Light blogging for me today, but I wanted to check in and see if articles of impeachment have been filed yet to punish Rahmbama for the terrible campaign they ran in Mass.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.
A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.
Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.
The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.
Republicans do not pay their debts.
It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.
I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.
I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.
This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.
People are complicated. Love is not.
It’s the corruption, stupid.
Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.
After roe, women are no longer free.
This blog will pay for itself.
Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.
Their freedom requires your slavery.
Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?
Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.
Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.
Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?
He really is that stupid.
“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”
Demo Woman
So you want one of your lowly commenter’s to read FDL.. hahahahahahahahaha
It’s not gonna happen.
stevie314159
And where the hell is my CAPITAL GAINS TAX CUT?
NobodySpecial
Impeachment is SO 1994.
Sly
From most of what I’ve read so far, it’s a split between the Firebaggers blaming the White House Chief of Staff and guys like Evan Bayh and Lanny Davis blaming the Firebaggers.
Frankly, I think I have enough contempt in me for both.
Comrade Jake
This morning, I have a hard time not agreeing with much of what Ezra wrote last night.
Robin G.
I can’t even be snarky. We are so hosed. GodDAMMIT.
Brick Oven Bill
:)
Tattoosydney
The usual wankers in Australia are predicting the end for Obama and even a Brown presidency apparently. Apologies for the naked link.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/runaway-republican-truck-wreaks-havoc-20100120-mlt7.html
D-Chance.
Yggi has lost his mind (what little he had) over at Terkel’s joint. In one post, he declares the Massachusetts election “isn’t substantially that big a deal” and “won’t matter that much” (Excuse-o-meter option #5). Then, hysterically cries about how millions of Bangladeshis will die due to the same said election in another post. What interesting psychological studies…
gnomedad
Ken/Barbie 2012!
edmund dantes
No, but they definitely should have been more engaged. It’s a failure on all parts of the democratic establishment. They took the seat for granted, and they got their asses handed to them. All of them got their asses handed to them.
Obama as President becomes the de facto head of the DNC. He picks someone to run the show. The DNC failed here by letting a feckless candidate squander the seat. The state party also failed in a similar fashion. So did the candidate. Democrats saw this seat as a birthright, and they just assumed it would be handed to them.
They should have known the Repubs would be gunning for the “Kennedy” seat. They’ve wanted to take it for years. It’s total failure on all parts to defend and protect their oh so important “super-majority”.
The worst part is the centrists will whine and complain and say they’ve dragged the party too far to the left with HCR, but you’ll notice all the movement since HCR has been to the right.
Oh well. The one guarantee from all of this is that the Democratic party will take away the wrong lessons from this, and try to make themselves more republican lite.
Lisa
Rahmbama! LMAO!!
Comrade Jake
@edmund dantes:
Already happened. Bayh said almost precisely this last night.
I really am looking forward to the parade of douchebags making regular appearances on the teevee in the coming weeks.
Cure 7802
“Progressive” healthcare champion Weiner now wants to drop the whole thing and move on to jerbs.
Unreal…
The Other Steve
When Hubert H. Humphrey died in 1978, a Republican named Dave Durenberger won the special election.
Part of that was a backlash over Wendell Anderson resigning as Governor and having his Lt. Gov appoint him to fill the Senate seat vacated by Walter Mondale in 1977.
Any of this sound familiar?
And Hubert Humphrey was a more important figure then Ted Kennedy.
John Cole
@edmund dantes: That is a very reasonable take on the issue. I think it is inarguable at this point that they should have been more engaged. I still lay the bulk of the blame on the Coakley campaign.
NobodySpecial
@Robin G.:
Nah, we were ALWAYS hosed. It just gets showier now.
The Senate bill will be passed by the House now – no one’s got the stones or claims to have the votes for reconciliation, anyways, so that’s their only way out that looks even remotely successful.
Cap and Trade and all the other stuff gets harder to do and looks a lot worse than it did when all you had to care about was how many times Lieberman was gonna shiv ya before final passage. But it still probably goes through in some really weak tea form by bribing one Republican not named Lieberman each time. And Obama’s agenda gets watered down enough that he loses valuable progress made for 2012.
And the key is – that outcome was preordained the moment the Senate decided it was better to fight Obama than to fight Lieberman and the Republicans. Coakley could have been an Etch-A-Sketch with the word ‘YES’ written on it, and it still would not have changed the problem that too many Democrats in the Senate would rather fight the President than work with him.
socraticsilence
Man it sure is shocking that the emerging narrative is Obama tried to move the country too far left on Healthcare- I was assured by the “true progressives” that everyone would realize that this election turned on the Dems not going far enough, who ever could have predicted this. Good thing all of them actually have healthcare and only 30 million or so poor folk have to do without– those losers probably don’t even drive Prius’s so why should we care about them.
