Yesterday, Brown — and a handful of other Republicans — voted with Democrats to block a Republican filibuster on the Democratic jobs bill. From the Los Angeles Times:

So, with Brown contributing to half a political victory for the Democrats (the bill still has to pass the House), what do Massachussetts Republicans think of Brown now? Some comments on Red Mass Group:

Lets not let this happen with the GOV race. Lets put the most Conservative canidate in please. No more RINOs (Republican in Name Only)
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This has nothing to do with conservative vs. RINO. It’s about personality– I think Scott Brown bought into his created image of an independent politician who will transcend those nasty partisan politics; then, bought into the image created by overenthusiastic supporters as THE (Republican) ONE who could be president.

Remember that he is a politician, not a private sector guy. And still MUCH better than Coakley, so it was worth the effort.
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Brown is just another of the turncoats that New England puts out as RINOs (Snowe, Collins). I feel like a fool for having contributed. At least with Coakley, you knew what you’d get. I’m disappointed, but it’s a lesson worth learning… beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
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He told you exactly what you were getting, the death of ObamaCare and a fresh independent voice…which yes, means he will vote with Democrats sometimes for those of you with reading comprehension issues.
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I supported Scott Brown believing he was an “independent” Republican who would make up his mind on legislation based on how it would affect Massachusetts, not on orders from Republican Leadership.

He has appointed a fine staff to analyze pending legislation and it’s affect on Massachusetts, and obviously decided it helps us grow our economy. So he is voting for it, regardless of what the Republican Leadership “ordered him to do”.

Good for him.
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I suspect this job bill does help our state, even if not our country.

Give this man time I say. He is our 41st vote on a lot of important issues for the nation. Let others work hard to change our state here at home.
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Scott f’ing blew it. It is over. He might as well vote ‘present’ for the next two years. The enthusiasm needed to put him back there in 2012 just left the building.

The shot heard around the world lands as a $15B give-away. WTF Scott? Thanks for nothing.
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This is still a Dem state. He never ran as a movement conservative. He ran as a populist. He is conservative, and must represent the will of the people. Sorry, 60% of the population did not become constitutional conservatives overnight.

The state loves him even more. I watched this announcement form a bar in Watertown. Cheers is all he got.
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The Brown fan page is getting hosed. Close to 2500 comments on his status update with 95% scathing.

Agreed that there is a lot of projection and messiah complex at play here — but as a longtime supporter it is just so frustrating to see him shoot himself in the foot on literally his first vote.

Whether it is holding hands with a Saudi sheik or bending over to a foreign premiere, or rolling over on your back like a dominated dog in the name of “bi-partisanship” (oh hooray!!) — nobody can respect you after something like that.

He was sent to D.C. specifically to be an obstructionist — to stop the grotesque expansion of government. No one seriously expected him to be Ron Paul 2.0 but come on! It is like finding out the girl who had been playing hard to get all semester, actually blew the entire football team and basketball team over the summer — the magic disappears pretty fast.

This just totally took the wind out of his sails, and I don’t see him recovering from this.
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It is very hard for me to imagine anyone cheering this. Did he read the bill? Does he actually think that capital/dollars taken out of the private sector and handed to government are better at creating jobs? There is neither sound policy nor political strategy behind this. It is simply amateurism.
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Hey, he ran against Washington status quo f-ups, and part of the ridiculous Washington idiocy is the abuse of the filibuster in the Senate.

It was idiotic when it was done by the demmies, and it’s idiotic when it’s overused by our side.
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This bill largely does not have much if not any value towards economic growth other than as a big payback to the unions. Brown greatly alienated 90% of the people who donated to his campaign to make his victory possible. They gave to him strictly to put an end to the ridiculous spending. This bills falls into that category.

I’m starting to wonder if he does have a messiah complex as mentioned before based on some recent comments and innuendo from recent interviews. As Barbara pointed out, he may think he is “the one” to rise above the polarized partisanship of DC and save them from themselves. Either that or his is angling to be a regular guest on the sunday talk show circuit
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Scott Brown is never going to have a 100% ACU rating. I knew that going in on January 19th. If you didn’t, you weren’t listening to the words coming out of his mouth during the campaign.

There are going to be more votes like this, hopefully not many, where Conservatives like us will be displeased. There will also be many votes where Scott Brown will Save Our Bacon.

It was anticipation of those bacon-saving votes that made me cast my ballot for Scott Brown on January 19th.

The Honeymoon may be over, but we will still have a (hopefully) long and happy Marriage.

A post on the Angry Bear economic blog argues that the vote for Republican Scott Brown in Massachussetts, which deprived Senate Democrats of a crucial vote needed to pass their health care bill, was not in fact a referendum on the legislation or the health care issue.

