OT-Sorry, should have combined with the first OT. I had dinner with some Dems in DC last night and to a person they were stunned by what is happening in Mass. re: the senate race. This is Massachusetts, the bedrock of the Dem foundation. It looks like at Minimum it will be close and the talk was a lot about what this would mean inside the hearts of the sitting Dem senators and congressmen if the Dems had serious trouble holding on to the Mass seat of Kennedy.
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Massachusetts Race Now Key to Health Bill
By JANET ADAMY and NAFTALI BENDAVID, WSJ
White House and Senate Democratic officials said Monday that they believed asking the House to pass the Senate health bill unchanged was likely to be their best hope if their party loses a Senate seat in Massachusetts. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office signaled Monday that the House wouldn't go along with that, and the bill's fate dimmed.
A defeat in Massachusetts would not only deprive Democrats of their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate but also underscore the unpopularity of the health legislation and possibly lead some wavering party members to reverse their support.
The Senate passed its health bill Dec. 24, and the simplest plan for Democrats would be to have the House pass the same bill should Democrat Martha Coakley lose a Massachusetts special election Tuesday. Democratic officials called it the least-bad option, but aides said no formal proposal has been taken to the House leadership.
Top Democratic aides on Monday described the scenario as difficult to pull off. House liberals oppose the key differences in the Senate version: a tax on high-end insurance plans and less generous assistance to help low-income Americans buy insurance.
"Certainly the dynamic will change depending on what happens in Massachusetts," Ms. Pelosi said Monday. "But it doesn't mean we won't have a health-care bill." Ms. Pelosi has previously indicated she doesn't want to pass the Senate's version. A spokesman said that position hasn't changed.
Democratic officials, while publicly saying the bill remained on track, were facing the sobering reality that the effort, after seeming nearly assured of success just days ago, could collapse. Until the Massachusetts race turned tight, congressional Democrats had hoped to deliver a bill to President Barack Obama before his State of the Union address, which is scheduled for Jan. 27.
A close vote in Ms. Coakley's favor would allow Democrats to maintain their 60-seat majority in the Senate, but the image of a Democrat almost losing in a state as liberal as Massachusetts might lead some Democrats to abandon the health legislation.
"Even in liberal Massachusetts, most voters are opposed to it," said Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling, a Democratic pollster in Raleigh, N.C., who has conducted polls in that state and others on health care. "If it's not popular in Massachusetts, it's really not popular anywhere."
Another option to keep the bill alive would be to try to pass it through the Senate using a parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation. Then Democrats would need only 51 votes to prevail, instead of the 60 that a typical bill needs to block a filibuster. That would require significantly stripping down the bill since the maneuver applies only to budget legislation. Democrats would probably have to remove popular provisions such as the rules to prevent insurers from denying coverage to the sick and proposed caps on out-of-pocket medical costs for consumers.
Democratic leadership aides say they have ruled out pushing the health care bill through Congress before Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown is seated, in the event that he wins. Democrats also saw little chance of courting moderate Republicans to support the bill. A Republican victory in a state as Democratic as Massachusetts would leave the GOP with no reason to negotiate with Democrats. "They've got us in their crosshairs," one Senate Democratic aide said.
"The American people oppose Washington Democrats' plan for a variety of reasons, including the tax hikes and Medicare cuts, but above all they simply don't want a government takeover of health care," House Minority Leader John Boehner said Monday.
White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said his office wasn't turning to a Plan B. "Our focus is on winning the Massachusetts race and continuing on the path we're currently on to merge the House and Senate bills," he said.
The mood among Washington Democrats Monday night was gloomy disbelief. Many senior Democrats were saying that Ms. Coakley is likely to lose, and they see political disaster going forward. To ditch health care now and enter the 2010 midterm election season with nothing to show for a year of negotiations might be the worst political choice, but to pass such sweeping legislation in the face of voter anger, like that on display in Massachusetts, could be nearly as bad.
In a poll of 1,231 likely Massachusetts voters conducted this weekend, Public Policy Polling found that voters' stance on the health overhaul strongly lined up with which candidate they back. Among those who support the legislation, Ms. Coakley led 92% to 5%. Among those who oppose the legislation, Mr. Brown led 95% to 4%.
