January 20, 2010
To Hawthorn Friends & Family --
The “voice of the people” – at least the voice of the people of Massachusetts (the only state George McGovern carried against Richard Nixon, the state that gave us Michael Dukakis) – has spoken with unmistakable clarity.
As you’ve heard repeatedly since last night, the “most Democratic state in America” has elected Republican Scott Brown to “Teddy Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat” (well, it HAD been in the Kennedy family’s control since JFK’s victory over Henry Cabot Lodge 58 years ago, in 1952). Brown is the first GOP U. S. Senator elected from the Bay State since Ed Brooke in 1972 . . . or, more pertinent to a badly run campaign, Martha Coakley becomes the first Democrat to lose a Senate seat in that state in 38 years . . . going on vacation after her December 8th primary win, blowing a 20-point lead, allowing the GOP to succeed in defining her to the electorate, especially – and fatally – to Independent voters.
It doesn’t overnight change Democrats’ power in Massachusetts, where they still control the governorship (although he is in deep trouble in the polls), all the constitutional offices (she remains Attorney General), all of the rest of the congressional delegation, and 178 of the 200 state legislators.
So, what does it change? Most obviously and as you’ve also heard repeatedly, it dramatically dims the prospects for President Obama’s healthcare legislation. As the front-page banner headline in the WASHINGTON POST presciently predicted yesterday morning, “Massachusetts vote may be harbinger for health care.”
Not only does Coakley’s defeat deprive the Democrats of their crucial 60th vote, it strikes absolute terror into the hearts of every Democrat on Capital Hill. Last Saturday Charlie Cook headlined his National Journal column about Democrats, “Colossal Miscalculation on Healthcare.” Today’s outcome proved him precisely correct.
Running almost exclusively against the Democrats’ healthcare plan, the GOP appears to have won the Massachusetts race by some six percentage points, a race the Democrats should have won by ten points. With 90+% of the precincts reporting, the GOP appears to have chalked up a 52% - 46% win in a state President Obama carried 62% - 36% . . . a 32-point shift in elections only 14 months apart.
In fairness, Massachusetts HAS voted Republican before: electing GOP governors from 1991 to 2007, and Ronald Reagan carried the Bay State in 1980 and 1984. But never with this impact!
What is the impact of yesterday’s election? I think there are three major impacts:
(1) It clearly demonstrates the shift in public opinion against President Obama and against his healthcare proposal, even in the “most Democratic state in America.”
With Americans reeling under double-digit unemployment, foreclosures, disappointing retail sales, and fighting a war they don’t know how to win, the administration has chosen as its congressional priorities healthcare reform (that Americans have come to fear, not welcome, and now oppose, strongly), global warming reform (whose cost American consumers will not readily bear), and financial regulatory reform (the senate champion of which, Chris Dodd, recently announced his retirement in the face of nearly certain re-election defeat). Led by Harry Reid (in desperate re-election shape himself) and Nancy Pelosi (viewed as in touch only with her own San Francisco district), the congress has tried to advance the administration’s agenda, both congress and administration woefully out of touch with their constituents and the seething anger consuming them.
As a result, the President’s poll numbers are falling. While his first year average of 57% approval is the same as President Reagan’s, he enjoys that 12-month average only because he started incredibly high. His current rating is about 50%, down from 64% when he took office. He gets 50% or higher on foreign affairs and terrorism, but 50% or more disapproval on healthcare and the economy. His handling of Afghanistan gets about a break-even score.
Asked if they consider the first year of the Obama administration to be a success or failure, 47% say Obama’s first year was a success and 48% say it was a failure . . . down from 51% - 37% in early August, a 15-point shift in five months.
Polling directly on healthcare suggests the majority of Americans now oppose it. They believe the proposals currently being considered will make their healthcare worse AND more expensive. Overall, Americans oppose current healthcare reform proposals, with only 44% supporting them and 51% opposing them. Ask about intensity, only 22% are strongly supporting, but 39% are strongly opposing. While failing to enact healthcare reform might make the Democrats look ineffective, enacting it may be politically suicidal.
