You can blame a bad candidate, bad organization, bad timing of a vacation -- choose your rationalization. But the reality is that voters in Massachusetts were reacting to the same foul mist coming off Boston Harbor that New Jersey Voters smelled coming off the Hudson and Virginia voters off the Chesapeake.
What they all understood was that the source lay on the shores of the Potomac.
It is a truly remarkable feat, in just one year's time, to turn the fear and anger voters felt in 2006 and 2008 at a Republican Party that had destroyed the economy, redistributed massive amounts of wealth from the middle class to the richest of the rich and the biggest of big businesses, and waged a trillion-dollar war in the wrong country, into populist rage at whatever Democrat voters can cast their ballot against.
All of this was completely predictable. And it was predicted. I wrote about it for the first time here on the sixth day of Obama's presidency, and many of us have written about it in the intervening year.
The President's steadfast refusal to acknowledge that we have a two-party system, his insistence on making destructive concessions to the same party voters he had sent packing twice in a row in the name of "bipartisanship," and his refusal ever to utter the words "I am a Democrat" and to articulate what that means, are not among his virtues. We have competing ideas in a democracy -- and hence competing parties -- for a reason. To paper them over and pretend they do not exist, particularly when the ideology of one of the parties has proven so devastating to the lives of everyday Americans, is not a virtue. It is an abdication of responsibility.
What happens if you refuse to lay the blame for the destruction of our economy on anyone -- particularly the party, leaders, and ideology that were in power for the last 8 years and were responsible for it? What happens if you fail to "brand" what has happened as the Bush Depression or the Republican Depression or the natural result of the ideology of unregulated greed, the way FDR branded the Great Depression as Hoover's Depression and created a Democratic majority for 50 years and a new vision of what effective government can do? What happens when you fail to offer and continually reinforce a narrative about what has happened, who caused it, and how you're going to fix it that Americans understand, that makes them angry, that makes them hopeful, and that makes them committed to you and your policies during the tough times that will inevitably lie ahead?
The answer was obvious a year ago, and it is even more obvious today: Voters will come to blame you for not having solved a problem you didn't create, and you will allow the other side to create an alternative narrative for what's happened (government spending, deficits, big government, socialism) that will stick. And it will particularly stick if you make no efforts to prevent it from starting or sticking.
Were Massachusetts voters reacting in part to the health care debate turned debacle? Sure. In a misguided effort to avoid the mistakes of 1993, the President decided that leadership on health care wasn't in his job description and encouraged the Democrats to make their sausage in public, after making his own deals with the same people who brought us pre-existing conditions and $150 prescriptions (and that's with insurance). He promised transparency, and he gave the country a huge dose of it. Unfortunately, what was transparent turned people's stomachs.
The White House allowed the health care narrative to be all about process, and the process the American people saw wasn't pretty. It scared seniors, who worried what would happen to their Medicare. It scared workers, who worried about what would happen to the plans their unions had negotiated so hard for in lieu of salaries. It scared middle class Americans with good health insurance plans, who had -- and have -- no idea whether their plans will be deemed -- if not today, in three or four years -- Cadillacs, which will first be taxed and then discontinued, leaving them with exactly what Frank Luntz told them it would leave them with: a bureaucrat between them and their doctor. And worst of all, it seemed to most Americans that the reason they were being asked to make such potentially big sacrifices was so that health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and millionaires wouldn't have to. It seemed not only risky but unfair.
So in that sense, the story of health insurance played right into the story that lies behind the looming tsunami that swept away Ted Kennedy's Senate seat and will sweep away so many more Democratic seats if the Democrats draw the wrong conclusions from this election. The White House just couldn't seem to "get" that the American people could see that they were constantly coming down on the side of the same bankers who were foreclosing people's homes and shutting off the credit to small business owners, when they should have been helping the people whose homes were being foreclosed and the small businesses that were trying to stay afloat because of the recklessness of banks that were now starving them. Americans were tired of hearing Obama "exhort" bankers and speculators to play nice as they collected their record bonuses for a heckuva job in 2009. It took him a year to float the idea of making them pay for a fraction of the damage they had done, and at this point, few Americans have any faith that a tax on big banks will ever become law or that the costs won't just be passed on to them in new fees.
