Why Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts was lost--and who lost it

All,

It's a much deeper fundamental crisis in the national Democratic Party than has been properly acknowledged--as well as Obama's clearly inept administration-- that's really responsible for the horrendous loss of Ted Kennedy's former Senate seat than anything that Martha Coakley, the DP candidate in Massachusetts, individually failed to do. The senatorial election in Massachusetts in the final analysis had very little to do with Coakley, even though she obviously didn't run a very good campaign. But the simple truth of the matter is that she didn't lose because of that. She lost because a very significant number of white independent voters were sending a loud ugly message to Congress (i.e. the Democratic majority in both houses) and specifically to President Obama that they categorically oppose his reform agenda in healthcare and beyond and they also have no confidence in the weak half-assed and frankly "running scared" positions that Obama has taken on the banks, Wall Street, major corporations, and national unemployment. People are very frustrated, angry and fedup--on both the right AND the left! While it's true that much if not most of the anger on the right is fueled by racism, some of it is also an ideological rejection of Obama's general political and economic agenda and the disturbing sense that many people (not just rightwingers!) feel--and I think justifiably--that both Obama and the Democratic Party generally have failed to seriously address their very real needs and problems in the national economy. Many people on the Left--including myself--also feel that over the past 5-6 months the president and the Senate especially (where Democrats outnumber Republicans 60-40) have fundamentally failed to provide genuine progressive leadership and clarity on healthcare reform, unemployment, financial regulation, and many other pressing domestic policy issues. In addition Obama's absurd decision to send 30,000 more troops to the endless destructive quagmire that is Afghanistan in the midst of this major economic crisis in the U.S. was not only wrong but politically foolish and economically wasteful.

In the end Coakley couldn't do anything about any of that. As it was she still lost by only 120,000 votes out of nearly 3 million votes that were cast. That tells me that not only was there a much smaller democratic voter turnout in this election--in a state where registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans 5 to 1!-- but that clearly a small but pivotal number of independent and Republican voters in the white suburbs (by far Coakley's weakest demographic in this election--she won a sizeable majority in every major urbanized district within the state) decided that this senatorial election was to be a public referendum on President Obama's agenda and the flailing and clueless Democratic Party majority in the House and Senate. Under these circumstances Coakley--or any other DP candidate in this election except Ted Kennedy himsef-- didn't have a chance in hell of winning this election.

What we all had better remember in the larger context is that President Obama received only 43% of the white vote in the national presidential election in 2008. McCain received 55% of the white vote. This means of course that if the national election for President had been left up to white voters only Obama would have lost the election in a LANDSLIDE to McCain. It is this stark political reality that is taking Obama down now on the right and among independents because the truth is that nearly 60% of white voters have ALWAYS rejected Obama anyway-- and still do. This means of course that without the 81% of the black, Latino, and Asian American voters who voted for Obama HE WOULDN'T BE PRESIDENT TODAY. Black folks cast an incredible 95% of their total votes for Barack (or 15.5 million votes) and Latinos cast 67% of their votes for him which added up to another 16 million votes. Without those 30 million votes we wouldn't even be having this discussion about Obama now because he would have already lost bigtime.

So I say all that to remind us that the reasons for Obama's severe difficulties now can't possibly be attributed only to Martha Coakley. The problem has always been much bigger than that for both Obama and the Democratic Party. Which is all the more reason why the way they've been spending their --and our--political capital is both strategically and tactically suspect at best because they keep trying to foolishly accomodate the Republican party through emptyheaded and self destructive "compromises" that the nihilistic Republicans and the right generally have absolutely NO INTENTION WHATSOEVER of making with them. This is the major reason why Scott Brown--who is to the right of Atilla the Hun AND Sarah Palin-- is the new Senator from Massachusetts. It's basic political ineptitude on the part of the President and the DP and no amount of lofty or apologetic rhetoric can possibly cover up that fundamental fact in this situation. If the President doesn't fight back--and I mean HARD--from this point forward he and the DP will be BURNT TOAST by the midterm elections of November 2010. Because if the Republicans take back Congress Obama won't be able to pass one piece of significant legislation for the remainder of his entire first term! It'll be much worse than the debacle of 1994 when Newt Gingrich, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott, Phil Gramm, Richard Armey and all the other super rightwing white supremacist demagogues in the Republican Party took over the House & Senate and effectively crippled the agenda of not only the last two years of Bill Clinton's already heavily compromised first term but also completely paralyzed his scandal ridden second term as well (even the Lewinsky sex scandal was ultimately merely a footnote in that poisonous context).

