A Blue View

Are The Tea Partiers A Movement?

Wash Post:

The 600 delegates at the National Tea Party Convention feel taxed to death, ignored by their elected representatives and the media, and appalled at the federal government's spending -- and there are millions of Americans just like them. Their anger has helped claim some political scalps, and they vow to "take back America." What is unclear to them, and to the political establishment watching warily, is how they might do this.

It's a critical moment for a movement that is unmistakably people-powered, that has been deliberately left leaderless to give voice to all frustrations. And although the mood here has been festive, even giddy, the fluidity of the group has been on full display.

Here was a California woman counseling people on how to register new Republican voters in their communities, but there were others who criticize the Republican Party as fiercely as they do the Democratic Party. Here attendees lashed out against the practices of the Washington establishment, but there a man from Memphis announced the formation of a political action committee. Here a former congressman delivered a fiery defense of America's "Judeo-Christian values," but there delegates walked out of a prayer session they thought crossed a line.

The convention, which concludes Saturday night with a keynote address by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R), in some respects has had the feel of a big blind date. The delegates chatted each other up for a year online, checking out each other's ideas and grievances, and they thought they might have something in common. Now they are spending a couple of days together, at a very nice resort, nibbling hibachi beef and browsing elegant "tea bag" jewelry, to see whether they like each other enough to be together.

Jeff Link, a luxury jewelry maker from New York, says that President George W. Bush started the fiscal policies that ruined the economy and that President Obama is making them worse, a belief shared by many here. But, he says, looking at the crowd, which is overwhelmingly white and middle-aged, "it saddens me not to see this gathering more diverse."

Jim Linn, an electrical engineer from San Diego, says that strict term limits must be imposed to "get control of Congress" and that the Constitution must be interpreted in ways that match his understanding of the Founders' intent. That would mean scrapping a lot of the amendments, he acknowledges, but not Nos. 2, 10, 16 and 17. He worries that a deeper depression is coming, and he tells his friends to store food, even though he knows it makes him sound like a crackpot.

Neither Can Put Out The Fire (cartoon)

Neither party can do it as shown in, A Peek Behind The Curtain At How Washington Really Works

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Today's Digest

Sorry, I don't have time today to separately post each of the stories I today found interesting.  Instead, here they are in a "quickie" digest form:

Obama Maps a Way Forward for a Health Overhaul

President Obama on Thursday evening presented his clearest plan yet to move forward with comprehensive health care legislation, saying that he wanted to meet with Democrats, Republicans and independent experts, lay out the facts for the American people and then, he said, “I think that we have got to move forward on a vote.”

Mr. Obama said he would first work with Congress to enact a jobs package ... But he also said that he would take the time to refute false statements and misunderstandings about the health care legislation and to hear alternate ideas from Republicans. After “several weeks” of work, he said, he would be prepared to live with whatever decision is made by Congress, but he also warned that voters, too, would be watching and would decide at the polls in November whether lawmakers had made the right choice.

The myth of Washington bipartisanship and the art of true compromise

Give this to Scott Brown: He's just been sworn in, and he's already having a positive impact on the governing dynamic in the capital. The president, key lawmakers and even the press have begun to focus on the dysfunctionality of the political process that now threatens all incumbents, irrespective of party and ideology. People have begun to talk to one another -- Obama with House Republicans, Jon Stewart with Bill O'Reilly -- and the tone has gotten noticeably more civil. In the 12-step program for overcoming our partisan addiction, we're now somewhere between Step 1 (acknowledging the problem) and Step 2 (accepting personal responsibility for doing something about it).

GOP senator blocking all Obama nominees

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) has placed a blanket hold on more than 70 Obama administration nominees because he wants funding for projects in his state.

Republican lawmaker's budget plan gets Obama's attention

Released two days before the unusual back-and-forth session between Obama and the GOP, the bill sponsored by Ryan and five other House members would seek to reduce the deficit and spur economic growth by cutting the tax rate on corporations, shifting future Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries to private insurance plans, and both raising the retirement age gradually to 70 and reducing the growth of benefits to make Social Security solvent ...

By Sunday, less than 72 hours after Obama praised Ryan, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag was highlighting potentially controversial elements of the plan. Ryan, meanwhile, was leading the GOP opposition to what he called the president's "far-left budget" and attacked the administration's support for a fiscal commission to examine how to reduce the national debt as "not leadership," but "punting."

Obama to get deficit commission with or without Republican help

President Obama will appoint a commission to tackle the nation's budget problems with or without the cooperation of Republican congressional leaders, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Thursday.

Lobbying Imperils Overhaul of Student Loans

An aggressive lobbying campaign by the nation’s biggest student lenders has now put one of the White House’s signature plans in peril, with lenders using sit-downs with lawmakers, town-hall-style meetings and petition drives to plead their case and stay in business. House and Senate aides say that the administration’s plan faces a far tougher fight than it did last fall, when the House passed its version.

"McGOP: The Virtues and Vices of Sameness"

Nate Silver:

I'm not going to comment too much on the topline findings of the Daily Kos / Research 2000 poll, of Republican identifiers, which many others have written about extensively. What I found more striking, actually, were the cross-tabs. On just about every question, the results showed essentially no difference based on age, gender, race, or geography -- once we've established that you're a Republican, these differences seem to be rendered moot.

Take, for instance, the statement that "Barack Obama is a socialist", which 63 percent of Republicans agreed with in the poll. How do the responses to this question break down by demographics? Well, they don't -- the percentage is just about the same for all groups.



How about the idea that Obama should be impeached? The same pattern holds ...

<Nate analyzes more of the poll's specific questions.>

This doesn't, by the way, mean that all Republicans are the same -- clearly there is some diversity of opinion within the party (although they're relatively small). What it does mean is that these ideological differences are just about all there are. If you take two Republican Congressional candidates and put them in the same primary, the outcome is liable to be the same whether that primary takes place in Alabama, Michigan, Idaho or Rhode Island, and whether the electorate is older or younger, more male or more female.

This accounts for what might be the Republicans' greatest strength as we head into the November midterms as well as their greatest liability. The strength is that they can somewhat comfortably adopt a nationalized, one-size-fits-all message. They don't have to worry about the constellation of constituencies that Democrats have: labor voters, Baby-boomer liberals, blacks, Hispanics, college-educated technocrats, libertarianish younger voters, etc. Their base is the same pretty much everywhere, and actuating a strategy that appeals to that base is not challenging.

The liability, meanwhile, is that while the Republican base might be the same pretty much everywhere, the rest of the electorate isn't. Some states and districts have different ratios of Republicans to Democratic and independent voters. Moreover, they have different types of Democratic and independent voters, some of whom may be amenable to the Republican message and others of whom won't be.

Thus, the Republicans are more likely to make suboptimal electoral decisions in individual districts -- we have a fresh example from last night, in fact, in IL-10, a D+6 district where the Republicans nominated the conservative Bob Dold rather than the moderate Beth Coulson. But the Democrats are likely to have a difficult time articulating an optimal national message -- and perhaps as a result a more difficult time governing.

The President's Q&A With Senate Democrats

Here's the whole thing:

Transcript

And here's CNN's highlight reel:

Finally, Clever Politics To Match His Clever Policies? Hopefully So.

Was last week's debate with House Republicans a game changing event?  Is the President finally realizing that proposing policies you want and believe in is a waste of time if you don't create the conditions for the Pavlovian GOP (unless the reward is electoral, they're not interested) to support them? Maybe according to the NY Times:

Emboldened by the response to President Obama’s face-off with House Republicans last week, the White House is intensifying its push to engage Congressional Republicans in policy negotiations as a way to share the burden of governing and put more scrutiny on Republican initiatives.

Top aides say Mr. Obama intends to follow through quickly on his State of the Union proposal for bipartisan White House brainstorming sessions. Republicans will also be invited to the White House this weekend to watch the Super Bowl, as well as to Camp David and other venues for social visits.

The outreach represents a marked shift in both strategy and substance by Mr. Obama and his allies at a time when Democrats are adapting to the loss of their 60-vote supermajority in the Senate and the president has been losing support among independent voters.

The White House’s goal is to show voters that Mr. Obama is willing to engage Republicans rather than govern in a partisan manner while forcing Republicans to make substantive compromises or be portrayed as obstructionist given their renewed power to block almost all legislation in the Senate.

While the strategy addresses some of Mr. Obama’s short-term political problems, it is not clear that it will help him with the more fundamental issue facing him as the leader of the party in power, which is showing voters results before Election Day, especially with unemployment in double digits and the health bill stalled.

For their part, Republicans said they were more than happy to showcase their proposals. They acknowledge that Democrats might have some ulterior motives in inviting more participation, but that it could still have benefits for both parties.

Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, when asked if Democrats might be trying to create a treacherous political situation for Republicans, responded, “They might be.”

“When we do policy and get good results, there is always the possibility that Democrats might gain a little politically,” he said. “But I think our main job here is to help the country.”

On Tuesday in Nashua, N.H., Mr. Obama showcased the new approach, urging Republicans to come forward with their ideas while chiding them for their resistance to various initiatives in the hopes of achieving short-term political gain.

“I’ve said to the Republicans, show me what you’ve got,” Mr. Obama told his audience while discussing the stalled health care legislation. “You’ve been sitting on the sidelines criticizing what we’re proposing.”

“You got a better idea,” he added later, “bring it on.”

Many Democrats say they believe that Republicans have been able to gain the advantage over the past year by conducting “hit and run” political attacks that allow the opposition to tear down Democratic proposals without much attention being paid to the Republican alternatives. They say that increased engagement could remedy that disparity.