Even the Democrats aren’t that suicidal. And as someone said, borrowing JFK’s book title, “This is a congress of lots of profile and little courage.”
After last night, it’s hard to reach any conclusion other than, in the short-term, massive healthcare reform is dead. Over. Done.
Abandoning comprehensive reform, however, does not deal with very serious problems – including coverage and affordability – increasingly bedeviling the American people. Nor does the GOP “just say ‘no’ approach” seem sufficient when the voters have identified as the devil private insurance companies, among others. So the issue will survive, whether today’s politicians do or not. It seems most likely they’ll attempt a more modest approach, some sort of expansion of Medicaid and increased federal regulation of insurance companies. Until the issue is addressed, the federal budget – driven by Medicare and Medicaid costs – will continue to hemorrhage red ink.
As a result of their political “tone-deafness,” even before yesterday, Democrats trailed Republicans in the generic congressional ballot, trailing even more among registered voters, a more than 10-point shift since election-eve 14 months ago. Given the numbers each side is defending, it still seems unlikely Democrats will lose the Senate, tho’ their Senate margin will be cut and their Senate leader may be gone. But last night’s result, coupled with continuing Democrat retirements certainly puts the House in jeopardy. Vic Snyder of Arkansas said farewell last week, as did Republican John Shadegg of Arizona, in his case for the second time. A re-play of the Republican takeover in 1994, the second year of the Clinton administration, is looking all too frightening to House Democrats.
And as they consider their peril, there are two problems for Democrats. They can’t run away from “their President” without seeming disloyal and risking their core support, but he seems as unable to help them at the polls as his vaunted grassroots organization has seemed unable to help his legislative agenda.
Jeff Greenfield said it directly, if brutally, “Put bluntly, who's afraid of Barack Obama? Who in the political arena frets over what might happen if he or she crosses the president? After the 2008 election, much was written about Mr. Obama's massive social network -- the millions or people tied to him through Facebook, Twitter, e-mail -- ready to be mobilized on behalf of his agenda. If there is any evidence that this army, now under the 'Organizing for America' umbrella, has had any impact on any wavering Democrat, it's harder to find than those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." Or, I would add, any impact on a single congressional vote or policy decision.
(2) It clearly demonstrates the crucial impact of Democrats’ losing support among Independents.
As long ago as last September 5, Charlie Cook headlined a column, “Bleeding Independents.” After the Democrats lost the governorships in Virginia and New Jersey last November, Public Strategies founder Jack Martin wrote, “These races were not about Democrats and Republicans, they were about independent voters.” Of that election, Karl Rove wrote, “suburban and independent voters moved into the GOP column,” and the WASHINGTON POST concluded, “the results prove that independent voters are wary of Obama’s far-reaching proposals and mounting spending.”
In Pollster.com’s latest analysis of polls, among Independents, Obama is now running about a 41% approval and nearly 50% disapproval.
Independents’ opposition is devastating on healthcare. As expected, Democrats approve 74% - 22%. Equally expectedly, Republicans oppose it with 10% for and 86% against. Deciding the issue are the Independents, and they’ve moved against it, with now only 43% for it (and, of those, only 20% strongly) while 54% oppose it, 46% strongly.
A sub-head in yesterday morning’s NEW YORK TIMES said, “Angry independents hold the cards in a Massachusetts race.” Yet the Democrats “didn’t get it.” From the President, to labor unions, to a dozen party and independent expenditure committees, their focus was on Democrats, not Independents . . . and, in Massachusetts, there are more Independents (51%) than Democrats (37%) and Republicans (11%) combined.
The WASHINGTON POST reported yesterday morning on the President’s Sunday campaign rally for Coakley, noting of his speech, “The roughly 30-minute speech was heavy on partisan rhetoric, without much appeal to the independent voters who account for nearly half the state’s electorate.”
Over recent months analysts have increasingly focused (but the Democratic party, administration and congress have not) on the alienated independent voters.
