The Big Question: What does Brown’s win mean for Obama and Dems?

Some of the nation’s top political commentators, legislators and
intellectuals offer insight into the biggest question burning up the
blogosphere today.

Today’s question:

Scott Brown beat Martha Coakley. What is the message for President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats?

Michelle D. Bernard, president & CEO of the Independent Women’s Forum, said:

Americans Want Change Once Again

The message to Democrats from last night election couldn’t be more clear:  the American people are disgusted with Washington politics and reject it’s big government agenda.
 

One year ago, Massachusetts voted for President Obama by more than 20 percentage points.  Yesterday they voted in a Republican by a 5 point margin.  This is a political earthquake.  The Democratic leadership can no longer claim that just a fringe of Americans oppose their agenda.  A majority of Massachusetts voters are political independents.  They overwhelmingly voted for Scott Brown and against his Democratic opponent.

Many voters saw this explicitly as a referendum on health care and voted for Scott Brown solely so that he could be the 41st vote against the proposed health care legislation.  This means something!  Democrats need to recognize that a majority of Americans strongly oppose their proposals and are appalled at the backroom deals and bribery that have been used to advance this legislation.

Democrats have time to recover—at least partially—before the mid-term elections.  Recovery starts with recognizing that they have a big problem, actually listening to the message that Americans have sent, and committing to govern from the center. 

 

Hal Lewis, professor at UC Santa Barbara, said:

Unfortunately it is a message that they can ill afford to accept. It is a message that the independents now see that he lied when he campaigned on a promise of bipartisan open government, and instead delivered hard-left secretive deal after deal that simply delivers the treasury, present and future, to friendly groups. The deals he made to round up the last few senators were particularly egregious, and became public. At this point he is still reasonably popular, but his troops, Pelosi and Reid , are not, and the blame for the partisan squandering of the national wealth has yet to fall on him personally. But it will.

He could get out of this by giving his Jeremiah Wright speech, and dumping the congressional leadership under the bus, but they wouldn’t put up with it. The fact is that this crowd really does not represent the aspirations of the American people (evident in all the polls long before Massachusetts), and neither he nor they are in a position to acknowledge it.

Actually (and i know this is sacrilege) I am beginning to wonder about his intelligence. (About his eloquence there are no doubts.) The ClimateGate disclosures made it completely clear that the entire global warming business (for which Al Gore, of all people, got the Norwegian Peace prize) has been a giant  scam from the beginning. Yet he continues to push it, apparently blissfully unaware that the scam is collapsing day after day. That is simply dumb.

It would take real character to change his ways, and i see no evidence of it.

Bruce E. Gronbeck, professor of Political Communication at the University of Iowa, said:

While a five-point victory isn’t a landslide, it’s certainly significant.  Whether the health care debate both in- and out of Congress turned the election is something we may better understand once the exit pollsters have more completely analyzed their data.  From the outside, it certainly looks, as well, as though Coakley ran a lackluster campaign, which certainly didn’t help the Democrats’ cause.    I certainly understand that the health care issue could have been important because of its economic dimensions.  Citizens seeing a double-digit unemployment rate, many of experiencing the pinch of reduced job benefits and few places for their children to get decent jobs, certainly aren’t feeling generous toward the uninsured.  Looking inward, not outward, is to be expected.  Whether the administration and the Democratic party again can change the ways the citizenry is viewing domestic life over the next six months presents them with a herculean challenge.

Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, said:

Well, it’s great fun watching the pro-Obama pundits and
media try to “spin” this one. Like watching a fly try to swim against the
current of a tsunami.

But no matter how acrobatic their “spin,” they can’t evade
the meaning of their stunning defeat in that bluest of true-blue states,
Massachusetts. Imagine what is going to happen in, say, Nevada come election
time: Harry Reid can, and it ain’t pretty.

The meaning of the Brown victory is the same as Obama’s
victory: the victory of a perceived outsider over the entrenched establishment.
As
I wrote waaaay back in December of
2007 (!):

““The paradigm that best describes what is
happening on the ground in Iowa, New Hampshire, and beyond, isn’t ‘right’
versus ‘left,’ ‘Christianism’ versus secularism, or red-versus-blue state
mindsets, but populist demands for change against our hidebound,
insular,
arrogant
elites in the media as well as in government.”

This was my explanation
for the rise of Obama and the upending of the Democratic party elites,
personified by Hillary Clinton and her supporters, and the same populist demand
for change is continuing to swell, only this time attached to a different party
and candidate (or set of candidates). The populist wave is even stronger, this
time, and angrier, due to the betrayal of the Obama-ites, who have sold the
country out for the benefit of Goldman Sachs, Big Pharma, and their friends on Wall
Street.