Comrade Jake
Yglesias last night. Unfortunately I think he’s probably right.
gnomedad
While the Dems clearly ran a shitty campaign, the central fact for me is that a hell of a lot of people who once voted for Kennedy voted for Brown with no sense that that is insane. When the Dems try to re-take the seat, they will be saying they “got the message”. Whatever the hell that is.
GregB
I blame Balloon Juice.
-G
socraticsilence
“The worst part is the centrists will whine and complain and say they’ve dragged the party too far to the left with HCR, but you’ll notice all the movement since HCR has been to the right.
Oh well. The one guarantee from all of this is that the Democratic party will take away the wrong lessons from this, and try to make themselves more republican lite.”
Really, you think, its almost like all of us who weren’t all out cheering the defeat of a liberal (to the left of the majority of senate dems) Senate Canidate knew something, and were mature enough to realize that rallying against a canidate because you’re a pissed off child is the wrong idea. I’m sorry but if healthcare goes down entirely as seems likely, Jane Hamsher and the rest can go fuck themselves- I don’t like to get vulgar but let me put it in terms even a dilettante like Jane can get– because of people like you ten’s of thousands of American’s will continue to die annually due to untreated disease- may you and yours be among them.
grass
How many people have to be impeached before Jane Hamsher can become president and make everything awesome?
aimai
Oh for christ’s sake. If we lowly bloggers cared enough about the MA election to fight for it,and strategize for it, why should we expect any less from our national leadership? Its not all Obama/Rahm’s/Reid’s fault but its at least partially their fault. For one thing they primed the electorate with promises of health care reform that they failed to pass in a timely manner. For another they left the field wide open to a demagogue and they failed to help a bad local candidate actually fight the obvious, demagogic, criticisms that scott brown leveled. You can’t fight a populist sex god with an ac/dc personality (at once against big government and for it, at once against the bank bailouts and for them) by running a dried up sourpuss of a kerry in a dress. Anyone could have told them that. Or at any rate, once you are stuck with Coakley there are about a gazillion things you need to do if you care about politics and think politically.
Once again: the terrain of the battle is a given, but you have to actually fight the battle or choose a new terrain. In MA we, as a party, ceded the terrain to Scott Brown. Obama and Reid and the rest of the national party aren’t uniquely guilty, but they were uniquely positioned to see the ramifications of what was going on and to come down hard on local actors, like the local democratic party, and make them turn out the vote.
If you want to run a machine candidate in a machine state then run the fucking machine, don’t let the machine run over you.
aimai
Morbo
@Comrade Jake: Very impressive, Bayh FTL, pretty surprising that it wasn’t Lieberman or Nelson. Whoever had him in the pool for which centrist Democratic senator would be the first to the microphone last night made out like a bandit.
Ben JB
Did you hear that Jim Webb (D-VA) had a similar take to Evan Bayh (i.e., this election was clearly a referendum on our soshulist ways and we should slow down the already glacial process of fixing a broken system)?
I don’t like losing a senatorial position to someone who says (in his victory speech) that
and then goes on to say, much like Kennedy would have, I’m sure, that
Losing to this guy sucks, sure, but what I really am getting sick about is that so many people are buying the line that this was a referendum on health care that shows a clear mandate to slow things down. How the fuck is Brown winning 52% to 47% from one state a mandate, and Obama winning 52% to 45% in the country isn’t, I don’t know.
edmund dantes
@John Cole: No denying Coakley ran an insanely bad campaign. She allowed herself to believe the seat was hers simply by winning the primary, and no one stepped up to tell her “you’re a fucking idiot”.
A rumor out there is that her campaign wasn’t doing any tracking polling? If true, are you fucking kidding me?
The problem here with this result is that it’s a confluence of a variety of factors, but every pundit, douchebag, etc are going to pick their one factor and point to it as the sole reason it happened.
The reality is that there is a motivated wingnut base, a drive to take the “kennedy” seat, pissed off progressives, demoralized Dem base, a piss poor campaign, a feckless wandering on HCR where they keep picking the worst optics (might be good policy though), not forcibly standing for ideals and explaining why they are, etc.
What’s the saying about failure/success and many components/single components of each? The truth is this a failure on a variety of fronts. Which may have been overcome by a strong campaign, but the Democrats have to recognize there is a lot of stuff brewing out there and if they just think this is solely because of Coakley they are in for a world of hurt.
SiubhanDuinne
Just in case the shit sandwich on crapturd bread wasn’t tasty enough for you today, here’s some vomitpuke relish to lather on top: Erroll Southers has just withdrawn his name from nomination as head of the TSA.
It’s not even 9:00am yet and the day already officially sucks.
Woodbuster (formerly donovong)
It’s simple now. If the Democrats in the House decide to grow a pair and pass the Senate version of HCR, then things will not be quite so bad.
