The End of Hope
By Bronwyn's Harbor on January 25, 2010 at 2:00 AM in Current Affairs
The tsunami effects of the Massachusetts election results Tuesday night are still being felt, not only throughout the United States but also throughout the world. In “The World Bids Farewell to Obama” (!), the esteemed German publication Der Spiegel notes:
US President Barack Obama suffered a painful defeat in Massachusetts on Tuesday. With mid-term elections looming, it means that Obama will have to fundamentally re-think his political course. German commentators say it is the end of hope.
Let’s begin with the flood of news in the U.S. Just a week ago, all of us, and all pundits, assumed that some form of Obamacare would pass in Congress. Now, we’re witnessing the collapse of health care reform, noted by Politico in “ Dem health care talks collapsing .” Now — get this — “Senate Dems Not Sure They Can Get Enough Votes to Reconfirm Bernanke” (as chairman of the Federal Reserve).
Then there are the national polls, starting with Gallup’s findings that 7 in 10 Americans say that the Massachusetts election result “reflects frustrations” shared by all Americans:
From Gallup’s “In U.S., Majority Favors Suspending Work on Healthcare Bill“:
In the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts, the majority of Americans (55%) favor Congress’ putting the brakes on its current healthcare reform efforts and considering alternatives that can obtain more Republican support. Four in 10 Americans (39%) would rather have House and Senate Democrats continue to try to pass the bill currently being negotiated in conference committee.
[...]
Massachusetts voters elected a Republican to the Senate for the first time since 1972. Americans widely agree that the election result has national political implications — 72% say it reflects many Americans’ frustrations, which the president and members of Congress should pay attention to, while 18% believe it is a reflection of political conditions in Massachusetts.
Brown campaigned against the healthcare reform efforts and promised if elected to be the crucial 41st Senate vote against it, which would allow Republicans to successfully block its passage.
According to the poll, most self-identified Democrats (67%) want Congress to continue working toward passage of the bill. However, an even larger majority of Republicans (87%) call for suspension of Congress’ current work on the bill. The majority of political independents, whose support has been crucial to recent Republican election victories in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey, would also prefer to see the reform efforts put on hold rather than moved forward.
This is critical: Most Americans dispute the administration’s and Congress’ prioritization of health care. Given that most Americans are more worried about the economy and jobs, it has stunned me that Obama and Congress has ignored Americans’ concerns in favor of legislation that is, to put it mildly, ill-timed. Again, from Gallup:
The public’s desire to slow down the Democrats’ healthcare reform efforts also appears to reflect doubts about whether the issue deserves the attention political leaders in Washington have given it over the past several months. A minority of 32% of Americans say President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress are right to make healthcare reform their top priority at this time. In contrast, 46% acknowledge health reform as an important goal but believe other problems should be addressed first, and an additional 19% reject the idea that healthcare should be a major legislative priority.
Here’s the “bottom line” as Gallup sees its polling results:
Brown’s election shook up the political world in both Massachusetts and Washington. President Obama has indicated he would like Congress to hold off on healthcare reform until Brown is seated, which is consistent with the public’s wishes to suspend work on the bill. But the public is also not convinced that healthcare should be the top priority for the government at this time and endorses finding alternatives that can gain Republican support, which the bill under consideration has not received. Americans may therefore prefer a longer pause on the issue — one that stretches well beyond the time Brown is seated.
The polling of Americans strongly matches the views expressed in Der Spiegel’s “The World Bids Farewell to Obama“:
US President Barack Obama has had a number of difficult weeks during his first year in the White House. Right after he took office, he had to wade through a week full of partisan bickering over his economic stimulus package combined with a tax scandal surrounding Tom Daschle, the man Obama had hoped would lead his health care reform team.
Then there was the last week of 2009, when a failed terror attack on a flight inbound for Detroit exposed major flaws in US efforts to identify and stop potential terrorists.
This week, though — a week when Obama should have been celebrating the first anniversary of his inauguration — may have been the president’s worst yet. Scott Brown, an almost unknown Republican member of the Massachusetts Senate, defeated the Democratic candidate Martha Coakley for the US Senate seat vacated by the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The defeat in a heavily Democratic state not only highlights Obama’s massive loss of popular support during his first year in office, but it also could spell doom for his signature effort to reform the US health care system.
[...]
[T]he vote shows just how quickly the political pendulum has swung back to the right following Obama’s election. The seat Brown won had been in Democratic hands for all but six years since 1926. Now, its new occupant is a man who not only opposes the health care bill, but also favors waterboarding as a method of interrogation for terrorism suspects and rejects carbon cap-and-trade as a means of limiting carbon emissions.