Summary points:

• The vote had more to do with the individual candidates than the issues
• The economy and jobs were the primary issues driving voters
• Coakley lost because Latinos and African Americans did not come out to vote
• Those who knew Brown’s position [on reform] were as likely to say it made them less likely to support him as to say it made them more likely to support him
• Voters were not expressing dislike of Obama
• Very few Brown voters expressed dissatisfaction with the legislative process on health care
• Large percentages of people did not know various specifics about the bill, and the more they knew, the more likely they were to support it

Who Voted for Brown in Massachusetts — and Why?

The media continues to report that the Massachusetts vote was a referendum on health care reform — and that this has the White House worried. If so, the White House is wrong. Take a look at (various polls) and you’ll have a very hard time believing that Scott Brown’s election represents a mandate on healthcare legislation.

Who Voted for Brown ?

Democrats who are disillusioned that Obama has not pushed further on health care reform? Upper-middle-class voters who believe that Obama doing too much, going too far, and may well hike their taxes? No, the surprise is that Brown was elected by Massachusetts’ working class, and they were not focused on health care legislation.

Non-college men voted for Brown by a 27-point margin (59% to 32%), and non-college women also voted for Brown by 13 points (while college women went for Coakley by 13 points)…

What happened? How did Democrats lose so many working class voters? Many of the non-college voters who chose Obama a year ago were Latinos and African Americans. This time, they stayed home, according to election eve and election night polling…

Keep in mind that a minority of white voters pulled the lever for Obama in 2008—he needed non-white voters to carry him over the top. Apparently this time Democratic organizers in Massachusetts didn’t work very hard to bring out their vote, or to explain to minority communities that, even if they didn’t particularly warm up either candidate, this vote could be important for health care reform…

In the end, the (Hart poll) pollsters observe that the results of this election “were not a call to abandon national health care reform.” 82% of voters were aware of Scott Brown’s opposition to health care legislation supported by President Obama and congressional Democrats, but “it had virtually no net impact on the Senate election.” Here is the money line:

“Those who knew Brown’s position [on reform] were as likely to say it made them less likely (39%) to support him as to say it made them more likely to support him (41%).”

A few readers have suggested that Massachusetts elected Brown because they have seen health care reform in their own state, and do not like it. But the poll reveals that two-thirds (67%) favor the Massachusetts health insurance law that ensures nearly universal coverage, including 53% of Brown voters

The poll confirms (the) argument that the vote had more to do with personality than issues: “Considerable evidence exists that this election was largely about the individual candidates, Coakley and Brown, more than a referendum on President Obama or the Democratic agenda.”

By 61% to 33%, Massachusetts voters said they were picking the best candidate to be their U.S. senator, rather than “sending a message to Washington.”…(Scott Brown’s) personal rating from voters was 51% positive to 32% negative while Coakley had much weaker personal ratings at 40% positive and 37% negative.

Voters were not expressing dislike for the president: Massachusetts’ electorate give Obama much better ratings than Coakley (52% positive, 33% negative), and approval of the job he is doing (52% approve, 38% disapprove).

Insofar as they were voting on issues, those polled reported that they were most concerned about the economy and jobs…Health care reform placed a distant second: “Electing a candidate who is committed to controlling health care costs and covering the uninsured” (single most/very important factor) among only 54% of all voters. The working class voters who elected Brown have been hit hard by the economy. That is their immediate concern. As Hart notes:

“Economic dissatisfaction played a large role in Brown’s victory. The majority of voters who said the Massachusetts economy is not so good or poor voted for Brown by 56% to 39%. However, voters who said the economy was excellent, good, or fair supported Coakley by 52% to 43%.”

A Second Poll

Over at the Washington Post, Ezra Klein reports on the Post/ Kaiser/ Harvard poll, a second survey that tried to determine why voters chose Brown…Klein observes:

“The results make it untenable to argue that the election had nothing to do with national issues in general or health-care reform in particular. But it makes it similarly hard to argue that the state is firmly opposed to health-care reform, or that Scott Brown’s election is a mandate against the bill.” .

I agree, but I would go further. When I took a close look at the questions and the results in the Post/Kaiser/Harvard poll, I discovered that it tended to confirm much of the Hart research.

First, 91% of Brown’s voters considered the economy and jobs “extremely important or very important” compared to 84% of Coakley’s voters.

More importantly, 88% of Brown’s voters thought “leadership and personal qualities” were “extremely important or very important” compared to just 69% of Coakley’s voters. (This supports the notion that, to a large degree the folks who picked Brown were selecting someone they liked, without worrying as much about the issues. )

Granted, 93% of Brown’s voters said that health care reform is “extremely important or very important,” but as Ezra notes,“48 percent of Brown’s voters think that Brown should work with Democrats on the health-care reform bill rather than partner with Republicans to sink the effort altogether. Which suggests that though Brown’s election was far from an affirmation of President Obama’s agenda, nor was it a call for relentless obstruction.”