If the Democrats in the House turn into the lily-livered cowards that I expect them to, they will run away from HCR and into the open arms of the Teabaggers and Republicans who will take their seats away from them. And Obama will have a great deal of time to play pinochle for the next three years, while he keeps John Thune’s fucking seat warm.
Davis X. Machina
@ The Other Steve
I think the game-changing, paradigm-shifting special election victory — coming from 10% down — of Harris Wofford in ’91 is the better analogy. He ran after the entrenched Republican John Heinz was killed in a helicopter crash.
Now you might say ‘Harris Who’?
Wofford ran as a single-issue candidate, stressing the need to address the health-care crisis. The pundits all told us that this was a sign that this time the country was ready. It was a harbinger of the great reaction to Reagan/Bush I to come. It was the people calling out for change in the midst of a recession.
He was even shortlisted by Clinton for VP in ’92.
Rick Santorum blew him out in ’94.
By-elections don’t mean dick.
Woodbuster (formerly donovong)
@SiubhanDuinne: The poor guy probably wanted to decide his own fate, rather than leave it in the hands of my stupid Senator, Jim Demented.
edmund dantes
@socraticsilence:
Let me say this as gently as possible. FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!!!
The Grand Panjandrum
Yeah it looks like giving Baucus and the Gang of Six three months to hammer out a deal is already paying dividends.
Napoleon
@edmund dantes:
Yep, and it gets better in that their excuse was that they were having problems raising cash yet the Brown campaign which was at that point was doing worse with fund raising was running a tracking poll so that when the numbers moved in their direction they had something to take to people with proof that their campaign was worth investing in, whereas Coakley had no numbers to take to people to show them if they did not give her serious help the seat maybe in jeopardy.
DZ
AEdmund Dantes:
13 years in Chateau D’If. Might yet come to pass for all of us.
Remember November
Is it me or is every hottie from BSG landing a gig on a FOX tv show?
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Comrade Jake: Bayh can go f-ck himself. I liked Ezra’s post from last night. This is the best part:
Speaking of Kennedy, he anticipated this reaction back in 1980. On the eve of his defeat to Jimmy Carter, and Carter’s defeat to Ronald Reagan, he warned his supporters against letting electoral setbacks dampen their commitment to their cause. “If the Democrats run for cover, if we become pale carbon copies of the opposition, we will lose–and deserve to lose,” he said. “The last thing this country needs is two Republican parties.”
Hear that Evan Bayh!! And the rest of the DLC assholes for that matter!!
bob h
My suspicion is that if the Republicans had nominated a candidate with less lapidary hotness, the Democrats one with a more normal level of charisma, and the contest not occurred in a State that had already taken care of its healthcare, we would be celebrating a great victory today, and HCR would be passing before the State of the Union.
On such trivialities the fate of our nation hinges.
Xenos
@edmund dantes: Indeed. There is a lot of stuff brewing and a lot of money and marketing expertise on the Republican side to take advantage of it.
The people want change – the did in 2008 and still do in 2010. But they apparently do not want to change. As long as the easy answers and dishonest claims of the corporate PTB find a receptive audience reform will at best amount to half measures. This is a cultural and structural problem that may take a couple generations to work through, if ever.
At this point I am very interested to see how Brown is incorporated into the GOP Senate Caucus. He may fit right in, or he could stir things up a bit. His personality is pretty erratic so I really have no idea what will happen.
Remember November
Coakley forgot to say “Green Balloons”
Stroszek
@edmund dantes: It’s not a rumor. The campaign itself has been complaining that the DNC didn’t give them enough cash for tracking polls. But this is BS for two reasons:
1) They ended the primaries with plenty of cash-on-hand.
2) Instead of fundraising, Coakley ran off to the Caribbean for a huge chunk of the general election campaign.
This, of course, doesn’t excuse the DNC and DSCC for doing their own trackers, but it gives you a sense of what a mess this was. The failure is just amazing from top to bottom. If it weren’t for PPP, this would have been a 15 point blowout.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Remember November: What are women on Faux shows for besides T & A? All Rupert cares about is attracting eyeballs. Ever seen the Faux Business Channel(I know .. no one even knows it exists .. not even Faux Noise viewers)? It all goes back to the old maxim: “Sex sells!!”
Punchy
Can we instead discuss Malkin’s hatty and Sid da Kid’s six points last nite?
ericvsthem
@The Grand Panjandrum: This. The 2-3 month delay in getting a bill out of the Senate Finance Committee’s “Gang of
SixShit” will be what killed HCR in 2009, if indeed the House fails to pass the Senate bill, or the Democrats are unable to get a bill through both houses before Brown is seated.Bob (Not B.o.B.)
@edmund dantes:
I didn’t know the DNC had veto power over state primaries or had the power to force a candidate to do its bidding. Please explain.