Kofi

Democratic Party Fails to win Massachusetts Senate Seat

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/us/politics/20election.html?th&emc=th

All,

The incredible political ineptitude, hubris, and smug cluelessness of the Democratic Party and the Obama administration that led to the inexcusable victory of a previously unknown far rightwing Republican in the "liberal" state of Massachusetts--a state that Obama won by a whopping 26 percentage points in the national presidential race of 2008--is nothing short of a major setback for the president's entire reform agenda--especially national healthcare legislation. How the DP and the President could have blown so many genuine opportunities to seriously challenge and change the general direction of the society and political economy over the past year is just astonishing and their inexplicable loss of the venerated seat of the late iconic liberal Senator Edward 'Teddy' Kennedy--who held the seat for 47 years!--is yet another glaring example of what happens when progressives, the Democratic party, and President Obama, don't properly stand up and actually fight for political and economic change, instad of constantly giving away our collective political capital in the delusional name of "bipartisanship' and mindless compromises with the right...Without ideological integrity and a genuine commitment to organized political activism on a mass scale we can't possibly defeat those truly heinous forces in this society who are absolutely determined to have corporate class domination, racism, sexism, militarism, and homophobia continue to rule us and ultimately destroy any semblance of a truly humane social community, democratic political economy, and progressive civic culture in this country...

Kofi


G.O.P. Senate Victory Stuns Democrats
By MICHAEL COOPER
January 19, 2010
New York Times


BOSTON — Scott Brown, a little-known Republican state senator, rode an old pickup truck and a growing sense of unease among independent voters to an extraordinary upset Tuesday night when he was elected to fill the Senate seat that was long held by Edward M. Kennedy in the overwhelmingly Democratic state of Massachusetts.

By a decisive margin, Mr. Brown defeated Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, who had been considered a prohibitive favorite to win just over a month ago after she easily won the Democratic primary.

With all precincts counted, Mr. Brown had 52 percent of the vote to Ms. Coakley’s 47 percent.

“Tonight the independent voice of Massachusetts has spoken,” Mr. Brown told his cheering supporters in a victory speech, standing in front of a backdrop that said “The People’s Seat.”

The election left Democrats in Congress scrambling to salvage a bill overhauling the nation’s health care system, which the late Mr. Kennedy had called “the cause of my life.” Mr. Brown has vowed to oppose the bill, and once he takes office the Democrats will no longer control the 60 votes in the Senate needed to overcome filibusters.

There were immediate signs that the bill had become imperiled. House members indicated they would not quickly pass the bill the Senate approved last month.

And after the results were announced, one centrist Democratic senator, Jim Webb of Virginia, called on Senate leaders to suspend any votes on the Democrats’ health care legislation until Mr. Brown is sworn into office. The election, he said, was a referendum on both health care and the integrity of the government process.

Beyond the bill, the election of a man supported by the Tea Party movement also represented an unexpected reproach by many voters to President Obama after his first year in office, and struck fear into the hearts of Democratic lawmakers, who are already worried about their prospects in the midterm elections later this year.

Mr. Brown was able to appeal to independents who were anxious about the economy and concerned about the direction taken by Democrats, now that they control both Beacon Hill and Washington. He rallied his supporters when he said, at the last debate, that he was not running for Mr. Kennedy’s seat but for “the people’s seat.”

That seat, held for nearly half a century by Mr. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate, will now be held for the next two years by a Republican who has said he supports waterboarding as an interrogation technique for terrorism suspects, opposes a federal cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions and opposes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants unless they leave the country. It was a sharp swing of the pendulum, but even Democratic voters said they wanted the Obama administration to change direction.

