scott Brown win is a rebuke for Obama’s domestic agenda.
I am highly interested to see how “liberal” issues, like universal health care and gay rights, fare under Scott Brown. Per the True Progressive ™ calculus, the rebuke can only cause a shift leftward. So it’s all good for liberals in Massachusetts, right? I mean, I would totally collect the handles of people who make/have made this argument because I really want them to have proper credit when the shift left happens.
tomvox1
The biggest misconception to be drawn from a potential Coakley defeat is that Dems need to “move to the center.” If anything, the entire party from the President on down needs less triangulation and more going to bat for the common people, i.e. true Progressivism. Passionate defense of democratic, egalitarian principles is a turn on. “Centrism” that invariably favors corporate interests over the concerns of the majority, not so much.
Of course real campaign finance reform would be the best way to insure this sort of money-blind activism but I’m not holding my breath…
slag
Well, to their credit, one thing Obama has done has been to eventually use OFA on behalf of Coakley. Much good may it do, but after getting a few emails from them, I was finally guilted into making a few calls on Coakley’s behalf.
I hate this damn process. First, somebody does or says something to make me give some cash (in this case, John Cole with his stupid ActBlue page). I try to tell myself that that’s enough since I don’t even live in that goddamn state, I have plenty of grievances to justify the half-assed-ness of my participation, and I hate calling people on the phone. But eventually, I’m worn down. Suckered into participating in some form of phone-banking, whether I want to be or not. And when I ask myself why I do this shit for these fucking ingrates, I always tell myself that I’m not doing it for them but for me. Why does democracy have to involve so much goddamned work?
For the record, I left all messages with the exception of speaking to one person who did, indeed, vote for Coakley.
Brien Jackson
@Dennis-SGMM:
Based on what? In his first year, Bush got NCLB and a tax cut passed through reconcilliation. Obama has gotten an $850 billion stimulus bill, and will only miss passing a massive healthcare reform bill in his first year by a couple of weeks. And there was the low hanging fruit like Ledbetter and SCHIP expansion.
Davis X. Machina
salacious crumb =
perl
script.Flunking the Turing test is one thing, failing to cover the spread on it is pathetic.
Midnight Marauder
@scudbucket:
@Dennis-SGMM:
That’s a far cry from “most of everything he wanted,” now isn’t it?
bayville
@Shazza:
To recap NJ:
Corzine was a throroughly unlikeable individual – wealthy, with a dour personality, terrible communications skills and a Goldman Sachs background (i.e. a 21st Century Dem). And on behalf of Corzine, an Obama, a Clinton or a Biden were campaigning in the state for the final two weeks of the campaign.
On top of that, he was running against a Bush Ranger, a U.S. Attorney embroiled in numerous conflict of interests allegations (see: Ashcroft, John most notably) and was underfunded 4-to-1 by the incumbent. Chris Christie, the candidate, never offered even a general economic plan for the state. His health insurance plan was/is a joke. He was ridiculed by most media outlets for all of this, including the more conservative columnists/pundits.
And a moderate Republican third-party candidate Chris Daggett generated some interest among the electorate, who presumably would take a few votes away from the endorsed GOP candidate.
What happened? The election wasn’t as close as everyone had predicted with Christie gaining the win. Teachers and cops stayed home. State workers showed mild interest in Corzine and the college campuses were apathetic.
The Camden County Dem machine could only muster a 54% edge for Corzine. So right now at this hour, Chris Christie is being sworn in as the new Gov of NJ.
Original Lee
@Cat Lady: This this thisity this this this. Plus the way Coakley has been running her campaign reminds me of Townsend in MD – “This state is blue, and I’m a Kennedy, so I don’t have to campaign.”
Mumphrey
@ NR:
Wrong, wrong, wrong. We live in a representative democracy. It’s our fucking job to vote. For Christ’s sake, we need to grow up here, and learn what this whole representative democracy thing is all about. We don’t have some benevolent dictator who looks out for us and does everything for us. That’s our job.
So maybe some people thought Deeds wasn’t liberal enough. Maybe they liked Moran. Well, they ran in a primary and Deeds won. From then on, the job isn’t to whine that too many people didn’t bow down before their superior wisdom and pout and stay home because Deeds wasn’t enough better than McDonnell, the job is to go out and vote anyway, because sometimes we don’t always get what we want, but we make the best of it anyway.