On the one hand the vast majority of Brown voters who were polled say they are opposed to the health reform legislation—but their reasons for disliking it vary widely. Many in the media have suggested that those who voted for Brown were disgusted by all of the deal-making and the way Democrats cave to special interests. But when Brown voters who said that healthcare was “extremely” or “very important” were asked to be more specific, only 13% of Brown voters said they “Didn’t like the way it was being handled; politics; deal-making; closed doors lack of transparency…”

How Can People Oppose Legislation They Don’t Understand?

But the strongest argument suggesting that the Massachusetts vote was not a vote against reform can be found in a Kaiser Family Foundation study that polled households shortly before the Massachusetts election. The survey showed voters sharply divided on the legislation along Democratic and Republican party lines, with Independents evenly divided (41 percent support the legislation; 43 percent don’t)

But most importantly, the polling showed that most voters have only a dime idea of what is in the bill. According to Kaiser, “The poll finds that even after a year of substantial media coverage of the health reform debate, many Americans remain unfamiliar with key elements of the major bills passed by the House and Senate.”

- Nearly 40 percent did not know that the bill would prohibit insurers from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

- The majority of seniors had no idea that the Senate bill would help close the Medicare “doughnut hole” so that seniors would no longer face a period of having to pay the full cost of their medications.

- Forty-eight percent of all Americans had not heard that the legislation would offer tax credits to small businesses to help them buy insurance for their employees.

- Forty-one percent are not aware that if they have employer-based insurance, the reform legislation will not change existing arrangements.

- More than one quarter of all Americans had no idea that reform legislation would provide subsidies to help low-income families buy insurance.

- Thirty-seven percent did not realize that insurers would be forced to provide a basic benefit package, defined by the government—no more “Swiss Cheese policies” filled with holes.

- Sixty-three percent were unaware that insurers will no longer be allowed to charge women more.

In each case, those polled responded more favorably to the legislation as they heard about these provisions. For instance, when they were told about the tax credits for small businesses 73 percent said they would be more likely to support the bill.

In general, the more respondents learned about the bill, the more positive they were…

Why do so few Americans know what is actually in the legislation? A blizzard of misinformation has created much confusion. In newspapers and on television, you regularly hear that ordinary Americans will be forced to buy insurance they cannot afford (no mention of subsidies or caps on out-of-pocket payments which should virtually eliminate medical bankruptcies.) You read that small businesses won’t be able to afford a mandate (no mention of tax credits.)

Americans have been told that the Democrats are making no effort to rein in spending (no mention of the pages and pages of proposals that would cut Medicare costs, paving the way for lower health care bills throughout the system.) They are warned that Medicare beneficiaries will be hurt (no explanation that Medicare cuts are targeting unnecessary care that puts patients at risk without benefits; no mention that the bill will help close the donut hole that now forces Medicare patients to pay for their drugs out-of-pocket.)

We have been told that insurers will continue business as usual (no mention of the provision that prevents them from putting a lifetime cap on benefits, or the plank in the legislation which says that insurers must spend a certain percentage of the premiums they receive on healthcare. If they don’t spend it, they are required to give their customers a partial refund.)

The other reason most people aren’t aware of what the Senate bill would do is because they are busy. They are working. They are raising children. They don’t have time to pay attention to the devilish details. In some cases, they don’t have the education or the powers of concentration needed to absorb and analyze this legislation. That’s not what they do for a living.

Why can’t some of the analysts boil the bill down to a few pages, and six power-points? Because the benefits are all in the details, and often those details are interlocking. You cannot understand one without understanding another.

But the truth is that re-forming a $2.6 trillion industry that serves (or at least should serve) millions of very different people—young and old, sick and healthy, poor, working-class, middle-class, upper-middle-class and wealthy requires thousands and thousands of adjustments. Just spelling out what will be covered requires many pages, and many amendments.

For instance, did you know that the legislation would require that insurers cover vision and dental care for children? That’s just one of those adjustments that will make all of the difference for some families.

- Finally, it is true that some Americans are strongly opposed to both the Senate bill and any reform legislation.

When it comes to the enthusiasm gap, strong feelings are significantly more predominant on the right, with twice as many Republicans saying they ‘strongly oppose’ the proposed legislation as Democrats saying they ‘strongly support’ it.”

“Political independents, that critical swing group, are divided down the middle: with 41 percent supportive and 43 percent opposed.”

