As I’m sure you know by now, Martha Coakley has done the impossible: lost Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to a teabagging Republican. Now congressional Democrats, predictably, are running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
There are going to be a couple depressing narratives woven out of this, the worst of all possible special elections.
1. The Democrats, and the Obama Administration, are doomed. This is a referendum on the party, and voters hate them.
2. Moderate, moderate, moderate. Leftist ideology got us here and only a return to the tried and true centrism of days gone by will bring the Dems back in line with the good ol’ US of A.
Fortunately they are both wrong, with qualifications. Democrats who only take the above lessons from last night’s debacle, as an unnerving number of them seem to be, are ignoring some key points.
A big reason both the health care plan, and Democrats in general, are losing popularity is because of the glacial process of the legislation. The longer health care percolates, the more voters dislike it. Voters, fickle beasts that we are, want to see something happen when we vote, but we also hate watching it happen. All the compromises, the legislative slings and arrows, and the plain meanness of the political process turn us off. The more we hear about pending legislation, and the ugly sausage-making process, the more we dislike it. (For an in depth-analysis of this trend, in compelling jargonese, click here.) The GOP realized this from the get-go and they’ve been working over time to ensure that nothing happens, in a long drawn out way, thus making the Democrats look terrible. And it’s working. But do you know what would make the Dems look better?
If they passed it anyway.
More after the jump.
And then there is Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, who seems to think the Democrats have become just too darned progressive for their own good. I don’t know what he is talking about exactly. Perhaps the tax-break laden stimulus? Or the business-friendly (but still worthwhile) health care bill? In any case, whatever Coakley’s loss and American skepticism of health care reform can be blamed on, it isn’t liberal ideology or a grossly un-American expansion of the welfare state. In fact, if the Democrats get their shit together and pass this thing, it will probably end up being unimpeachably popular: just like Medicare and the Massachusetts version of universal health care which the current bill is based on, and Scott Brown supports because it’s really popular. The only reason Bayh frets publicly about creeping liberalism in the party is because it plays well to the cameras. Americans hate progressive policy when they hear about it on FOX News. But they tend to like it once it’s actually in place. See: Social Security, Medicare, etc. (The exception is when it doesn’t directly benefit them. See: welfare.)
Unfortunately, it probably won’t matter. Back in the 1970s, one of Jimmy Carter’s aides noted something quite perceptive in a memo to her boss, Frank Moore, that administration’s congressional liaison. In Congress, she wrote, “if a perceived problem is verbalized long enough, it becomes a problem.” The Democrats are taking the perceived problems of liberal overreach and imminent electoral doom, and they are actualizing them. 2010 is going to be ugly. Midterms after a party wins the presidency always are, especially in times of economic downturn. But that fact will be mitigated if the Democrats stand up, hit back with an attack narrative of their own (like, say, bashing the Republicans for their unrelenting obstructionism, and outright hypocrisy), and pass the damn bill. Instead they seem to be curling into a ball and playing dead. If they keep at it, they really will be.
Amen.
Also worth mentioning is that passing a health care bill in spite of this Brown guy will only help the Democrats win back his wasted seat after three years of being marginalized.
The Dems problem (at least in Congress) is not that they are too liberal or that they’ve become too conservative. It’s that they are spineless and will cave and cower any chance they get. People don’t want to vote for the weak. And when we look weak even when we control the White House, House and Senate, we’re really screwed.
Oh, and Coakley lost this all by herself. I hope Rahm did a better job picking candidates for this fall!!!
Independent voters are usually the least informed–they are independent because they don’t like politics. When they perceive that nothing is getting done, they blame the in-crowd. Never mind that most of the things that independents are upset about–over spending, taxpayer bailouts, and lack of movement on health care were caused or necessitated by the ramshackle, cynical work of Republicans when they were in power. They wouldn’t know that, but cause independents don’t follow politics. So, now that things finally got bad enough for them to take notice, boom: blame it on the guys in charge.
This has been the pattern for the last forty years. Republicans break things through irresponsible tax cuts and please-the-base spending. Democrats fix things, and take the blame for the pain it causes. Republicans sweep back into power and break things again. Rinse. Repeat.
Jake, you must be new around here.
But you’re so full of shit we’re sure you’ll fit right in.
The proposed bill sucks like your momma.
If it was a decent bill voters would be salivating to see it become law.
They aren’t.