I don’t know, I could swear we already went over this a year and a half ago with bitter Clinton supporters; maybe I only dreamt that; maybe I’m far wrong here. But I didn’t think we’d need to go over it all again this soon. I mean, it isn’t like I always get what I want, either. I’ve voted in primaries for people who lost. I never wanted Kerry or Dukakis (maybe it has something to do with Massachussetts), but I was sad for a while and then got on with life and voted for them anyway.
Living in a system like ours doesn’t mean that we get everything we want, or that people in office have to do everything we say just because we’re the most passionate about it. The president has 300 million constituents, and he has to do the best he can with a big, nasty, screaming minority throwing monkey wrenches every which way. He doesn’t have time to hold our hands and get us fired up about every election that comes along. We should be grown up enough about this that we can haul our asses out and vote once or twice a year on our own without needing somebody to hold our hand or whisper sweet nothings into our ears.
I’m sorry to be an asshole about this, but this is our fucking country. Can’t we do the least we need to do to keep it running well?
The Raven
OH, wow. I think Jon Stewart nails it.
Tsulagi
@srv:
See, now that’s checkers thinking. Clearly the 11D chess moves are to make sure asses like Lieberman and Baucus are attended to and comfy. They fell for it.
Keith G
@FlipYrWhig: Good question. Pardon me if I go off the top of my head with just a few as research time is nil. But I am sure I will be corrected if wrong.
One caveat: No mythology of “The Great Speech” here. People are swayed if first, they already have the mental flexibility to shift an opinion and second, they are “courted” continually over time. And in actuality, I doubt that there are any great shifts in opinion, more like a series of nudges, but nudges add up.
Think FDR and social security; Marshall and Truman arguing for the Marshall Plan; Kennedy’s tardy decision to speak out on civil rights helped move the ball; LBJ and Medicare.
JenJen
Watching this afternoon, MSNBC has gone from a little cautious to outright cocky, in the last hour. It feels to me like it might be pretty big for Brown. I’m feeling a bit nauseous.
Mr Furious
@Napoleon:
Doesn’t matter if he’s lying or not. He’s offering cover for others to do the same, and playing into the media’s preferred frame—that’s why he was quoted.
That’s the meme regardless of the outcome, and he’s to be presented as evidence.
Uriel
@salacious crumb:
Excuse me, but i have to ask- what the hell are you going on about? What does this nonsense even mean?
FlipYrWhig
@The Raven: I knew everyone would enjoy Jon Stewart ranting about Democratic ineptitude. But I expected that more people would be irritated with his happy-time common-sense deficit-hawk interview with that guy from the Pete Peterson crowd.
cat48
@Malron I was shocked too, but their child is missing so I know how they feel. Very sad.
Keith G
@Brien Jackson: You are right, yet I would submit the sins you mention are more post Reagan.
Nonetheless, does developing and using an effective PR/political machine inevitably lead to evil? Gosh, sounds like the Rings of Sauron.
Brien Jackson
@The Raven:
Indeed, he precisely nails why I can’t stand him.
Uriel
@JenJen: Yeah, MSNBC has pretty much called it for Brown, declared HCR dead and buried, and pronounced Obama a one term failure.
Well, I for one have to say I’m really looking forward to the Kucinich administration! I’m sure we’ll get a lot done.
eemom
@Mumphrey:
absolutely right, thank you.
It’s about not being passive, NR. It’s about RESPONSIBILITY. It’s about taking the initiative to LEARN what differences there are between the two candidates……not sitting back on your ass and waiting for someone to motivate you.
In essence, you’re saying that the best looking, loudest talker with the most TV ads should win, because that’s who’s most likely to motivate lazy fuckers like you who can’t be bothered to do a little homework. That’s BULLSHIT.
The Raven
@FlipYrWhig: I only see Stewart when someone links him. I’m prepared to believe he gets deficit economics wrong–almost everyone who isn’t an economist does. But he understands pleasing an audience and he’s got Coakley’s number.
Brien Jackson
@Keith G:
Well that depends on what exactly you’re envisioning. If you’re talking about detailed district/precinct profiles and volunteer databases, then no. If you’re talking about passing popular entitlement expansions without any sort of funding, because funding=tax increases, which are unpopular, then yes.
Kryptik
Sweet Jesus Christ, I can’t stand this anymore.