The White House has squandered the greatest opportunity to change both the country and the political landscape since Ronald Reagan. It should have started with a non-watered-down stimulus package big enough to stop the bleeding in the job market -- and a smack-down of any Republican who dared to utter the word "deficit" after 8 years of reckless, unpaid Republican spending. It should have followed with stringent regulations on Wall Street and protection of homeowners and small businesses instead of with a jobs creation program inside the administration for failed bankers and failed regulators. A stimulus -- including a jobs program -- strong enough to prevent the hemorrhaging of 700,000 jobs a month and a muscular approach to the bad actors who had crashed the economy would have gotten the public firmly behind the President and the Democrats, demonstrating to the average voter that they have a choice between one party that's on their side and another that's not. Instead, the White House just blurred the lines between the parties so the average American couldn't tell the difference.
With all its efforts to tack to the center, the White House missed the point. The issue isn't about right or left. It's about whose side you're on. In Massachusetts, the voters believe they know. It's now up to the President and his party to convince the American people otherwise.
This cycle of causing democrats to lose control after repairing the economy, then taking control to provide more wealth to those corporations and individuals who pull the strings of the right-wing nuts, is old news. Breaking this cycle means getting true reporting to people who don't scrutinize what they're fed by most media. If the mainstream media would just talk honestly about the real mess that the Republicans have caused over the past 40 years, only those too dumb to go inside during a lightning storm would remain supporting the modern republican agenda.
Well done, Mr. Westen. Well done, all of you.
LOL - Grandpa, I think it's past your bedtime.
Which are gathered and pooled to provide free speech. It is a socialist activity.
So will all who have issues with being social(ist) please log off.
Just a little humor here, it is sorely lacking.
We haven.t gone off the cliff yet, Never have so many lived so well.
Some of us on the far left have to say this some times or we start getting a little crazy.
And yes we are being abused by Greedy Corporations and Punitive Government.
I am not happy with my party for reasons you on the Right cannot even fathom.
But at least their working, yours are just saying how bad the Country is, OH WELL.
Like they use to tell us LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT. I'M still here 45 years later. Not going away.
Its all about Fairness and the Promise of a better future, when they are out of balance somone in Washington isn't doing their job, because that is why we sent them there. TO COMPROMISE.
Winner take all Politics is FACISM or COMMUNISM. If you cannot handle a little Socialism find a mountain, build a cabin and live off what you find there. I love the idea, it just doesn't work for 300 million people.
All social democracies. No communism yet!
High quality of life, no poverty, vibrant economies and darned nice places to live (and visit!).
There are six instances. I could name more but I think you get the point.
How can you vote for change if your voting for the same old tired ideas that got this country where it is right now?
Tax breaks for the wealthy - both individuals and corporations.
Most Americans don't realize it - but they are the financial slaves of capitalism.
Americans don't need jobs - they need to work for themselves. When Americans are laid off - it's so their bosses can make more money or at the very least not make any less. When you have a society where 95% of citizens are working to benefit 5% - that's not democracy. The BIG LIE is that BIG GOVERNMENT is the problem - when in fact we have NO Government - since our votes are auctioned off to the highest bidder. Now the Supreme Court aka SUPREME RULER - who appointed our last President - are giving corporations the same rights as individuals - not that we had any left to begin with - this just makes it even more official - i.e. $1 = 1 vote $1,000 = 1,000 votes.
What THEY ALL UNDERSTOOD was that the source lay on the shores of the Potomac. >
Perfectly stated, Mr. Westen... & PERFECTLY __NOT__ realized by the now nearly insufferable Obama WhiteHouse, as this ExiledOnline.com commentary catches so perfetly:
http://exiledonline.com/fire-the-failures-save-the-presidency/
< So now Americans are in revolt against the government. Obama’s first response should be ... pink-slips to the economic team that’s screwed this country up. So far, OBAMA SEEMS TO HAVE LEARNED _EXACTLY THE WRONG LESSON__ —he told ABC News that the election defeat came NOT from SUBSTANCE, but from bad style: >
< "If there’s one thing that I regret this year is 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.” >
SO - the Democratic Presidency, THE ENTIRE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, has been HIJACKED by folks (the Obama/Emanuel/Summers/Geithner GS cabal) who CAN NOT SEE what "THEY ALL understood"??!!!
