For too many months now, Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats turned their back on a growingly impatient nation in order to secretly hammer out a deal to commandeer a sixth of the nation’s economy under the pretense of health care reform. With each new payoff and each new round of backroom wheeling and dealing, the discontent grew. Rather than read the national mood as the referendum it was on his grand scheme, Obama dismissed opponents as obstructionists and made high-flown statements about doing what no administration before him had succeeded in doing.
In point of fact, he has done something no administration before him succeeded in doing. He has managed, albeit inadvertently, to reverse completely the winds of political change that had swept him into office just a year earlier. His achievement, dubious though it is, will be one for the record books.
Why Massachusetts saw red last night should be obvious now even to the most self-deluded Obamaphile — including Obama himself. Which is why this morning’s MSM headlines are mostly of the “Don’t Count Us Out Yet” variety rather than the “Full Speed Ahead on Obamacare” ilk.
The question now is what does Obama do next. Right now he has enough egg on his face to make brunch this Sunday for the entire White House staff. His first State of the Union is just around the corner, and now instead of rubbing Republicans’ noses in his success at moving the nation a giant step closer to a socialist democracy, he is faced with a major dilemma. Does he go out there and try to take a business-as-usual approach, pretending to be unscathed by Scott Brown’s—and the American people’s—victory in Massachusetts? Or does he begin to scale back his ambitious agenda and address the still-flagging economy?
More importantly, does he learn from his mistakes and begin to recognize that he works for the American people, and not the other around? If the answer to this question is no—and I suspect it will be (the leopard doesn’t change its spot) maybe those “Don’t Count Us Out Yet” articles that ran this morning may prove as wrong as the ones that predicted Obama’s face would appear on Mt. Rushmore one day.
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Comments 20
The real story is that O has alienated his own supporters by going along with an all private health bill, an expanded war in Afghanistan,and the Economics of Bernanke/Geithner. This victory is about Obama’s failure* to act out what “The Base” had always accused him of,being a left wing radical. He’s no “true” left winger,he’s more like Nixon. Tricky.
18% of those who voted for O in 2008,voted for Brown. Why do you think that happened?
January 20th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
I disagree, Rex. That’s the real story according to hard left progs who seem to imagine, against all evidence, that if only someone ran on their agenda a broadly radicalized American working class would emerge from some alternative universe and sweep us all to single payer bank-busting pacifist nirvana. It is true that he’s alienated the the far left, and that in farming out his agenda to the DC liberal elites he became tied to a program that became a corporate liberal lowest common denominator, losing most of the nutroots and the rest of the new new left, who’ve always made up in volume what they’ve lacked in number, but the ca 20% of O voters and other Dems who voted for Brown are much more Reagan Dems, not radiclibs – people who found his assertiveness on detainee treatment and the military as appealing as the typical Democratic Underground swamp creature finds it disgusting. The opinion from the latter sector on Brown – I doubt whether they really qualify as a political base except in their own minds – is that he’s a creature of the “far right.”
January 20th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
CKMacleod@
Right, that’s a solid diagnosis, you see how they react to Lieberman, who is the closest thing to a JFK Democrat, like a vampire to a cross
January 20th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
MacLeod, if Brown got only slightly more votes in Mass than went to McCain, (60,000 more) and
if Coakley got 900,000 fewer votes than went to Obama
maybe Rex has a point.
January 20th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
@ fuster:
Find any evidence to support that point, analyzing the ideological affinities of the voters – otherwise it’s just weakly evidenced, counterintuitive speculation. The fact that Brown got more votes than McCain in an election with overall dramatically lower turnout (normal for non-presidential year elections, though abnormally high for a special election) correlates with polling that showed him overwhelming Coakley amidst MA’s huge bloc of indies and stealing a relatively large proportion of Dems.
It’s not inconceivable to me that the Brown/Reagan Dems and indies in some other social-economic context might support a rellatively radical progressive agenda – but I think those days are gone, and probably a long way from returning, if ever.
January 20th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
MacLeod, I think that Rex was saying rather clearly that Brown got a very large number of Dem votes.
What you need to understand is that he got a large number of votes from the netroots folks…and they weren’t voting for Brown.
There’s nothing counterintuitive about it. Them LakerDogs were explicit in saying that they were split right down the middle over voting for Coakley or voting against Obama.
I’ll bet you a buck that when you look through the stats (whenever they’re out) you’ll find both the indies that you expect and the lefties that Rex expects.
January 20th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
There is no large number of netroots folks, fuster. You could get 100% turnout from the netroots – and for that matter from the rightroots – and it wouldn’t move the needle perceptibly. They have some influence in opinion formation, and can help in organizing and fundraising when they put forth a unified effort, but, when netroots/far left positioning is as contradictory and diffuse as it’s been of late, it counts for very little. I saw lots of Olbermann-style hatred for Brown on the left, typically joined to a hold-your-nose-but-vote-for-Coakley attitude, and a smaller amount of anti-Coakley/boycott sentiment, but there’s no evidence those in the last group commands any significant influence or corresponds to any significant voting bloc. I saw zero evidence of an ideological left protest vote for Brown – or of anyone advocating it either. Did you?