Sly
@edmund dantes:
Just as a corollary, the fact that no internal tracking polls were done, either by Coakley or the DNC, is evidence of extreme incompetence.
The DSCC has three times the money that the NRSC does. If they had known that Brown had started to creep up on Coakley in the past month or so, they could have dumped a lot more money into the GOTV effort and lit a fire under the Boston establishment’s ass to get behind her. But no one had any idea of what was going on until a week ago. It seems that Coakley wasn’t the only one who took a vacation at the most inopportune time.
Now the NSRC has a win that they can use to reassure traditional GOP donors that all is not lost and that they should unleash the spigot again.
Citizen_X
Pelosi and the rest of the House Dems: Pass. The fucking. Bill. And let Bayh and Webb pound sand.
socraticsilence
@edmund dantes
Thanks bud, but I just happen to think that Hamsher’s problem is directly related to the fact that she will never have to go a day without health insurance and thus “half-measures” that would have helped cover 30 million or so American’s can be rejected out of hand- in effect she’s the Trustafarian with the Free Mumia shirt calling for Revolution at my rally, she’s the comfortable embodiment of radical chic who looks at the poor and the suffering and says “if only we were a social democracy” instead of simply giving them a meal for the night.
K. Grant
@NobodySpecial:
Of all of the stories that have evolved over the last year, this is the one that absolutely stumps me. It started immediately, with Reid, IIRC, and hasn’t really stopped. People kvetch on a daily basis about Obama not leading, or pining for the days of LBJ, but honestly, the Democrats in the House and Senate (especially the Senate) seem to take a great deal of enjoyment (for some, undisguised glee) out of pissing in Obama’s cornflakes.
Face
@ericvsthem: According to TPM (take it for what it is), HCR is likely DOA.
And I cannot foresee any other major legislative initiative passing in the next 3 years. Lame duck? Probably not. But damn close.
Steeplejack
Good quote from Ted Kennedy (in 1980) in Ezra’s piece: “If the Democrats run for cover, if we become pale carbon copies of the opposition, we will lose–and deserve to lose. The last thing this country needs is two Republican parties.”
And I agree with Yglesias (quoted above): Brown’s election just gives the DINOs cover not do anything.
socraticsilence
@ Bob- What Edmund doesn’t mention is that Coakley was the primary canidate who ran against the party establishment Capuano was the choice of Obama et al, as well as of the Kennedy family.
Econwatcher
I have the same fears everyone here does for the policy implications of this loss. But for Coakley herself, this is just a tiny bit of karma. She’s a political hack who kept an innocent man, Gerald Amirault, in prison for at least three extra years. She didn’t put him there. But she went out of her way to help keep him there.
And it’s one of those cases where she simply had to know he was innocent and just didn’t care. This was one of those daycare molestation cases, where small kids were questioned relentlessly and suggestively by a social worker, who wouldn’t let them go until they said what she wanted to hear, after which they gave the wildest accounts of satanic abuses. Coakley’s conduct was unforgivable. So for her, good riddance.
Robin G.
@NobodySpecial: You really think the Senate bill’s going to be passed by the House? I don’t. Pelosi’s good, but she’s not a miracle worker. Too many progressives will sit, along with some Stupak amendment people, and HCR will die. It may never even come to vote. And once HCR is dead… there’s no recovery from that kind of blow, not by this fall, anyway. Americans will always vote for assholes over wimps, always. We’ll lose the House, drop six or seven seats in the Senate. Obama’s agenda will die, he’ll be unseated in 2012, and hey, what’s this? We’re back to 2000! And then, I suppose, the manic progressive purists shall rejoice.
Admittedly, I’ve given up coffee this week, so my despair is a bit more accute. But I’m pretty sure I’m right. Our only chance for political survival is to pass the Senate bill, and I don’t think it’s going to happen.
arguingwithsignposts
Since this is an open thread, my food experiment turned out well last night. But then I fell asleep before refrigerating the leftovers, so almost three chicken leg quarters go in the garbage. $%@#%!!!
It was that kind of day. Now, I will try to spend my day studiously ignoring politics.
Osprey
Que the countdown before somebody says this was a brilliant move of political jiu-jitsu by Obama so that the Senate wouldn’t have to capitulate to Lieberdouche and Hair Nelson and would just use reconcilitation.
Considering how awful her campaign was, this would almost be feasible, but with the Dems track record of shooting victory in the face and dry-humping the manual of defeat, I think they just fucked up. And as somebody already said, it doesn’t take much to get the Repub base energized to GOTV. The Dem side seems to only get hardcore after shit has really hit the fan (see 2006-2008 elections as reference compared to 2000-2004).
The Grand Panjandrum
@edmund dantes:
It wasn’t a rumor.
(My emphasis added.)
