. . . The Boston Herald for trying to tie their eupohoric victory lap over the passing of Obamacare with a supposed right wing backlash to the election of Scott Brown to the Kennedy's ancestral Senate seat, since he didn't kill Obamacare. These left wing authors show the same degree of grace and intellectual honesty in victory that the left displays at all other times. And in this case, the lefties at the Herald don't simply stretch logic, they murder it:
Republicans feeling blue as Scott Brown win backfires By Jessica Van Sack and Hillary Chabot
Republican folk hero Sen. Scott Brown is being taunted by triumphant Democrats - and slammed by irked conservatives - after the historic health-care bill he was elected to kill was signed into law by President Obama yesterday.
“If he were a milk carton, he would be expired,” said Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman John Walsh.
Brown’s backers from the insurgent Tea Party movement want to know if they’ve been had. . . .
Given that Brown never had a chance to vote on the healthcare bill being rammed down our throat, why would - or could - anyone possibly make the leap in logic to lay the blame for that on Scott Brown. But Brown is the 41st vote - and the bottom line is that the left's ability to radically remake our country beyond the insanity of Obamacare is now very much at issue.
There is a lot of needless wailing and gnashing of teeth going on over the fact that Scott Brown, along with a handful of the other usual suspects, crossed party lines to vote with the Democrats to pass Harry Reid's scaled down $15 billion "jobs bill." It in fact was scaled down from a "bi-partisan" $85 billion bill that had far more tax cuts negotiated between Senators Baucus and Grassley.
What is left is essentially a cosmetic bill consisting of a . . .:
$13 billion program allowing companies to avoid paying Social Security taxes for the remainder of 2010 on new hires who have been unemployed for at least 60 days. Employers would also receive a $1,000 tax credit for each new worker who stays on the job for at least a year. Democrats tout the plan as a simple way to create tens of thousands of new jobs, though some experts dismiss it as too narrow to make a significant dent in the nation's unemployment rate.
The jobs bill also includes a one-year reauthorization of the Highway Trust Fund, a provision allowing companies to write off equipment purchases as business expenses, and an expansion of the Build America Bonds program, which helps state and local governments finance infrastructure projects. . . .
It is doubtful that this bill will create many new jobs, but at least it is mostly aimed at the private sector. That is a first for the Obama administration. I applaud them.
Let's put this, and Scott Brown's vote, in perspective. Just a month ago, Obama was asking for a jobs bill that would include $79 billion to fund more infrastructure projects even though an analysis of the near $79 billion already spent on infrastructure projects in the original stimulus shows it had "no effect" on local unemployment. Just as a reminder, of the original $786 stimulus, only 2.6% was directed towards small business loans - even though small businesses are responsible for over 80% of all the new job creation in America. Then there is Crazy Nancy and the House which passed a version of the "jobs bill" last week that would spend $150 billion on a wide variety of things - just not private sector jobs. The House bill has only $354 million - yes, million - going to small business loans. That is less than one quarter of one percent of their "jobs" bill. These people are insane.
Scott Brown never claimed to be a conservative ideologue. He may be center or center right, but if he were too much further to the right then he is, I wonder whether he could have gotten elected in blue Mass. He has already declared that he intends to hold the line on Obama care and the War on Terror. That is a lot. Besides, the reaity is that we are never going to see a better deal coming out of this Congress than a jobs bill that only spends $15 billion and at least points that money in the direction of small business. That's the zenith of what we can expect to see coming from a Congress that is redefining the terms "profligate spending" and "misplaced priorities." In truth, I would have voted for it just as a prophylactic against an alternative to something many times worse. Thus, I find those today complaining about Scott Brown either aren't paying attention or they are ideologoues engaging in a bit of counterproductive chest thumping melodrama.
The bottom line is that Obama threatens our nation in many ways. We have health care and reconcilliation staring us in the face. Cap and trade, like the theory of man made global warming itself, may be dead, but we have the EPA warning that it will start issuing binding regulations to limit carbon emissions within the next twelve months. Obama is still pushing a major overhaul of our financial system that will force race based lending standards into our financial system at a level never before seen. There are major battles to be fought between now and November and perhaps beyond if the right doesn't recapture the House or the Senate. My suggestion to those who are, like me, quite concerned with all of this - give Scott Brown a pass on this one. Scott Brown is part of the solution, not the problem. Keep your eyes on the left, because there is the real threat to our nation.