The bottom line is this: the Massachusetts special election does not serve as a referendum on health care legislation. The voters who chose Brown chose him for myriad reasons. They say that they knew he opposed the legislation; about half of his voters counted this in his favor, while half counted it against him. Go figure.

The White House should ignore the Massachusetts election.

Nationwide, most voters have only a sketchy idea of what is in the bill. . So it’s impossible to talk about whether they favor or oppose current legislation. People can’t reject something they don’t understand – unless they are simply against reform on first principles, i.e. they don’t believe in universal coverage.

First, from Red Mass Group, a site “founded to revitalize the right-wing community in Massachusetts.”

The People’s Victory

A month ago they mocked you. Three weeks ago you were a mild inconvenience. Two weeks ago you were a irritating rash. One week ago you became a migraine of epic proportions. Yesterday you reminded them it is you, not they, who are the master. You are the people and this victory is yours.

Freezin’ for a reason

This weekend I traveled from D.C. to Massachusetts on a bus filled with 55 young people who gave up their holiday weekends to volunteer for Scott Brown. We left after work on Friday, drove through the night, and arrived Saturday morning. After about an hour’s rest, we hit the phones and streets to started Getting Out The Vote. Motivated by slogans such as “Freezin’ for a Reason,” “Gettin’ down for Scott Brown,” and “Salvation for the Nation,” our group of dedicated volunteers tirelessly worked for 3 days campaigning for the man who could be the 41st vote against Obamacare and a host of other items on the Democratic agenda.

Though Massachusetts is not accustomed to closely contested elections, the GOTV machine on the ground was well-run. Driven by raw enthusiasm and contagious energy, volunteers and staff pounded out phone calls, held signs in the bitter cold, and walked neighborhoods in the snow. The response from the Massachusetts voters was incredible. They were so excited to express their support for Scott, honked their horns when they saw our Brown signs and sweatshirts, and thanked us for volunteering our time. In all my years of grassroots campaign involvement, I have never felt such palpable excitement from the voters – and I never would have expected it in Massachusetts, where I spent four years in college. To see
how it has changed is surreal.

This race shows that the frustration and buyer’s remorse Americans are feeling around the country is permeating even the bluest states. The rise of Scott Brown shows Republicans how to capitalize on this feeling of discontent with Democrats and their agenda – by running a positive campaign based on solid policy ideas, by utilizing new technologies and old-fashioned grassroots voter outreach, and by staying focused on the fiscal issues that unite us and appeal to voters of all stripes.

Happy Anniversary Mr. President, with Love – Red Mass Group

Over one year ago President Barack Obama was sworn in as president and today, in what many considered to be a referendum on his presidency and his landmark healthcare plan, he suffered a major defeat. In a major upset State Senator Scott Brown defeated Attorney General Martha Coakley in the special election to fill the US Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy. Brown, who at one time was trailing by 31%, has successfully completed one of the most long shot campaigns in the history of Massachusetts politics.

Brown’s victory is almost a guarantee that Obama’s signature health care reform package is dead. When he replaces Paul Kirk as the interim senator he will be the 41st vote that Republicans so desperately coveted because it disarms the Democratic supermajority. When he is seated will be a major issue in the coming weeks…

Coakley called Brown at 9:20pm to concede the race after returns from the major municipalities were high for her but they were not enough to counter Brown’s domination of the suburbs, central Massachusetts and both Shores. Coakley managed to win almost 70% of the vote in Boston and 61% of the vote in Springfield but she struggled to hang on in Worcester with 52% and lost Lowell. She needed to hang on to all four cities in order to win and she failed to do that.

“I’m Scott Brown, I’m from Wrentham and I drive a truck.”

And now, from Blue Mass Group, which provides “reality-based commentary on politics and policy in Massachusetts and around the nation,” and where the mood is a little grim.

Health care: What went wrong

OK, here it is, in as simple-as-possible terms, why people in MA turned against the national health care bill to such an extent that they elected Scott Brown.

1. They don’t disagree with the sentiment that all people should be covered. Brown even touted his vote for the MA 2006 law. It’s so popular here that you can’t really run against it. (That infamous Rasmussen poll is an outlier; more representative of the general shape of the polling is here: 58% support.

2. The Democrats+Joe dithered, dickered, bickered and whinged for months. The basic point of getting millions of people covered gets obscured in the admittedly complex details, and controversies real and imagined.

3. The moderates drag it out, demand concessions that are broadly unpopular. The public option is jettisoned. No Medicare buy-in. And then the last straw is Nelson’s outrageous pound of flesh, the spectacularly unfair Nebraska Medicaid Haul.

Now, someone who has an ideological commitment to universal health care can overlook all that, as so much garbage you have to climb over to see the horizon. Me, I look at 30 million people getting health care, and I can overlook a lot.