Coakley will have to carry much of the responsibility for the loss, but clearly the state Democratic Party, the DNC and DSCC share some that burden. This is just some of the proof that the entire Democratic Party leadership got complacent and ended up losing a seat they should have retained. I will say that no matter who the candidate was it would have been a bigger fight than originally thought, but they got caught flat-flooted just like they did last summer with the teabaggers. The Democrats are showing a remarkable lack of foresight in understanding the political terrain.
John S.
Amazing how quickly “liberals” and “progressives” line up to drink from the right-wing puke funnel.
It’s a referendum!
Scrap the HCR bill entirely!
The voters rejected Obama!
The Democrats pushed the country too far to the left!
And on and on…I always expected the MSM to regurgitate this stuff, but I never expected to see it adopted by so many Democrats. It’s truly a thing of wonder.
gypsy howell
What exactly is the role of the DSCC anyway? Why is it that I get fundraising emails from Bob Menendez and John Kerry and some dude named JB Poersch twice a day every fucking day? Seriously, what IS the role of the DSCC if it isn’t to advise and bankroll Senate campaigns? Where does this money go, and for what?
Doesn’t anyone here know how to play this game? Feels like I’m the one getting played.
Econwatcher
@Brick Oven Bill:
This is the wittiest comment I’ve ever seen by BOB.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Oops, I see Calvin Jones quoted that same quote. Great minds, etc. And now WP won’t let me edit my comment. Damn you, WP!
Remember November
I think we should just recall the entire Senate. Useless bunch of oligar(c)hs.
The Grand Panjandrum
@The Grand Panjandrum: Sorry that comment should have this link in it.
Brian J
I don’t know if anyone posted this last night, but regardless, it deserves to be seen. Via the No More Mister Nice Guy Blog, he’s an important message to Democrats: don’t panic. The loss sucks, and it’s going to make things difficult, but this only becomes an anchor if we let it. His example is the surprise upset of Harris Wofford in Pennsylvania in 1991, who lost to Rick Santorum in 1994. Nobody is suggesting that we need to act like irresponsible assholes, only that we need to call the Republicans out on their bullshit and own their obstructionism.
K. Grant
@socraticsilence:
I agree whole-heartedly. This is purist nonsense in its most heartbreaking sense. We have the opportunity to do something, something that will actually help people, and others are arguing that is better to reject those in today in order to give them something ‘even better’ 16 years from now. You know what, I used a food pantry for a year, and while I would have liked filet mignon, that big honking tube of low-grade ground chuck kept me from starving.
NobodySpecial
@Robin G.:
The House is infinitely more practical than the Senate, being how they have to run every two years. No one may LIKE it, but if they’re serious about passing any sort of health care, they’ll pass the Senate bill. I figure it’ll take a couple of days to sort out in conference, but I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t pass.
@K. Grant:
Of course they want to piss in his cornflakes, Obama is sitting in the chair that some of them manuvered 20 years or more to get to, and he was only in office for part of one term. Then you’ve got the ones who’ve been coddled the entire time they’ve been there because you don’t dare make them actually make a controversial vote, and add on the top weak ineffective leadership that feels no need to help Obama succeed, and you get – this Senate.
And soggy cornflakes.
Napoleon
@The Grand Panjandrum:
If you are saying this because Coakley claims they did not have money for tracking polls and the DNC and DSCC should have done something about it then how do you explain how Brown who at that point raised less had the money to run tracking polls, and when the results started breaking in his favor he took them to donors. That was 100% Coakley’s fault.
Steeplejack
@bob h:
I think you may be onto something here, that this election “occurred in a state that had already taken care of its healthcare.” I wonder if MAsshole voters felt free to vote their disdain and discontent because they don’t see HCR passing or not passing affecting them at all.
But I don’t know how well MA’s plan has worked out and how visible a change/improvement it is (if it is) to the people there.
Brian J
@Robin G.:
Not necessarily. From what I can tell, Coakley was a bad candidate that let her opponent take advantage of her screw ups. The national scene for Democrats probably didn’t help, but it didn’t have to be her downfall, either. If the response is something besides cowering in fear and trying to launch an endless stream of deficit commissions, then we can recover.
edmund dantes
@socraticsilence: Asshole. You are the one wishing death upon myself and my family without even knowing where I stand on the topic. So FUCK OFF. (Not to mention the general sentiment of wishing death on anyone)
As to other stuff from BOB and you, I’m not sure how I can make it more clear. Coakley fucked up. Big time, but she was also allowed to fuck up. She never should have been left to her own devices especially if the seat is so goddamn important that if you lose it, you’re immediate reaction is we might need to scuttle our prime objective.
To borrow an NCAA term, it shows a lack of institutional control. They couldn’t have forced her to do anything, but they should have been on the ground themselves polling, priming their base, etc, but from everything I can see everyone got complacent until the external polls started to show Brown winning. They all failed. Coakley and her campaign deserves the biggest piece of the failure pie, but the rest of the Dem establishment deserves a fairly big chunk themselves.
gypsy howell
While the DNC and DSCC stood by and did what exactly? I’m curious to know what it is they do with all the money they raise.
