| Conservatives are calling it the "Massachusetts Miracle": Republican Scott Brown won yesterday's special election to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.
What does it mean? Does it mean what Maine's Susan Collins says it does?
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said one of the many messages coming out of the Massachusetts election is that Americans are sick of partisan gridlock, but voters also had a much more expansive recommendation.
"They want better performance out of Washington, they want us focusing on the troubled economy and the need for more jobs and ... they're tired of sweetheart deals that were sneaked into the health care bill. They want that kind of bill to be negotiated in the open. And they're tired of politics as usual and they also want controls. They don't want unfettered, one-party control," Collins told Fox News.
I can't argue with this - I think it's probably true. Of course, Republicans are the main reason there is partisan gridlock in DC, and adding Scott Brown snarls it up even more. As for "politics as usual"...well...I'm not hopeful having Brown as a Senator is going to change that at all. While Democrats have cut deals with insurers and health care providers, their base obeisance pales in comparison to the GOP's usual pathetic grovelling at the feet of corporate America. That is, it's not lkely Brown is the solution. |
Or there's the lesson Evan Bayh is taking away from Brown's win:
For Senator Bayh the lesson is that the party pushed an agenda that is too far to the left, alienating moderate and independent voters.
"It's why moderates and independents even in a state as Democratic as Massachusetts just aren't buying our message," he said. "They just don't believe the answers we are currently proposing are solving their problems. That's something that has to be corrected."
What about this health care bill is "too far left"? How could you make it more "moderate"? What is "left" or "right" in the context of health care? What the h*ll is Bayh talking about?
I like what Mike Lux had to say:
Here's the deal: while there are significant differences between Democratic base voters who didn't turn out to vote in very big numbers yesterday in Massachusetts, and the working class swing voters who voted for Scott Brown, these two kinds of voters actually have a great deal in common in terms of what will move them to vote for Democrats:
1. They want big change.
2. They are tired of having wealthy special interests, especially the big banks and insurers, run things in DC.
3. They expect the Democrats to get things done on the big issues of the day- they want jobs created, a better health care system where the power of the big insurers is reigned in, investments in renewable energy, the big banks broken up.
Nate Silver ascribes the loss to Croakley's campaign, the national political environment, and the circumstances of the special election.
I don't think you can get away from local considerations for the upset. After all, it was a Speaker of the House from Massachusetts who said, all politics is local. Massachusetts voters have a tendency to opt for socially-liberal Republicans who promise fiscal sanity. William Weld. Mitt Romney - who was socially liberal until he decided he wanted to win the Republican nomination for president, at which point his approval ratings in the state promptly tanked.
And there's the rub. Brown's already a marked man, caught between a populist, liberal electorate, and a consummately pro-corpoate and socially conservative political party. Kos:
So what will come first? Remember, Brown has to run for reelection in 2012, a presidential year, in one of the top 2-3 most liberal states in the nation.
Either Scott Brown alienates ideologically rigid Teabaggers by casting votes with Democrats in order to shore up his standing at home; or
He votes in lockstep with the rest of his party and becomes the nation's most unpopular senator.
One or the other is inevitable. Maybe both.
In the end, I find myself agreeing with Peter Daou. Democrats have failed miserably to govern based on "a morally sound, well-articulated, solidly-grounded set of ideals" and looked "weak." As Daou pointed out, it's something liberal bloggers have been pointing out for months. It's something I've been saying for months. Democrats should have taken a bold, progressive stance and created good policy.
Will they learn their lesson? Probably not. Again, Mike Lux, quoting from The Progressive Revolution:
In the culture of caution that dominates Democratic politics in the modern era, when you try something big and fail, even if the failure is due in great part to your own timidity, you only become more cautious. |