"Despite his roots, Obama struggles to show he's connected to middle class"

Wash Post:

... During his recent tour of blue-collar towns, factories and burger joints, Obama has tried to reconcile two pieces of his reputation. He turned down high-paying jobs after graduating from Harvard Law School and became a community organizer, compelled by the experience of growing up with a single mother who sometimes lived on food stamps. He married a woman from a working-class family on the South Side of Chicago, and they rented a walk-up condominium in Hyde Park.

But during his campaign for the presidency, Obama bungled some of his early attempts to connect with blue-collar workers, complaining about the price of arugula at Whole Foods and visiting a bowling alley only to roll an embarrassing score of 37. Some political rivals continue to disparage him as an elitist. Even his aides have sometimes worried that his intellect can be mistaken for condescension and that his composure can seem like detachment.

Those shortcomings were evident last month when Obama invited the previous two presidents to join him at the White House for a news conference about the U.S. relief effort in Haiti. George W. Bush was simple and frank: "Just send us your cash," he said. Bill Clinton spoke without notes and verged on tears as he recalled his personal connection to the devastated country: "I have no words to say what I feel," he said. "I had meals with people who are dead." Obama, meanwhile, spoke from prepared notes, looking all business, glancing to his left and to his right to establish eye contact while standing with perfect posture behind the lectern.

In the two weeks since, Obama appears to have learned from his predecessors' trademark strengths. He has traveled to Ohio, Baltimore, Florida and New Hampshire, each time emphasizing how much he enjoys leaving the strictures of the White House and the divisiveness of Washington. Like Clinton, he has told stories about his own struggles, recalling the 15 years he spent paying off student loans and the "family emergency" that forced him to cash out his 401(k). Like Bush, he has favored simple language and relatable analogies.

On life in Washington: "It can drive you crazy."

On one of the good things about the White House: "You live above the store."

On his relationship with the mayor of Elyria, Ohio: "He and I shared a burger at Smitty's."

On the media: "People with the pens and pencils."

On his reason for visiting a machine company in Baltimore: "I just like gettin' out of the White House, and then I like tooling around companies that are actually making stuff."

So it was little surprise in New Hampshire that, after Obama visited one manufacturing business, he was introduced at his town hall by the owner of another manufacturing business. Obama answered six questions from the crowd at a packed high school gym, referring to "folks" 13 times before aides indicated he had run out of time.

He lingered afterward for five minutes, shaking hands, slapping backs and exchanging hugs while his assistant, Reggie Love, followed to collect business cards and phone numbers. At 3:30 p.m., less than three hours after he landed in New Hampshire, Obama peeled away from the crowd, pointing apologetically at a cadre of aides and Secret Service agents who were suggesting it was time to go. The moment for direct connection had passed. Now it was back to the motorcade, onto his 166th flight aboard Air Force One and off to the White House -- back to a life apart.

"The War Within" The GOP: A California Case Study

Wash Post:

A few facts reveal just how far the Republican Party has fallen in California.

A Republican hasn't carried the state in a presidential contest since 1988. The last time a California GOP candidate won a U.S. Senate election was in the same decade. Nowadays, Republicans' share of the state's registered voters has shrunk to 31 percent, a historic low.

"There are large parts of the state where the party is irrelevant," said Allan Hoffenblum, a well-known California political analyst who has been a campaign manager for Republicans in the state. "It's not even a statewide party, really."

But few stories better reflect the divisions and disarray among state Republicans than the saga of an obscure Southern California assemblyman.

He was unknown even by political junkies in the region until early this year. Then, with one vote, conservative Assembly member Anthony Adams became a symbol of California Republicans' chaos and destructive divisions. The story of the man who was once regarded as a loyal foot soldier exposed the toxic infighting that has come to define the party.

Now he became the latest straw dog in a fight much larger than anything about himself, an unlikely proxy in a broadening war for the heart of the Republican Party's, one engulfing Republicans nationwide. In New York, conservatives and more moderate party members fiercely contested a congressional seat that had drawn Sarah Palin into the fray on behalf of the party's right. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a darling of conservatives, found himself in a political death match against fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, who had begun a primary challenge against him. The Adams skirmish was part of a pitched battle led by conservatives furious at those who, they thought, had not demonstrated loyalty to their principles.

When he cast an aye vote for Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2009-2010 state budget, which included about $12.5 billion in tax increases, Adams instantly became a pariah in conservative GOP circles -- targeted for political extinction.<Continue reading.>

"The various parts of the conservative movement are coming together"

The Wash Post on what Conservatives have learned from the Left's Net Roots and how "there isn't a centralized right-wing conspiracy, but it really is a vast right-wing conspiracy":

With the Democratic defeat in the recent special senatorial election in Massachusetts, engineered in part by tea-party activists working with several Beltway-based groups, the conservative movement is more energized than it has been in years.

It is also more unified. Disputes festered between economic and social conservatives during the Bush years, but they have eased amid what all sides decry as Obama's liberal agenda. "Nothing unites like a common enemy," said Colin Hanna, president of the conservative group Let Freedom Ring.

The movement that many date to the 1955 founding of William F. Buckley's venerable National Review now spreads through new media. Learning from the Democratic "Net roots," conservatives use Twitter and Facebook to plan such events as the recent demonstrations against health-care reform at the Capitol.

"We're experts at [finding] pro-lifers on Facebook," said Kristan Hawkins, executive director of Arlington-based Students for Life of America, and one of numerous social conservatives who have worked closely with economic conservatives to fight Democratic health bills.

Such coordination is increasing. Inside the Beltway, much of it is fueled by the Conservative Action Project (CAP), a new group of conservative leaders chaired by Reagan-era attorney general Edwin Meese III. CAP, whose influential memos "for the movement" circulate on Capitol Hill, is an offshoot of the Council for National Policy, a highly secretive organization of conservative leaders and donors.

"There is a definite sense that the various parts of the conservative movement are coming together," said Regnery, a leading CAP member.

CAP has worked with some of the movement's key national players, who include bloggers such as Erickson and Michelle Malkin and the State Policy Network, a consortium of 57 conservative and libertarian think tanks. One of them, the Pelican Institute for Public Policy in New Orleans, recently hosted a speech by James O'Keefe, the conservative activist charged last week with entering a federal building under false pretenses in an alleged plot to tamper with telephones in the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) ... 

The most prominent outside-the-Beltway force is the tea-party movement. "We're the grass-roots, boots-on-the-ground army," said Jenny Beth Martin, a Tea Party Patriots national coordinator. "If the D.C. groups have a message that resonates with our people, we work hard to help get it out."

Beltway organizations have had more involvement in the tea parties, long portrayed as largely organic expressions of populist anger, than most conservatives have acknowledged. The first nationwide tea parties on Feb. 27 were co-sponsored by Americans for Tax Reform, whose president, Grover Norquist, is a paragon of the D.C. conservative establishment, and the Arlington-based American Spectator.

The Spectator's then-managing editor organized the rally near the White House that day, according to promotional materials and participants.

Some conservatives object to talk of coordination, and especially of a "vast right-wing conspiracy," a term used by Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1998 to describe her husband's political enemies, and recently repeated by former president Bill Clinton about Obama.

"There is no conservative cabal, where the talk-radio guys get together with the Internet guys, who get together with the Fox News guys, who get together with a Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, and the talking points go out," said Mark Levin, a leading conservative talk-radio host.

Others say the caricature has elements of truth. "What was once a very centralized movement is now very diffuse, across the country," said Erickson, whose "Morning Briefing Emails" have grown from 498 subscribers when they started in February to nearly 70,000. "There isn't a centralized right-wing conspiracy, but it really is a vast right-wing conspiracy."

What is unclear is whether the energy on the right will benefit the Republican Party. Many conservatives, especially tea-party groups, are deeply suspicious of party moderates, and the results of November's House race in Upstate New York still resonate. Conservative opposition to the Republican candidate, state Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, helped get Democrat Bill Owens elected.

"Conservatives could care less if there's an R in front of your name," said Tom Gaitens, a Florida member of Glenn Beck's 9.12 Project, which the Fox News host -- a leading Obama critic -- announced on the air in March. It has hundreds of chapters that work with tea-party groups. 

Fissures Within The GOP Impossible To Paper Over

NY Times:

Republican leaders burst into applause here the other day as their luncheon speaker, Gov. Linda Lingle of Hawaii, shared the latest analysis by a Washington Congressional handicapper: The way things are heading, she read, “you can count on the Democratic majority in the House being toast this fall.”

But as the Republican National Committee ended its winter meeting here on Saturday, party leaders, if jubilant over a string of election victories and declining support for President Obama, were also questioning whether they could take full advantage of the opening Democrats had handed them.

At a moment of what appears to be great if unexpected opportunity, the Republican Party continues to struggle with disputes over ideology and tactics, as well as what party leaders say is an absence of strong figures to lead it back to power, from the party chairman to prospective presidential candidates.

From a sunny perch 5,000 miles from chilly Washington, the party leaders watched Republican members of Congress try to keep their balance as Mr. Obama sought to reclaim the mantle of reasonable bipartisanship in his State of the Union address on Wednesday night and his remarkable public debate in Baltimore with House members on Friday.

At stake, they knew, was the heart of the strategy they had pursued for the last year and had intended to carry into the midterm elections: remaining unified to block the White House at every turn, rallying the conservative base but leaving Republicans vulnerable to being portrayed as the obstructionist party of no.

“We have the wind at our back,” said Katon Dawson, the former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party. “We just have to find our momentum.”

Over all, it is almost surely better being the Republican Party as the 2010 election approaches. The Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race was a boost to party spirits and an opportunity to press the case that Mr. Obama had fundamentally misread the electorate.

But as the president was quick to point out, with a 41st vote in the Senate and the ability to block legislation through filibuster come pressure on Republicans to share in the political risks of making hard choices. “The responsibility to govern is now yours as well,” Mr. Obama said in his State of the Union speech, a message that was certainly heard by party leaders here in Honolulu.

