Will they never learn?

[pecunium]

Are they bloody daft? The real thing in Mass. was healthcare, and Obama (with Reid and Pelosi's help) giving the store to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

As they built the bill, the Republicans want it to pass, because the dog's breakfast they've created will please no one. Add that they are wimps when in... the minority, and allow the republicans to be bullies (when the Dems have the majority) and the results are a disaster.

Look at the polling: the US is a center left country (this is when you poll on issues, divorced of party), and the Republicans are a kleptocratic bunch of very right wing types and we are headed for failed state status.

Bowing to the Fox News agitprop wing of the Republican Party will only serve to more fully marginilize them. They need to grow some gonads and make a real difference beteween the parties.

I've seen things where the message the party is taking from this is, "We are too left, we have to move more 'to the center.'" Bullshit. The lesson to take from this is that when one's constituency is pissed off they vote for someone else, and situationally in the US there is only one other party to vote for. Becoming more like that party isn't going to make your constinuency happier with you, and gormless examples of spineless pandering isn't going to win votes from the other side.

That comes across as nothing more than a craven desire to suck on the public teat.

If they want to keep the votes of the people who aren't Republicans... they have to stop acting like Republicans.

Comments

[onyxlynx]

1. No, they'll never learn.
2. The last Republican Senator from Massachusetts was Edward Brooke. Who is still alive. Note that no one is mentioning him, just when he left office. He was black and liberal.
3. I am thinking that there were a number of terrific Democrats in Mass. who would have run crackerjack campaigns. None were anointed. This is suggestive.
4. I'm beginning to feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist again...

Also, I'm linking to this on the political side.

[sethg]

Speaking as a Mass. resident (although one who doesn’t watch TV, so take my political analyses with a brick of salt) I don’t think the Mass. election was “about” health care. Both sides invoked it, but the overwhelming frame, to me, was that the state Democratic Party machine put up a candidate who was a mediocre politician, and expected that victory was hers by right; meanwhile, the Republicans put up a candidate who was charismatic, made at least a pretense of independence, and actually worked for his votes. The last time a Republican in this state beat a Democratic machine politician for an open statewide seat was 2002, when Romney became governor, and Romney’s campaign team went on to advise Brown.

(One complicating factor, w.r.t. health care, is that Massachusetts has a universal health-care system—the bill to implement it was signed by Romney!—roughly similar to the bills now before Congress. Nobody in either party seems to have any interest in repealing it, but I don’t see anyone swooning with delight over what we have, either.)

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

This is what people who live in the state keep telling me.

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

As another Mass resident, I think this is exactly right.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

If they want to keep the votes of the people who aren't Republicans... they have to stop acting like Republicans.
You're decades too late. Twenty years ago, the "Democratic 'Leadership' Conference" made the strategic decision to go for corporate money . . . and we got Clinton, who was to the right of Nixon*, and now we have Obama who's to the right of Clinton.

* trade, China, environment, wiretaps, welfare, etc., etc.

[pescana.livejournal.com]

Yes. Well said!

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

The comments I've seen from people who live in Mass. run surprisingly heavily to something like: "The Democratic Party Machine backed & put up a really terrible candidate, and I'm not surprised that she lost". That's regardless of whether they add "*sigh*", which most of the people I know who live there do.

[eagle]

This reminds me a great deal of what happened with Ned Lamont, and a similar reaction on the part of the Democratic Party Machine backing Lieberman is, I think, one of the major reasons why we still have Lieberman in the Senate.

Can we fire the entire non-elected leadership of the Democratic Party? That sure looks like where the actual problem is to me. They seem to be considerably less competent on average than the people running under the aegis of that party. (Note: competence independent of ideology.)

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how far it would go towards solving our problems, but I do second your idea of firing the non-elected leaders of the Democratic party, for starters. And a fair number of the elected ones as well, though the Voters would have to take care of that. For all the talk about democratic/grassroots Primary elections, the shadowy Party Bosses seem to pretty much determine who's going to get the backing & financing that will give an aspirant a chance to win. And for some years that backing has been given to candidates who were & are to the right of the traditional Democratic Party Center -- and possibly somewhat to the right of the national political center.

I was born during the Coolidge Administration, with FDR being the first President I can remember, and from my point of view the past three decades have seen the Democratic Party come to occupy the place on the political spectrum that used to be filled with the center-left wing of the Republican Party. In a two-Party system like ours, I think having (in practical effect) nothing but two Conservative Parties is likely to be disastrous. But I don't know what, if anything, can be done about this with any reasonable probability of success.

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

... and this is why I am nonpartisan.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

I'm in MA and I don't see it that way at all. She took it for granted. It was a poorly run campaign. She freakin' vacationed for part of the time she should have been campaigning.

That said, headline from the village voice: "Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate”.

From Jon Stewart: "so the logic is...If this lady loses, the health care reform bill that the beloved late senator considered his legacy, will die. And the reason it will die... is because if Coakley loses, Democrats will only have an 18 vote majority in the Senate, which is more than George W. Bush ever had in the Senate when he did whatever the fuck he wanted to."

The rest of what you say makes sense to me regardless of what happened in MA yesterday.

[thecoughlin.livejournal.com]

It is a sad day to live in Massachusetts.

Basically, the Republican's also out grass rooted the party that took the national election through grassroots...

[(Anonymous)]

/bemusedoutsider here/

Coakley did great in the primary, criticizing Obamacare and opposing the Kennedy/Obama candidate. When she won, the K/O crowd endorsed her which was the kiss of death for a lot of her primary supporters.

True none of the Dems thought they needed to campaign against Brown, whom nobody had heard of and who was iirc 30 points behind Coakley in polls. But personal attacks on Coakley imo are mostly a smoke screen against seeing this as a referendum on Obama/Obamacare.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

In reference to your final point, Terry, I'd suggest that the Democratic Party Leadership, in fact, does not act like Republicans in one crucial respect. They do not maintain the kind of discipline that causes practically _all_ of the Party members in Congress to vote against practically anything (i.e., anything the least bit controversial) that the opposition party proposes. The Republicans have been remarkably skillful at that for at least the past 15 years. It's a matter of putting The Party above the interests of the People or the Nation, and it seems to have permanently soured my attitude towards the Republican Party, even though I've always considered myself a mildly conservative (lower-case, of c.) person.