Demo Woman
@Remember November: There’s a candidate in FL that wants to do exactly that.
Brian J
@Ben JB:
Shut up, that’s why!
Seriously though, this election will be whatever the right wants it to be. If there’s one thing the other side knows how to do better than us besides messaging, it’s reading what they want into election results. Just a few days after calling Obama a socialist/redistributionist for wanting bigger tax credits, they claimed he ran on a center-right agenda and needed to live up to that. Don’t be surprised if this election somehow becomes a referendum on gays in the military, the California budget crisis, water issues in the Southeast, and Afghanistan by the end of the week.
Bob (Not B.o.B.)
Having worked on campaigns that were strongly supported by the DCCC, I can tell you at the end of the day only the candidate gets themselves across the line. No amount of money or come-to-Jesus-talks by people in DC can force a candidate to win.
The candidate is responsible for the bulk of their own fundraising, messaging and field. No big check from DC can save a failing campaign.
The fact that the candidates team leaked a memo, before election day was even over, blaiming the DSCC and the DNC says a lot more about the candidate than the actual loss.
I don’t believe she didn’t have the money to run a simple poll. If she was that broke, she needed to get on the phone and raise the cash.
Robin G.
@Brian J: No, I agree, Coakley sucked. But I have no faith, none, that the Dems won’t now cower in fear like baby chicks in a rainstorm. Except not adorable.
I honestly never thought I’d feel this much despair with my own party in power. But, again, no coffee (and, it must be said, vicious PMS).
Brian J
@edmund dantes:
Didn’t she take a vacation in the middle of the fucking election? I mean, WTF? Why not just tell voters to go fuck themselves on the front page of The Globe and be done with it?
Dennis-SGMM
Surprise, surprise; people who felt that the Dems had moved too far to the left are saying “See? I told ya’.” Those who felt that the Dems had not far enough to the left are saying the same. What ever your point of view was before the election is now “proved” by the outcome.
Absent exit polling, everyone is absolutely right. You might have thought that, once it became clear that the election might go against the Democrat, the party would want to have exit pollsters in place to help them figure out what actually did go wrong. Or maybe they just didn’t want to know.
Bob (Not B.o.B.)
@edmund dantes:
OK. I might buy that.
The Raven
Weirdness. The areas that supported Brown in Mass. are almost exactly the ones that went for Hilary Clinton in the 2010 primary.
(Posted in multiple places, because it’s a good insight, and because it’s so weird.)
Brian J
@Robin G.:
Don’t laugh, but for a long time, people have told me I am going to become a politician. Along with best eyes, best ass, and best sense of humor, that’s what I was voted as during my last year of high school.* I can’t see it, if only because I hate talking in front of crowds most of the time, so if I did get involved in politics, it’d hopefully be working behind the scenes.
I sometimes imagine what it would be like to be in the position that some of these guys are in. I think of what I would do, what they end up doing, and how I might have done things differently. And while I can’t say I always blame them for being cautious, it’s gotten ridiculous. The Republicans at this point are like children who, when given that special treat in order for their parents to get them to shut the fuck up, decide to keep on acting hysterically regardless. They don’t care, and while they will sometimes win no matter what happens, they will always win if we simply let them. If I am ever involved in politics, I will hopefully remember the frustration I now feel at the way the Democrats are acting and work to ensure that I never feel it again. There’s absolutely no reason for the Democrats at the national level to act like this. Unfortunately, far too few of them realize it.
*Only that last part is true.
Napoleon
@gypsy howell:
They dole it out on the basis for where they can get the most bang for the buck, but if a candidate is so stupid as to not be running tracking polls so that if things are going badly for her she has the data to go to them and make the pitch that they would get more bang for the buck by putting the money in her race because it was actually becoming competative, then she is an idiot.
And as I have already mentioned twice in this thread, but Brown did not make that mistake and he had the data to pitch to the money people that he had a chance.
Brian J
@Bob (Not B.o.B.):
I can see where you are coming from, but at the same time, there’s not a single person involved with the party at the state or federal level that might have wondered if things were going as smoothly as Coakley’s allegedly nonchalant approach to campaigning suggested? Nobody in the political office of the DSCC thought to check up on this race? If so, heads really need to roll.
Wag
It’s the Economy, stupid!
PTirebiter
Woke up this morning to the dulcet stylings of Fighting Joe Lieberman on radio, “Hello” he lied. My wife threatened she’d call Bekins and take both dogs if I didn’t declare a mental health day. Nothing but early Stones and Myrna Loy movies for me today.