We have Teabaggers, a monolithically stonewalling bloc of Congressional Republicans, talking heads latching onto the latest Palinism and taking it as manna from the god of rational thought, Dick Cheney wondering why Obama isn’t beating the shit out of more brown people, disasters both literal and financial…
And yet Obama’s failed, in one year, because he’s personally divided the nation, and is somehow, simultaneously, a horrible dictator on par with Stalin and Pol Pot and ineffective enough to stop corporations from ratfucking us, and somehow has rammed through a socialist communist liberal Agenda despite having 75% of Dem legislation and nominees filibustered, many assisted BY Congressional Dems…and because we lose one senator, we only have a caucus of 59 which means we’ll get nothing ever fucking done, and it’s all Obama’s fault for not having a magic fucking wand.
Why the fuck do I follow the dysfunctional reality show that is American Politics when all I ever get is a soul dying by a million lemon-juice-soaked papercuts?
Keith G
@Mumphrey:
Well, I have heard that you go into an election with the population of voters you have and not the voters you wish you had.
tworivers
@Brien Jackson:
In your eagerness to stave off criticism of Obama, you failed to notice that in my post I laid the vast majority of the blame on Coakley’s incompetent and lackluster campaign, and that my secondary point was that MA voter disgust was with Democrats in general (rather than Obama specifically)
I live in MA and hear lots of disgust re: the bank bailout. People (rightly i think) are of the opinion that both parties are in the tank for big business, and that Congress is pretty much run by the banks (as Dick Durbin admitted).
re: Obama
Obama ran on the promise of not letting special interests dictate what happened in Washington. So far, he hasn’t delivered in this area. He never came out strongly in favor of the public option (leading some to conclude that he never wanted a public option in the first place), he made a backroom deal with Big Pharma, and when he had an opportunity to place conditions (transparency, breaking up of Too Big to Fail) on the banks he was bailing out, he sided with Geithner and let the banks off pretty much scott-free.
Please don’t mistake me for a Jane Hamsher supporter. I think her alliance with Grover Norquist is incredibly foolheaded, dangerous, and at odds with her ultimate policy goals. I like Obama and think he’s worlds better than McCain would have been. But that said, I can’t help but be disappointed in the way he has sided with corporations instead of the people thus far.
2th&nayle
@ploeg:
H.I. McDunnough, “I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn’t easy with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House. I dunno. They say he’s a decent man, so maybe his advisors are confused.”
I just couldn’t resist.
scudbucket
@The Raven:
Fixed.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dennis-SGMM: It’s ludicrous to blame Obama for anything. He’s completely powerless to do anything meaningful despite a Democratic Senate and Congress. Doesn’t matter how popular he is or how much people like him, presidents are powerless in our system of government. Reagan proved that.
Elie
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Yeah he is just a loser and a failure too stupid and lame to know any better — a complete, lame ass who doesnt want to succeed and wants to perpetuate his own powerlessness.
You on the other hand should feel free to vote Republican since they are your model for how to get anything done
Citizen Alan
@Brien Jackson:
I should say so since Scott Brown is probably going to pick up a few thousand votes based solely on the fact that his daughter was on American Idol.
@pk:
Now be fair — Brown kept his hand over his pee-pee at all times.:)
cat48
Obama did not keep promises. Wrong–he kept a lot per Politifact:
Tracking Obama’s promises
91 Promise Kept
33 Compromise
14 Promise Broken
87 Stalled
275 In the Works
2 Not yet rated
politifact.com has the entire time. Sick of the broken promise meme. He kept 91 F’n promises so far & he’s not done yet.
Sanka
Coakley will win tonight. Bottom line is, Coakley’s team ran a horrible campaign, not even engaging the people of Massachusett(e)s after the primary, just sat back and waited to be coronated. That is what turned off the voters.
Not saying Obama is to blame here, but by extension he needs to take heat. You got
Karl RoveDavid Axelrod now saying that Brown “ran a good campaign”and essentially giving the rank and file in the field a big middle finger and kick in the groin while trying to cover his boss’ rear endand that the president would have helped sooner if “he had been asked”. Yeah. Ok.And of course it should reflect on party leadership and the party in general. The health care bill is ridiculously unpopular and it doesn’t help that Nancy Pelosi is saying that she’s going to cram it down for our own good. Saying that the bill “isn’t progressive enough” is seriously misreading what’s been going on the past eight months or so.