Mr. Jensen, the Democratic pollster, said that his outlet has polled voters in about 25 states on the health overhaul since July. While a small plurality of voters in Maine and Connecticut backed the health overhaul at times, no state poll has ever shown that a majority of voters support the effort. Independents in particular have turned against the idea.
In Congress, Democrats awaited the outcome of Tuesday's vote, and there was no sign of defections yet. Aides to several centrist Democratic lawmakers said their positions hadn't changed.
"I wouldn't view him as being swayed, if Coakley wins, by the focus on health care," said Jake Thompson, a spokesman for Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, a moderate Democrat whose vote for the Senate bill was the hardest to win. Mr. Thompson said Mr. Nelson would be less likely to support the bill if it went to reconciliation since that process couldn't ensure the restrictions on insurance funding of abortion that the senator worked to insert in the Senate bill.
The turn in the Massachusetts election, where the health bill has been a top issue, has revealed how uneasy the public has grown about Mr. Obama's top domestic priority. The health bills that the House and Senate passed last year would expand insurance to about 30 million Americans and prevent insurers from denying care to consumers.
But months of attacks from Republicans have helped turn public sentiment against the plan by focusing attention on cuts to Medicare, the nearly $1 trillion cost of the measure over a decade, and the greater role the government would take in the health-care system.
Giving up on the health overhaul would represent a huge defeat for Democrats, since it would leave them without a major legislative victory despite their wide margins in the House and Senate. Party officials said they thought public support for the effort would rebound if they had a final product to market.
"Democrats know that there's much more political upside to getting health-insurance reform passed and signed in by the president than there is to not doing that," said Brad Woodhouse, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. "Once people start getting the benefits of it, Republicans are going to have to explain why they tried to stop it."
—Jonathan Weisman contributed to this article.
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Turnout Is Key in Massachusetts Battle
Close Race for Senate Galvanizes Supporters
By GREG HITT , TAMARA AUDI AND PETER WALLSTEN, WSJ
NORTH ANDOVER, Mass.—The fight for a Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat, and with it President Barack Obama's domestic agenda, is coming down to one essential challenge: maximizing turnout of core supporters in dismal wintry weather conditions.
Both campaigns in Tuesday's special election to succeed the late Edward Kennedy, joined by allies on the left and right, are mounting extraordinary efforts to boost turnout, pouring millions of dollars into advertising while flooding neighborhoods with canvassers and phone lines with last-minute appeals to vote.
Snow and sleet fell across most of Massachusetts Monday. Rain or snow is expected again Tuesday, especially in the Boston area, which could depress turnout.
A special election to fill the seat held by the late Senator Ted Kennedy is going to have enormous implications for the entire country. Video courtesy Fox News.
This eleventh-hour push is more akin to a presidential campaign in a closely fought battleground. But it is unfolding in a traditionally liberal state that has rarely seen a grass-roots showdown. The contest may come down to whether the Democratic Party's traditional allies can overcome what appears to be a surge of local enthusiasm for the Republican candidate.
"It's a four-alarm fire up here on both sides," said Ellen Malcolm, president of the liberal group Emily's List, which is airing a radio ad statewide attacking Scott Brown, the Republican candidate.
Mr. Brown, until now a little-known state senator, has launched what his campaign called a "voter bomb," in which supporters are encouraged to sign onto the campaign online and commit to get 20 people to the polls. Democrat Martha Coakley launched a "snow-a-thon," with about 1,000 volunteers working phones from their homes.
After making a speech in Springfield, Ms. Coakley was swarmed by supporters. "I've been on the phone for the last two nights," Jack Rioni told her as she waded through the crowd. Ms. Coakley, the state's attorney general, stopped to shake his hand. "You've been getting good response, right?" she asked.
Yes, Mr. Rioni responded, "but a lot of people are annoyed about all the calls."
Mr. Brown, meanwhile, encountered large crowds and throngs of national media, underscoring the quick change in status for a candidate who just last week was considered a long shot.
The conservative Massachusetts Family Institute circulated a "voter guide" highlighting Mr. Brown's support for restrictions on abortion, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce aired television ads lauding his economic views.
Most special elections are routine affairs, with low interest among voters. But with Mr. Brown presenting himself as the GOP's crucial 41st vote in the Senate—the vote to break the Democrats' filibuster-proof majority—national party officials and interest groups see the contest as critical to health-care legislation and other top Obama administration agenda items.