Obama campaigned to the center, he is governing from the far left. And it is clear that his major policies are not supported by the majority of Americans. As the election of Scott Brown to the Kennedy's ancestral seat punctuated, the public is delivering a backlash. What has the GOP done to further that backlash for the past year? Absolutely nothing. Which is precisely what they should have been doing. When your opponent is committing suicide, you stand out of the way. What you don't do is give them the number to the suicide hotline and hire them a publicist who will blame the suicide attempts on you.
But that is just what it seems our GOP is doing. The only way Obama will be able to salvage the 2010 and 2012 elections will be if he succeeds in painting himself as reasonable and the Republicans as obstructionists - or, if in an act of insanity, the Republicans become complicit in Obama passing his socialist agenda into law, either by joining in or refusing to filibuster. In this regard, meeting with Obama on the left's health care legislation and allowing "Pay As You Go" legislation to escape Congress without a filibuster are just mind numbingly stupid errors.
I recently blogged on why the GOP should rejectObama's offer to meet on the health care monstrosity and how they should make a counteroffer to meet on deficit reduction and spending excess. But it seems that the GOP is planning to attend, regardless. They are insane.
And now we have Obama signing Pay as You Go legislation into law today. Pay As You Go was passed on a party line vote a few days ago, along with an increase in the national debt ceiling. If any piece of legislation deserved to be filibustered, it was that piece of Orwellian dribble. I have blogged on this legislation here and here. Pay as You Go does nothing towards imposing fiscal responsibility, it provides a smoke screen for Democrats both to claim fiscal responsibility and to justify tax increases, and because of the accounting rules of the CBO, it makes it virtually impossible for future Congresses to enact tax cuts. So it was both a propaganda victory for the left, a way to deflect attention from another increase in the national debt ceiling, and a brake on conservatives. That is a big win for the left. Way to go GOP.
If the GOP doesn't have the backbone to explain to America why they are filibustering a piece of horrendous legislation, if they think not using the filibuster will protect them from the left demagouging the issue, they are utterly insane. Obama is on the defensive and the GOP is demurringbecause they think the public is too stupid to understand reality. These jokers will pull defeat from the jaws of victory between now and November, I am sure of it.
The Washington Post is the latest paper to do a liberal primal scream over the failure of Obama to destroy capitalism and enact a full transition to socialism in his first year in office. They find multiple people and acts to blame, but topping the list is . . . wait for it, . . . Republican obstructionism. Who could have guessed that the party holding a minority in the House and with too few seats in the Senate to filibuster could be the cause of Obama's epic failure in 2009? Coming in second for WaPo's opprobrium was Harry Reid and disloyal Senate Democrats:
For House Democrats, who enjoy a 256 to 178 majority, the main obstacle in 2009 was not Republicans, but the Senate. Even with 60 Democrats, Reid was unable to advance the climate-change and student loan bills that the House approved last summer. The Senate regulatory-reform bill is still in the banking committee.
One might think that with this admission, the authors would realize that it exposes the lie of their headline theory of Republican obstructionism. But it seems that one of the great achievements of the modern far left is their ability to hold a belief in the truth of two or more diametricaly opposed thoughts at the same time.
No matter. According to Wapo, the problem was that Republicans unreasonably refused to take any part in Obama's "remaking of America." Obama's proposals amounted to a vast expansion of government, massive increases in deficit spending, and new taxes, whether directly or indirectly on every American. Yet WaPo seems mystefied why Republicans should object to any of that on substantive grounds. Their alternative take on it is that "[s]ome of the bills . . . were perhaps too unwieldy for voters to digest and too easy for GOP opponents to demagogue." Of course, that's it. There's nothing wrong with any of the legislation. It is just Republicans taking partisan advantage of an electorate that is too stupid to understand the great things Obama was doing for America. The arrogance and hubris of the far left knows no bounds.
WaPo also seems to have a dim memory of the facts reported in their paper over the past year. From the very start - indeed, within three days of taking office, Obama told Republicans who attempted to engage and have input into bipartisan legislation - specifically the Stimulus - that "I won." So much for bipartisanship. Facts are such inconveinient things for the left - unless you are very selective about them of course.