“I’m hoping that it gives a message to the country,” said Marlene Connolly, 73, of North Andover, a lifelong Democrat who said she cast her first vote for a Republican on Tuesday. “I think if Massachusetts puts Brown in, it’s a message of ‘that’s enough.’ Let’s stop the giveaways and let’s get jobs going.”

Mr. Brown ran strongest in the suburbs of Boston, where the independent voters who make up a majority in Massachusetts turned out in large numbers. Ms. Coakley did best in urban areas, winning overwhelmingly in Boston and running ahead in Springfield, Worcester, Fall River and New Bedford, but her margins were not large enough to carry her to victory.

In a concession speech before cheering supporters, Ms. Coakley acknowledged that voters were angry and said she had hoped to deal with the concerns.

“Our mission continues, and our work goes on,” she said, echoing well-known remarks by Mr. Kennedy. “I am heartbroken at the result, as I know you are, and I know we will get up together tomorrow and continue this fight, even with this result tonight.”

The crowd at Mr. Brown’s victory rally, upset by reports that Democrats might try to vote on the health care bill before he takes office, chanted, “Seat him now!” Mr. Brown, for his part, noted that the interim senator holding the seat had finished his work, and that he was ready to go to Washington “without delay.” And he effusively praised Mr. Kennedy as a big-hearted, tireless worker, and said that he hoped to prove a worthy successor to him.

Ms. Coakley’s defeat, in a state that Mr. Obama won in 2008 with 62 percent of the vote, led to a round of finger-pointing among Democrats. Some criticized her tendency for gaffes — in a radio interview she offended Red Sox fans when she incorrectly suggested that Curt Schilling, a beloved former Red Sox pitcher, was a Yankee fan — while others criticized a lackluster, low-key campaign.

Mr. Brown presented himself as a Massachusetts Everyman, featuring the pickup truck he drives around the state in his speeches and one of his television commercials, calling in to talk radio shows and campaigning with popular local sports figures.

The implications of the election drew nationwide attention, and millions of dollars of outside spending, to the race. It transformed what many had expected to be a sleepy, low-turnout special election on a snowy day in January into a high-profile contest that appeared to draw more voters than expected to the polls. There were reports of traffic jams outside suburban polling stations, while other polling stations had to call for extra ballots.

The late surge by Mr. Brown appeared to catch Democrats by surprise, causing them to scramble in the last week and a half of the campaign and hastily schedule an appearance by Mr. Obama with Ms. Coakley on Sunday afternoon.

“Understand what’s at stake here, Massachusetts,” Mr. Obama said in his speech that day, repeatedly invoking Mr. Kennedy’s legacy. “It’s whether we’re going forwards or backwards.” He all but pleaded with voters to support Ms. Coakley, to preserve his agenda.

As voters went to the polls, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, made it clear that the president was “not pleased” with the situation Ms. Coakley found herself in. “He was both surprised and frustrated,” Mr. Gibbs said.

Although the race has riveted the nation largely because it was seen as contributing to the success or defeat of the health care bill, the potency of the issue for voters here was difficult to gauge. That is because Massachusetts already has near-universal health coverage, thanks to a law passed when Mitt Romney, a Republican, was governor.

Thus Massachusetts is one of the few states where the benefits promised by the national bill were expected to have little effect on how many of its residents got coverage, making it an unlikely place for a referendum on the health care bill.

On Capitol Hill, the fate of the health care legislation was highly uncertain as Democratic leaders quickly gathered to plot strategy in the wake of the Republican victory.

Sentiment about how to proceed was mixed, with several lawmakers saying the House would not accept the Senate-passed plan. Top officials had said that approach was the party’s best alternative, and many members said they still believed it was crucial that Democrats pass a plan.

“It is important for us to pass legislation,” said Representative Baron P. Hill, a conservative Democrat from Indiana.

Reporting was contributed by Katie Zezima, Danielle Ossher and Bret Silverberg in Massachusetts, and Carl Hulse and David M. Herszenhorn in Washington.