The omen could be a dark one for the Obama administration heading into a mid-term election year.
German commentators take a closer look.
Center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung writes on Thursday:
“Obama made a serious misjudement. Right at the beginning of his first year in office, he saved the banks, rescued (purchased) the automobile industry from collapse and passed a huge economic stimulus package. He had hoped that these enormous deeds (or diversions, depending on your point of view) would give him the space to address those issues which are dearest to him: health care reform, climate change and investment in education.”
“Those issues, however, are clearly not priorities for people in the US at the moment. Scott Brown campaigned on two promises, both of which apparently struck a nerve with the electorate. He wants to block health care reform and he wants to find ways to reduce the enormous budget deficit. It is here where the roots of dissatisfaction with Obama are to be found. His reform agenda, in its current form, is highly suspect to Americans. And they have the impression that, if he continues piling up debt, he will be gambling away the country’s future.”
The Financial Times Deutschland writes:
“For Obama, the election in Massachusetts means that he will have to re-evaluate his political style. He could now focus his consideration on his political base and push through his policy agenda. After all, he still has a majority in Congress — he could back away from his of bipartisanship … which would mean giving up much of what he spent his first year in office creating.”
“More likely, however, is that Obama will interpret the Massachusetts loss as a signal that he should move further toward the middle and make more concessions to the conservatives — even if this alienates his base even further, a base which had high expectations from the ‘yes we can’ candidate.”
“For everyone else in the world, this means that they will have to bid farewell to a candidate for whom the hopes were so high. They will have to say goodbye to the charisma they fell in love with. Obama will be staying home after all.”
The left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung writes:
“In addition to health care reform, Obama’s reputation has primarily been harmed by the high unemployment rate and the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan. It will become even more difficult in the future for the president to push projects through successfully. Not just because Republicans now have a means of preventing it, but also because the Democratic camp is deeply divided. Some would like to see the party shift toward the center — wherever that may be — whereas others want the party to position itself to the left. Such a battle is hardly a good sign for the mid-term elections in November. Massachusetts could prove to be an omen.”
The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:
“Of course the president rejects the interpretation that the Massachusetts election was a referendum on his first year in the White House. But he cannot ignore the fact that his health care reform package is not popular, the situation of the country’s finances is seen as threatening and many voters blame the high unemployment rate on the party in power — on the Democrats, led by Obama. The result is a second year in office full of very different challenges than the first. To save what there is to be saved, Obama will have to be prepared to fashion a bipartisan compromise on health care — a compromise with a Republican Party which has tasted blood and can now dream once again about a return to power.”
It is staggering that, just a year ago, Obama had in his grasp the opportunity to accomplish so much. But he did not listen to the American people. He was not tuned in to the primary concerns of everyday Americans who see, first-hand, the devastating effects of an economy in trouble, and rising unemployment. In fact, the news today that official unemployment figures exceed 11% reinforces the recognition that this administration has failed utterly to address the problems facing this nation.
I don’t know that this country can take three more years of a delusional president who doesn’t recognize the fundamental problems of the economy that its citizenry does.
But it is vital to note that Tuesday’s nights earth-shattering results do not indicate a victory for the Republican party.
Consider that not once, in his victory speech, did Scott Brown mention the Republican party.
Senator-elect Brown recognizes that it was the Independent voters of Massachusetts who made his victory possible. And, if the Republicans wish to capitalize on the mood of the voters, it will behoove them to run candidates similar to Brown who has a progressive outlook on many social issues, and instead focus — as did Brown — on national security and the economy as the primary issues that interest ALL voters, from Democrats to Republicans to Independents.
Perhaps, if we can find enough electable candidates who fit Brown’s profile, we can bring about a fundamental shift in Congress and, perhaps, even in the White House.
Yesterday, Tim Pawlenty was on Fox News. He wisely recognized the vital importance of Independent voters to Brown’s win, and underscored the knowledge that Brown did not run as a hardcore conservative who emphasized his Republican roots. Brown’s own words back this up: He often mentions that, in the Massachusetts state senate, he worked with far more Democrats than Republicans.
We need candidates who have crossover appeal for some Democratic party voters, as well as the ability to win over Independents, the largest block of voters in the United States. And we need candidates who will stand for the people, not the particular interests of their respective parties, or payoffs for their votes, but representatives in the truest sense of the word, to do what they are elected to do: serve the people. This may be the year.
by Ronald Scott
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