The left, from Obama through Reid and Pelosi, felt no need to engage in bipartisanship other than for some minimal political cover. And indeed, when one looks at the internal problems that Democrats had in 2009, the fact is that Pelosi and Reid treated most Congressional Democrats the same way they treated Republicans. Radical legislation was drafted behind their closed doors, only to be unleashed on Republicans and many Democrats alike vitrually on the eve on which they were to be voted. It was not merely bipartisanship that Obama and the Democratic leadership felt no need to consider, it was deliberative democracy itself. And indeed, the reason for that is the that the legislation, from cap and trade to health care to financial regulation, was so over reaching that even moderate Democrats blinked at the degree of the radical changes proposed by Obama-Pelosi-Reid.
WaPo concludes looking at what 2010 holds in store.
Before the Massachusetts loss, the White House officials touted 2009 as the most productive legislative year in decades. Prodded before Tuesday's election whether Obama and his team would change anything about its Hill strategy, Axelrod replied, "I've thought about that and I don't see how."
Lawmakers expect Obama to set a course for 2010 on Wednesday, in his State of the Union speech. Democrats want the focus on one issue: jobs. But on Friday in Ohio, given a few days to digest Brown's upset, Obama defended and promoted the same long to-do list he brought with him to office.
"I didn't run for president to turn away from these challenges," he said. "I didn't run for president to kick them down the road. I ran for president to confront them -- once and for all."
It would seem that Obama and his administration have as tenuous a grasp on reality as do the WaPo authors - though Democrats seeking reelection in 2010 seem to be grasping it well enough. I think it safe to say that we will be hearing primal screams from the left for at least the next few years. No matter to me, at least, as I find them oddly comforting.
From the sharpened quill of Mr. Krauthammer in today's Washington Post:
After Coakley's defeat, Obama pretended that the real cause was a generalized anger and frustration "not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."
Let's get this straight: The antipathy to George W. Bush is so enduring and powerful that . . . it just elected a Republican senator in Massachusetts? Why, the man is omnipotent. . . .
You would think lefties could discern a proletarian vanguard when they see one. . . .
Democrats must so rationalize, otherwise they must take democracy seriously, and ask themselves: If the people really don't want it, could they possibly have a point?
"If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake-up call," said moderate -- and sentient -- Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, "there's no hope of waking up."
Funniest graphic I've seen in a long time. A good scrubbing under the trunk, a shave and some nice clothes - hey, the Republican brand gets a makeover.
First came the tremors out to sea - November's statewide elections in Virginia and New Jersey that saw significant moves to the right. Obama involved himself in those races only to see Democrats take a whup'n. But those elections could still be colorably spun as turning on local issues. Not so tonight's Massachusetts special election. That was a massive earth quake in one of the deepest blue parts of our nation. Every Congressional Democrat is going to wake up tomorrow morning feeling like they are on a beach just waiting for the tsunami to wash them out of office. For if Republicans can win Ted Kennedy's ancestral Senate seat in Massachusetts, they can win anywhere.
The Mass. election was a statewide referendum on the governance and plans of President Obama, and particularly his health care bill. Obama himself made sure, by personal appearance in Boston, that everyone understood what was on the line. Even Prof. Bob Beckel, a vociferous, Pelosi-esque mouthpiece for the left, looking as dejected as I have ever seen him, called the loss of the Mass. special election "unspinnable."
So what now? For the right, this was pouring jet fuel on their fire. They will become more aggressive, raise a lot more money, and generate a real crop of challengers for virtually every election contest. Those contests will be nationalized, just like Scott Brown did with his campaign. The grass roots tea party movement will grow exponentially as the right, dejected, outraged and impotent in 2009, suddenly finds themselves masters of their own fate. This will snowball. The tsunami may not wash all away in November, but it will have gained terrible strength by then.
For Democrats - the dawn will bring pure, unadulterated, raw fear. Obama and the Democrats promised the world. They have delivered nothing but far greater national debt. The economy is in pain and unemployment is over 10% We are well into our longest single recession in postwar history and there is no light yet visible at the end of the tunnel. Obama, who promised a new era of post partisan politics, has turned out to be the most partisan figure in living memory. And now they know that all of the electorate are taking note. The House, where 41 seats are keeping the left in power, is now in fully in play. In the Senate, six Democrats are in play come Nov. - Reid (Nev), Lincoln (Ark), Spectre (Pa), Feingold (Wisc) and Bayh (Ind). If nothing else changes between now and November, most if not all of them can expect to be voted out of office.