As long ago as last September – in the wake of the summer’s incredibly hostile confrontations at congressional town meetings – the always insightful Bill Schenider did a wonderful column, “It’s Big Government, Stupid.” His point was that the problem wasn’t with rebellious kids, economic drop-outs, or other “wing nuts,” but “sold, middle-class Americans angry over the direction the country is taking.”
On August 1st, ahead of the town meetings, Will Englund did a column on the “Sullen Suburbs” noting that “Polls show that pessimism is growing in the suburbs with 54% saying the country is on the wrong track.”
In a WALL STRETT JOURNAL column in October, Gerald Seib wrote about, “Worries for Democrats: Rich, Seniors” noting that in recent years Democrats had enjoyed support from up-scale voters and they couldn’t afford to lose support among seniors, THE most reliable group to go to the polls and vote.
A December column by Ron Brownstein noted, “A GOP surge in blue-collar ‘beer track’ districts remains the biggest threat to House Democrats.”
To repeat our frequent refrain: Democrats and Republicans don’t decide elections (unless, by staying home, they forfeit them). Independents decide elections. And, increasingly, Independents are deciding NOT to support Democrats. And when that happens, Democrats lose elections.
(3) It clearly demonstrates Americans aren’t so mad they will “drop out” but, instead, WILL go to the polls and vote.
Turnout in this special election was more than 2.2 million voters, nearly half of Massachusetts’ total registered voters and more than twice as many as voted in the December 8th primary for this seat.
Both parties turned on their “machines” and turned out their voters. But the only real “machine” in Massachusetts – and it is routinely over-rated – is the Democratic machine (or at least the labor union elements of it). The vast majority of voters – the Independents – got themselves to the polls . . . and will again and again this year.
The election also demonstrated a few other things of interest:
· If anyone doubted it, bad candidates and bad campaigns tend to lose elections. Coakley’s gaffes were epic, far beyond what might be expected – or tolerated by the voters – from a candidate for the U. S. Senate.
· In the ongoing “struggle for the heart and soul of the Republican party,” the Republican right will claim this as a big victory, particularly given Sen. Jim DeMint’s early, heavy financial support when the Republican establishment was sitting on its hands.
· A hotly contested election drowns out other news . . . like former Sen. Norm Coleman’s decision NOT to run for governor of Minnesota.
What’s not yet clear – but will be in 90 days, if not before – is whether this will improve fundraising for the GOP? Figures through December 31, reported on January 15, showed a national political financial picture very different from the political Senate victory the GOP won in Massachusetts:
Cash-on-hand minus debt for the major committees reported:
Democratic National Committee $8,253,793
Republican National Committee 8,749,091
Democratic Senate Committee 10,187,488
Republican Senate Committee 7,335,015
Democratic House Committee 12,685,301
Republican House Committee 2,347,955
The poor showing of the House GOP committee has even prompted articles (“GOP cash woes threaten House bids”) about whether – IF there is chance (as after last night there clearly seems to be) for the GOP to win back the House – or not the poor fundraising results put a GOP takeover at risk. After all, the election IS in 10 months.
We’ll be watching and reporting on those figures – particularly the House figures – as well as the ongoing House retirements in coming weeks.
We’ll be watching, too, the run-ups to the early primaries. The hotly battled Texas governor’s primary is March 2, only six weeks away. One of the first right-vs-moderate GOP battles, in Kentucky, is May 18. Another is shaping up in Utah June 22nd. The biggest fight for the GOP’s “heart and soul” is in Florida, and for that we have to wait until August 24.
But there will be lots to keep us occupied until then.
I have neither rant or rave for this week. But I would share a quote, from Edith Hamilton’s marvelous book, The Echo of Greece. Writing about the fourth century before the Common Era, the age of Alexander and Menander, she wrote, “ . . . politics were falling into disrepute. Noisy demagogues made the Assembly a disagreeable place to fastidious people; gross corruption was on the increase; gentlemen were generally disgusted.”
As we, 25 centuries later, are often wont to “sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings,” it’s easy – and sad – to imagine her writing the same words about our age. We seem highly resistant to the lessons of history. If the Democrats resist the lessons of last night’s election results, they do so at their great peril.
John
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