Prediction: By the time
this is posted, the “Brown for President” boomlet will have already started to
gain momentum. Yes, I know, who ever heard of a state legislator rising to the
US Senate, after a few years, and then going on to take the White House? Oh, wait
….

 

John F. McManus, president of The John Birch Society, said:     

The Brown victory in Massachusetts tells President Obama and Democrats throughout the nation that the American people have awakened to, and are beginning to reject, the Obama/Democrat radical agenda. But there is another message here, one that I suspect is being heard very clearly by the nation’s mass media.  It is that, today, the American people have an alternative source for information that didn’t exist only a few years ago.  It’s called internet.  The preponderant majority of news dispensers in our nation have been newspapers, magazines, radio and television. And for decades, these have mostly been purveyors of liberalism, even socialism, whether supplied by Democrats or Republicans. But each of these traditional providers of information is losing its clout as the internet becomes relied upon by more every day – especially younger Americans.  The internet gives people choices regarding almost all issues that they haven’t previously enjoyed.
 
As a resident of Massachusetts, I feel confident that Scott Brown owes more to internet-supplied information about healthcare, huge national indebtedness, and job losses (his prime issues) than he does to anything else.  The message seems clear: As internet grows, socialism will be much harder to sell.  And a related message is that all who reject the socialistic/big government agenda favored by anyone ought to be on guard to block any moves to control and essentially destroy this most welcome addition to our nation’s mass media of communication.
 

Cheri Jacobus, Pundits blog contributor, said:

Scott Brown’s stunning upset victory in the late Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts means President Obama and congressional Democrats misread their ’08 victories.  They confused it with a mandate, eschewed any and all semblence of respect for the American people by thumbing their collective noses at promises of transparency, and name-called their way through town hall meetings, disregarding the tea partiers as inconsequential fringe players, while taking left-wing fringe players far too seriously.
 
Ooops.
 
The message for Democrats is to listen, even if you disagree, and never underestimate the American electorate.  Treating voters as naive fools who are simply too simple to understand the “great” work you are trying to do on behalf of the little people is a recipe for disaster.  It means you may soon find yourselves among those ranks of the “little people” as they put you out of a job.
 
For Republicans, the message is that actually HAVING a message works!  The Tea Party movement did what the establishment Republican Party could not for the past several years — establish a clear message, define the opponent, mobilize and get out the vote.  I also means, as Dick Morris has pointed out, that Republicans who may never have seriously considered running for federal office may now take the plunge, and many will be successful.  I’m even wondering how I might potentially do next year in my home state of Maryland against Barbara Mikulski.  Hmmmm……

Peter Navarro, professor of Economics and Public Policy at U.C. Irvine, said:

Phase I of the “Exactly repeat the Clinton 1992-93 mistakes of trying to do health care and raising taxes” is complete.  Senate super-majority is lost.  Phase II will be a Republican tsunami a la the 94 Gingrich revolution in 2010 and loss of the House.  Let’s see how dumb Barry, Harry, and Nancy really are.  It’s the economy stupid.

Richard S. Lindzen, atmospheric physicist and professor at MIT, said:

A somewhat careful analysis of the Massachusetts results suggests, as usual, a more nuanced situation than is likely to be reported.  A voting map of the state looks peculiarly like the nation as a whole.  The Boston area, the western part of the state (essentially the wealthy resort area of the Berkshires), and the outer Cape all continued to vote heavily Democrat.  The broad center of the state (with the exception of college towns) went heavily for Brown.  In brief, the base held for the Democrats while the red portion displayed profound buyer’s remorse.  As with the nation as a whole, this suggests that governing still requires reaching out to those who exist outside a certain information cocoon.  This may be difficult.  The information cocoon is basically represented by such entities as the New York Times, NPR, New York Review, New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, the MSM, etc.  Its worldview and even its notion of fact are so removed from what is seen by those outside the cocoon, that the only simple reconciliation consists in intentional vagueness and obfuscation.  Obama (and his Massachusetts friend, Governor Patrick) successfully employed vagueness in their campaigns (Yes we can.  Can what?  Change.  What kind of change? Change you can believe in.); however, once in control, the actual agendas belied the vagueness, and it will be almost impossible to return this genie to the bottle.  The resumption of vagueness will disillusion the base; the pursuit of the agenda will alienate the center.  I suppose that one solution will be to broaden the information cocoon to engulf the center, but the internet may render that more difficult than it used to be.