Eventually, the American people will wake up (sometime during primary season I’m sure) and realize that Democrats will have been in charge of Congress for the better part of four years come November.
So clearly, it’s Bush’s fault that the “right” healthcare bill isn’t being formulated by the Democrats currently in control for the last three years and that said bills aren’t sailing through a Democratically controlled Congress.
Also, Sarah Palin.
Patrick
Coakley’s campaign leadership deserve most of the blame for running a shit campaign. Coakley, by extension, also deserves a good deal of blame for being the candidate.
Everyone in the Beltway Democratic establishment deserves blame, too. I’m particularly looking at you, Tim Kaine & DNC, Bob Menendez & DSCC, and the White House/Organizing for America. How do you drop the fucking ball on a race that the next two years of your legislative agenda depend upon? I don’t give a fuck if your internal polls show you up by 30 points, you’d better not be content until they show you up by 40.
So much institutional fail.
I feel that if Howard Dean were still running things at the DNC, we’d all be talking about Haiti and the economy and health care and the NFL playoffs instead of Massachusetts today. But he isn’t, and all we’re going to talk about today and tomorrow is Massachusetts.
cat48
@salacious crumb
No way Obama is gunning for war w/Iran. He has done everything he can to get them to comply with AEIA. He made a deal w/Russia for Iran to have Russia manufacture the nuclear medicine part they needed. The deadline has been extended for them. Israel wants them bombed yesterday. Obama’s not interested.
He’s still talking w/Iran & sanctions that hurt the Regime directly is next. He only makes direct stmts to Iran when they start beating & killing their own people in the Green Movement.
liberty60
I am on lunch, and don’t have the time to work through all 230 something comments- which is to say if I am restating what others said, too bad.
The only lesson to be learned here is that 2008 showed that progressives can win; 2010 shows that we can lose.
In 2008 Dems worked hard and fielded a good strong candidate; in this race, we had a weak candidate and lackluster base.
We never, ever had a “60 seat supermajority”- the Liebermans and Nelsons were always there, waiting to do the bidding of their contributers. There was never a 60 vote possibility for a public option.
Stop with the Mayan 2012 despair; the best that the wingnuts have, is “we like the status quo”…which is in the long run, an untenable message.
A few words of hope- in my field of architecture, almost the entire public planning/ real estate/ design/ construction industries are solidly on board with environmental awareness and green principles. This stuff isn’t the fringe- this is the silent majority. In this industry, CHANGE IS COMING. Those who stand in its way will win the occasional defensive skirmish (like a Massachusets seat) but are losing the war.
People are sick of the neocons- not just the politicos like us, but the solid middle class suburban mortgage holding folks- are sick and tired of the endless war, and the Dick Cheney Chicken Little act is growing thin.
This is war, and we have won a big one, and lost a little one.
The stuff about Obama and his magic pixie dust was a bitter joke by our enemies- lets not believe in it ourselves. We have way too much work to do.
les
@Zifnab:
New metaphor please. Fucking ewwww.
onceler
Oh, it’s much more her fault than his. The figure up on DKos right now showing Brown making 66 campaign stops to her 19 since the primary pretty much says it all. She hasn’t even really been a candidate. And what little campaigning she has done, has been awful.
Obama’s main mistake so far has been that gross under-estimation of unemployment during the crafting of the stimulus bill, and sticking by those numbers (which had a worst case scenario of 8% unemployment), while failing to take more drastic measures. Which YES, he certainly could have. Still can. The Dem party as a whole will continue to suffer if they keep feeding the perception that they aren’t interested in either punishing those who caused the crash, or taking steps to create immediate increased employment. This should all be obvious, but apparently not to some…
cat48
@JenJen
I noticed MSNBC’s cockiness also. It is odd because I have heard 3 times today that “No News Organization is doing Exit Polls.” Can’t figure out what they are using except regular polls that led to a big embarrassment for them recently in the NY-23 race when the Dem won. They said all day it was going to the Tea Party candidate. Also said all day Obama was ahead in N. Hampshire by 7-9 pts & he lost that.
Maybe they are willing it so.
gwangung
Hell YES.
I wish people would remember that. The Republicans are a more authoritarian party with fewer constituencies. They can crack the whip on party discipline. The Democrats are more of a coalition of diverse interests that sprawl across the moderate to liberal axis. They have to work harder to move together. People cannot forget that.