Christopher C. Healy, the chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party, said Republicans were justified in blocking what he described as a drastic overreaching by Mr. Obama. Still, Mr. Healy acknowledged that Republicans had to be careful about being seen as overly partisan and would now be under increasing pressure to offer a competing vision of governing.

“We can’t be just about saying no,” he said. “But we have not completed the transition yet from defeated incumbent party. We have to position ourselves as an alternative and create enthusiasm for our positions.”

Many of the obstacles facing Republicans were on display in Honolulu. The party chairman, Michael Steele, is an unsettling figure within his own party, as became clear when Ms. Lingle offered a public reprimand to party members for criticizing Mr. Steele, if anonymously, to reporters. “Please don’t do a rebuke in my home state of Hawaii, not to my friend Michael Steele,” she said, as her audience rustled with discomfort ...

With Mr. Obama seeking to strike a different tone at the beginning of his second year in office, Republicans back in Washington were responding with conciliatory phrases, if not yet substantive compromises.

“We’re not always going to agree, but I think it did become clear in the conversation today with the president that there are issues and items that we do agree upon,” Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican House leader, said Friday after the session with the president in Baltimore. Mr. Boehner suggested that the two parties pull out of complicated legislation smaller items they could agree on and vote together on those.

But here in Honolulu, the strains within the party over conservative principles versus political pragmatism played out in a sharp and public way, especially as the party establishment struggled to deal with the demands of the Tea Party movement. Republican leaders succeeded in derailing a resolution proposed by conservatives, led by James Bopp Jr. of Indiana, which would have required candidates to agree to a list of conservative positions to get party support.

The GOP's Challenge This November (cartoons)

Media Comparison: The "strategy for breaking the partisan logjam holding up President Obama’s agenda" Begins To Come Into Focus

Or at least the NY Times thinks so. The Wash Post isn't so sure, however.  As regular followers of our Media Comparisons know, there is no "truth" ... just different news sources interpretations of "truth."

The White House on Thursday signaled the outlines of its strategy for breaking the partisan logjam holding up President Obama’s agenda, saying Democrats would move quickly to underline their commitment to fixing the broken economy and to build an election-year case against Republicans if they do not cooperate.

With Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul stalled on Capitol Hill, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview that Democrats would try to act first on job creation, reducing the deficit and imposing tighter regulation on banks before returning to the health measure, the president’s top priority from last year.

But Mr. Obama quickly got a taste of how difficult it would be to bring the opposition party on board.

One day after the president upbraided Congress in his State of the Union address for excessive partisanship, Senate Republicans voted en masse against a plan to require that new spending not add to the deficit (it passed anyway as all 60 members of the Democratic caucus hung together). And some Republicans peremptorily dismissed Mr. Obama’s main job-creating proposal, expressing no interest in using $30 billion in bank bailout money for business tax credits.

“I think there is a right way and a wrong way to do it, and that is not the right way,” said Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican heading the effort to elect more Republicans to the Senate.

On Friday, Mr. Obama will travel to Baltimore to announce specifics of his jobs plan, including a proposed $5,000 tax credit for small businesses for each new employee they hire in 2010. While there, he will address House Republicans at a retreat they are holding.

The instant Republican resistance to the jobs plan — coupled with a vote this week to kill a deficit-reduction panel that had been initiated with high bipartisan hopes — illustrated the chasm between the two parties and the difficulties Mr. Obama faces if he is serious about trying to work with an energized opposition.

Increasingly confident of their prospects after the Massachusetts Senate victory, Republicans are disinclined to give ground in policy debates and appear willing to stick with their near-unanimous opposition to major initiatives unless Democrats offer significant concessions.

“House Republicans will seize the opportunity in respectful terms, but candid and frank terms, and make it clear to the president that we have better solutions,” said Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the chairman of the House Republican Conference.

The administration showed no signs of capitulating either, with officials saying the White House will pursue a strategy of trying to shame Republicans whenever they stand in lock-step against Mr. Obama. In an interview Thursday, Mr. Emanuel warned that Republicans would suffer politically for their opposition to the pay-as-you-go plan.

Media Comparison: "Democrats confused about path ahead"

Or at least the Wash Post thinks so. The NY Times isn't so sure, however.  As regular followers of our Media Comparisons know, there is no "truth," just different news sources interpretations of "truth."

A day after President Obama called on them to renew efforts to pass his ambitious agenda, congressional Democrats remained in disarray Thursday about how to move forward, with at least some pointing at the White House as the cause of the legislative standstill gripping Capitol Hill.

Democrats left town early Thursday weighing their next steps on everything from the stalled health-care bill to competing job-creation packages. Before they departed, some criticized Obama for casting blame on the Senate, where moderates felt singled out for ridicule. Others sought to shift the burden to the GOP, latching on to Obama's call for Republicans to share responsibility for governing after a devastating special-election loss left Democrats a vote shy of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Still others said the president's calls for bipartisanship were wishful thinking and suggested that daring Republicans to block their ambitious agenda would set up a "liberating" contrast for November's midterm elections.

"We also have the responsibility, if we can't find that common ground, to stand our ground on principles," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), rejecting bipartisanship as a goal unto itself. "If we can't find a bipartisan way to do it, we are not going to say, 'Well, if it is not bipartisan, we are not going to do it.' We are going to do what we believe."

The first order of business continues to be the far-reaching health-care bill that Obama once considered the cornerstone of his domestic agenda but that took a back seat to the economy in his State of the Union address Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said he felt "a little bit" more confident about the health-care bill's prospects after Obama sought to rally the 48 million Americans who watched the speech.

"I think he did a good job of laying out the problem," Reid said.

Reid and Pelosi said they remain stalled on the most likely option for moving ahead on health-care reform. That would require the Senate to pass a bill, through a parliamentary move requiring a simple majority, resolving issues in its version of the legislation that have prompted objections from House Democrats. That would allow the House to then approve the Senate's measure, thus avoiding another vote on the entire bill in the Senate, where it would almost certainly face a successful 41-vote filibuster by Republicans.

Pelosi, reiterating her opposition to simply passing the Senate legislation, said it is only "75 percent the same" as the House bill and mocked Obama for suggesting that the two measures are 90 percent similar.

More Obama's Predicament Cartoons

 

The GOP Is Naive In Thinking Obama Is The Only One With A Problem (cartoon)

If you're unsure what this cartoon is about, check out this and this.

Tea Partiers, By Their Very Nature, Have Trouble Organizing

As posted in, Ignore This Week's CW: The GOP's Mid-Term Election Problems Are Far Worse Than The Dems', the GOP has two fundamental problems with the Tea Partiers: they pose an existential threat and they can't organize. This NY Times article elaborates on the latter point:

A Tea Party convention billed as the coming together of the grass-roots groups that began sprouting up around the country a year ago is unraveling as sponsors and participants pull out to protest its expense and express concerns about “profiteering.”

The convention’s difficulties highlight the fractiousness of the Tea Party groups, and the considerable suspicions among their members of anything that suggests the establishment.

The convention, to be held in Nashville in early February, made a splash by attracting big-name politicians. (Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska is scheduled to deliver the keynote speech.) But some groups have criticized the cost — $549 per ticket and a $9.95 fee, plus hotel and airfare — as out of reach for the average tea partier. And they have balked at Ms. Palin’s speaking fee, which news reports have put at $100,000, a figure that organizers will not confirm or deny.

Tea Party events exploded last winter, as increasingly large gatherings protested the federal stimulus bill, government bailouts and proposed health care legislation. While they vary by name, specific tenets and relative embrace of anarchy, such groups tend to unite around fiscal conservatism and a belief that the federal government — whether led by Republicans or Democrats — has overstepped its constitutional powers.

Tea Party Nation, the convention organizer, started as a social networking site for the groups last year, a kind of Facebook for conservatives to “form bonds, network and make plans for action.” But its founders, former sponsors and participants are now trading accusations.

Philip Glass, the national director of the National Precinct Alliance, announced late Sunday that “amid growing controversy” around the convention, his organization would no longer participate. His group seeks to take over the Republican Party from the bottom by filling the ranks of local and state parties with grass-roots conservatives, and Mr. Glass had been scheduled to lead workshops on its strategy.

“We are very concerned about the appearance of T.P.N. profiteering and exploitation of the grass-roots movement,” he said in a statement. “We were under the impression that T.P.N. was a nonprofit organization like N.P.A., interested only in uniting and educating Tea Party activists on how to make a real difference in the political arena.”

Mr. Glass said he was also concerned about the role in the convention of groups like Tea Party Express, which has held rallies across the country through two bus tours, and FreedomWorks, a Tea Party umbrella. He called them “Republican National Committee-related groups,” and added, “At best, it creates the appearance of an R.N.C. hijacking; at worst, it is one.”

Erick Erickson, the editor of the influential conservative blog RedState.com, wrote this month that something seemed “scammy” about the convention. And the American Liberty Alliance withdrew as a sponsor after its members expressed concerns about the convention’s finances being channeled through private bank accounts and its organizer being “for profit.” ...

Sherry Phillips, who founded and runs Tea Party Nation with her husband, Judson, said Monday that it was a nonprofit group ... She declined to comment on Ms. Palin’s speaking fee.

“If there is any profit,” Ms. Phillips said, “the money will go toward furthering the cause of conservatism.”

"Democrats Seek to Counter Court Ruling on Political Spending"

Wall St Journal:

Democrats are exploring ways to counter a Supreme Court ruling that threw out a century of limits on corporate political spending, hoping it will hand them a populist issue to stem a Republican tide rising on public anger.

President Barack Obama devoted his weekly address to the decision, calling it a victory for "special interests and their lobbyists." He cited "one of the great Republican presidents, Teddy Roosevelt," who "warned of the impact of unbridled, corporate spending" on elections.