Brad Delong, professor of Economics at the UC Berkley, said:

Don’t let lousy campaigners run for senate seats.

Obama is, IIRC, a little more popular than presidents typically are at this point in the election cycle–and he is much more popular in Massachusetts than presidents typically are in typical states at this point in the election cycle. So there doesn’t seem to be a message for Obama here in terms of his popularity.

As far as legislative tactics are concerned, this returns us to 59 Democrats and 41 Republicans–exactly where we were before the Club for Growth drove Arlen Specter out of the Republican Party. It makes Reconciliation the only functioning legislative process in Washington DC, and that has powerful implications for what actually passes over the next year.

Brad Delong, professor of Economics at the UC Berkley, follow-up:

One of
the stranger things about the Washington DC reaction to Scott Brown’s
victory is that very few people seem to have noticed that Scott Brown
approves of the health care reform bill–he thinks that it is good
policy, that it would be a good set of reforms to the country’s health
care system.

Why is he pledged to vote against it, then? Two reasons: (a) Party
loyalty. (b) The current bill doesn’t do more for
Massachusetts–Massachusetts, you see, already has the benefits of the
bill (they were enacted by the Mass. legislature and Mitt Romney when
he was governor), so from the narrow perspective of Massachusetts’s
interests, the bill has no benefits but has some costs.

John Feehery, Pundits Blog contributor, said:

The brown victory is further indication that the democrats overread
their electoral mandate from a year ago, and overreached in attempting
to pass their legislative agenda. The democrats have been arrogant, and
have ruled ideologically, instead of pragmatically. Our political
system tends to self-correct when the balance of power is out of of
whack. That is exactly what happened last night.

John M. Snyder, public affairs director for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said:

The message, following similar November messages in Virginia and New Jersey, is that American voters want change away from the policies of Obama and his supporters in Congress.  This message is as clear as a bell.

Andy Stern, president of SEIU, said:

“Today is no different than yesterday or the day before or the day before that. Pat DeJong will still wake up in Libby, Montana.  Pat is still mourning the loss of her husband and the selling of his family’s ranch because of his medical bills.  And, Pat will still go to the bed side of her patients each day, providing excellent care, still lacking coverage of her own,” said SEIU President Andy Stern. “Pat’s reality is the reality millions of working people face every day. One political election does not change the fact that Pat and hardworking families across this country have been asking for and deserve fundamental reforms.

“The reason Ted Kennedy’s seat is no longer controlled by a Democrat is clear: Washington’s inability to deliver the change voters demanded in November 2008. Make no mistake, political paralysis resulted in electoral failure,” Stern said.

“During the past year, Republicans refused to do anything but stand in the way of change and Democratic Senators took too long to do too little. And tonight, the Senate bears the consequences for its failure to act decisively but the American people are the ones left paying the price. If our elected officials don’t recognize that every day more working families fall victim to Washington’s failure to act, the elections next November will result in the same.

“Today’s vote must be a wake-up call that now is the time for bold action. Time to stand up to politics as usual. Time to stand up to Republican scare and stall tactics. And time to speak up for working families.

“The Senate may have squandered the trust the American people gave to Washington in 2008. But now, every member of Congress and the Administration must act with a renewed sense of purpose to show working families whose side they are on and deliver meaningful change to every American. This is not the time for timidity.  It is time to show the courage and strength of conviction to move this country forward and bring working families the change they need. It starts by passing health insurance reform and giving Pat and millions of people like her the security and peace of mind they deserve.”

David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland
Security, said:

I have believed since election day 2008 that getting the 60 vote majority in the Senate was a negative for the Democrats because it raised unrealistic expectations in the Democratic base about what could be achieved. Healthcare has been the signature example of this. Max Baucus demonstrated quite convincingly that a public option could not garner 60 votes this summer, yet, Democrats spent the entire fall on a damaging intramural battle on this issue when the outcome was never really in doubt. It remains essential to pass a healthcare bill, but the only viable option at this time is for the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to the president. This bill is not perfect, and some Democratic constituencies oppose it, but those flaws could be fixed later. Whether the House can pass the Senate bill will demonstrate whether Democrats are serious about governing the country and achieving a key goal for the nation. The Brown victory has given Democrats a 10-month window to re-tool in order to avoid a repeat of 1994.

­­­­­­­­­­­­

Dick Morris, political commentator and Pundits Blog contributor, said:

It means:

1. Any Republican has the potential to defeat any Democrat anywhere
2. More Dem retirements from the House and Senate
3. More viable Republican candidates will run in Senate and House races

and …

4. Obama will never again pass a piece of partisan and controversial legislation

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said:

President Obama and the Democrats have to show that they are serious about creating jobs and taming Wall Street. The absurdity is that it is easy to create jobs. They do it in Germany and the Netherlands by work-sharing. This is really simple and it doesn’t cost any more than UI benefits.