Sure, Jake, you and Reid are smarter than the rest of us and know what’s good for us so ignore the Liberal folks of Mass and pass your bill anyway.
(That should be easy now that you have one fewer vote than you did and a third of the remaining Democrats are scared shitless. Jackass.)
Pass it and show us.
go ahead.
“Business friendly (but still worthwhile) health care bill”
Are you kidding me? I love how people gloss over this bill because it’s “reform” and they’re ready to accept any kind of reform at this point. We shouldn’t approve anything that is “good enough” just to get something done. That’s BS. This is a shitty bill and should be defeated. The house and senate need to start over and do this thing right or the voters need to start passing legislature in their states like…hmmm…Massachusetts!
stupid. “If they passed it anyway”???? wrf????/
HOW exactly do you propose to pass the pile of crap they have crafted?
can you not count freaking votes?
Those conservadems in the house will freak out now and about 30 will peel off.
Obama fucked up by (a) letting congress define it all, and (b) playing to the 60 vote rule resulting in the creation of an unholy hodgepodge MESS Obama couldn’t even explain and no one can explain, and (c) not mobilizing grass roots, and not communicating well, which is kinda hard, cuz he said his goal is to base it on “let’s sit down with insurers!” so the whole rationale of paying them off with 40 million newcustoms then creating a regulatory rube goldberg scheme is just….un messageable.
Instead, MEDICARE for all woulda done it, and if can’t get 60 pass with 51 and if have to compromise compromise at MEdicare at age 55, we’ll lower it to 45 soon, and BOOM, it’s passed.
BTW Democrats hitting back with message of GOP unrelenting obstructionism, and hypocrisy is KINDA HARD TO DO after the whole Obama approach has been “let’s sit down with insurers!” and “I am pledged to responsible bipartisan reform!” which is as good as saying “Republicans. Not so bad!”
Like many critiques yours is written as if these failures are anonymous, and His Name cannot even be mentioned. Face it. He’s not doing a good job. Yes, I mean Him. You know, Him. The One who didn’t even mention His health care reform in Massachusetts. Can you guess who I am talking about? Your piece is written as if He does not exist.
@4
a perfect example of Democratic thinking. We’re better, so we lose.
Soooo “no we can’t,” soooo defeatist, soooooo unwilling to take responsibility. Yes, responsibility. It’s our job to make the right policy and sell it and fucking win elections.
NOT erect well rationalized elaborate intellectual excuses to justify continuous failure ….
Hi Jake. Nice piece, but I really do think you are fooling yourself. It is not the glacial pace of legislation that is turning people off, it is the perception that the current administration has no idea how to handle the current economic crisis. This is MASSA-FUCKING-CHUSETTS going red, not Alabama. This is a giant honking signal that the midterms are going to be disastrous.
What ever makes you feel better, though.
This is not about Coakley. This is not a bump in the road. This is a fucking train wreck. And the bad news is: We haven’t seen the worst of it yet. That will happen in November.
Obama promised change. With respect to the economy, he’s as bad – or worse- than bush. He might not know any better, or he may just be in the pocket of the big banks. The short of it is that his government has committed trillions of dollars to bailing out banks while dooming the rest of us to one long, painful “recovery”, Japan-style. His complete disregard for public opinion about the AIG counter-parties bailout, TARP and the stimuli are coming home to roost, I fear. He better listen to the few smart economic minds around him (Volker) and dismiss Geithner, summer and rest of the neo-Keynesian sycophants.
Without a solid basis for the economy, the healthcare reform is doomed to fail, because it is perceived as very costly and unaffordable in these times. His backroom deals with Ben Nelson and unions, among others, have not helped present the requisite level of transparency, either.
@12 is right, but the problem runs even deeper than Obama not knowing what the fuck is going on: not even the bankers themselves can explain (and probably won’t even if they could) what they were doing with the gazillion dollars that just disappeared into the great bank in the sky.
There is a distinct chain of events that needs to happen here: get the banks to explain themselves, unravel the financial clusterfuck that currently binds the government with the financial sector, and then, presto: money. Health care needs to pass because poor people need to go to the hospital too, but there’s a bunch of rich bankers who have duped this country out of the funds necessary to care for those need it most.
@12 – The GOP in the Senate has been blocking his appointments. If he fires Geithner, what’s the chance he’ll be able to get another Treasury Secretary confirmed before the end of his term?