Rex will have to say for himself whether that’s what he was suggesting. Sounded to me more like he was suggesting that potential voters stayed home. Maybe, but all the lefties I’ve ever known have been dreaming for years that the non-voting segments of the populace would support a radical agenda. It’s a fantasy. Polling suggests that the broad mass of adults tend to be marginally more leftwing than actual voters in their sentiments, but no one knows how they’d actually vote if they cared and bothered to inform themselves. In any case, there’s no evidence of a radical cavalry that just refrained from riding to the rescue because Coakley wasn’t a far left rabble rouser.
January 20th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Two bucks?
January 20th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
You’d have to define exactly what the bet is supposed to turn up, and then you’d have to lend me the $2 if I lost.
January 20th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
How about I just admit I lost and pay up, then we’ll figure out what the bet was?
January 20th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Works for me, I think.
January 20th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I could throw in a couple quarts o’ black beans or something, if ya need it
I make ‘em up pretty good, and assuming they don’t cause a gas explosion while in the mail….
January 20th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Maybe the recipe and an on-line gift certificate for How Do You Like Them Beans? would be more efficient.
January 20th, 2010 at 9:31 pm
the recipe is fairly simple. grilled onions , roasted red peppers, tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, olives and olive oil, oregano,bay leaf, cumin, cilantro, grated red onion, and scallion tops.
and black beans.
Or maybe you might prefer a couple cans Chef Boyardee Pastafagiggles
January 20th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
I can’t believe it but it’s true:
In a recent column featured at RealClearPolitics, US News & World owner and Boston Properties founder, Mort Zuckerman revealed that he supported Mr. Peanut’s candidacy both publicly and privately, and now thinks 0 has ‘done everything wrong.’
Here is one of the supposedly most sophisticated thinkers and clearly one of the most successful business leaders who got jobbed by the Obami, which tells me a huge chunk of people who should have known better all indulged in a kind of klueless wishful thinking.
January 21st, 2010 at 5:06 am
Well that worked about as well as when he dated Gloria Steinem, Warren Buffett, was another who should have known better, but didn’t
January 21st, 2010 at 5:20 am
Buffet backpedaled as fast as any of them, but I think there was some white guilt transfer going on as some hoped Obama would end the race wars. I knew he wouldn’t because of where he came from, but others are not as knowledgable of Chicago racial politics or they willingly averted their eyes.
But to the original thought, we don’t have much exit polling data because no one thought it would be a close enough race to even worry about. Rassmussen did do some and it suggests that the issue was healthcare and mostly we don’t like whatever is Obamacare. It seems that the Christmas Eve deal which produced bribery payments, as well as the Union carve out on the Cadillac tax also were problems, but since we never had the full ground press on exit polling, we will never have much more than that to chew on. Brown’s people said they also got traction on terrorism, fed by the upcoming trial and the Christmas day incident, but you never know how much to trust internal polling data.
I think the better polling data are those that say the biggest favorable ratings, or group identification in politics, right now is the Tea Partiers followed by the unaffiliated and then with the two major parties well after them. Any leftist nutroots who think Obama had a problem because he didn’t go left is just drinking koolaid. Most Americans self identifiy as conservative, not republican, but conservative.
This is a center right country. I hope Obama is stupid enough to double down on pushing huge government programs, politically that would be great for me – I see signals he doesn’t want to, at least where it can be easily seen, but his heart is with the farthest reaches of the left. It is only the realities of the presidency that have tugged him away from the radical libs.
Perhaps an even bigger issue is where do we go from here. Snickers of the democrats being doomed forever are as silly as those that said conservatism is dead. But I believe some trends in the body politic are driving things. The debt and borrowing and financial condition of the country are on people’s minds big time, this was true at the end of Bush’s term as well. He was dissed for TARP, and especially the auto bailout. Obama just went wacko on this too as well as the porkulus. What other aspect of Bush did conservatives hate the most? Non-military government spending under the guise of compassionate conservatism. So this isn’t new, but when Obama doubled down on debt, just blowing by Bush’s spending in the blink of an eye, it just rasied the warning signs. The size and cost of government are also in the crosshairs, and I think people are slowly beginning to realize that big business is not supportive of the GOP, it is supportive of government. Who were really with the special interests on health care – the democrats. If you shrink what you ask of the government, business has less reason to spend all their time there. The opportunity for the GOP is that these trends historically support their philosophy, but people are suspicious of any politican at this point. If they just do dem lite – they will get voted out next time.