Brown did not run against our President who is popular with all Americans.
OUR President is an amalgamation of conservatism and liberalism - which makes him an independent.
In fact I believe he should run as an independent in 2012.
The Mass vote was a wake up call to congress including republicans to finally get behind OUR President and work together on his agenda and to stop playing political games!
It may not be apparent to most - but so far so good.
The recent supreme court ruling will help get liberals AND conservatives to work together to fight the real BIG BROTHER - which is not our Government - but those including the media who have bought our votes.
The same thing will happen this year unless Obama acts to ensure that the Democrats govern with a centrist agenda.
word police, you are part of the problem, by not letting post to get through you prolong this false reality hiding the truth from an ignorant voting public.
The biggest problem that I and my progressive friends have is that Obama is way too centrist. Then people that say they are in the middle claim he's too far to the left. Obama isn't the SLIGHTEST BIT on the left. He is a centrist and his policies, his White House team, everything he does bears this out. By the way, Clinton was too. Michael Moore called Clinton the best Republican president we've ever had and I think he was right.
We can't let Fox News define the middle in this country and we can't let them throw the word "socialism" out willy-nilly with no apparent idea of the meaning of the word. Here we are supposedly with a "liberal" majority in the House and Senate and we still can't get any progressive legislation passed. Progressives are still the minority party, even with Democrats in charge.
So that leaves 2011 for them to actually do something.
Sorry but I think we lost our chance to get this country moving forward with this administration.
organize and march
Our financial system is broken. Our economic system is broken. Our job market is broken. Our healtchcare system is broken. Our educational system is broken. Our government is broke, and broken, and our political and legislative process is corrupt.
We're just arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Our best days are behind us. Our national decline is picking up steam and momentum.
Brace for impact.
we want our country back
organize and march, time to wake up and bring a new progressive era to this country
PS: If John Kennedy were here today, he would be ashamed of his party for aligning itself with the far Left. Rest in peace.
Obama needs to throw out the old Bush administration hacks and really adopt a populist agenda. Do you realize most of ther current economicand tax policy from GWB is still in place? How's that working for you? Obama's speeches aren't enough, but neither are your assertions of Socialism without addressing specific problems or solutions.
Universal single payer is inevitable, the loss of Capital based employment, will drive it.
If Republicans really believed in small govenment they would all resign. Or at least take a smaller pay check.
After reading hundreds of these discussions, I find that only one in ten reflects that the indvidual understands how we as a society functions. So no wonder we are more of a circus than we were 30 years ago.
FYI: the economy lost 800.000 jobs a month when Obama took office. From the very beginning, he has said that jobs are his priority.
Result: each month we had LESS job losses. After less than a year, what each month grew worse under Bush, was totally transformed into the opposite: today we're at less than 100.000 job losses a month, and nothing indicates that it will stop here.
Why are even people like Mr. Westen failing to see this?
Hypothesis: they try to psychoanalyze the president (looking for 'leadership' in the old way: "muscular" reactions etc.) instead of trying to understand his policiy decisions. I really think that it's as simple as that ... .
So imo president Obama absolutely earns a A-. The minus only stands for the fact that he didn't understand yet how much the media were busy speculating about him instead of trying to understand his actions.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#34833567
(Rachel Maddow, numbers of job losses)
I think Obama has to quit vacillating on issues and take command, or the voters will vote for the other party later this year. As voters we only have two main choices so it always boils down to the lesser of the two evils. Obama needs to take command personally.
I also think Obama should pull our troops out of both wars as these are clearly not working. He shouldn't feel obligated to continue Bush's failed policies.