I think it’s pretty obvious from even this comment board what’s really going on: the Democrats’ base is not fired up. The Republicans’ base is.
It’s not that health reform is “too liberal for Massachusetts!” I mean, you really have to be kidding if that’s your argument. (Is that REALLY your argument?? REALLY?)
This has been the case this entire debate. If Democrats’ hope that they were going to get the change they believed in was stronger than Republicans’ fear that anything might change, we would definitely be in a different place now.
In fact, I would bet everything that happened over the last year could become irrelevant if we start talking about our hope now: that the economy is improving, that Americans are going back to work, that the war in Iraq is coming to an end, that people will wake up and live in a world where they don’t go bankrupt just because they got sick. But we probably won’t do that. The narrative that nothing will ever get done is so much more addictive, I guess.
(PS. Most people in Massachusetts don’t want a public option. They want SINGLE PAYER. Hint: Actually, so does most of the country.)
Whew amazing the witless comments around here. Is everyone willfully ignorant about how the political process works? Your fantasy of a single-payer health plan is just basically crackpot. No way that will ever get through the Senate, never. You will get nothing. Very very dumb to settle for nothing because ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough. I’ll hand you that just some random legislation would not be good enough but from what I have read most people who have some idea what they are talking about (and some touch with reality) say that the current legislation is a step in the right direction. I would opt for listening to reputable journalists like say Krugman over the nattering Naderites of negativity.
I would say the best response for the left to the Mass fiasco is to shut the fuck up, take a deep breath and carry on trying to get something positive accomplished before November, when the cretins will surely carry day and be in a much better position to indulge their nihilism.
@17- Your argument is that a single-payer plan is bad because it won’t get passed. Never mind the merits.
This is a terrible argument, and it’s what scuttled Healthcare Reform from the beginning. People actually do want substance.
The Democrats decided that instead of swinging for the fences, they’d bunt. But without a player on base, bunting isn’t going to score a fucking run.
I only have one issue with this post — because I don’t think anyone knows what to do in this situation, politically, I won’t comment on the proposal to pass the health care bill as is. (And, I agree with a lot of people who think the bill is crap.)
What ticks me off is the presumption that the Senate seat up for grabs was Ted Kennedy’s. It wasn’t, even when he was alive. Kennedy occupied a Senate seat that belongs to the people of MA. It’s theirs to give to whoever they want. They wanted Brown more than that hack who thought it was Kennedy’s. I think that was the biggest mistake here — the mistake of presumption.
@18 I am saying you are being willfully ignorant of the political process if you think single-payer has a prayer in hell, ever. The closest chance there was to that was the public option which, as the Republicans feared, may well have led to something like a single-payer system down the road as people began to realize that they were being duped by the insurance industry. I don’t think the public option had a prayer in hell either to be honest.
The ‘super-majority’ we have is actually made up of a whole bunch of very nominal Democrats and one right-wing independent and even this we owe to a freakish twist of fate. Really it doesn’t offer much of a chance but it is almost certainly the chance of a lifetime. This is a congenitally right-wing country. The current vague imbalance of power is nothing short of miraculous.
Some of the ‘steps in the right direction’ that the current legislation has in it: tax on over-priced health plans (might help hold down costs according to the CBO), ban on denial of coverage (very big assuming the insurance industry does not find a way of squirming out of it), setting up of cooperatives/exchanges (might help hold down costs and provide alternatives to for-profit providers), mandate that everyone buys insurance and subsidies for those who can’t afford it (again not perfect but something). As someone else said on Slog the other day – do any of the anti-Obama cranks on the left even have any idea what is in the proposed legislation?
@20- But the Democrats really don’t need a 60 vote majority. They need a 51 vote majority and the strength of will to ride out a filibuster attempt.
As for the “steps in the right direction”-mandating people buy private insurance without a cost control method and with the government subsidizing those too poor to pay is NOT a step in the right direction. It is frankly dumb. All the positive points you came up with had caveats, you think this is an easy sell to the American people? There are a whole lot of people who’ll never approve of a ‘socialist’ plan, but there is a majority who would approve of a plan that didn’t stink. What we’ve got on the table now has a couple good points and a lot of stink.
Reagan was perceived as so screwed at this point in 1982. He went on to re-election in ’84, as did Clinton after the ’94 revolt. Obama wins by staying true to his course.
This is not a congenitally right-wing country. All we need to do is explain things correctly.