The Tea Partiers discovered the internet and if the GOP establishment gets in their way they will try and fix it themselves. Anecdotal stories are that money is flowing to candidates, not the party. We will see how that holds up. They were late to the party in NY 23 but are realizing that the primaries are the place to really work. So Crist in Florida – endorsed initially by the national GOP – was seen as a problem. Rubio will win that primary and the seat. In Brown they recognized that he was a candidate to work with, where as Dede in NY 23 was not, and so they came out in force to give him the money to combat the national dem money that came flowing in to try and rescue Coakley. He probably isn’t as socially conservative as they would like, but he is conservative enough, especially with where he comes from. The Tea Partiers are getting smarter. The left wing net roots – typified by Olberman and others on MSNBC – just scream and call people names. They are just angry self identified elitiests who don’t understand why we don’t see their brilliance. Their reaction is perhaps the best explanation of why they should be ignored.
Palin, for all the hate, took on the political establishment of her own party. That is why she is so popular, whether she should ever be president or not, she gets what people are angry about. Government. A government so busy lining their pockets and sticking it to the average Joe and acting like the average Joe is a neanderthal needing their guidance. Most people in Washington aren’t all that wonderful. Most have never run a business, or made a payroll, or understand day to day life. Palin does – but her major critics are completely out of touch. I mean come on – David Brooks is a fool, but he passes for wisdom. He thought Obama was great because he read from a teleprompter and had well creased pants. How stupid is that. Most people in Washington are parasites. Perhaps the body politic is waking up to the idea that we need of less of it. We will see.
January 21st, 2010 at 6:18 am
I suppose so, he wasn’t really paying attention then. I had hopes for Obama, initially but then I examined him a little closer, and I thought
he could never really heal this country. He has imported the same
third world leftist mindset he inbibed in Indonesia, when he was growing up, reinforced by Frank Marshall Davis in Chicago, probably Eric Foner at Columbia, certainly Derek Bell at Harvard, Wright, Ayers, Khalidi, et al. The same mindset embodied in Galeano’s “Open Veins of Latin America”, which Ortega handed him at that summit
meeting, it’s the Latin counterpart to Zinn’s “People’s History”. This is just a recipe for disaster as we have seen.
About Brooks, one is tempted to bring up his reference to Obama being familiar with Niebuhr, much like that movie “Back to School” where Vonnegut writes a paper for Rodney Dangerfield, ‘this man knows nothing of Vonnegut” says the professor. Niebuhr was skeptical of most human action, so he wouldn’t have dug Obama
at all.
January 21st, 2010 at 7:32 am
narciso wrote:
I know Niebuhr only secondhand, through description and through the uses he’s been put to.
It seems to me that handing Niebuhr to a Democrat, or channeling him through a figure like Brooks, typically increases contempt for Americans – for their values, their history, their pleasures, and their desires. It encourages the statist to despise the people, but doesn’t discourage him from attempting to act on some vision of what the people should want, what the people would want if only they also were capable of perceiving the Neibuhrian wisdom.
Such pessimism doesn’t squelch the activist urge, though it does increase the tolerance in the activist for pointless activity: Considering how hopeless and altogether contemptible the American masses and their leaders are, in this view, it would be foolish to expect things to turn out particularly well at any point. In a way, the Niebuhrian attitude towards government in the American mode is much more hostile than that of a Reaganite conservative, the difference being that the Brooks-Obama activist can’t imagine any better tool than government to mortify the popular flesh, though only an enlightened despot could really hope to do things right.
Niebuhr fed Carter’s “crisis of confidence” episode beautifully, and lurked in the background behind the “end of abundance” and “culture of narcissism” critiques that were so popular in the ’70s, and which have lately been re-appearing in new guises. Obama managed to sing the crisis of confidence, anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist song as though it was a hopeful one during his campaign, but that was always a lie in political terms, because the rewards it describes aren’t really of this earth. It’s appealing to the young, because the young don’t know how to value what they have, and always imagine that they’ll somehow adapt and end up on their feet whatever happens to their bodies, freeing them to indulge the whims, angers, and fantasies they mistake for ideals.
It might be not be going too far to call the approach decidedly un-American, even while acknowledging its durability within American opinion, especially elite opinion, in forms that, of course, long preceded Neibuhr himself.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:32 am
@ Zoltan Newberry:
ZN — it was pretty clueless of Zuckerman to support OSlash, but Mort’s been only tenuously linked to the right for a long time now.
I think he suffered from what a lot of people have, a sort of arrogant complacency about how survivable our freedoms and way of life are when under assault by anti-libertarian policy trends. Freedom isn’t free, and one of the things it requires is a knowledge of history and a sense of moral and intellectual bearings. You can’t, in fact, drift along into a soggy collectivism and still keep your liberties, your future, your income, or even probably your job — but each of the last 4-5 generations has seemed to have to learn that lesson by making sloppy mistakes.
You really do have to be prepared to defend liberty, even against goopy, anti-rational feel-good consensus and the perpetual whine the left can work up on cue, if you expect to keep it. O’Sullivan’s Law is ironclad: anyone who is not positively and explicitly conservative will invariably trend left-liberal. Even if we hadn’t had all the clues we did have about OSlash’s leanings, people should have known all along that he wasn’t going to buck O’Sullivan’s Law.
January 21st, 2010 at 11:40 pm