Obama and Pelosi have already signalled their intent to continue to try and force through their radical agenda. They are clearly considering all possible options - most of them being procedural gerrymandering - to pass the abortion that is the health care bill. Yet in light of what we know now, as David Brooks opines:
That, of course, would be political suicide. It would be the act of a party so arrogant, elitist and contemptuous of popular wisdom that it would not deserve to govern. Marie Antoinette would applaud, but voters would rage.
And that really sums up what must be, even if unspoken, how most of the left are no doubt evaluating this. And indeed, we have been treated today to Virginia's Sen. Jim Webb calling on his party to refrain from voting on the health care bill until Scott Brown is seated. And Evan Bayh is sounding the alarms, "warning fellow Democrats that ignoring the lessons of the Massachusetts Senate race will “lead to even further catastrophe” for their party." Bayh acknoledges that the trajectory the Democrats are following is well too far to the left, and counsels a true bipartisan approach.
Those are two of what I am sure will be many more examples arising in the near future of the lemmings stopping at the edge of the cliff and telling Obama and Pelosi that they refuse to follow them over it. The danger to the lemmings is that Pelosi, Reid and Obama are able to get the Senate version of the bill passed by the House. Then the lemmings don't have to stop at the side of the cliff, they will be pulled over regardless.
This has been both a momentous and entertaining night. And it only promises to get better. I don't know about you, but I can't wait to hear next week's State of the Union speech.
Tonight history was made. In the words of the AP, there has been, in Massachusetts, an "Epic Upset." It deserves to be put in context.
In 1773, it was at Boston that the colonists warned the government of its overreach with the Tea Party.
In 1775, the people of Massachusetts ignited the Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord.
In 1952, the Kennedy clan took hold of Massachusetts politics, gaining a Senate seat that the clan would not relinquish until the death of Ted Kennedy in 2009.
John F. Kennedy, who would later become President, was very much a moderate Democrat, strong on defense and conservative on fiscal matters. He instituted one of the first income tax reductions and he involved us in the Vietnam War. Teddy was not even a pale shadow of his brother, JFK. Yet so strong was the Kennedy hold on Massachusetts that Teddy, a man expelled from Harvard for cheating and a man responsible for homicide in the case of Mary Jo Kopechne, was still able to get elected to his older brother's Senate seat and retain it by wide margins in every election thereafter. Unlike JFK, Teddy made a name for himself as a far left ideologue and a true child of the anti-war 60's.
In 2004, Ted Kennedy was directly involved in getting Massachusetts law changed so that an interim election would have to be held to seat a new Senator if a seat became open. Ted expected John Kerry to win the Presidency and wanted to insure that the Republican Gov. Mitt Romney would not be able to appoint a Republican to serve out the term.
In 2008, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans three to one, Obama won Massachusetts by a 26 point margin and Democrats took full control of all branches of Congress, including a bare 60 vote supermajority in the Senate. By 40 seats in the House and 1 seat in the Senate, Republicans became utterly irrelevant to whatever the left wanted to do.
On 20 Jan. 2009, Obama was inaugurated, kicking off a period of far left governance for the first time in America's history. It was a year that saw Obama and the Democrats make a massive effort to move America far to the left.
On Aug. 25, 2009, Ted Kennedy died, leaving his Senate seat open and his "life's work" of instituting socialism and, more particularly, European style government controlled health care in America, near completion.
On 8 Dec. 2009, Scott Brown won the Republican primary for Teddy's seat. He ran explicitly on a plank opposing the socialist programs and profligate spending of Obama. On Dec. 19, Coakley polls gave her a 20 point lead over Brown. No one gave him a chance of winning and Coakley did not bother to campaign.
On 1 January 2010, the Democrat-controlled Congress was within weeks of passing a monstrosity under the rubric of health care reform.
On 18 Jan. 2010, with Coakley down in the polls, President Obama himself came to Massachusetts to remind the formerly faithful Democrats of the state that his plans for America where on the line in this election.