Possible legislation includes requiring corporations to obtain shareholder approval before funding political advertisements and blocking companies from deducting election spending as a business expense on their taxes.

Another proposal, borrowed from existing rules for political candidates, is requiring "the CEO of the corporation to make a declaration at the end of an ad saying, 'I'm the CEO of X Corp. and I approved this ad,' " said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), who heads the House Democrats' campaign committee ...

Friday, White House Special Counsel Norman Eisen met to discuss options with aides to Mr. Van Hollen and Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), as well as Justice Department staff and Fred Wertheimer, a longtime activist on campaign-finance issues, officials said.

Mr. Van Hollen said Democrats also are weighing an effort to bar companies that received federal bailouts and big government contractors from electioneering, similar to rules affecting federal employees.

Most Republicans hailed the court's decision as victory for free speech. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) said it would help individuals acting "collectively through a corporation."

Democrats hope to paint the Republican position as favoring "even more big money and corporate special interests influencing the outcome of elections," Mr. Van Hollen said. "That should be a wake-up call to many in the Tea Party movement," who, as in last week's Senate election in Massachusetts, have flocked to Republican candidates, he said ...

The Democrats' effort recalls the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first bill signed into law by Mr. Obama when he took office a year ago. The union-backed law negated a 2007 Supreme Court decision that the president castigated during his campaign for making it harder for women to file discrimination claims.

Previously, Republicans sometimes have backed campaign-finance regulations. This year likely will be different. Even Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), who co-authored the bipartisan 2002 McCain-Feingold act cracking down on corporate electioneering, said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation" that little could be done. "The Supreme Court has spoken," he said, predicting "an inundation of special-interest money into political campaigns." ...

Some analysts expect a flood of corporate and union money to fuel an increase in political commercials, particularly negative attack ads. Others are skeptical.

Obama's Predicament Cartoons

Massachuestts' Lessons For The Grass Roots

Lynn DePillis:

The senate special election in Massachusetts was, for reasons that have been articulated on this site and others, a complete disaster. The Coakley campaign was hopelessly inept. The White House didn’t step in until too late. An insurgent tea party fringe was too much to beat back.

It was also, however, the first electoral test of the operation that’s designed, in part, to overcome these sorts of situations: Organizing for America, the skeleton of Barack Obama’s campaign apparatus that morphed into the Democratic National Committee’s grassroots arm. Since its debut this time last year, the group has focused almost exclusively on health care reform; it also sent out a few emails on behalf of Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey.

Once Martha Coakley’s peril became apparent, OFA went into emergency rescue mode, sending many of its top operatives to Boston and mobilizing chapters across the country to place calls into the state. It wasn’t enough to save Coakley’s candidacy, but it might have saved the Democrats from an even more embarrassing defeat. And, crucially for future races, this first outing tells us a few things about what OFA is doing right, and what it’s doing wrong. <Continue reading.>

Poll: 57% Think Corp Contributions Are Free Speech Yet 76% Want Limits Placed

Gallup:

Americans' broad views about corporate spending in elections generally accord with the Supreme Court's decision Thursday that abolished some decades-old restrictions on corporate political activity. Fifty-seven percent of Americans consider campaign donations to be a protected form of free speech, and 55% say corporate and union donations should be treated the same way under the law as donations from individuals are. At the same time, the majority think it is more important to limit campaign donations than to protect this free-speech right.

The free-speech question elicits uncommon agreement across party lines. More than 6 in 10 Republicans and Democrats believe campaign donations are a protected form of free speech, but fewer than half of independents (48%) agree.

Public attitudes about the issues involved in the court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision come from a nationwide Gallup survey sponsored by the nonpartisan First Amendment Center. The poll was conducted Oct. 1-2, 2009, shortly after the high court heard concluding arguments in the case.

Americans Favor Limits on Contributions

While corporations and unions are still barred under a 1907 law from making donations directly to federal candidates, the court's decision Thursday allows organizations to run ads in direct support of or opposition to specific candidates; it also overturns 2002 McCain-Feingold restrictions on how close to elections corporate-sponsored ads can run.

"More specifically, 61% of Americans think the government should be able to limit the amount of money individuals can contribute to candidates and 76% think it should be able to limit the amount corporations or unions can give."

The 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case underscores the tension between protecting free speech and giving certain groups or individuals undue influence over election campaigns. Another poll question asked Americans to weigh the two considerations and say which is the greater priority for them: placing limits on how much individuals, corporations, and unions can contribute to campaigns or protecting the rights of these groups to freely support political campaigns. By 52% to 41%, Americans say placing limits on contributions is paramount for them.

More specifically, 61% of Americans think the government should be able to limit the amount of money individuals can contribute to candidates and 76% think it should be able to limit the amount corporations or unions can give.

Thus, it would appear that, regardless of Americans' support for the principle that campaign donations are a form of political speech, and that corporations and unions should get the same treatment as individuals, they are likely to have significant concerns about the practical effect of the court's ruling, that is, more corporate and union money being poured into elections.

Bottom Line

Prior to now, while corporations and unions could run issue-based ads, they could not spend a penny on candidates, except through political action committees. Now that they can run such ads, the country could be in store for major changes in the way campaigns are conducted. Does the ruling square with Americans' views on campaign contribution limits? In some respects, yes. In others, it depends on whether Americans decide that independent expenditures are tantamount to political "contributions" or are merely free speech.

The Democratic Party's "festering old perceptions have come back with a fury."

Thomas Edsell:

When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, he decisively demonstrated that he was not bound by Democratic orthodoxy. He called for merit pay, expanding charter schools, and firing incompetent teachers. He supported President Bush’s faith-based initiatives providing federal money to religious charities.  He endorsed the Supreme Court's decision overturning a handgun ban in the nation’s capital, while faulting the Court’s opposition to the death penalty for child rape. 

Once in office, however, Obama failed to sustain his carefully calibrated positioning. And then he compounded this failing. White, middle-class voters ceased to think of him as a protector of their interests. There was the bank bailout and his concessions to Wall Street on financial reform. While expanding his political capital on health care reform, he failed to make a dent in unemployment. 

But of all these political miscalculations (and unfortunate circumstances), his push for health care reform stands above the rest. He simply failed to anticipate the animosity that his proposal to cover the uninsured and to subsidize health care for the poor would generate.

The harsh reality is many voters consider the health care bill a multibillion-dollar transfer of taxpayer money to the uninsured, a population disproportionately, although by no means exclusively, made up of the poor, African Americans, Latinos, single parents, and the long-term unemployed. Providing medical care to this population is an explicit goal of the legislation, and a worthy goal, but political suicide in the current environment.

As everyone knows, the United States is undergoing a profound demographic transformation. Non-Hispanic whites are likely to become a minority by the year 2042. This shift underlies the theory of a Democratic realignment: Pro-Democratic groups are growing while the pro-Republican white population is declining.

There is evidence, however, that trends that have recently boosted Democratic prospects may also be a key factor in undermining the capacity of the population for empathy, and, thus, its receptivity to programs like health care reform.

Robert Putnam, a Harvard sociologist and author of the influential 2000 book, Bowling Alone, offers an interpretation of what is going on. In 2007, Putnam published “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century,” a study that reaches conclusions painful to those committed to diversity and equality: “New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods residents of all races tend to 'hunker down.' Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.”

He continues: “[I]nhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television. Note that this pattern encompasses attitudes and behavior, bridging and bonding social capital, public and private connections. Diversity, at least in the short run, seems to bring out the turtle in all of us.”

Putnam’s findings offer critical insight into the explosive growth of the Tea Party movement and the strikingly sudden collapse of support for the Democratic Party. They suggest that the populace, especially the white populace, is on a psychic hair trigger. The demographic transformation of the country and the birth of multicultural America have made this group extremely status anxious—an anxiety that the recession obviously heightens. They are in a mood, to borrow Putnam’s phrase, to “hunker down.” 

And it is precisely this anxiety that is such an impediment to empathy. They view themselves as only marginally better off than those they perceive as the recipients of new government benefits. They look at health care reform and worry that they have little or nothing to gain and much to lose. In the end, Democrats failed to tailor their salesmanship of health care reform to allay the qualms of these voters, of the white working class.

What this suggests is that many analyses of the elections of 2006 and 2008 only saw part of the picture.

Playing Field Improves For GOP, Though Existential Primary Fights Loom

NY Times:

Republicans are luring new candidates into House and Senate races, and the number of seats up for grabs in November appears to be growing, setting up a midterm election likely to be harder fought than anyone anticipated before the party’s big victory in Massachusetts last week.

Republicans still face many obstacles, not least a number of potentially divisive primaries in coming months that will highlight the deep ideological rifts within the party. But in the days since Republicans claimed the Senate seat that Edward M. Kennedy had held for decades, upending assumptions in both parties about the political landscape for 2010, they have seen not just a jolt of energy and optimism but also more concrete opportunities to take on Democrats.

Just since Tuesday, half a dozen Republicans have expressed interest in challenging Democrats in House races in New York, Pennsylvania and potentially Massachusetts, party officials said.

“I think it was inspiring and gave voice to a lot of people,” said Mike Fitzpatrick, a former one-term Republican congressman from the Philadelphia suburbs who announced on Saturday that he would try to reclaim his old seat from Representative Patrick J. Murphy, a Democrat ...

Stuart Rothenberg, a political analyst who follows Congressional races, said a report he will release Monday will count 58 Democratic House seats in play, up from 47 in December. The number of Republican seats in play has held at 14 in that period, he said. And Democrats expect more of their incumbents to retire, which could put additional seats at risk.

Democratic officials said Sunday night that Representative Marion Berry of Arkansas was expected to announce plans to retire Monday, making him the first to quit since the Massachusetts election and opening up another competitive race.