But I can definitely imagine how one who doesn’t share an ideological passion (or who isn’t exposed to such, as Ted Kennedy would do) would start to smell a rat. Or, more aptly, the sausage going bad.

Just something to keep in mind.

Scott Brown and the “upbeat” campaign

I was one of the first to congratulate Scott Brown and his supporters for their victory yesterday, and I still do today. It was a very impressive showing, and they should be proud of the victory.

But it was not an upbeat campaign. True, Brown himself did not run negative ads like the “you will be raped in a parking lot if you vote for Deval” piece that backfired so badly on previous Republican candidate Kerry Healey, although he did go mildly negative.

He just got smart and realized that he didn’t have to descend to that level himself. Talk radio, the Fox Republican Channel, and the teabagger army that descended on this state from New Hampshire, Virginia, and elsewhere did it for him. From death threats and horrific statements on Facebook to 24/7 radio vitriol, there was an ugly side to the Brown campaign. To his credit, Brown initially spoke out against some of this, but toward the end, he accepted the ugliness. This video is an example. Not especially important in itself, but an important indicator. In any event, only 97,000 people saw this on YouTube: a tiny fraction of the over two million people who voted, even if all the viewers were from Massachusetts and voted, which certainly is not the case.

Quick thoughts

..if anyone is interested…

* I will never vote for Martha Coakley again, for anything.

* I was at Deval Patrick’s victory rally at the Hynes in ’06 and remember hearing speeches from all the big Dems. Martha’s AG victory speech was flat, dull and could not end fast enough – Dems should have remembered that. Brown, although far from a polished, top-notch political orator, is the far more likable candidate.

* Coakley’s ad strategy sucked. She would run two ads that said “Scott Brown will defeat health care in Washington”, then on the same channel Scott Brown would follow her with two ads that say “Scott Brown will defeat health care in Washington”. Genius!

* Brown, in general, was a class act. He ran classy ads and had a classy victory speech (with a few notable exceptions). People respond to class (see Obama, Barack: 2008)

* Democrats are sucking in Washington right now. They’ve sucked for a long time. I’m beginning to suspect that Scott Brown’s victory is irrelevant to my future because p***y Democrats were just gonna cave and give away the house anyway. I’m not saying that I would passively accept an influx of Republicans into congress, I’m just saying that I am not getting too worked up over one Senate seat. Even if it used to be held by Ted Kennedy.

* I am an unenrolled voter with liberal and progressive values. I have in the past flirted with the idea of registering Democrat. And I do understand and respect the argument that I can’t improve and impact the Democratic Party from the outside and that my participation is needed to make the party more progressive and such. But how do you all keep dealing with the disappointment? The party leadership in Washington is awful. Reid is repulsively bad. Pelosi needs much improvement, to say the least. Dean was replaced with Kaine. Health care was gutted. Little if any progress has been made over the past year. And then we, the left, blow the election to fill Ted Kennedy’s vacant Senate Seat. Why would someone like me ever want to identify myself as an enrolled Democrat?

Comments from readers of the New York Times Room for Debate blog, Ezra Klein’s blog on Washington Post, and the political polliing and analysis blog FiveThirtyEight:

If Democrats cannot pass health care reform under the conditions available over the past year (60 senators, 255+ House seats, an AMA endorsement, and a new president) it cannot be done. No voter should ever listen to a Democrat promising health care reform again. They had their chance, and they couldn’t deliver.

The only viable option is to pass the Senate bill and then tweak it later using reconciliation. If they can’t do it, they don’t deserve to hold power.
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Democrats should realize that folks are concerned about spending, about the size of the government, the size of the debt and that the guy they elected in Nov ’09 promised fiscal discipline and change. We’ve seen scant little of that.

My guess is that what ultimately sunk health care was the LA Purchase, the Cornhusker kickback and the sweet deal the unions received on their Cadillac plans…all deals done behind closed doors. I would go so far that the union deal last week stuck the fork in Coakley and propelled Brown to victory.
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The defeat in Massachusetts was an indicator that voters there already realized that the Democratic Party wasn’t holding up its end of the bargain. Democratics in Congress and the White House broke their bargain to seek health care reform last January when they decided to start by making deals with industry and their colleagues rather than doing spade work in their constituencies.

Obama’s web site never solicited any input from voters other than to ask for sob stories — they just instructed them to support whatever the inside deals had been struck. Democratic Senators told their constituencies that they had to wait until Baucus was done before they would talk to them about health care.
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The whole exercise has been a sellout of basic Democratic principles. Democrats in Congress will no doubt find some way to pass “something” but that something won’t be reform or the overhaul that most people wanted to see. By focusing on politics rather than principle, the Democrats have squandered the mandate they were given last fall. Unfortunately, it is Democratic voters who will bear the consequences of their actions.

