Latest News, and Views, on the Brown/Coakley Contest
By Bronwyn's Harbor on January 18, 2010 at 12:30 AM in Current Affairs
First things first: NoQuarter will provide full coverage and live blogging on Tuesday night’s Massachusetts results, and Larry Johnson will be a commentator on John Batchelor’s election coverage radio show.
(1) “Brown Has 9.6% Lead in New Poll,” insidemedford.com.
(2) “Sources: Obama advisers believe Coakley will lose,” CNN
(3) Fascinating: “Kirk Can’t Vote After Tuesday,” Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard
Appointed Senator Paul Kirk will lose his vote in the Senate after Tuesday’s election in Massachusetts of a new senator and cannot be the 60th vote for Democratic health care legislation, according to Republican attorneys. …
(4) From the most respected electoral pundit: “Charlie Cook: Brown now favored,” Politico
(5) “McConnell: Healthcare will be ‘toxic’ for Democrats in 2010, ’12,” The Hill
(6) We’ll believe it when we see it: “Sen. Kirk: New Mass. senator will be sworn in ‘as quickly as possible’,” The Hill
(7) The most telling headline of them all? “Voters desert President Barack Obama in Ted Kennedy seat,” Times of London
[...]
This Tuesday, in the election to fill Kennedy’s Senate seat, Feeney and fellow lobstermen will vote Republican. It is a pattern being repeated throughout the state of Massachusetts in what is threatening to become the biggest upset of President Barack Obama’s first year in office.
“Kennedy was a good friend of the lobstermen,” explained Feeney. “He would help whenever we had a problem. I just think the Democrats have forgotten the working man.”
The lobstermen are not the only ones jumping ship. The latest polls show the Republicans ahead in America’s most liberal state. The party has not won a Senate seat here for 37 years. The Democrats are so worried about losing the seat that Obama is flying in tomorrow, despite the crisis in Haiti.
To lose Kennedy’s seat would be a humiliating end to Obama’s first year in power, particularly as Kennedy was one of the first senior Democrats to endorse him for president. Not only would it be an ominous sign for the mid-term elections later this year but it would lose the Democrats their supermajority in the Senate, robbing them of their ability to sidestep Republican filibusters, and derail healthcare reform.
Bill Clinton, the former president, flew in for a rally last Friday even though, as a United Nations special envoy for Haiti, he had not slept for three days. “I came here to tell the people of Massachusetts that this country’s revolution was born in Massachusetts against those who abused power … do you now want to put Massachusetts on the side of the power abusers?” Clinton said.
[...]
On Friday he did a walk-about in Boston’s Little Italy, a Democrat stronghold. Asked how he felt about possibly winning the seat, he replied to loud cheers: “It’s not the Kennedys’ seat. It’s not the Democrats’ seat. It’s the people’s seat.”
A number of women had brought along their dogs. Donna, a dentist, had brought her fox terrier Razzie. “I always voted for Kennedy but this guy is refreshing,” she said. “Washington has forgotten the middle class and he’s the way we can stop it.”
Most alarmingly for the Democrats, the main plank on which Brown has campaigned is Obama’s healthcare plan, which he says will mean Massachusetts subsidising states such as Nebraska. He has kept quiet on issues such as his opposition to same-sex marriage.
“People who I never in a million years thought would have voted Republican are going to him,” said Rhonda Serre, a mother of two who has lost her job but still supports the Democrats. On Friday Brown was joined by Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York. “This election will send a signal and a very dramatic one,” Giuliani said. “Believe me, the Democrats are frightened.”
Most analysts still believe the Democrats can win. But even a narrow defeat will be portrayed as a victory by the Republicans. Brown’s Senate campaign is already being studied by party strategists as a model. “He’s making healthcare a front-and-centre issue in the most liberal state in the country and it’s working for him,” said Whit Ayres, co-founder of Resurgent Republic, a group of conservative strategists.
“It’s the albatross around the Democrats’ necks.”
Obama has made a mistake so fundamental, it is shocking. The people are worried about our nation’s economy and about jobs. Yet Obama has given only passing attention — token attention, really — to the people’s most pressing worries.
Instead, Obama has focused all of his passion and his might on passing a bill that he envisions as legacy legislation, ignoring the obvious fact that the legislation itself is an obviously hopeless mish-mash mess that has required all kinds of arm-twisting to get as far as it has.
So we ask this question: How has Obama spent most of his time in the past few days, instead of keeping close watch over the fall-out from the underwear bomber’s nearly-successful act of terrorism and instead of focusing more time and energy on the overwhelming crisis in Haiti? Right. He’s spent most of his time pressuring lawmakers to pass his beloved health care bill because, for reasons that escape any but the most narcissistic, he sees the bill as his greatest achievement (while every sane person sees the bill as a pathetic joke that will muck up the quality of health care, harm Medicare, fail to address soaring medical costs, and increase every state’s as well as the federal deficit).
The people have watched all of the pressures being placed on their representatives, as well as their representatives’ abdication to such pressures, and are aghast.
How could their own senators and House members abandon the clear opposition of the people to this bill? How could members of Congress not insist that the foremost urgent matters — the economy and jobs — take precedence over all else?
Is it any wonder that voters, when given the rare opportunity to express themselves in the voting both, would rush to vote for a Scott Brown who — unlike his go-along-to-get-along opponent — clearly is his own man. When Scott Brown says he will be the 41st vote against Obamacare, I haven’t a single moment’s doubt that that is exactly what he means. He is believable. He is a man comfortable in his own skin who believes what he believes and lets the voters know, frankly, what he will and can do for them. How refreshing. And how drastically different than the drivel that Obama delivered on the campaign trails in 2007 and 2008.
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