Republicans need a net gain of 40 seats to regain control of the House. That still seems unlikely, though hardly impossible.

Mr. Rothenberg lists seven Democratic Senate seats and four Republican seats in play; that number will not change on Monday, though Mr. Rothenberg recently rated Republicans as likely to take over Mrs. Lincoln’s seat in Arkansas.

“The Republicans are expanding the playing field, no doubt about that,” Mr. Rothenberg said, describing it as a continuing Democratic deterioration that began late last summer.

But the outlook for November remains hard to discern for several reasons. The Supreme Court decision last week overturning limits on corporate money in campaigns could alter races in ways difficult to predict, though the conventional wisdom is that Republicans will benefit most.

President Obama and the Democrats are reorganizing to blunt any advantage Republicans might have gained from the burst of angry populism that seems to be coursing through both parties.

The White House has not given up on passing a health care bill, and there is still time for the economy to improve in a way that could benefit the president and his party. And while Republicans are benefiting now from a wave of optimism, they also face a thicket of primary fights, starting in Illinois on Feb. 2, which could weaken their nominees.

Democrats have not been spared primary battling. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who switched to the Democratic Party from the Republican last year, faces a primary challenge on the left from Representative Joe Sestak. The party also faces competitive Senate primaries in Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio, reflecting, among other issues, strains between liberals and centrists.

But the deeper intramural divisions are within the Republican Party, a sign of the intensity and unpredictability of the grass-roots conservative movement.

Across the country, Republican candidates are running as outsiders with the backing of conservative Tea Party groups, challenging Republicans identified with the party establishment. Several analysts said the victory in the Massachusetts Senate race of Scott Brown, a Republican who ran with Tea Party support, could encourage more challenges and drive incumbents further right.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, is facing a primary challenge from former Representative J. D. Hayworth, who is seeking to exploit longstanding unease among conservatives toward Mr. McCain.

Highly contested and potentially divisive Senate primaries are also shaping up in California, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Nevada and New Hampshire.

The Illinois primary next week is one example where a Senate candidate favored by the Republican establishment, Representative Mark Steven Kirk, has to deal with the complications of a challenge from the right. Mr. Kirk has veered right on issues like climate change, after originally voting for a Democratic bill on the subject in the House.

In Kentucky, Trey Grayson, the secretary of state, faces a stiff challenge from Dr. Rand Paul, a Tea Party candidate and a son of Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a Republican presidential candidate in 2008. If Mr. Paul wins — and early polling suggests he could — a Democrat would be favored to win the seat, now held by Jim Bunning, a Republican who is not seeking re-election.

The debate over whether the party needs to embrace conservative roots or broaden its appeal will continue this week in Honolulu, where the Republican National Committee is girding to address a so-called purity resolution introduced by conservative leaders. The resolution requires Republican candidates to support at least 8 of 10 conservative positions — on issues including abortion, same-sex marriage and immigration — or be cut off from party financing and support.

Party officials said they were hopeful that they could head off the resolution, though probably not without a contentious debate.

Republicans said that the glut of candidates was evidence of the party’s robustness, and that primaries were as likely to be helpful as damaging to the party’s hopes in November.

“There’s a ton of primaries on the Republican side,” said Curt Anderson, a senior adviser to Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. “I have always been of the camp that that’s a healthy thing. I know Democrats say: ‘They are divided. They have primaries.’ I’m like, throw me in the briar patch — we have people who want to run for office.”

Democrats have seized on this as evidence of the obstacles Republicans face. Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that by his count, Republicans face robust primaries in at least 55 districts. “The dynamic is to drive the winner way to the right,” Mr. Van Hollen said, “which does risk losing the moderate and independent vote.”

Charlie Cook, an analyst of Congressional races, said these contested primaries could prove to be a plus for Republicans, in the form of increased contributions, volunteers and votes. But, Mr. Cook said, “If it helps eccentric candidates who are not electable in a general election get the nomination, that’s a problem, or if Tea Party candidates lose primaries and Tea Party supporters stay home, that’s a problem.”

After Coakley's Defeat, Barrier for Women in Massachusetts Still Stands

NY Times:

The defeat of Martha Coakley in last week’s special election to fill the Senate seat that was long held by Edward M. Kennedy has reignited the debate over whether there is a glass ceiling for women in Massachusetts politics.

“Welcome to liberal Massachusetts — we’re not,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic political consultant. “And if you didn’t believe it before, anyone who thinks that Massachusetts is liberal in light of Tuesday’s results need only look at the record and lack of success women have had in Massachusetts politics. That should just put it away for good.”

For decades, women have been unable to gain a solid political toehold in Massachusetts, a state long dominated by male political figures. Five women in Massachusetts’s history — including Ms. Coakley, the attorney general — have been elected to statewide constitutional office, and four have been elected to the House of Representatives.

Currently, the only women to hold high elective office are Ms. Coakley, Representative Niki Tsongas and the State Senate president, Therese Murray.

“Women in Massachusetts have had a hard time winning statewide office and holding it if they got it,” said Dan Payne, a Democratic strategist. One reason, he said, is that there are not enough women running at lower political levels to move up.

Ms. Murray, the first woman to be State Senate president and the 16th woman elected to the body since 1790, has been cultivating a network of politically involved women to run for local office or raise money for female candidates through forums and mentoring groups. And in Cambridge, the Barbara Lee Family Foundation analyzes the role of women in politics and writes guidebooks to help them get elected.

“I think the guys have done a better job with having a pipeline and a team effort in the past,” Ms. Murray said. “We’re in the process of making it strong for women, and we have to make it stronger.” But doing so has been particularly difficult ...

“For women to run, they have to break through the way things have been done,” said Ms. Hunt, who is also the Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School.

Mr. Payne said he believed women had given Ms. Coakley a late push in her primary victory against three male opponents. But he said Ms. Coakley never mentioned her gender or that she would have been the state’s first female United States senator, while Scott Brown, her opponent, ran “a macho, testosterone campaign,” driving around the state in a pickup. (No tallies of the vote by gender were available.)

Ignore This Week's CW: The GOP's Mid-Term Election Problems Are Far Worse Than The Dems'

While the superficial, meme-of-the-day pundits keep blathering on about how ominous a signe the Mass election was for Dem's November election chances, unnoticed by most CW regurgitaters, the GOP is having it's own, far more fundamental problems.

While the problems for the Dems are primarily tactical (how do they better get their message--especially on the benefits of health care reform--out, what do they have to do to run better campaigns, etc), the Wash Post story below makes clear that the GOP is facing a far more difficult to fix existential threat from the extreme right. Further, the Dems have a clear leader, who seems to have woken to the fact that he's going to have to lead by emotions not just reason (better late than never!); the leaderless GOP on the other hand, is facing not only an unorganized opposition but an opposition tempermentally opposed to improving its effectiveness by becoming organized.

By all rights, Tom Perriello should have almost no chance to win reelection to Congress. He's a stimulus-backing, health-care-reform-loving, cap-and-trade-supporting liberal Democrat who represents a conservative central Virginia district where antipathy to the president and all things Washington runs high.

Perhaps too high. Perriello's opponents are so divided about who is the best conservative to replace him that they are transforming what should be a gimme for Republicans into a national emblem of GOP strife, potentially setting up a replay of the special election in Upstate New York in November that handed the Democrats a seat in a region they hadn't represented in more than 100 years.

As in New York, Republican leaders in Virginia are backing a moderate state lawmaker, Sen. Robert Hurt, whose record enrages many conservatives, including a disparate band of Tea Party activists. To them, Hurt is not a real conservative because of his past support for tax increases, and they're promising a third-party challenge if he wins the nomination. And lurking on the sidelines is Virgil H. Goode Jr., the former GOP congressman who lost to Perriello by 727 votes and has hinted at running as an independent.

"We want a conservative, not a situational Republican," said Laurence Verga, a business owner from the Charlottesville area and one of five Tea Party candidates in the Republican primary. "I really believe the 5th District congressional election is about the soul of American politics."

At a time when Republicans are ecstatic over Scott Brown's astonishing victory in last week's special election for the late Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts, the race in Virginia's 5th is a reminder of the dangerous undertow created by the intense passion that motivates the Tea Party movement and other conservatives.

That enthusiasm is a boon to Republicans in a liberal place like Massachusetts because conservative are so desperate to win they're willing to unite behind a single candidate, even if some of that candidate's positions are anathema to many. Brown, for instance, supports abortion rights.

But in such places as Virginia's 5th District, conservatives are uncompromising. Their goal isn't simply to reclaim the seat from Democrats: They want to fill it with only the purest of conservatives.

Unless leaders can bring the disparate groups together in districts like these, Republicans are likely to offset every unexpected victory they gain in a place such as Massachusetts with an unlikely loss elsewhere. Already the dynamic is playing out in various ways in races in Texas, Florida, Tennessee and elsewhere.

The backlash on the right

In the 5th District, conflict has arisen at nearly every turn as Republicans gear up to challenge Perriello.

"Obama Turns Up Heat Over Ruling on Campaign Spending"

NY Times:

President Obama took aim at the Supreme Court on Saturday, saying the justices had “handed a huge victory to the special interests and their lobbyists” with last week’s 5-to-4 decision to lift restrictions on campaign spending by corporations and unions.

The decision will have major political implications for this year’s midterm elections. After it was announced, Mr. Obama immediately instructed his advisers to work with Congress on legislation that would restore some of the limits the court lifted. But in his weekly address on Saturday, he sharply stepped up his criticism of the high court.

“This ruling strikes at our democracy itself,” Mr. Obama said, adding: “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections.”

How much the administration can do about the ruling remains unclear, although Mr. Obama said he had instructed his advisers to work with Congress on a “forceful, bipartisan response.”