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How can a team that communicated and positioned their message so brilliantly well during the campaign be so horrible at communicating wen in office?

Rahm and Axelrod must be giving him bad advice. The inner sanctum needs a shake-up.

I hope Barack spends some time with Bill Clinton dissecting what is going on.

The administration has to get a lot more aggressive on messaging.
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I am an indepedent voter in Massachusetts, the moment I heard that Scott drives a used truck with 2,000,000 miles on it and Scott’s mother is on Welfare, I decided to vote for Scott. He is one of us, a working poor Caucasian, and he will work for us: millions working poor Caucasians in Massachusetts.
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Don’t the results from Massachusetts prove beyond a doubt that what we need to do in this country is institute some form of rule according to the General Will. Do the people really know enough to know what is good for them or for the public at large? Don’t they need to be ruled by those who do know the general will and are willing to take steps to put it into action? Google “the general will” and learn.
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Democrats can always be counted on to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
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It’s more than time for Democrats to get a backbone! I have donated to the party for the last time until I see some major change in this party of jellyfish! They’ve really managed to squander away the impact of the 2008 election.
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While political writers ascribe the Democrat loss in Massachusetts and inability to perform, to a lack of organization or holding together, the truth is perhaps far simpler. Democrats perceive the individual as not as important as the government.

Republicans believe that the individual is important. The individual is the essence of capitalism and the essence of our nation…we have risen to world prominence on the backs of individual great inventors, innovators, entrepreneurs, and hard workers. Democrats want “the government” to reward those who can’t. Republicans want to empower the individual to achieve. That is what America is really all about. And, “We the People” know it.
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The Democrats’ real problem is that they’ve forgotten the value of incrementalism. You don’t build and maintain a majority by undertaking several huge legislative efforts at once. The American people distrust politicians who claim they can keep track of so many moving parts, and rightly so.

Had Democrats been willing to compromise on some Republican reforms over the years, perhaps there would be more good will built up and support for some incremental Democrat ideas could be found.
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The one thing the Democrats can learn from the GOP is – it’s all politics, all the time.

The GOP has been in campaign mode since they got beat in 2008, taking their message – such as it is – to the electorate and not really even trying to participate in government.

Obama needs to realize this and take them on. This GOP is still a bunch of losers. Their economic policy is Bush era, their perspective on the issues is backward-looking and destructive for this country.

Obama and Congressional Democrats need to craft clear, popular legislation that will move this country forward and put GOP obstructionists in the naked position of opposing legislation that’s clearly right.

The popular will is there. The message needs to be far better.
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I called the president as a mysterious wrong number from the beginning. Now, I guess, it turns out Harry Reid spotted him as a viable candidate. I think part of this legislative problem is that Obama was not a senator at heart, was a present-voter on the state level, did not attend all his committee meetings–even Reid said he thought Obama was bored being a senator. I think he is now bored being president…I call Mass the Revenge of the Clingers. Listen to us. The people. We are not necessarily for the Republicans, either–but someone needs to lead here. Not speechify or piously accept “the buck,” but run things.
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I am not sure that this has anything to do with the Democrats, per se, and with the disgusting horse trading that was going on in Congress on every single issue that was put before them this year (and for too many year prior to that). Too much political posturing and protection of the status quo rather than being serious and tackling the big issues. I wouldn’t read too much woe into this for Democrats nor would I suggest the Republicans read too much victory into it, either. The interesting thing will be to see what happens in a race where the incumbent is a Republican and not a Democrat. The mood seems to be to get rid of whoever is in office.
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Who says the Democrats are timid? They are rather fierce when it comes to defending corporate interests. The problem is that most Democratic voters are under the illusion that this still the party of FDR, leaving aside the question of how committed to working class interests this patrician was. So when the Democrats of today (Carter, Clinton, Obama) seem to have a failure of nerve in attacking corporate interests, the reality is that they never intended such an attack in the first place. Democratic voters then become demoralized and stay away from the polls, leading to new Republican majorities. After a few years of Republican Party malfeasance, a new mood of “throw the bums out” emerges. And so it goes. In other words, you have the “will of the people” being demonstrated constantly, when it is still Goldman-Sachs, Exxon and IBM running the country by pulling the puppet strings of whoever is in the White House.
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It’s really no mystery. The “democrats” include an exponentially larger cross-section of society – from far left liberals to slightly left of center centrists, and today many centrists. Getting any kind of consensus from such a broad group is, as we’ve seen, nearly impossible.

