Martha ("Marcia" to Massachusetteans of the Kennedy variety), Meet Creigh Deeds
Jennifer Rubin - 01.19.2010 - 9:19 AM
The venom directed at a failing candidate by her own party is often directly related to the margin of the anticipated defeat. If true, then Martha Coakley is going to get thumped, according to Byron York’s report:
“Everybody is scrambling and freaking out,” says one Democratic strategist of the mood among Democrats now. Coakley’s run has taught the once-triumphant party that “a lackluster, uninspiring campaign is not going to get it done, even in the bluest states.” But with feelings running deep, some Democrats are blaming Coakley in a much more personal way.
“She’s kind of aloof,” the Democrat says. “There are people who will vote for her who don’t really have a sense that they like or trust her. The Kennedys aren’t really fond of her. She basically announced her campaign the day Ted died, and didn’t give Vicki the opportunity to think about [running to replace her husband]. From the Kennedy side of the ledger, there’s no great love for Coakley. They look at her as kind of a predatory politician.”
Well,she did win a primary, after all — by nearly 20 points, in a multi-candidate race.
Hmm, that would mean the other Democrats she defeated must have been really lame.
Just a little over a month ago, the entire Democratic establishment was backing her, and the mainstream media declared her the decided favorite in the general race. Now she’s flawed, personally defective, and unloved by everyone. I’m sure Creigh Deeds can relate. He too was beloved, yet wound up the goat as Democrats realized he was headed for a big loss. He too ran a mediocre race. But neither Deeds nor Coakley would have been caught fending off incoming artillery from the Democratic spin machine had the national political environment — namely, the Obama agenda and the public’s disdain for the Reid-Pelosi-Obama leftward lurch — not turned off voters.
Don’t get me wrong — Coakley has made her share of flubs. But in any other year, a Democrat who had committed just as many flubs would still win. That looks highly unlikely now.
commentarymagazine.com
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Coakley will rightly get most of the blame should Brown actually pull off what once seemed to be an impossible victory. Yet much of the responsibility will have to rest with Barack Obama, who has guided his party so poorly that it is having trouble making an appeal to voters in Massachusetts.
Cost argues that Obama made grievous errors in dumping bipartisanship, making Reid and Pelosi the de facto “prime ministers,” and coming up with an agenda ill-suited to the times. Well, we’ve come a long way. It seems like just yesterday that Obama was peddling his “judgment” in lieu of “experience,” right? It turns out that he has neither.
The judgment errors are many and serious. He misread his mandate, confused campaign rhetoric for persuasive communication, overexposed himself, refused to let go of his juvenile fixation on blaming George W. Bush for all the problems he faced, replaced bipartisanship with hyper-partisanship, and declined to take seriously early-warning signs sent by the voters in New Jersey and Virginia. The common thread through all of this: arrogance. “We won!” he pronounced early on and therefore never seemed to take seriously criticism or objections, whether from the other party, concerned Democrats, the media, or even polls. He simply plunged ahead, oblivious to the backlash that was building.
Insularity has been the order of the day. And we will soon know whether it has cost him his filibuster-proof Senate majority and his signature agenda item. Three years is a long time in politics, so it’s possible that Obama may yet recover and succeed, but only if he wakes from his political slumber and learns from his many costly misjudgments.
commentarymagazine.com
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The real message of Massachusetts is that Democrats have committed the classic political mistake of ideological overreach. Mr. Obama won the White House in part on his personal style and cool confidence amid a recession and an unpopular war. Yet liberals in Congress interpreted their victory as a mandate to repeal more or less the entire post-1980 policy era and to fulfill, at last, their dream of turning the U.S. into a cradle-to-grave entitlement state.
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• Ed Markey of Massachusetts, first elected in 1976, helped to ram the cap-and-tax bill through the House and has pushed relentlessly for the EPA to declare carbon a pollutant under the Clean Air Act that didn't mention carbon.
• Wisconsin's David Obey, elected in 1969, is the House Appropriations chairman who steered the $787 billion stimulus to focus on Medicaid expansion and other transfer payments that have done nothing for economic growth.
• Henry Waxman, first elected in the Watergate class of 1974, deposed John Dingell in 2008 as too moderate to run the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Hollywood liberal is co-author of the cap-and-tax vote that will cost numerous Blue Dogs their seats.
Associated Press
Pete Stark; Henry Waxman
• Pete Stark, class of 1972, runs the health subcommittee on Ways and Means and has written most of the House health reform that has forced moderates to walk the plank on the "public option."
• George Miller, class of 1974 and chief enforcer for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has pushed to nationalize the college student loan market. Like Mr. Stark, he's from California.
• Barney Frank of Massachusetts, class of 1980 and chief protector of Fannie Mae, wrote the financial reform that would make too-big-to-fail the law for the largest banks. He has also pushed the mortgage foreclosure programs that have extended the housing recession by preventing home prices from finding a bottom.
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These committee chairmen are all creatures of the Great Society and what was called the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s. They have spent their lives in government and know almost nothing about the private sector or how to grow an economy. They view the Reagan era as an historical aberration, and they have stayed in Washington for decades precisely in wait of this moment to realize 40-years of pent-up policy ambition. They believe this is their 1965, or 1933.
While Mr. Obama campaigned as a young postpartisan Democrat who wanted a new era of comity in Washington, his victory has instead empowered these ancient left-wing warriors. These are the men who have run Washington this past year, and they are Mr. Obama's de facto cabinet. The nearby photos show some of the most powerful, clockwise from the top right:
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, Democrats are proving again that America can't be successfully governed from the left. If that is the lesson Mr. Obama learns from Massachusetts, he might still salvage his Presidency.
online.wsj.com |