Sly
@Robin G.:
You only saw a deluge of Nays on the House Bill after the passing threshold had already been reached. This is a way for the leadership to throw certain members (in this case, the progressives) a bone to keep their fundraising base alive on an issue that the left might not be too enthusiastic about.
It will be harder than before, certainly. Cao is already on record as voting no, and Wexler left. So every single yes vote from the initial bill would have to be preserved, and that cover will have to be withdrawn, making a lot of people unhappy. Poor Dennis.
It’s ultimately a question of whether or not the progressives who voted no would allow the status quo to remain, which I seriously doubt. There are some modifications that could pass via reconciliation later on that have already been agreed to. Doubtful a PO would make it, but any changes in the tax code are doable. I have nothing besides instinct to back this up, but that seems to be the reasonable gambit Pelosi and Hoyer would make.
If they do let the entire effort fail, I might just join the DLC out of spite.
gypsy howell
I’m really curious to know whether the DSCC and the DNC DID in fact have any come-to-Jesus talks with Coakley, and whether they tried to throw money her way. And does that money come without any strings (such as “We strongly encourage you to use this for tracking polls” or advice like that)
They keep asking me for money, and I’m really wondering what they do.
That’s not to say that I place the blame entirely at their door – it seems beyond obvious that Coakley ran her campaign absolutely miserably. I’m just wondering how something like that happens in such a high-profile and seemingly “game-changing” (to hear the asswipes like Bayh and Webb talk) Senate race.
(edit: Napoleon – just saw your comment above back to me. I guess I’m confused that with not much else going on re: Senate races, did the DSCC just look the other way and figure if their phone didn’t ring, they didn’t need to get involved?)
socraticsilence
@Raven-
Not too weird I mean it became pretty clear to most observers that aside from NY and California, the area’s Hillary won in the primaries were more conservative, old and white than the area’s Obama won– and guess what older, whiter and more conservative voters generally don’t vote for Dems.
Elie
@John S.:
You got that right. I am completely disgusted but unfortunately, not completely surprised —
Bob (Not B.o.B.)
@Brian J:
The thing is, maybe those alarms were sounded. It might not have mattered if the candidate was a complete douche and blew off the warnings.
Oh well. We still have
59, er 58.Karen
@The Raven
I am not surprised that the same areas voted for Brown. FDL and other PUMAs decided to kamikaze the Democratic Party with Obama as President. I guarantee you, if Hilary Clinton was President, NOTHING would ever be her fault. Never ever. But the PUMAs are determined to kill the Democratic Party out of spite because Obama didn’t wait his turn and dared to win.
And don’t be surprised when they do it everywhere. These PUMAs hate Obama more than they care about the Democratic Party since it’s not THEIRS.
It’s easy for the Jane Hamsher liberals of the world, they’re the true “elitists” who can say the bill isn’t good enough so let’s scrap it and obstruct the candidacy of anyone who could vote for it. What do they care? They have health insurance. She’s the reason why people are wary of liberals.
Obama is screwed no matter what he does. It’s never enough. And of course, he can’t show true anger because then he’s the “angry black male.” His party isn’t just pissing in his corn flakes, let’s not forget that there were people who wanted Hilary Clinton to win and they’ll never forgive Obama for winning.
bedtimeforbonzo
@aimai: . . .
“If you want to run a machine candidate in a machine state then run the fucking machine, don’t let the machine run over you.”
U nailed it, aimai,
bedtimeforbonzo
@Morbo: Barney Frank was pretty quick to the mic, too.
Last I checked Barney Frank is no centrist.
Fwiw, Brown was smart enough to tap into voter anger and put forth a populist appeal in the bluest of blue states.
No accident in his acceptance speech, Brown declared: “This (win) is for Independents!”
Lessons to be learned.
Lessons to be learned — and Barney Frank, bless is liberal heart, is a quick learner, and, if anything, a political realist.
bedtimeforbonzo
@The Grand Panjandrum: What aimai said at 24.
Corner Stone
@Karen:
You sound a little bitter. What’s the matter sweetie? Do you periodically feel moody?
Demo Woman
@Corner Stone: WTF is that suppose to mean?
Skepticat
@gnomedad: The message that I’m getting is that people can be incredibly shallow and ill-informed and yet vote–with their lizard brain, not their cerebrum. Today’s earlier headline on the Globe website–Brown saying that his election shows that this can happen all over America –scares the snot out of me.
Karen
@Corner Stone
Are you always so bitchy, dearheart?
Are you being so condescending because I’m a woman or because you’re thrilled that Coakley lost?
Brian J
@Bob (Not B.o.B.):
True. There’s a lot of blame to go around, but much of it lies with the candidate herself. That’s why I think the idea that the Republicans can succeed more often with himbo candidates is misleading. It might work, but a lot of that depends on how good or bad the Democratic candidate is.
The Raven
@socraticsilence:
So, was the vote swung by older white conservative women, then? That’s startling, if so.