That process got under way Friday, a White House official said, when Norm Eisen, Mr. Obama’s special counsel for ethics and government reform, met with two leading Democrats — Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York and Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland — to begin talks on how Congress might proceed.

The sharply divided decision overturned parts of a 2002 law — known as the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, after the two senators who sponsored it — that severely restricted political advertising paid for by corporations and unions in the 30 days before a presidential primary and in the 60 days before general elections.

The five justices who sided with the majority characterized it as a victory for the First Amendment and freedom of speech. The ruling was expected to unleash a torrent of attack advertisements in the coming midterm elections; many analysts said it would benefit Republicans in a year when Democrats are already on the defensive.

But the decision could also have a significant effect on Mr. Obama’s expansive domestic agenda. The president has angered many of the big-money industries — like banks and insurers — that would be inclined to dig deep into their pockets to influence the outcome of the president’s legislative proposals.

Plouffe: How To Prevent A November Nightmare

David Plouffe:

The Democratic Party got a resounding wake-up call from the voters of Massachusetts on Tuesday. But it's long been clear that 2010 would be a challenging election year for our party.

With few exceptions, the first off-year election in a new president's term has led to big gains for the minority party -- this was true for Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. After two election cycles in which Democrats won most of the close races and almost all of the big ones, Democrats have much more fragile turf to defend this year than usual. Add to that a historic economic crisis, stubborn unemployment and the pain that both have inflicted on millions of Americans, and you have a recipe for a white-knuckled ride for many of our candidates.

But not if Democrats do what the American people sent them to Washington to do.

In 2006 and 2008, voters sent an unmistakable message: We want decisive change. This was not just a change of political parties. Instead of a government that works for the entitled and special interests, a government that looks out for Wall Street, they wanted a government that works better for them, a government that plays the role it should to help foster the security of the middle class.

Many of last year's accomplishments are down payments on those principles.

We still have much to do before November, and time is running short. Every race has unique characteristics, but there are a few general things that Democrats can do to strengthen our hand.

-- Pass a meaningful health insurance reform package without delay ...

-- We need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them ...

-- Make sure voters understand what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did for the economy ...

-- Don't accept any lectures on spending ...

-- "Change" is not just about policies ...

-- Run great campaigns ....

-- No bed-wetting ...

This country is at a crossroads. We are trying to boost the economy in the short term while also doing the long-term work on health care, energy, education and financial reform that will lay a strong foundation for decades to come. Let's remember why we won in 2008 and deliver on what we promised. If Democrats will show the country we can lead when it's hard, we may not have perfect election results, but November will be nothing like the nightmare that talking heads have forecast.

The Parties Response To The Massachusetts Election (cartoons)

Obama Centralizes Campaign Control As He Assesses How To Move Forward

An interesting NY Times article about Obama's taking over the Democratic campaign system and how the White House is thinking about moving forward strategically. And by reading between the lines, you can also learn one of the reasons they think Martha Coakley lost: her campaign's polling was too optimistic, causing them to realize her troubles too late to turn the tide:

President Obama is reconstituting the team that helped him win the White House to counter Republican challenges in the midterm elections and recalibrate after political setbacks that have narrowed his legislative ambitions.

Mr. Obama has asked his former campaign manager, David Plouffe, to oversee House, Senate and governor’s races to stave off a hemorrhage of seats in the fall. The president ordered a review of the Democratic political operation — from the White House to party committees — after last week’s Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, aides said.

In addition to Mr. Plouffe, who will primarily work from the Democratic National Committee in consultation with the White House, several top operatives from the Obama campaign will be dispatched across the country to advise major races as part of the president’s attempt to take greater control over the midterm elections, aides said.

“We are turning the corner to a much more political season,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser, who confirmed Mr. Plouffe’s role. “We are going to evaluate what we need to do to get timely intelligence and early warnings so we don’t face situations like we did in Massachusetts.”

As Mr. Obama prepares to deliver his State of the Union address on Wednesday and lay out his initiatives for the second year of his presidency, his decision to take greater control of the party’s politics signals a new approach. The White House is searching for ways to respond to panic among Democrats over the possible demise of his health care bill and a political landscape being reshaped by a wave of populism.

Improving tactical operations addresses only part of his challenge. A more complicated discussion under way, advisers said, is how to sharpen the president’s message and leadership style.

The reinforcement of the White House’s political operation has been undertaken with a sense of urgency since Tuesday, when a Republican, Scott Brown ... The White House was caught off guard when it became clear that Democrats were in danger of losing it, and by the time alarm bells sounded from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, it was too late.

The president summoned Mr. Plouffe to the Oval Office hours before the polls closed and asked him to assume the new role because of the implications the midterm elections hold. Mr. Plouffe built a reputation in 2008 as a master of the nuts and bolts of campaigns, and will assemble a team to provide unfiltered information that serves as an early-warning system so the White House and party officials know if a candidate is falling behind ...

The party is trying to become less reliant on polls conducted by candidates, which can often paint a too-rosy picture of the political outlook. The president’s leading pollster, Joel Benenson, will be among those conducting research for Mr. Plouffe, aides said, along with others who will divide the country by regions ...

“Our own political operation will be more rigorously in communication with the other elements, so we can compare notes,” Mr. Axelrod said. “What we learned from Massachusetts is that we need to be more assiduous about getting our own data and our own information so we have a better sense of where things stand.”

The White House intends to send Mr. Obama out into the country considerably more in 2010 than during his first year in office, advisers said, to try to rekindle the relationship he developed with voters during his presidential campaign.

His first big chance will come when he delivers his State of the Union address. Rather than unveil a laundry list of new initiatives, advisers said, Mr. Obama will try to reframe his agenda and how he connects it with public concerns. In particular, he will focus on how his ideas for health care, energy and financial regulation all fit into the broader economic mission of creating what he calls a “new foundation” for the country, the key words being “rescue, restore and rebuild.”

While presidents typically experience rough patches, this one is particularly challenging for Mr. Obama. Liberals have grown disenchanted with what they see as his unwillingness to fight harder for their causes; independents have been turned off by his failure, in their view, to change the way Washington works; and Republicans have become implacably hostile.

The long and messy legislative fight over health care is a leading example of how Mr. Obama has failed to connect with voters, advisers say, because he appeared to do whatever it would take to get a bill rather than explain how people could benefit.

“The process often overwhelmed the substance,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “We need to find ways to try to rise above the maneuvering.”

The discussion inside the White House includes at least two distinct debates: Should Mr. Obama assume a more populist or centrist theme in his message? And should the White House do what it takes to pass compromise legislation or should it force votes, which even if unsuccessful can be used to carry an argument against Republicans in the fall?

Massachusetts' Out Sized Role In Obama's Life

NY Times:

Long before Scott Brown hopped in his pickup truck and did the electoral equivalent of doughnuts on the White House lawn, President Obama’s political destiny, for better or worse, was tied more closely to Massachusetts than to any state but Illinois.

The so-called “hub of the universe” — cradle of celebrated presidents (Kennedy, Adams), losing nominees (Dukakis, Kerry), comedic slap fights (Leno, Conan) and Dunkin’ Donuts (munchkins, crullers) has always held an outsize view of its own prominence in the political cosmos and beyond.

But in the case of Mr. Obama’s adult history, it might actually be appropriate.

It was in Cambridge where Mr. Obama found early national recognition as the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review.

It was the Bay Stater John Kerry who picked the still relatively unknown state senator from Illinois to deliver the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.

That speech — in Boston — put Mr. Obama on a trajectory that would make him the third African-American senator since Reconstruction (the Massachusetts Republican Ed Brooke was the first) and eventually land him in the White House (in no small part because of the state’s senior senator, Ted Kennedy).

In 2006, Mr. Obama’s political gurus David Axelrod and David Plouffe helped engineer the election of the Chicago native Deval Patrick as Massachusetts’ first African-American governor, which helped convince Mr. Obama that a black presidential candidate could achieve broad appeal among white voters across the country.

Not long before Mr. Kennedy died, Mr. Obama assured him that he would make health care a priority in the first year of his presidency, a tactical move that will be second-guessed for years.

As Mr. Obama enjoyed his summer vacation on Martha’s Vineyard — a few weeks after his clumsy embroilment in a dispute between a Cambridge police office and a Harvard professor — he received news of Mr. Kennedy’s death, an event that would rally supporters of the health care overhaul bill while setting in motion the sequence that could lead to its demise.

Obama & Massachusetts Cartoons

Activist Judges Reversing Of Decades Old Precedent On Campaign Finance Laws "leaves Democrats with few options"

The activist judges on John-I'm-just-an-umpire-Robert's court have reversed 83 years worth of precedent and impacted equally long standing laws in 24 different states yet it's not clear what Congress can do about it. From the  Wash Post:

Frustrated Democrats began laying plans Friday to chip away at a landmark Supreme Court decision unleashing corporate expenditures in political campaigns, but the ruling's broad sweep will make it difficult to stem a tidal wave of new spending in this year's pivotal midterm elections.

Major corporations and advocacy groups immediately began devising ways to take advantage of the 5 to 4 decision, which concluded that corporations have the same First Amendment rights as individuals and, therefore, can spend as much company money as they wish to oppose or support individual political candidates.

The ruling, announced Thursday, opens a significant new channel of funding for major corporations and their lobbyists in political campaigns. It is seen as particularly helpful for Republicans because of their party's traditional bonds with industry groups and its strong opposition to financial regulations proposed by the Obama administration. Labor unions, which strongly support Democrats, are also likely to take advantage of the ruling.

The decision further weakens the power of the major political parties, which must adhere to campaign restrictions enforced by the Federal Election Commission. Trade organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, by contrast, are now free to use money from their members to pay for ads explicitly targeting lawmakers who vote for legislation the groups do not like.