Unfortunately, Larry Summers, the head of President Obama’s National Economic Council, rejected work-sharing insisting that it is not the American Way. Instead, he argued that double-digit unemployment is the American Way. President Obama cannot afford this sort of thinking from his top advisors.

He also has to get serious about being on the side of the public rather than the Wall Street banks. The $9 billion bank tax is a start, but it is really small change. It comes to about 5 percent of their annual profits and bonuses. The Wall Street banks will undoubtedly put up a big show of fighting it, but at the end of the day, they will gladly fork it over in exchange for all the help that they got from the taxpayers.

Without our help, these boys and girls would all be beating the streets looking for work, instead they are richer than ever, while the rest of the country is coping with double-digit unemployment. It wouldn’t be this way if the Obama administration did not want it to be this way.

Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said:

Talk about a wake-up call! Democrats who are minimizing Scott Brown’s victory do so at their very great peril. In a representative democracy, voters like to believe they are in charge — and they expect elected officials to adjust their agendas accordingly. Republicans have been given a gift that will keep on giving all the way to November, which is virtually unprecedented for a special election. Democrats can either learn from the results and show some humility, or they can pretend that the Massachusetts Senate contest was an aberration, all Martha Coakley’s fault. The road Democrats are on will lead to major, larger-than-expected losses in November. And for Democrats who say, ‘we’ve still got 59!’ and think the Massachusetts mood is not replicated nationally, there is one key question: Have they looked at a dozen recent national surveys that show the public has turned strongly against their healthcare plan? Jerry-built rigs usually collapse, and sometimes there is major loss of life.

 Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said:

It takes a special skill for a Democrat to lose a federal election in Massachusetts.

But whatever the failings of the candidacy and campaign of Martha
Coakley, the Democratic senate candidate in Massachusetts, the
Democrats’ loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat held for almost half a
century by Edward Kennedy, following the party’s November loss of the
New Jersey gubernatorial race, suggests the need to focus more on the
broader context, and less on individual shortcomings.

The Democratic Party has squandered the enormous opportunity bequeathed to it by the election of 2008.

The party gained overwhelming control of both the legislature and
executive in 2008. Yet party leaders somehow failed to recognize the
political moment.

We live in populist times.

Wall Street has crashed the economy. According to the official figures
— which under-report unemployment — one in six people in the country
are out of work or unable to find full-time work.

People know who’s to blame for the country’s deep recession, and they want them held accountable.
 
And they want to see aggressive policies to put people back to work.
 
But we’ve seen neither populist politics nor policies from the Democrats.
 
Although President Obama on occasion has had harsh words for Wall
Street, in general the administration has sought to blunt the public’s
anger against the banksters.

 It supported and has continued the Bush administration’s bailout plan,
a kind of unconditional love for Wall Street. Sure, you could make the
case the banks had to be saved in order to rescue the economy; but
there is no defense for bailing out the richest of the rich with no
strings attached.

The administration has put forward a financial regulatory plan with
some very useful components. But it has refused to embrace the bold
populist policies we need — breaking up the banks, taxing financial
speculation — to rein in Wall Street. It has also failed to defend the
good positions it has advocated with sufficient vigor and high-level
involvement.

 The gentle treatment of Wall Street from the outset of the administration has framed subsequent political developments.

 To its credit, the administration pushed through a desperately needed
economic stimulus plan. But in significant part because the size of the
stimulus plan was similar to the amount spent on the Wall Street
bailout, and because the administration had embraced both, the stimulus
and bailout — though totally distinct — became entangled in people’s
minds.

Next came health care. The Democratic Congressional leadership
developed a complicated and obtuse health care plan. There was the
occasional bluster about how the insurance industry was seeking to
undermine the plan, but in fact the insurance and pharmaceutical
industries embraced the idea, and will profit enormously from it.
Rather than identifying and campaigning against the corporate obstacles
to providing affordable access to care for all, the White House cut
deals with them.

Meanwhile, while the stimulus and Federal Reserve interventions
prevented the recession from turning to depression, the unemployment
and foreclosure situations grew dire. No post-stimulus jobs initiatives
appeared until the end of 2009. And the Congress and White House failed
to do anything consequential to keep people in their homes.

 Along the way, populism did find a partial outlet: in the confused and contradictory tea party movement.

 Going forward, who grabs the populist reins will significantly determine the 2010 election results.