Sanka
A “defensive skirmish”? The seat of Ted Kennedy? With healthcare in the balance? No. A thousand times NO.
NY-23 definitely. One could even argue that for the governors races in NJ and VA. But potentially losing this seat in Massachusetts is not a “defensive skirmish”.
Brien Jackson
@Patrick:
What in the hell would Howard Dean have had to do with anything?
Kryptik
Sigh
Just wake me up when Armageddon comes and Palin is president because “Obama divided the nation.” Because I’m fully convinced we’re fucked now.
Brien Jackson
@onceler:
I’m not going to argue with whether or not Romer and Co. mismodeled the recession, but no, “he” can not do anything, given that the President doesn’t have the power to unilaterally appropriate federal funds. He can ask Congress for more stimulus money, but there’s no indication they’re willing to do that.
cat48
@Brien Jackson
The House passed a jobs bill before break. It will be in the Senate next. (Don’t call it a stimulus, shh)
ScottyC
Gilles Deleuze: This ain’t your grandpa’s capitalism.
Patrick
@Brien Jackson:
I see part of the institutional failure in D.C. to light a fire under Coakley and her campaign as belonging to Tim Kaine and the DNC. While Dean was DNC Chair, he made it the DNC’s business to train, advise, staff, and support campaigns. He was a departure from many former DNC Chairs in his focus on training, ground work, and campaigning. Kaine is a much more conventional vanilla rolodex kind of Chair and the DNC has gone back to being a fundraising organization first, instead of being a campaigning organization first as it was under Dean’s leadership.
When Kaine replaced Dean and Dean’s DNC organization was dismantled, one of the reasons given for it was that it was redundant to have both the Dean DNC organization and Organizing for America. Since the DNC chair and the direction of the party is the President-Elect’s prerogative, Kaine replaced Dean and OfA replaced the DNC structure.
I think the DNC, the White House, OfA, and the DSCC all deserve some blame in this snafu. Particularly the DNC and the White House should have made this race their priority from the moment Coakley won the primary. But there was never any sense of urgency until the Beltway-wide freak-out last week. No one turned up the heat on her or on her campaign until the 12th hour.
I don’t think that her campaign would’ve been as ineffectual as it has if Dean were the Chair of the DNC. I don’t think that organization would’ve taken the race for granted.
cat48
Kaine was Gov until new one sworn in last wk/this wk? Sure he will be more active now that he is just DNC & he speaks excellent Spanish!
Brien Jackson
Where was this?
Moreover, Dean was pretty much obsessed with increasing the amount of resources allocated to red states, which obviously meant less money for bluer states.
Chuck Butcher
Every election is a contest and you’d best treat it that way. Mid-terms are always trouble due to low turn-out and fatigue; and mid-term special elections are worse. ALWAYS.
If you’re going to run you give people reasons to like you and reasons to believe you care about them. Neither happens if you don’t show up.
Having the White House in constant campaign mode isn’t really good for the country, but having people out pushing agendas and pushing back is important. The DNC/OFA should be in constant campaign mode – period. The DNC has let slide Dean’s programs because they worked short term and missed that they were long range plans.
Whatever you think the voters should be, you’d better understand what they are. For this election to be this close there’s plenty of blame to hand around – but the candidate is the person who is running.
Chuck Butcher
@Brien Jackson:
The fact that you don’t know “where was this” means you don’t know shit. Given that, maybe you being a dumbass in this comment is understandable. If you’d been any part of the machinery you’d have kept your trap shut or said something meaningful.
Rick Taylor
Since ultimately this is about the economy, a bigger stimulus might have made a difference. Perhaps he could not have gotten it through, but I wish he would have attempted it.
johnny walker
@cat48:
This isn’t an argument that you can win with counting stats. What’s the context? Those numbers include everything from keeping a promise to encourage controlled burns to failing to recognize the Armenian genocide. There are a few rather significant broken promises listed, ie. cramdown, lobbyist restrictions and the aforementioned televising of healthcare negotiations. If someone is upset about the details of some specific broken promise(s) you don’t get to just handwave it away by dumping a list of numbers.
@Brien Jackson:
What’s your point? Is that supposed to excuse him from trying? He knew the job was hard when he took it.
Brien Jackson
“The DNC has let slide Dean’s programs because they worked short term ”
Sigh.