The Raven
@Karen:
It wasn’t the progressives that monkey-wrenched this election. It seems to have been a combination of foolish local politics and and, perhaps, (speaking ahead of actual data) older white conservative women.
Comrade Kevin
@Karen:
That’s exactly what he’s doing.
Corner Stone
@Karen:
How is that condescending? I was just asking if you were ok since you seemed a little upset.
Brachiator
@edmund dantes:
You think that the Democrats might have learned something from Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign, which was full of assumption and entitlement.
And some Democrats (reflected by some posts here) assumed that changing demographics meant an automatic Democratic majority, no campaigning necessary.
I’m probably a centrist and I don’t give a rat’s ass about whether the Democrats lean to the left or to the right. I care about jobs, an improved economy. Oh yeah, and Iraq and Afghanistan is resolved. Some people appear to live in a fairy land in which daily problems don’t matter and some “progressive” agenda is supposed to be the main order of business.
And HCR may have been dragged to the right, but the larger problem was that it was dragged toward incoherence. And since the state of Massachusetts have health care reform, they kinda know what this looks like and what some options are, so if voters there were willing to swing over to Brown, then the Democrats have to seriously re-examine their base assumptions and get out of this old mindset of left/right independent of actual policy proposals.
mey
The only people blaming this on
KhanObamaRahmORahma are the baggers (fire or tea, take your pick).ETA: Oh, and the PUMA baggers. Also.
Brachiator
@Skepticat:
I get the shallow, but how were the voters ill-informed?
ruemara
@aimai:
I love this summation. “It’s because Obama/Rahm/Reid failed to deliver HCR in a timely fashion.” There’s over 300 other people involved in this equation, there’s literally thousands peripherally involved in affecting electorate thought, but this Tribune of Failure are key linchpins. “They left a key seat open..” The Mass state Dems totally were powerless as they hurried in to change laws to prevent the gov from just appointing someone, the local voting body who chose Coakley in a primary were powerless, and most powerless of all was Coakley, the woman who was running for powerful seat and yet couldn’t show ability to weld power. Awesome. The Mayor of Boston said he didn’t like Coakley and didn’t do anything to campaign for her, she herself had no will to win and conceded before all the precincts, but this is machine politics gone bad? I’ll be honest. After that, I was glad to see such a weak spined hack go down before she did real damage.
I usually find you to be very astute but I don’t get why everyone thinks that someone-aka Obama- snaps their fingers, people just stop being who they are.
Do any of you work in politics? At all? I, unfortunately, work right next to those great local politicians and I have to say 1 thing. You have never encountered a more aggressive, self-promotional type in your life. They are back-slapping, speechmaking machines. Grandmas and grandpas that can have days that start with meetings at 8 am and end with meetings until 1am the next day. Energy, self promotion and always be campaigning. Brown did that. Coakley didn’t. He capitalized on an already energized base, while the Democratic base has been busy since 1/21/09 ripping on every choice Obama has made and whining about being demoralized. Self fulfilling prophecy.
The tiny portion of barely informed masses selected the least promising candidate based on name recognition who sat out most of the campaign while the people who supposedly had a vested interest in her seat yakked on and on about how awful she was. No wonder she lost.
Tim Kaine-doesn’t he have any responsibility for how stupidly this went? The DSSC’s Robert Menendez? Seriously? Damn, I want their jobs! When I fail to do a job I’ve been given, I face consequences. The Democratic Party lost because they went in half-assed and waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting. They better get over it.
SadieSue
@Steeplejack:
As a Mass resident, I don’t think most of us thought of this election as a referendum on HCR (other than those who listened to Brown’s usual GOP anti-health care talk). Most MA residents have health care the same way most American’s do – either through their job or a plan they paid for themselves. The only difference is that if you have no money, or very little, there is help available (full disclosure – my brother was on MassCare for a while last year; he has a job with insurance now & I am grateful for both).
Any way this is very long-winded – Coakley was a lousy candidate & other than anyone Brown attracted with his GOP talking points, I don’t think HCR played any (major) role in the elections. And most people I know (granted, we are in the very blue section of WMass) want national HCR to pass; in some ways MA is less likely to fight national reform – just like same-sex marriage, we’ve seen that it works.
ETA – I supported Capuano in the primary & held my nose & voted Coakley in the election.
johnny walker
Funny. Snark aside, if we’re going to pretend 10% unemployment and a majority of the country being against HCR had nothing whatsoever to do with this then we can expect to see more of the same in November. Obviously Coakley was about as bad a candidate as could be asked for, but it wasn’t all her.
Steeplejack
@SadieSue:
Thanks for the insight. I didn’t mean to suggest Massachusetts voters thought of the election as a referendum on HCR; I was just wondering whether MassCare might have taken any consideration of HCR out of the equation.