The White House and its Democratic allies, stunned by polls showing Massachusetts tilting toward the Republican state senator, have scrambled to build a volunteer network "literally overnight" in a state where they haven't needed one before, one party official said.
Mr. Obama stumped for Ms. Coakley on Sunday. But a Suffolk University survey found about one in four voters who felt favorably toward the president backing Mr. Brown, one sign the president's personal appeal might not be enough to help his party this year.
The labor federation AFL-CIO, supporting Ms. Coakley, dispatched national and state-level staffers to phone banks, and distributed fliers linking Mr. Brown to former President George W. Bush and "tax cuts for the wealthy."
The Service Employees International union put 300 volunteers into the field and spent $685,000 on a TV ad attacking Mr. Brown.
A Democratic strategist said the number of volunteers nearly doubled from Thursday to Saturday, when some 3,500 supporters reaching out to voters, making more than 500,000 "voter contacts," including calls and email solicitations.
Democratic strategists contended Monday that they had stemmed the rise in Mr. Brown's poll numbers. Public surveys showed either a neck-and-neck race or a slight Brown lead. The Suffolk poll over the weekend of bellwether areas of the state showed Mr. Brown with double-digit leads in those places, mostly because independent voters have moved so strongly in his favor.
While strategists in both campaigns cautioned that the outcome remained in doubt, a spate of last-minute polls suggested Mr. Brown was holding a lead heading into Election Day, including a survey by InsiderAdvantage/Politico that showed him up 52% to 43%.
Asked by reporters about Mr. Brown's poll numbers, Ms. Coakley said: "The polls aren't accurate and we don't pay attention to them. We'll talk on Wednesday." Ms. Coakley said her campaign is "very confident" and that the response from supporters "has been tremendous."
The field organization for Mr. Brown isn't as extensive as the one being mounted by Democrats in the final days. A Brown campaign official said some 500 volunteers worked daily over the holiday weekend, making close to 125,000 voter contacts each day, including phone calls and door knocking.
The campaign also has a program in which volunteers can make calls from home, which prompted Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) to circulate an appeal to his own supporters around the country urging them to join the Brown cause.
Mr. Brown said he is "grateful" for the grass-roots support that has propelled his campaign. "We have come a long way, but we still have much work to do," he said.
The strategies from both sides serve as a preview of the national campaigns beginning across the country.
Like Mr. Brown, Republicans elsewhere will seek distance from a national GOP that remains unpopular, while tapping into public anxiety over joblessness and Mr. Obama's domestic agenda.
Democrats, meanwhile, have signaled they will try to regain a populist advantage. Ms. Coakley and her allies have hammered Mr. Brown for his opposition to the Obama-proposed tax on big banks, a plan that has quickly become an election-year centerpiece for Democrats.
Dozens of supporters at Teamsters Local 404 chanted "Martha! Martha! Martha!" when Ms. Coakley walked into the union's office in Springfield Monday afternoon.
A Teamsters official introducing Ms. Coakley urged supporters to "make sure we take Mr. Brown down!"
Outside, supporters said they were concerned with Mr. Brown's momentum. "His popularity has increased quite a bit and we didn't expect him to make such a comeback," said Bill Young, a pipefitter from Boston who held a Coakley sign outside the Springfield rally.
At the rallies, the sense of national significance was a constant theme. "The eyes of the world are upon us," said state Sen. Gail Candaras, introducing Ms. Coakley at the Springfield rally.
Springfield Mayor Dominic Sarno yelled over a cheering crowd: "You're gonna have to get on the phone. You're gonna have to talk to your neighbors. Don't take anything for granted,"
In North Andover, more than 1,000 people crowded along Main Street, where the sidewalks had been newly shoveled and the trees were covered in snow.
Mr. Brown, moving slowly down the middle of the street, urged voters to help get out the vote Tuesday. "Don't take anything for granted, folks," he said, pushing them to keep "working hard."
Bob Shapiro, an unemployed math teacher from nearby Andover, said he's never been active politically, but he's upset at Mr. Obama and Democratic efforts to combat climate change and overhaul the health system, among other things. He said he was an independent until a few months ago, when he decided he would support Republicans.
He was stunned at the size of the crowd. "This just blows me away," he said. "A lot of people are upset." |