And now, on 19 January 2010, 237 years after the most famous act of rebellion in our history, 235 years after starting the Revolutionary War, 58 years after turning control of a Senate seat to the Kennedys, 4 years after Ted created the special election hoist for his own petard, one year after voting Obama into office by a landslide, and with Obama's entire plans for moving our country far to the left completely on the line:
MASS ELECTS REPUBLICAN BROWN TO THE SENATE BY 5 POINTS (OUTSIDE THE MARGIN OF FRAUD, ACORN, & SELECTIVE RECOUNTS)
That is a 31 point swing to the right in Mass. politics in the space of one year. The people of Massachusetts have given their verdict in a referendum on Obama. They have broken the far left'sstranglehold on our federal government and ended their ability to ram through their far left agenda, working fundamental changes to America and its economy. The people of Massachusetts did so by breaking with their own tradition of being perhaps the Democrat's most reliable stronghold - a fact that will reverberate through our body politic long into the future.
This act of near rebellion by Massachusetts foreshadows and portends a backlash of massive proportions against the Democrats in 2010 unless they make a 180 degree change in their current trajectory. Massachusetts, in an incredible twist of irony - given a chance to have their say today thanks to the partisanship of Ted Kennedy himself - has once again rebelled against overreach of an arrogant, oppressive and overreaching national government. Let Freedom ring.
Somehow, I think this will be much closer to the reality of cause and effect - across blue state America at least - than the South Park writers contemplated when they wrote this episode.
Senator John Kerry weighed in today on the Brown-Coakley Senate race in his home state. It might be difficult for many to understand, as he was speaking Democratese. Fortunately, having gotten my Masters in that language (I also had to prove fluency in several Negro dialects to get my degree, but that is an aside) with a minor in lip reading, I can assist with helpful translations of what Sen. Kerry actually said and meant. This from Sen. Kerry:
I'm no stranger to hard fought campaigns, but what we've seen in the past few days is way over the line and reminiscent of the dangerous atmosphere of Sarah Palin's 2008 campaign rallies.
Translation: My God, these right wing yahoos are demanding fiscal discipline and less government - these are precisely the type of people with terrorist predilections that Napolitano warned us about. Can't anyone connect the dots?!?!? For God's sake, someone check their underwear!!
This is not how democracy works in Massachusetts,"
Translation: Who told the peasants that they could start thinking for themselves? What in the nine hells is going on here? [Update: Have to add this in. A quote from a Talking Points Memo post this morning wherein the left wing author gives his perception of the average Bostonian voter: ". . . [T]hey have a certain humility and expect famous people and experts to tell them what to think." Tell them what to think? That is breathtaking in its arrogance and condescension. My satire is trumped by reality.]
"Scott Brown needs to speak up and get his out of state tea party supporters under control.
Translation: I am so screwed if someone doesn't put a lid on these people before I'm up for reelection. Maybe I can impress my states voters by talking about how anti-American the tea party protesters ---
At this point in his speech, Sen. Kerry was interrupted by a phone call from a staffer apparently warning him that the "tea party" as anti-American might not play so well in Boston. Using lip reading, we were able to document his side of the conversation: John Kerry Ready For Duty. Whose speaking? Uh-huh. . . .Yes. . . . Sorry, what's that again? . . . Really? . . . In Boston Harbor you say? . . . 1773? I never knew. . . . So they really were dangerous terrorists even back - - - . . . . . What? Are you sure? Note to self - talk to Bill Ayers about updating the history part of our social justice curriculum.
At this point, he resumed his short statement.
In Massachusetts, we fight hard and win elections on the issues and on our differences, not with bullying and threats.
Translation: Ahem . . . . I sure hope the voters are looking at my words and not Youtube. When a smearmongeringrightwingnewsie gets thugged by party enforcers and it doesn't get played on the local news, well, no harm no foul.
And there ends John Kerry's helpful - and educational - intercession into the Brown Coakley campaign.
Do this. Whisper softly the words "Scott Brown." Whisper the words just once . .
Now wait . . .
Let your whisper take flight . . .
Let your whisper ride high on the winds until, falling gently back to earth, it should chance upon the ears of a Democrat far, far away.
Do you hear it now? The dim but unmistakable sound of wailing. A distant primal scream fading to tear soaked sobs . . .
Heh.