Rob Jordan, vice president for federal and state campaigns at the conservative FreedomWorks, said his Washington-based group could reap particular benefits from a portion of the ruling that threw out restrictions on running political ads in the weeks leading up to an election.

"We expect to have upside potential in the multimillions, and we expect to be major players," Jordan said of his group's plans for the midterms. "This will probably put ads on our radar screen more than they would have been."

Democrats hurried Friday to lay out possible legislative responses to the ruling, even while acknowledging that only a constitutional amendment -- which is exceedingly unlikely -- could strike at the heart of the decision. Most campaign finance experts agreed.

"There is not much that Congress can do," said Robert K. Kelner, a Republican lawyer at Covington & Burling. "It's hard for me to see any obvious route for campaign finance reformers to take aside from tinkering around the edges."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), the former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee head, and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman, are working with the White House to craft a new campaign finance bill. They are almost certain to call for strengthened disclosure requirements for companies that directly sponsor ad campaigns, and they may push for requiring shareholders to approve political expenditures by publicly traded companies. They are also studying ways to prohibit campaign spending by corporations such as American International Group or General Motors that received federal bailout money, as well as companies that have federal contracts or registered lobbyists.

Democrats are also eyeing restrictions on U.S. companies that are subsidiaries of foreign-owned corporations; they believe the public will be outraged by the possibility of foreign influence in U.S. election campaigns. The high court's majority opinion avoided addressing possible implications for foreign-owned firms, which are barred from direct participation in U.S. elections but can use their American subsidiaries to form political action committees.

The subsidiaries now appear free to spend as much as they wish on ads targeting specific U.S. election candidates, and critics said the opinion could be applied even more broadly ...

Opposing the ruling fits neatly into the Democrats' recent embrace of populist themes, including efforts to crack down on corporate excesses. "The voices of average Americans could be drowned out by Wall Street banks, big oil, health insurance companies and other special interests," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement this week.

Rep. Dan Lungren (Calif.), the ranking Republican on the House committee that oversees federal elections, said his party has little to fear from such a message. "Republicans are on the side of the First Amendment," he said ...

Executives could expose themselves to shareholder lawsuits if they spend money in ways unrelated to their core business. "I think corporations are going to be very careful in using this," said Stanley Sporkin, a former federal judge and regulator who now advises corporations.

Schumer and Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) eventually hope to persuade Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a past sponsor of campaign finance reform with Feingold, to join the Democrats' effort. McCain issued a statement Thursday saying he was "disappointed" by the ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, but his office declined to comment Friday on whether he would seek legislative redress.

Opponents of the decision hope that a bipartisan consensus will materialize.

"It may just be that this decision is so outrageous that it will be the catalyst to get the kinds of reforms we needed," said Mark McKinnon, a former campaign adviser to President George W. Bush who supports new restrictions.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman John B. Larson (Conn.) also has introduced a bill -- the Fair Elections Now Act -- that would set up a voluntary system in which congressional candidates would abide by certain restrictions in exchange for public financing of a portion of their campaigns. The measure has 126 House co-sponsors, and Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) has offered the same bill in his chamber.

Such a system would allow candidates to "run for office without any big money from Wall Street PACs or lobbyists," said David Donnelly, an official with the Public Campaign Action Fund.

The Best Poll To Date On Massachusetts' Opinions

Warning signs a plenty in these results for Obama, the Dems and GOP. Though the first two haven't yet figured out their response, they at least realize they were being sent a message. The GOP, blinded by superficial, headline analysis, doesn't seem to realize they were being sent a message too. From the  Wash Post (complete results):

Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, antipathy toward federal-government activism and opposition to the Democrats' health-care proposals drove the upset election of Republican senatorial candidate Scott Brown in Massachusetts, according to a post-election survey of state voters.

The poll by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University's School of Public Health underscores how significantly voter anger has turned toward Democrats in Washington and how dramatically the political landscape has shifted during President Obama's first year in office.

The findings do not provide a political portrait of the entire country in the opening weeks of the 2010 election year. But given that Massachusetts has been reliably Democratic in presidential elections, the results of Tuesday's special Senate election and the reasons voters sided with Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley speak to broader shifts that have taken place across the country over the past year.

These changes were echoed in national polling and helped elect Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey in November. Democrats have been put squarely on the defensive. Obama and Democratic leaders are looking for ways to alter the political dynamics in the hope of heading off potentially sizable losses in their congressional majorities in this November's elections.

Sixty-three percent of Massachusetts special-election voters say the country is seriously off track, and Brown captured two-thirds of these voters on Tuesday. In November 2008, Obama won decisively among the more than 80 percent of Massachusetts voters seeing the country as off-course.

Nearly two-thirds of Brown's supporters say their vote was intended at least in part to express opposition to the Democratic agenda in Washington, but few say the senator-elect should simply work to stop it. Three-quarters of those who voted for Brown say they would like him to work with Democrats to get Republican ideas into legislation in general; nearly half say so specifically about health-care legislation.

When Obama was elected, 63 percent of Massachusetts voters said government should do more to solve problems, according to exit polling. In the new poll, that number slipped to 50 percent, with 47 percent saying government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.

Like Obama, Coakley won the votes of more than 70 percent of those seeking government involvement, but the bigger pool of voters seeing government overreach helped Brown claim victory.

Health care topped jobs and the economy as the most important issue driving Massachusetts voters, but among voters for Brown, it was closely followed by the economy and jobs, and "the way Washington is working."

Overall, 43 percent of Massachusetts voters say they support the health-care proposals advanced by Obama and congressional Democrats; 48 percent oppose them. Among Brown's supporters, eight in 10 said they were opposed to the measures, 66 percent of them strongly so.

Sizable majorities of voters for Brown see the Democrats' plan, if passed, as making things worse for their families, the country and Massachusetts. Few Coakley voters see these negatives, and most of those backing her see clear benefits for the country if health-care reform becomes law. Less than half of Coakley's supporters say they or the state would be better off as a result.

Among Brown's supporters who say the health-care reform effort in Washington played an important role in their vote, the most frequently cited reasons were concerns about the process, including closed-door dealing and a lack of bipartisanship. Three in 10 highlighted these political maneuverings as the motivating factor; 22 percent expressed general opposition to reform or the current bill.

Voters for Coakley, by contrast, cited the need to cover the uninsured and fix the health-care system as the main reasons the issue drove their votes.

Massachusetts enacted a universal health-care plan several years ago, and the survey shows that it remains highly popular. Overall, 68 percent of the voters in Tuesday's election say they support the plan, including slightly more than half of those voting for Brown.

Obama also remains popular in Massachusetts. More than six in 10 of those who voted approve of his job performance, with 92 percent of Coakley's voters expressing satisfaction, along with 33 percent of Brown's. More than half of Brown's backers say Obama was not a factor in their vote.

But the Obama administration's policies draw some fire, with nearly half of all special-election voters either dissatisfied or angry about those initiatives. Three-quarters of Brown's supporters expressed the negative view.

GOP policies prove even less popular, with 58 percent of Massachusetts voters saying they are dissatisfied or angry about what Republicans in Congress are offering. Among those voting for Brown, 60 percent give positive marks to the policies of congressional Republicans, but a sizable number, 37 percent, offer a negative appraisal.

The Massachusetts election brought another indication that the Obama coalition from 2008 has splintered, just as the results in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey showed in November.

Compared with the 2008 presidential results, Coakley suffered significant erosion among whites, independents and working-class voters, according to the survey.

In Massachusetts, independents made up about half of Tuesday's electorate, according to the poll, and they supported Brown by nearly 2 to 1. Obama carried Bay State independents by 17 percentage points in 2008. Among those voting for Brown, 28 percent said they backed Obama over Republican John McCain.

Activist Supreme Court Decision: "Dramatic, sweeping, fundamental, seismic—all those adjectives apply to this alteration of the political landscape"

It's hard for me to believe that any news this week could be worse than what happened in Mass on Tuesday. Then the Supreme Court decided American democracy could be auctioned to the highest spender. At least the Mass setback will operate over a relatively short time frame, what the Supreme Court just did will impact us for decades, if not longer. What an unbelievably awful week.

From Katie Connelly:

It's hard to know just yet what the precise impact of the Supreme Court's landmark decision on campaign-finance reform this morning will be. But one thing is for sure: it will be huge. Dramatic, sweeping, fundamental, seismic—all those adjectives apply to this alteration of the political landscape. In all likelihood, Republicans will be the biggest beneficiaries. They've had a long history of taking care of their corporate buddies. And with the Administration today opening a new front in their battle on Wall Street, you can bet the financial industry will happily raid their bursting cash coffers to support Republicans in November.

The decision is a stunning display of judicial activism from a chief justice who promised to engage in anything but. Remember all his promises to respect precedent? Apparently he doesn't. As E.J. Dionne writes: "Remember Roberts saying judges were like umpires calling the balls and strikes? In this case, he and his colleagues canceled the game altogether and decided on their own what the final score would be." Roberts expanded the scope of the initial case before him, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, to take on a century's worth of campaign-finance regulation. Dahlia Lithwick describes it perfectly: "The court had to reach out far beyond any place it needed to go....This started off as a case about a single movie. It morphed into John Roberts's Golden Globe night."

For their part Republicans are defending the ruling as rolling back infringements of free speech. They're wrong. The First Amendment protects an individual's right to free speech. Corporations are not individuals, although in this ruling, the Supreme Court equates the two.

Free Speech Now Auctioned To Highest Bidder (cartoons)

Democratic Reaction To Mass Election (cartoons)

The Mass Election In Cartoons

With all the news this week, I've been behind on posting cartoons. Here's a sample of what you missed.

