In aftermath, Dems debate party’s future

Internal debates over the direction of the Democratic Party intensified
Wednesday following a devastating electoral loss in Massachusetts.

In the aftermath, liberals immediately began to argue that Scott Brown’s win shows the party has not delivered on the change promised by President Barack Obama, while centrists and conservatives worried the result shows voters are disillusioned with leftward moves made by Congress.

If the results Tuesday in Massachusetts show anything, it’s that both factions could be in some danger in 2010. The question for Democrats is which one takes the reins.

Democrats insist they aren’t surprised by the difficult road ahead, but they are getting their first taste of failure in several years. And those overseeing the party’s electoral fate sought to use Brown’s win over Martha Coakley as a cautionary tale of what happens when a candidate eases up on the campaign trail.

But while Democrats were professing calmness and a lack of surprise, activists fought over what direction to take going forward.

Liberals said Brown’s win shows that people would prefer a public option to the individual mandate when it comes to healthcare reform.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) released a Research 2000 survey conducted after polls closed in Massachusetts. Among people who voted for Obama in 2008 and then Brown on Tuesday, more thought Obama and the Democrats haven’t gone far enough than thought they had gone too far.

The survey found that 57 percent of Obama voters who backed Brown said the president hadn’t delivered on his message of change.

“Democrats are on the verge of learning exactly the wrong lesson from the Massachusetts race,” PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor said. “The numbers are clear, the only question is: Will Democrats learn the right lesson or suffer more losses in 2010?”

Democracy for America political director Charles Chamberlain added: “In an election between Scott Brown and the public option, the public option would have won.”

But while liberals were saying Democrats weren’t going far enough, centrists and conservatives said they were going too far.

Centrist Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) learned Wednesday that Brown’s win could lead Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) to challenge him in 2010. Even before that news broke, though, Bayh told ABC News that it was time for Democrats to slow up and re-evaluate.

“There’s going to be a tendency on the part of our people to be in denial about all this,” Bayh said. “Whenever you have just the furthest-left elements of the [Democratic] party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country, that’s not going to work too well.”

The third option is to stay the course. Indeed, an exit poll conducted by GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio on Tuesday showed just 38 percent of voters said they were motivated by opposition to Obama and his policies, and the president maintained a 55 percent approval rating among Tuesday’s electorate.

Democratic leaders concurred, saying little would change, except for a re-evaluation of their individual campaigns, which both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee began dealing with Wednesday.

“I think we lost the battle, but the war still goes on,” a Democratic source said. “Not a lot is going to change, really at all.”

Nathan Daschle, the executive director of the Democratic Governors Association (DGA), said Democrats shouldn’t be surprised by the side effects of moving legislation.

Even after Republicans have taken over the governors’ seats in New Jersey and Virginia, along with the Massachusetts Senate seat, he said, there was no need for a come-to-Jesus meeting.

“Is it time for Democrats to have that meeting? I really don’t think so,” Daschle said. “One of the things that we’re facing is just the difficulty of being in power. When you’re in power and you’re trying to make change, it comes at a cost.”

Even as Democrats jostle over their party’s direction, though, there is little evidence of it leading to the primary problems Republicans are facing. The party gained its majorities largely through running centrist and conservative candidates in swing and conservative districts, and few of them have drawn significant primary challenges to this point.

After months of consternation over healthcare, DSCC Chairman Robert Menendez (N.J.) said it’s time to refocus on the economy.

“We need to find a way to engage independent voters in a meaningful way, and for me, that means, clearly, economic issues,” Menendez said.

DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen echoed Menendez. In an interview with The Hill, he said healthcare must be completed, but he suggested changing the subject might be beneficial.

{mosads}“In terms of our policies and actions taken in House, we have focused on the economy,” Van Hollen (Md.) assured. “But the actions we’ve taken on the economy have been drowned out by long debate on healthcare reform.”

Obama said he felt his administration had lost a connection to the public because it was focused too heavily on policymaking.

“If there’s one thing that I regret this year it’s that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values,” Obama told ABC News on Wednesday.