The Myth of Dean is really perplexing, not so much because I don’t understand why people would like Dean, but because the myth is 180 degrees from what Dean was arguing in 2005. And I can understand why Dean would want to rewrite the history of the Dean Wars, to cover up his ridiculous conception of federal elections in the face of how overwhelmingly wrong he was shown to be in such short order, but I guess I actually don’t understand why anyone would be so personally invested in Dean as to so easily buy into the revision.
Brien Jackson
@Chuck Butcher:
Um, no, it means it didn’t happen. I’m not even sure how you think it would happen. The central party doesn’t normally involve itself in primaries, unless they’re backing incumbents, and they’re certainly not going to bigfoot into a campaign after the primary and announce that they’re taking over from the people who just won the first leg. Dean did send a lot of resources to state parties, especilly in hopeless Republican states like Alaska, but that meant diverting resources away from campaigns and blue states.
Brien Jackson
From trying what?
Chuck Butcher
@Brien Jackson:
Since you’ve displayed your ignorance of where and evidently as well how I’m not sure I can type slowly enough for you.
Dean did not win the election for Obama, but the tactics were built on by OFA and they bootstrapped off the DNC work. I’m scarcely going to educate you on how this was set in place and how it worked having neither time nor inclination. Since you weren’t a part of the machinery it is your perogative to be ignorant and make flat statements about matters you know little of.
Chuck Butcher
Where the fuck did I say any damn thing about primaries? I do know what the fuck I’m talking about since I have been a Democratic Party official for years as well as a fucking candidate in a House Primary….
I do know how resources were allocated, who got them, and how much in many cases. You can shove Terry McAuliff and his losing ways up your nose. I brought up something that worked and was showing promise of carrying on and you turn it into a Dean Messiah thing.
johnny walker
@Midnight Marauder:
“Once it becomes law, President Obama will campaign on the health care reform measure, detailing for everyday Americans how they would see improvements to their system and painting the Republicans as blocking meaningful change.”
Good, but what reasonable explanation is there for why he couldn’t he have done this ahead of time? It certainly can’t be that he was too busy with other issues because those are still there. Assuming the bill passes, this plays right into a “See, he didn’t want to own the bill but now that it passed he’s going to go around and take credit” type of framing from Limbaugh or whoever. Both Obama and the legislation were more popular (or at least less-opposed) over the summer, why wait? It’s mindboggling.
Quiddity
My understanding is that Coakley didn’t spend much money. On advertising. On polls. On GOTV. That, and Coakley was a poor campaigner, or so it’s been reported.
Now you could argue that the White House (and the DSCC) should have been on the ball and intervened sooner. I agree.
I’d put the blame 60/40 Coakley/Obama-DSCC
Mattsky
There was a ton of TV ad buys. That was NOT the problem.
Mattsky
The polls are still open. There are no exit polls but the blame game between the Dems has already started
The polls were off in upstate New York in November so it is hard to trust them now. A recent news story I read said MA had over 100k corpses on the voting rolls. The corpses are very hard to poll but with a little assistance from those nice helpful people at ACORN they can still vote for Democrats.
It ain’t over till it’s over. –Yogi Berra
andrewtna
How about John Rawls:
““In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed.”
The Truffle
Hopefully, after this, Dems won’t be complacent again.
fasteddie9318
Look, Coakley was a terrible candidate who preferred to spend her time priming the money folks to actually going out and meeting voters. Maybe she’s lazy, maybe she’s tone deaf, but either way she ran an impossibly bad campaign.
Plus, let’s be honest, the American electorate is at this point collectively too stupid to be allowed to vote.
jim
This thing looked to me like someone made a bar-bet with Coakley that she couldn’t campaign worse than McCain & Palin did in 2008. I hope she bet big.
“If you could pick just one philosopher with whom to rebuke Obama, who would it be?”
Got to go with Schopenhauer (let’s see how that “hope & change” jazz stands up to a dose of REAL pessimism) … yeah, well, him or the TimeCube guy – either one works for me.
Lex
From Brad at Sadly, No!:
I was a political journalist (outside the Beltway) for about 25 years, and that is both as concise and as insightful as any political punditry I’ve ever seen. I’m not arguing that what it describes is logical or even rational. But it’s definitely real.
And in a rigidly two-party system, as Brad points out, “‘Whatever else is around’ is, sadly, the goddamn GOP.”