The left has, on a purely intellectual level, long been aware of the falling poll numbers of Obama and his radical agenda. But it has only been with polls showing the revolt of voters in their heartland, bluest of blue Massachusetts, that the full, raw reality of their widespread unpopularity, their preacrious position, and the threat to their radical agenda has gone crashing into their consciousness with all the shock and horror of a tsunami washing over them. The far left is now going through the stages of grief, from denial to negotiation to anger and then back again. Only a very few, such as Evan Bayh, have moved on to acceptance. Those in full blown denial are still trying to trot out the "its all Bush's fault" excuse. The latest comes from the far left site Hotline, a place where biased reporting normally finds acceptance among its commenters:
As audience members streamed out of Pres. Obama's rally on behalf of AG Martha Coakley (D) here tonight, the consensus was that the fault for Coakley's now-floundering MA SEN bid lies with one person -- George W. Bush. . . .
I won't bother to quote from the rest of this farcial piece. You can follow the link. But I will quote a few of the comments. There are 881 of them. Here are just the first few:
This is so funny!!!! They are still blaming Bush a year after he left office and four years of a Democratic controlled Congress...unbelievable! Sorry, but at this point the Democrats are responsible for the situation in this country.
HB January 17, 2010 6:59 PM
OMG! Bush tried and tried and tried to get Congress to address the problems with the housing market. It is on record and nobody seems to care.
Bush was shot down by democrats (and a few republicans) each time he tried to get congress to regulate Freddie and Fannie!
Don't get me wrong, I was NOT a Bush fan for his second term. I think he was not a good president in his second term. BUT, the economic situation is square at the feet of Democrats.
How long is the president and his party going to blame Bush rather than getting off their backsides and actually fixing things?
ChrisS January 17, 2010 7:20 PM
Let's be very specific about blame. And let's be specific on what the blame is for:
Behind closed doors, everyone who has a Nebraska zip code is given a break on Medicare, while 49 other states pay for the right of Nebraska's free ride. All for a vote. And how does that rise above the level of bribery?
The Senator from Louisianna is handed $300M for her yes vote. And how does that rise above the level of bribery?
And for union support, all union members are waived of a tax that other non-union members must pay. How does that rise above the level of bribery?
President Bush was not here for this one, folks.
President Obama, don't be surprised with Massachusetts when you have established an environment of corrupt behavior. Yoda said it best, sir. "That is why you fail."
DBC January 17, 2010 7:41 PM
Unbelievable! I was going to use this as a gag line ("Coakley loses; Obama Blames Bush") but I see that reality is TRULY stranger than fiction.
Scott W. Somerville January 17, 2010 8:25 PM
People of Earth:
Just pray your children don't grow up to be Democrats. What a pitiful example for our youth.
FAIRTV January 17, 2010 9:54 PM
LOL, this is hysterical. Satire, right? Blaming Bush?
ROFLMAO, the Dems are officially delusional now. Time to invest in straight-jackets!
Jim Tower January 17, 2010 9:55 PM
MISS ME YET?
George W Bush January 17, 2010 9:55 PM
That is some decent anecdotal evidence that a good portion of America has moved on from the "you can fool me some of the time" stage to the "can't fool me all of the time" stage. When that happens, attempts at fooling start to become offensive. Thus it is safe to say that the continued use of the "it's all Bush's fault" excuse is now counterproductive for the left. Not that the far left won't keep trotting it out. But at some point, likely in the not too distant future, that excuse is going to go from "counterproductive" to "toxic." We will know when we have reached that point. It will be the day Obama opts to man up and treat us to another pro forma "the buck stops here" speech - this time on the economy - and displaying all the false sincerity he can muster.
That said, Obama hasn't yet fully given up on the "it's all Bush's fault" excuse and all its variants. In stumping in Beantown for Coakley, the most ridiculous part of Obama's speech came when he decried how Republican obstructionism was keeping him from dealing effectively with all of the problems he had "inherited." It seemed to pass right over the head of the assembled faithful that Democrats hold [Update: held] a Congressional supermajority - meaning that Republicans have not been able to obstruct a single thing that the Democrats wanted to pass for nearly a year. Perhaps Obama can get away with that in Beantown, but if he trots that one out in, say, his next State of the Union speech, even the left wing media might choke on it. Regardless, it is clear the voting public will. [Update: Even Firedoglake agrees on that point.]
Well, some of the left wing media might choke. Others would, it seems fair to forecast, adopt a pose of blissful ignorance. Newsbusters is reporting that, as of yesterday, CBS news had yet to broadcast a single report on the Senate race in Massachusetts. That is amazing. It is denial with a capital "D." It is the stuff of fairy dust and unicorns.
