The Wall Street Journal asked me to offer my take on the results in the Massachusetts Senate race. A version of this post appears in today's WSJ.
If the White House learns the right lessons from this stunning loss, it will turn out to be a blessing. A blessing in a very heavy disguise, I realize, but a blessing nonetheless.
President Obama can still course-correct in time to avoid the looming iceberg that Democrats are headed for in 2010. In the wake of Massachusetts, he should take a step back, take a metaphorical trip to the mountaintop, and reconnect with the reasons why he ran -- and why he got elected.
Since there is no other job that prepares you to be president, the best presidents are the ones with the ability to learn on the job and the willingness to course-correct. First, the Obama White House has to admit it is heading in the wrong direction. Then it needs to bring all hands on deck, toss overboard a few who currently have their hands on the wheel -- and turn hard to change course.
Some, including Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, are saying that the outcome in Massachusetts is an indication that Obama and the Democrats need to move to the middle and focus on trying to make bipartisan deals. This, of course, is exactly what the Democrats have been doing all year. If they redouble their efforts to curry favor with the Olympia Snowes of the world, they'll be making a grave mistake.
Celinda Lake, Martha Coakley's pollster, spoke the truth yesterday when she said their campaign was hurt by the White House's failure to confront Wall Street. This has left Democratic candidates the targets of angry voters -- especially angry independent voters -- worried about the economy.
For the last 12 months, the administration has been tone-deaf to just how much the economy has impacted Americans' lives. This has allowed populist rage to grow, and put Democrats -- who have been hot and heavy with the big banks and insurance companies all year -- squarely in voters' crosshairs.
In the last week, the president and his team have upped the populist rhetoric. But if they want people to believe their fiery pronouncements about taking on "powerful interests" and "the status quo," they need to remember that the middle, the place the Evan Bayh crowd wants them to move toward, is exactly where the status quo resides.
The course the Obama White House needs to chart is neither left nor right. It leads directly to the priorities of America's middle-class families, who are worried about jobs, foreclosures, mounting credit card debt, are convinced that the fix is in -- and are looking desperately for someone on their side.
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you are very bright. we need more people like you in the world
it can be a blessing if they respond by DOING the right things.
Such as:
Step 1
Expand health care coverage to 40 million people useing reconciliation:
Expanding Medicaid to everyone below 215% of the FPL, and expanding SCHIP coverage to all uninsured children should cost of just under $800 billion.
The Medicaid expansion could be structured to also work as a de facto extreme catastrophic insurance policy for people over 215% FPL.
Early Medicare buy-in could be added for people without insurance who are between 47-65.
Have Wall Street fat cats and other low-life pay for it all.
Step 2
Create monumental Infrastructure Bank for large job creation and investing in future productivity ( Krugman was right. You didn’t do enough the first time with the “stimulus” program). Have the professionals make all of the decisions and not pork-barrel politicians.
Step 3.
Put Elizabeth Warren in charge of the new Consumer Protection Agency.
Replace Bernanke with Volker. Fire Summers, Geithner and Rhambo.
Step 4
The United States Senate is an inane, corrupt and dysfunctional institution that no longer serves the interests of the American people. Bypass it on energy. Use the full powers of the EPA to mandate change!
Step 5
Get out of Iraq immediately! Leave a few drones. Reverse dumb decision on Afghanistan escalation. (Remember, you don’t like dumb wars). Leave a lot of drones.
#1 is very unlikely.
#2 depends.
#4 will be a disaster if Senate is avoided in legislation to that degree.
#5 not likely. That would require Obama to admit escelation was a mistake.
Correcting the course of action requires leadership and convictions.
Mr. O doesn't have either.
It's only been a year and already you're giving up!
To fight for the middle class and poor people, jobs, and bring our men and women home from these wars.
But the fight we've gotten is: with each other, catering to the republicans, fighting with Beck, Hannity, Rush, Cheney's, tea parties, death panel conversations and fighting for Geithner, Summers and Bernanke. Bailing out Wall Street, Banks, auto companies while we, the American people, continue to lose our jobs, homes, health care, increased gas and food prices and higher interest rates.
They didn't even fight for Van Jones or Erroll Southers. These were two highly intelligent and experienced people the President nominated and hired but yet did not speak out on their behalf. How can we believe they will speak out on our behalves?
Yes, I voted and supported Obama and I don't have a change of heart. I just want some action and results.
The far left is spinning spinning spinning to make this some sort of a mandate for Obama to take a hard left. But as often as you repeat it folks, it's still not the message. Refusing to really listen to the folks and move to the middle will only continue to enrage the voters and spell doom for any hope of the "progressive" agenda because their party will be run out of power.
In most battles their are losses. Smart commanders know when to pull back, when they are OVER EXTENDED, when they have to give ground to survive to fight another day.
