Dems Must Step Up to Majority Governance after the Massachusetts Mess
By Theda Skocpol - January 19, 2010, 8:39AM
My husband Bill and I were at our Cambridge polling place at 7am this morning, as a steady stream of voters marked the simple ballot. People at this solidly Dem precinct had determination on their faces, but the mood was as somber as this gray, snowy day at one of the downest times of the year, with holidays and Patriots both done. Coakley has little enthusiasm on her side -- Brown supporters were waving signs in the street even in liberal Brookline yesterday. It will be miraculous if she eeks out a win, and it is very possible she will go down to resounding defeat.
The national media will be full of doom for Obama, Democrats, and health care reform, and this is a moment to see what Democrats are made of. Defeat or minisucle victory in today's Massachusettes Senate election, etiher one, brings Democrats to a moment of truth. They must come out fighting, bold and more unified if they -- and the country -- are to stave off the disaster of a failed presidency. A loss of momentum, a descent into timidity in the White House and gridlocked division and Congress, will mean the end of Democratic fortunes for many years, and further sentence America to decline and right-wing extremism. To avoid that, here are the steps forward:
-- PRESIDENT OBAMA needs to take charge at once and deliver fighting, forward-looking messages over the next weeks. He and his party won a huge mandate for change a year ago; they still have massive majorities in Congress, and they need to deliver and proclaim what they are delivering. If Obama starts doing a Clintonesque pivot toward "moderation" and courting Republicans, he will become irrelevant and condemn his party to massive mid-term losses instread of the usual substantial trim-backs that parties in power typically suffer. He may well lose in 2012 if he takes the course of retreat, or if his party in Congress will not unify and act.
-- DEMOCRATS NEED TO PASS HEALTH REFORM RIGHT NOW -- before the State of the Union Address -- AND MOVE ON TO A BOLD POPULIST AGENDA. If Congressional leaders cannot pass compromise bills in both chambers within ten days -- and they seem to have ruled this out -- then the House must pass the Senate bill as is, let President Obama sign it, and have the President proclaim the specific improvements he will recommend in the next budget proposals. The House will have to go along with this, and all of us in the progressive community should demand that they do. Too bad the Democrats and their special-interest supporters pissed away so much time on this. They displayed governmental dysfunction and distasteful horse-trading for all to see for many weeks. Obama and the Congressional leaders did not take the right paths on health reform this fall, and could have done better, but now the Senate bill is all we can do, and it is historic. It will deliver a lot for millions, and Obama and the Dems need to move on. They can use the good ideas not in the Senate bill for a steady stream of improvements going forward, many of them achieved by majority vote in the Senate as tax or budget steps. In a way this would be optimal: treat early 2010 health reform as a start, not an end. Within a few years, we could even have expanded Medicare or a real public option via the majority route, because these are cost-saving budget measures.
-- Indeed, let's all say GOODBYE TO THE CHIMERA OF SIXTY SEATS and start doing as much as possible with normal, democratic majority votes. Remember, Democrats had no such thing, even nominally, until the MN contests played out the middle of last year. And with the quisling, backstabbing Lieberman in the count, they didn't really have sixty Senate seats even then. They were bound to lose a bit of ground next fall anyway, so the MA outcome, should it go against the Democrats, only speeds up the arrival of reality. This might even turn out to be a good thing, because Obama and the Congressional leaders need to stop the laughable special deals to get every last prima donna on board, and turn instead to bold proposals. Some can pass with "majority votes" (start calling it that, Dems; lose the jargon about "reconciliation"!), while other proposals on the floor of the Senate will force Republicans, including Scott Brown if elected, to go on record blocking important steps for the country. Brown won't last long in MA if he does one unpopular obstructionist thing after another. Senate leaders also need to start changing courtesy customs that maximize possibilities for quiet obstruction, and force Republicans to do their dirty busy in public. This will easier if they are not deferring to every wavering Democratic Senator. The sad truth is that Democrats are the ones preserving a lot of the worst customs of the Senate.
-- LESSONS FOR ELECTIONS must be learned by Dems in Massachusetts and beyond. The general lesson for 2010 and 2012 is: you better have a clear message that speaks to average people's life circumstances and projects real solutions on major issues, and you better get out there and meet the voters non-stop. In MA in 2009-10, things have unfolded in very unfortunate ways and candidate choices have hurt the party. True, the prolonged illness of Senator Kennedy meant that candidates could not publicly build support as long as he lived. But after his funeral, MA Dems fell into dysfunction and complacency. Coakley had a head start, but Mike Capuano should have had a competitive chance to make his case, because he would have been a strong, energetic candidate in the general election. Showing unfortunate contempt for blue collardom, Cambridge progressives insisted on putting forward a little known candidate, Khazei, who had no chance to win without a year of prior buildup, but who took enough away from Capuano to hand the nomination to Coakley with less than a majority in a spiritless primary. She, in turn, had the gall to run primary ads that spoke as if the primary was the election; she and too many MA Dems took it for granted that she was in for sure before the general election. She avoided voters and debates -- and when she has spoken of late, has said one stupid thing after another. She has acted as if treatment for rape victims in hospitals is the major issue of our times -- and of course it isn't, not even for pro-choice women in this economic climate. Coakley dared the people of MA to vote for a Republican or take someone they don't like in the Dem column -- and guess what.....
If Coakley goes down to defeat this time, she must retire from the electoral stage and let another, much stronger MA Democrat build support to defeat Brown next time. Look at Connecticut, another deep blue state: once an upopular or flawed Dem gets off the stage and a good one gets on, popular support for the party surges. This is a lesson that Dems had better learn in New York and IIllinois, for example.
-- My final thought is historical: the ORIGINAL NEW DEAL DID NOT HAPPEN IN THE FIRST YEAR. It was a prolonged set of struggles that peaked several years into FDR's first two terms, at the bridge between them. THIS SECOND NEW DEAL, IF IT IS TO HAPPEN, HAS TO BE A MULTI-YEAR STRUGGLE, TOO. Obama, the Congressional Dems, and progressive groups have to start seeing things that way. A loss in MA tonight will be like a football team projected to win big going down ten points at the end of the first quarter. A fighting, unified football team can easily come back from that. Let's see if the Democrats are tough winners like the New England Patriots of 2001, and not quick-folders like the Patriots of 2009.
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