The GOP has essentially become a very narrow group – extreme conservative christians and far-right proponents. Many center-leaning conservatives do not associate themselves with that group. Getting concensus from such a ideologically narrow group is much easier.
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The House should pass the Senate’s bill and then fix the problems through reconciliation. Anything else puts the vanities and fears of individual House members over the very real needs of the people who put them in office.
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Friends, it’s not a mystery…we know the answers, sen-elect Brown is giving them to us. Today he said what’s happening in the US is “bigger than the president,” meaning that democrats, republicans, and independents are upset at the closed-door, back-room deals. They want what Obama promised: transparency. He had a year to deliver and came up dry. The answer? For democrats, republicans, and independents is simple: try someone else for a change.
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None of this would have happened in Senate Dems had any semblance of party discipline. They let Baucus take an entire summer over a process that everyone but him knew was going nowhere and they let Lieberman keep his chairmanship despite slapping them around time and again.

The day that the Dems enforce party discipline and can effectively put a message across is the day the GOP are finished. Unfortunately, that day looks a long while from coming.
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this just shows how screwed up and dysfunctional our current system of government is. if you can only pass anything with a SUPERMAJORITY then nothing can ever be passed.
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I also see a bit of the “kick the dog” problem going on here. The Republicans have been kicking the Democrats. The Democrats have been kicking their voters. The voters are kicking their own willingness to vote. We have a bunch of learned helplessness all around.

The question of course is why the Democratic politicians are such willing targets of Republican abuse.
The proper response from the Dems is, “we have not yet begun to fight!” What we get instead is, “Sorry our troublesome supporters forced you to abuse us. Is there anything we can do to make you Republicans feel better?”
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I will never vote for a Republican again — ever — but that doesn’t mean I have to vote for Democrats. I don’t have to vote at all. You can joke that you don’t belong to an organized political party, but this has gone far past funny. Lousy candidate recruitment in your own backyard, lousy campaigning, a ridiculous level of static at all levels of the health care debate, appalling oversight of the pass-through money under the TARP program. Who needs it? Where did we get these morons?
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Republicans, Independents and many Massachusetts Democrats don’t want Obamacare. Why would they want to see rates climb still higher, experience less service, or fund other states efforts to realize full insurance coverage?

I have no problem with someone being a loyal Democrat. I mostly disagree, but that’s besides the point. What’s troubling is the left’s finger pointing away from the core problem; Obamacare is a dog. Blame Coakley, blame angry tea party participants, but never contemplate that liberal legislation is flawed. The hubris of the left, wrapped in self sanctimony and righteousness is appalling.
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Everybody here seems to be missing something. I don’t believe health care is what gets people upset. They are upset about the economy and the fact that the only demographic that is not hurting right now is Wall Street fat cats.

When in fall 2008 Obama supported the bailout, I was worried he was gonna lose the election. He didn’t (perhaps because his opponent also supported the bailout) but he may still have lost the presidency. He is tarnished by his administration’s association with Wall Street while right wing Republicans have managed to paint themselves as the anti-bailout populists. That nobody in his circle seems to get this is a huge and perhaps tragic failure. Would the Democrats have lost the seat of Geithner had been fired and the Wall Street tax been enacted months ago? No way!

As you probably know by now, she lost 53% – 46% in a heavily Democratic state.

That from a post by Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting fair elections in the U.S. The group, which was featured in the HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy,” has exposed voting irregularities in both Democratic and Republican election wins.

Here, she issues a caution about some possible scenarios regarding a premature media call for either Brown or Coakley in today’s Massachussetts special election for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.

SHINING A BRIGHT LIGHT ON AN UNDEMOCRATIC TACTIC

For 10 years, I’ve been watching a trend to manipulate elections through premature “call” of the race by a media outlet. See below for predictions on what may follow a media call for either candidate in Massachusetts.

The media “call” can be manipulated because the public doesn’t know that projected winners come from a system that is not even a governmental source! In fact, the media “calls” elections based on data from just one media outlet — usually a quiet little division of the Associated Press that occupies a little corner somewhere and answers very few questions. Volunteers call in result reports to the corporation. The reports are often inaccurate (see below for examples). The names of these volunteers are not part of the public record. We will never get the list of names for those who will call in the 351 numbers which will result in “calling the election” for Tuesday’s Massachusetts election.

HOW THE MEDIA “CALL” MAY ULTIMATELY CONTROL POLICY

If Tuesday’s Massachusetts special senate election is “called” for Democrat Martha Coakley, expect to see a rush to install her, copying a Republican tactic in 2006 whereby San Diego’s Brian Bilbray was seated by the US House of Representatives before tens of thousands of votes were even counted. Yes, the Senate can override the actual election results, or pre-empt the real results, and pre-emptively install a candidate based on a media prediction, or a bunch of unofficial tallies, or whatever they want. It can be done. It has been done. And if the media calls the race for Coakley, expect to see it done again.