Obama had tremendous opportunity and blew it primarily because he thought this recession would rebound soon could be used as a pass to take hundreds of billions from the tax payers and distribute it as he wishes all the way into his next election. But the recession was worse than expected and his rip off of the tax payers is now a heavy weight around his neck.
IT's time to move to the middle or destroy the party, that's the choice.
The American people are simply not paying attention.
Look, the people of Massachusetts have elected what was billed as an independent, moderate,
Republican; a double oxymoron if there ever was one.
Haven’t they noticed that the Republicans in the Senate vote 100 percent in lockstep 100 percent of the time?
Haven’t they noticed that the Party agenda is to delay and obstruct any and all legislation (except of course for the big spending bills that everyone seems to agree on), with the objective to make things worse in the country and therefore better for the opposition party?
Do they really think that a freshman senator is going to change ANYTHING about this agenda?
Many of us have been holding to the belief that just because Obama and the Democratic Congress have turned out less Progressive than advertised, that no one was going to run out and vote Republican as a logical choice.
Apparently we were wrong.
What this elections should teach the Democrats is simply this: Never underestimate the stupidity of the electorate; even in a state as progressive as Massachusetts.
I'm not saying his same-sex marriage position is the greatest, but it shows a sense of compromise that he seems to have stopped actively fighting against it.
Brown has some positions that are repugnant to me, such as the usual "don't tax the banks" crap, but he's also in agreement in getting away from foreign oil.
My point is we won't know how he behaves until he is surrounded by the coyotes of his party in the senate. He actually supports Obama on some foreign policy issues. So we need to see if he has backbone.
He is completely tone deaf to the plight of the poor and the middle class. He, as well as the members of Congress have been so caught up in their own self-interest that they have failed to recognised the needs of the people. Look at what is happening with healthcare reform. Everybody is thinking about Him/Herself rather than the people they represent. That is the reason the people of Massachussets have sent this lousy government a clear message. (If you continue to ignore us we will vote you out)
I personally believe that the President wants to do good by the people. I also believe that he does understands the plight of the poor. But the problem is he has surrounded himself entirely with people who do not have a clue about what is going on in the lives of the poor. One cannot say otherwise because the pproof is in the pudding. They handed free money to the big banks and nothing to the poor. This country would have been in better shape if they had use the money to put people back to work.
And those in the administration that preach "stand up for the people" do so only at the expense of the taxpayer. They have a mis-directed notion that America wants the Govt to provide everything to everyone.
There's not many in the administration that grasp middle class. Combine them with the leadership in Congress and its like adding fuel to a fire.
My Comments: There's so much within this single paragraph that will dictate the future of our country.
Will Obama do what no President has done in 30 years and begin to re-build our manufacturing base (once a power within this country)? Through reviewing our trade policies and other driving factors?
Will Pelosi demand EFCA, Cap and Trade, and Amnesty for Illegals remain on the agenda in 2010?
Will there be action and results or just more words and spending? We've seen and heard that too many time from this administration and congress? We aren't buying words alone.
Will businesses take the brunt of change in their pocketbooks? If so, that's a tightrope to walk. Businesses are jobs, not govt rhetoric and spending.
Can Obama find leadership within his character? He has proven to be a successful campaigner and politician, but hasn't had to lead in his life. Nor has he been held accountable, until now. This is still a learning experience for him. And learning on the job, especially this job, is always full of surprises.
There are no ideas, no direction, and most significantly, no intellect in the GOP now. George Will, David Brooks, even Joe Scarborough have become the fringe elements in the right because they actually think.
The right is all about costumes and bellicosity now, wearing tea bags on their hats while ranting about socialism, fascism and communism all in one breath, as if they had any idea what those terms actually meant. They railed against health care reform, not even understanding that they were the ones who were most abused by the present system that feeds the beasts known as insurance and drug companies.
They are so behind the times and so unable to change that having a man of color as president terrifies them for no other reason than that he is... a man of color. They've actually started an all-white basketball league to "get back to the fundamentals!"
It's Sunday morning in America, folks. And it's taking a while to get over the hangover from the binge of stupidity and corruption we've endured. But believe it - Scott Brown's election was the beginning of the recovery.
http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/
Meanwhile, he seems to provide the impetus for the Dems to get serious. Though there's no guarantee that they will.
I thought Coakley's involvement with the Fells Acre Day Care Center prosecution was morally indefensible, I thought her charges of Murder 1 for Pring-Wilson (Harvard student attacked by two street punks), was over-the-top and smarmily politically correct, (involuntary manslaughter seemed right to me) I hope she gets a wake up call as AG (didn't vote for her there either but for the Republican) and stops protecting herself. PUblic office isn't worth compromising everything for. But she has shown herself to be a weak-kneed public official in many ways.