This 'new' reality will work a sea change in our government. How Obama and the far left will react in the near and long term to this new reality is very much an open question. Will they try to force through health care and whatever else they can using end runs around our deliberative democracy? At least as to Obama and Pelosi, I rather expect that from them because they are true left wing ideologues. Such people are fanatics, not pragmatists. One of the hallmarks of such people - besides a fundamental disrespect for democracy - is that they do not learn from their mistakes nor the mistakes of others - else why continue to push for socialism when it has ultimately been a failure whereever it has been tried? Their anwers to all the ills of society are legislation and government control. And when, surprise, that fails, then the fix is to add more legislation. Repeat ad infinitum. [Update: That was quick. Within the last few hours, we have Pelosi saying that, irrespective of the Mass. election results, "we will have health-care." And from Obama:
President Barack Obama plans a combative response if, as White House aides fear, Democrats lose Tuesday’s special Senate election in Massachusetts, close advisers say.
“This is not a moment that causes the president or anybody who works for him to express any doubt,” a senior administration official said. . . .
Now why should the revolt of voters in blue Mass. give Obama a reason for doubt? And does it make sense to become combative after the election? I guess this is part of his Chicago way - if the voters punch me I'll punch back twice as hard. It should be interesting to see how that philosophy works out when applied to voters at large. It seems to me he might need some of them some day, but what do I know. Indeed, this sounds more like the tantrum of a child than the measured response of a President. At any rate, could Obama and Pelosi have illustrated my points with any more clarity? There will be no move to the center from these two ideologues unless forced in that direction by their own party, kicking and screaming. Otherwise its damn the icebergs and full speed ahead for the USS Obamatanic.]
Will many of the less ideological left start moving to the center, bucking their party out of pure self preservation? We can count on that with the same degree of certainty we reserve for the rising and setting of the sun. The only questions are how many and how soon. If it is a Brown blow-out, the effect might be immediate. It if is a squeaker, regardless of who wins, we will see the same effect, just less pronounced. [Update - Brown has now won the Senate seat by 5 points. That marks a 31 point swing from when Mass. voted for Obama just a little over a year ago. The ramifications of this are huge, particularly in light of like swings in Va. and N.J. The peeling away from Pelosi and Obama has already begun. Rats, sinking ships, etc.]
That brings me to a final point. How in the nine hells did the far left ever get the moniker, "reality based community?" Was that someone's idea of a joke - sort of like calling the hulking peasant of Robin Hood fame "Littlejohn?" Indeed, reality and the far left seem to be near mutually exclusive. Perhaps "irony based community" would be more apropos.
Intrade has Brown at 60 to 40 over Coakely . . . . This is all just too good to be true. Indeed, it suggests a win outside the margin of fraud. Update: A poll commisioned by InsideMedford.com puts Brown at a 9.6% lead. Though not from a well known pollster, according to Hot Air, it appears not merely legitimate, but probably more accurate than other polls given that the others oversampled Democrats.
Obama showed up in Mass. today to campaign with Coakley. He pulled in a significantly smaller crowd, about 1500, while on the other side of town, Scott Brown held a competing campaign event that had 3,000 indoors and another 1,000 out on the streets. Instapundit has the report and the pictures. It may well be that, as in NJ, Obama's coattails are short indeed.
The conventional wisdom is that if enough Democrats show up at the polls, Coakley can pull out a win. I wonder how true that is. Yes, Republicans are hyper-energized and independents are breaking strongly against Obama. But Democrats themselves seem none too happy being led by the Obama Pelosi clique. The PPP poll a few days ago showed 17% of Democrats planning to vote for Brown while an ARG poll put the crossover vote at 20%. A poll this evening from InsideMedford.com puts the crossover at 17%. Those are significant numbers anywhere - all the moreso in a state that last voted a Republican to the Senate decades ago. And those are likely voters. How many Dems will show their rancor by simply not showing up to the polls? Suffice it to say, the left is facing an internal revolt on a scale not seen since the fall of the Shah.