If the race is “called” for Republican Scott Brown, expect to see a rush from Republican lawyers to claim that Brown has the right to vote immediately, instead of Paul Kirk who is current interim successor to Ted Kennedy. If that fails, look for an attempt to force abstention on the Massachusetts vote while stall tactics play out.

Sixty votes are needed. If Coakley is called and installed, they’ve got the 60. If Brown is called and stalled, they’ve got 59. Either way, the media “call” on Massachusetts is going to be under exceptional political pressure.

No matter where you stand on the controversial healthcare bill, be aware that what you see reported on Election Night is not only not “official” or “final”, but is not even real, and may not even be the numbers written down by poll workers or printed out by the voting machine.

ISSUING FALSE NUMBERS TO THE MEDIA TO CREATE A FALSE “CALL”

In the recent controversial NY-23 race, volunteers in multiple wards called in zeroes instead of votes for Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman. There WERE votes, but they called in zero and later said oops. This was not a plausible oops, because the zeroes were not called in randomly for various races, nor did the zeroes spread themselves among different candidates. Doug Hoffman had false zeroes reported while votes were called in for the others. Incorrect figures provided to the media resulted in a margin which appeared thousands of votes larger than it actually was, goading Hoffman to concede prematurely.

In the Florida 2000 presidential election, impossible numbers were provided to the media producing exactly the margin needed to “call” the race for George W. Bush. Minus 16,000 votes were reported for Al Gore, and (not knowing the margin was false), Gore conceded privately to Bush and nearly conceded to the nation.

In New York City’s 2008 presidential primary, more than 50 wards falsely reported “zero” votes for Obama (but not for Hillary), creating a superficially low result on Election Night.

In Maine’s 2009 election, the media reported called-in results for Lewiston and Augusta, two of Maine’s largest cities, for seven ballot questions each with two possible choices (7×2=14 results per city), a total of 28 vote results for the two cities. Not a single one of the 28 results was correct, and eight were off by large margins.

In New England, even preliminary governmental results from each municipality are not compiled for a day or so. Results are typically sent by courier or brought by the police to the secretary of state. The results you see on the news are therefore not government results at all, but results generated by unnamed volunteers (or sometimes paid part timers) working for a corporation.

The media “call game” is a political game that can be played dirty, and in Massachusetts, the media “call” could ultimately control national healthcare policy.

Usually, these premature calls can be unraveled if they are incorrect because elections aren’t certified for several days and winning candidates aren’t installed into office for a month or more. But in Massachusetts, because of the special situation with an imminent vote on a controversial bill combined with a temporary senator, the media call can create an undemocratic mess.

JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE

When the media calls an election based on non-governmental verbal information from unnamed volunteers, it displaces legitimate election procedures. Media volunteers can — and HAVE — issued false numbers in order to get the media to call an election for a candidate. The US Congress can — and HAS — installed new voting members of congress before the votes are counted or the contest is determined.

If a media outlet calls the Massachusetts race based on verbal reports from names that are never disclosed, we need to call this what it is: Journalistic malpractice, and a danger to democracy.

If what you see Tuesday night ain’t right, be prepared to speak up. Or shout loudly. It’s our duty.

Yet, despite all the game theory engaged in by thousands of political kibbitzers, professional and amateur alike, not once — not once – until last week did I see anyone mention the possibility that the fate of the entire enterprise rested on today’s Massachussetts special election to fill the seat left open by the death of Ted Kennedy.

And in case you didn’t know it yourself — it just very well might. The Senate Democrats need 60 votes to end any Republican filibuster on the bill. But one of those votes includes interim Massachussetts senator Paul Kirk, who replaced Kennedy. The election today will decide who replaces Kirk – Democrat Martha Coakley or Republican Scott Brown, who has pledged to vote to uphold the filibuster.

Massachussetts may be the most Democratic-leaning state in the nation, with three times as many registered Democrats as Republicans. The race should have been a gimme for the Dems, sort of a Mike Tyson versus Don Knotts championship bout for all the marbles. But it isn’t. The respected political polling web site FiveThirtyEight, which claims that it correctly called the winners of every Senate race in 2008, puts the odds of a Democratic victory in Massachussetts at just 25%.

Reasons for such an upset, if and when it does occur, will be analyzed ad nauseum starting the moment a winner is declared. But mostly attention will turn to whether the Democrats will try to vote on the health care bill before Republican Brown is seated, whether that would be legal, and whether the Democratic coalition would hold in any case.

One thing is clear: If Brown wins today, political pandemonium is going to ensue.