Okay. The Massachusetts seat is lost. But are there lessons to be learned? Just where have the wheels come off of the crowning achievement that was Obama's ascendancy to the Presidency?
Surely, he created his own overblown expectations. Then he changed his course and took actions that probably led many of his supporters here, if they could be candid, to scratch their heads.
For example, if he had come out for single payer on day one (yes, I know that single payer has no chance according to his supporters) and repeatedly thereafter, would his supporters have voiced objections here as many do now when single payer proponents talk about it? Or would they now be advocating for it as well? Do these supporters want it? And why was it improper to even discuss it if there was supposed to be a truly deliberative process? How does that promote legitimacy in the democratic process?
Anyway, the more relevant points based on the election results follow, but I believe that those who blame the Left for Obama's predicament are simply missing the boat.
Celinda Lake, who is Coakley's pollster, accurately reflects what this election means in my opinion. Yeah, I saw it at HuffPo. But, truly, does this mean that it should be 100% discounted? When I hear that, it makes me shake my head. Lake's view:
"If Scott Brown wins tonight he'll win because he became the change-oriented candidate. Voters are still voting for the change they voted for in 2008, but they want to see it. And right now they think they've got economic policies for Washington that are delivering more for banks than Main Street."
As I said, even a caveman should be able to glean this point.
Her view continues:
Lake said that the problem for Democrats is that voters are blaming them for the nation's poor economic conditions. "2010 is fast turning out to be a blame election and I think that either we are going to characterize who deserves the blame - whether that's banks and lobbyists and people who still want to hold on to national Republican economic strategies - or we're going to get the blame. And that's a very different tone than, often, the administration is comfortable with," she said.
The feeling among voters, said Lake, is that Washington prioritizes Wall Street over Main Street and that, despite Coakley's credentials as a state attorney general who has taken on and beaten Wall Street banks, sending her to Washington would not make a difference. [...] "Voters are voting for change and we have to go back to that change message. And we have to deliver on change, especially an economic policy that serves working people."
Lake provides some authority:
Lake pointed to polling released by the Economic Policy Institute showing that 65 percent of Americans thought the stimulus served banks interests, 56 percent thought it served corporations and only ten percent that it benefited them. "That is a formula for failure for the Democrats. We have to deliver on economic policies that take on Wall Street and we have to do it for five months, not just five days. We really have to deliver on the policies," she said.
Check out the polling link. It is pretty telling in terms of what people believe about the way things are going on. And are they wrong? Let's not forget that a majority want single payer, too.
As I said at the start, even a caveman can understand the forces at play in the electorate when Billy Tauzin, the very lobbyist that Obama castigated in the campaign, became his partner. Or when Obama recently crowed he was not elected to help fat cat bankers, while he has done virtually nothing to curtail their power. What else needs to be said? People hear the words, then see the disconnect. It breeds cynicism. It's ironic to look at these examples and recall how Obama spoke about the cynicism during the campaign.
Robert Kuttner recently wrote about the situation Democrats find themselves in with respect to the future. The whole article is worth a read (even though it, too, is at HuffPo). In pertinent part, he said:
[T]he health bill has already done incalculable political damage and will likely do more. Polls show that the public now opposes it by margins averaging ten to fifteen points, and widening. It is hard to know which will be the worse political defeat -- losing the bill and looking weak, or passing it and leaving it as a piñata for Republicans to attack between now and November.
It has already brought down Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota [...] one of the Senate's great populists, [who] began the year more than twenty points ahead in the polls [but] [...] by the time he decided to call it a day, Dorgan was running more than twenty points behind.
But how did Democrats get saddled with this bill?
Begin with Rahm Emanuel. The White House chief of staff, who was once Bill Clinton's political director, drew three lessons from the defeat of Clinton-care. All three were wrong. First, get it done early (Clinton's task force had dithered.) Second, leave the details to Congress (Clinton had presented Congress with a fully-baked cake.) Third, don't get on the wrong side of the insurance and drug industries (The insurers' fictitious couple, Harry and Louise, had cleaned Clinton's clock.)
The result:
Cutting a deal with the insurers and drug companies, who are not exactly candidates to win popularity contests, associated Obama with profoundly resented interest groups. This was exactly the wrong framing. This battle should have been the president and the people versus the interests. Instead more and more voters concluded that it was the president and the interests versus the people.
As policy, the interest-group strategy made it impossible to put on the table more fundamental and popular reforms, such as using Federal bargaining power to negotiate cheaper drug prices, or having a true public option like Medicare-for-all. Instead, a bill that served the drug and insurance industries was almost guaranteed to have unpopular core elements.
And the unaddressed need of the insured and underinsured:
The bill helped about two-thirds of America's uninsured, but did almost nothing for the 85 percent of Americans with insurance that is becoming more costly and unreliable by the day....
Perhaps what happens when the politics outweighs the policy:
[W]e went from a politics in which government is necessary to provide secure health insurance -- because the private insurance industry skims off outrageous middlemen fees and discriminates against sick people -- to a politics in which Democrats, as a matter of survival, feel they have to apologize for government. Thank you, Rahm Emanuel.
And the disconnect that the public sees:
[Obama] advised me [in a robocall] that he needed Martha Coakley in the Senate, "because I'm fighting to curb the abuses of a health insurance industry that routinely denies care." Let's see, would that be the same insurance industry that Rahm was cutting inside deals with all spring and summer? The same insurance industry that spent tens of millions on TV spots backing Obama's bill as sensible reform?
If voters are wondering which side this guy is on, he has given them good reason.
This, Kuttner concludes:
[T]he Massachusetts surprise should be a wake-up call of the most fundamental kind. Obama needs to stop playing inside games with bankers and insurance lobbyists, and start being a fighter for regular Americans. Otherwise, he can kiss it all goodbye.
Obama now has his moment of adversity. He has never really faced such a situation before. Out of adversity can come greatness. Will he become a profile in courage and forget the political strategy of winning before doing what the public elected him to do? Or will he continue along the way that has brought the brink of disaster, cutting deals with lobbyists and adopting policies that favor the insiders and entrenched special interests most of all, epitomized by Wall Street over Main Street?
So far, I think he has been anything but a chessmaster. More like a political novice, not too far removed from the state legislature. Thus, the need to over-rely on people like Emanuel and the economic creators of havoc, rather than knowing how to rein them in. Now, however, Obama has a chance to grow. He must grow. He must take the chance, with all the risks, and truly have faith in the people, the ones who elected him because he preached that faith. Yes, he may lose, but in the end losing can create the momentum for winning. But only with true risk comes reward. Win or lose, if he becomes the fighter for the people that he so often promised he would be, in my opinion his path to not only success, but greatness, will be enhanced.