Apparently, even the White House is now leaking that they expect Coakley to loose. That makes the President's decision to spend his political capital campaigning for Coakley all the more incomprehensible. Perhaps the stakes were simply too high to keep him from making the attempt, or perhaps this is disinformation by the White House in an attempt to energize more Democrats to come to the polls Tuesday. In either event, after Obama's personal intercesion, if Brown does win by a wide margin, this will seem like Judgment Day for the Democrats. The White House can spin it all they want to - and Coakley did run a horrible campaign - but the facts are that this is true blue Massachussets, Ted Kennedy's seat, its a campaign run on national issues, and the future success of Obama's programs on the line. If Brown wins by a wide margin, there just is not enough spin in the world to stop every elected Democrat in Congress from suddenly suffering immediate onset incontinence.
A year ago, conservatism was given its last rites by a gloating media as the anointed One ascended to his rightful place, promising to usher in decades of Democratic rule. The fantasy survived beyond the first day, but not the first year. The why is simple. Obama was elected with a mandate to stabilize our economy and protect our nation. Instead, he has injected fear and uncertainty into both our economy and into our national security. He has, as Charles Krauthammer points out, governed as a left wing ideologue. This from Mr. Krauthammer:
What went wrong? A year ago, he was king of the world. Now President Obama's approval rating, according to CBS, has dropped to 46 percent -- and his disapproval rating is the highest ever recorded by Gallup at the beginning of an (elected) president's second year.
A year ago, he was leader of a liberal ascendancy that would last 40 years (James Carville). A year ago, conservatism was dead (Sam Tanenhaus). Now the race to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in bluest of blue Massachusetts is surprisingly close, with a virtually unknown state senator bursting on the scene by turning the election into a mini-referendum on Obama and his agenda, most particularly health care reform. . . .
The reason for today's vast discontent, presaged by spontaneous national Tea Party opposition, is not that Obama is too cool or compliant but that he's too left.
It's not about style; it's about substance. About which Obama has been admirably candid. This out-of-nowhere, least-known of presidents dropped the veil most dramatically in the single most important political event of 2009, his Feb. 24 first address to Congress. With remarkable political honesty and courage, Obama unveiled the most radical (in American terms) ideological agenda since the New Deal: the fundamental restructuring of three pillars of American society -- health care, education and energy.
Then began the descent . . .
In the end, what matters is not the persona but the agenda. In a country where politics is fought between the 40-yard lines, Obama has insisted on pushing hard for the 30. And the American people -- disorganized and unled but nonetheless agitated and mobilized -- have put up a stout defense somewhere just left of midfield.
Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.
It's inherently risky for any charismatic politician to legislate. To act is to choose and to choose is to disappoint the expectations of many who had poured their hopes into the empty vessel -- of which candidate Obama was the greatest representative in recent American political history.
Obama did not just act, however. He acted ideologically. To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something -- to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.
Perhaps Obama thought he'd been sent to the White House to do just that. If so, he vastly over-read his mandate. His own electoral success -- twinned with handy victories and large majorities in both houses of Congress -- was a referendum on his predecessor's governance and the post-Lehman financial collapse. It was not an endorsement of European-style social democracy.
Hence the resistance. Hence the fall. The system may not always work, but it does take its revenge.
And of course, what has made this reality crystal clear is Republican, Scott Brown. Brown, having run for Ted Kennedy's ancestral senate seat and made the election a referendum on national politics, stands poised to make a real run at it in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1. This should have been a walk-over for the Democrats. It is now, of course, anything but. Some polls put Brown ahead in the race - and the polls are apparently close enough to reality that Clinton cut short his work in Haiti to come to Massachusetts and Obama is set to follow on Sunday. Even if Brown loses, a message has already been sent to the left. But if Brown wins, it will be far more than a message, it will be the first day of the apocalypse for the Democrats.
Never did I think Hope n' Change would infect conservatives, but it seems this stuff is more infectious than the H1N1 . . . . .
Scott Brown leads Martha Coakley by 4 points in the latest Suffolk’s Political Research Center of likely voters. In bluest of blue Massachussets? For Chappaquiddick Ted's ancestral seat? The only thing that could make this any better would be if I had an ownership stake in the Depends and Peptobismal kiosk nearest the White House.
I have not blogged this up to now because, so many other people have been doing such a good job of it. But this latest info has infected even me with the hope and change flu. Jules Crittenden, Legal Insurrection and Memorandum are the places to go for updates. This is really fun. If Ted is in heaven, I am sure they are keeping him in a room that doesn't get cable news. Then again, if he is in hell, I have no doubt he is sitting superglued to a chair in front of Fox News in widescreen HD.
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