Poll: Class & Education Strongly Drive MA Vote; 61% to 33% Voters Were NOT Sending Message To Washington

Wall St Journal:

Republican Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts Senate race was lifted by strong support from union households, in a sign of trouble for President Barack Obama and Democrats who are counting on union support in the 2010 midterm elections.

A poll conducted on behalf of the AFL-CIO found that 49% of Massachusetts union households supported Mr. Brown in Tuesday's voting, while 46% supported Democrat Martha Coakley. The poll conducted by Hart Research Associates surveyed 810 voters.

The finding, disclosed during an AFL-CIO conference call about the poll, represents a fresh problem for Democrats, who count on union leaders and union members as a pillar of the party's base.

Karen Ackerman, the AFL-CIO's political action director, said the results of the Massachusetts poll indicate "what we call a working-class revolt" in which voters were responding to the fact that no one was addressing their needs or interests. But she played down the support among union household members for Mr. Brown.

"Union voters are like any other voters, and they respond to the environment around them" and who they think will be on their side and fight for them, Ms. Ackerman said. "What happened in Massachusetts is that working families did not see the Democratic candidate as being on their side."

She added that the AFL-CIO has "very good success" reaching out to union voters and did have a union program in Massachusetts in support of the Democratic candidate, state Attorney General Martha Coakley. Still, she said the group does have concerns about the midterm congressional elections in November.

"Clearly, we're taking a serious look at this [working-class revolt] because, frankly, we know that 2010 elections are going to be very difficult," she said, adding that the group plans to move forward with a "very progressive political program."

The poll showed Ms. Coakley drew more support among voters with a college education, by a five-point margin, while she lost by a 20-point margin among voters without a college degree.

Guy Molyneux, a pollster with Hart Research Associates, said the poll showed "pretty strong evidence" of voters who worried the health-care overhaul moving through Congress would tax their employer-provided benefits, even though Mr. Obama had agreed to a deal that exempted workers in collective bargaining agreements until 2018. Unions stepped up their campaign efforts for Ms. Coakley after that, but it wasn't enough to turn the tide.

The AFL-CIO's pollster also said the election was more about the two specific candidates than about being a referendum on Mr. Obama or the national Democratic Party's agenda. By 61% to 33%, the voters polled said they were picking the best candidate for Massachusetts rather than sending a message to Washington. Nearly two-thirds of the voters who elected Mr. Brown said they wanted him to work with Democrats in Washington.

Tuesday's Silver Lining

Whether you think Tuesday was a disaster or just a big bump on the road to be overcome, you have to agree that unless the Dems are complete morons (unfortunately, not beyond the realm of possibility), having these results now, 10 months before the mid-terms when there's still time to adjust, was, ironically, a lucky break.

Today, we're mourning the loss of a super-majority in the Senate. Without Brown's wake up call, on Nov 5th we would have likely been grieving over the loss of majority in both houses of Congress.

Massachusetts, Two Days Later

As a way to process Tuesday's election results, I spent lots of time yesterday on lots of news sites and blogs. There are way too many to excerpt as is normally done, so instead, here is my index to the best commentary and analysis out there.

How did it happen

The only "exit" poll I know of, from Research 2000:

Mass. Voters Protested Against Weak Wall Street, Health Care Policies

Rick Holmes, a columnist for the suburban Boston Metro-West News thinks it was primarily Coakley's fault:

Martha's many mistakes

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) blames Obama for "health care's demise"

Weiner On Health Care's Demise: We Lacked Leadership From Obama

Michael Scherer of Time broadens that to encompass Obama's first year:

Five Ways Obama Went Wrong

Nate Silver of 538.com builds on David Leonhardt's idea that Obama has pleased no one (and worse, angered many) by not countering the perception he's a progressive even while he pursued centrist policies:

The bills before Congress are politically partisan and substantively bipartisan.

Mass Hysteria:

Jonathan Chait of TNR is seeing Mass Hysteria so he argues that the CW is missing the real forces at play in the Mass election and suggests Obama needs to be like George Bailey during the panicked run on his bank in It's A Wonderlife Life:

Why Democrats need to take a deep, deep breath. Maybe two.

Ezra Klein of the Wash Post uses a very different entertainment reference, Monty Python & the Holy Grail, to make the same point (and the comment a Republican submitted is also worth reading):

Sometimes a bunny is just a bunny

Jon Stewart hits the hysteria nail on the head:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2010 - The Re-Changening
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Analysis of the results and what to do next:

Jonathan Chait next argues that no one should interpret the Mass results as any kind of referendum on health care:

We've got ours, and we don't want to pay for anybody else to enjoy this great system we have.

Steven Pearlstein of the Wash Post argues the same thing as Chait and believes it's not over:

GOP win doesn't mean health reform is dead

Ezra Klein suggests a radical way to move forward on health reform

Democrats could scrap the legislation and start over in the reconciliation process. But not to re-create the whole bill.

Ezra also warns the Dems if they abandon health care now, their base should rightly abandon them:

If Democrats let go of health care, there is no doubt that a demoralized Democratic base will stay home in November. And that's as it should be.

Tim Egan agrees the Dems need to get a spine and a much, much better mouth:

They can cowboy up, pass health care that helps right the major wrongs of the system, and then explain what they’re doing.

On a more serious note, The NY Times editorial board offers very pointed advice to Obama & the Dems:

It is indisputable that the Republicans have settled on a tactic of obstruction, disinformation and fear-mongering, but it is equally indisputable that the Democrats have not countered it well.

Amy Walter, writing in NationalJournal.com, suggests how the Dems can generally win back Independents:

Will Democrats Feel Voters' Pain?

What The Mass Results Mean: Throw The Bums Out

Here are the reasons I believe Scott Brown won:

• 10% unemployment
• an inept opponent
• 10% unemployment
• health reform sausage making, the GOP's ability to exploit fears and the Dems inability to cut throw that and explain the benefits
• 10% unemployment

Here is the reason he did not win (no matter how the GOP spins it):

• repudiation of the overall Obama agenda

The most recent Va, NJ, and Ma elections, in fact, now join the similar 2008 and 2006 ones: all were 'throw the bum out' elections.  The problem for the Dems is that they are now the bums. The Republicans should also check their unadulterated glee: they're the bums in plenty of places too.

Readers Comment On The Mass Election

From Skye, A Blue View reader:

Keep the faith!  What we learn today may not be the win, but the caution. Martha Coakley will become an adjective - "Don't get Coakleyed!" - don't get whiplashed by the consequences of complacency.  People tend to have to learn the hard way, and though you'd think  Bush and Cheney and Palin were lessons enough, and though the costs of the lessons take it out of the most needy and most vulnerable, maybe this is what it will take to hold the mirror of shame up to the right wing, and to kick the righteous smugness out of the left wing. Maybe we will learn what Reinhold Niebuhr teaches, and what Obama knows, both as a scholar and as a black man:  sober hope.

 I was holding signs on a snowy exurban corner this morning, looking in the eyes of people who sneered and people who smiled.  The people who smiled needed to see mine, too. In that exchange of glances, both hostile and open, was the story of flawed community, of visionary realism.

On to taking care of the business of life and nation even more challenging now, but even more compelling.  And Obama is still our president.  That we did.  My children are better for it, and they still believe.

Thank you for your blog and your witness.

Onward!

What do you think about the election? What lessons do you think Obama needs to take from the results?  Add your comments to this post.

Obama Now Has A Long List Of Tough Choices

Adam Nagourney:

Special elections come and go. And the party that wins the White House one year ordinarily loses seats in the next Congressional election that comes along.

But what happened in Massachusetts on Tuesday was no ordinary special election.

Scott Brown, a Republican state senator for only five years, shocked and arguably humiliated the White House and the Democratic Party establishment by defeating Martha Coakley in the race for a United States Senate seat. He did it one day short of a year after President Obama stood on the steps of the United States Capitol, looking across a mass of faces that celebrated the potential of his presidency.

As a result, Mr. Obama will spend the first anniversary of his inauguration watching Democrats tangle in an unseemly quarrel over who lost Massachusetts — Ms. Coakley’s pollster, Celinda Lake, called the Huffington Post four hours before the polls closed to blame Democratic leaders in Washington — and contemplating a political landscape that has been thoroughly upended in the course of only 10 days.

The implications are sure to be far-reaching, and the result leaves Mr. Obama with a long list of tough choices.

Stripped of the 60th vote needed to block Republican filibusters in the Senate, will Mr. Obama now make further accommodations to Republicans in an effort to move legislation through Congress with more bipartisanship, even at the cost of further alienating liberals annoyed at what they see as his ideological malleability?

Or will he seek to rally his party’s base through confrontation, even if it means giving up on getting much done this year?

Will he find a way to ram his health care bill through Congress quickly in the wake of the Massachusetts loss, so that his party can run on a major if controversial accomplishment? Or will he heed the warnings of Republicans, and now some Democrats, that to do so would be to ignore the message of Tuesday’s election, with its clear overtones of dissatisfaction with the administration’s approach so far?

It is not just questions of policy: for Mr. Obama and the Democrats, already worried about the coming midterm elections, the results could hardly have been more distressing. States do not come more Democratic than Massachusetts, the only one that voted for George McGovern over Richard Nixon in 1972, a fact that older residents still recount with fresh pride. By challenging the legacy of Edward M. Kennedy, the holder of the contested seat for 46 years and a liberal icon, the Republican victory could only be dispiriting to the left.

Most ominously, independent voters — who embraced Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign and are an increasingly critical constituency — seemed to have fled to Mr. Brown in Massachusetts, as they did to Republicans in races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey last November. It is hard not to view that as a repudiation of the way Mr. Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have run things.

“This is a giant wake-up call,” said Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman who lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for governor in Virginia last year. “We have to keep our focus on job creation. Everything we have to do is related to job creation. We have to do a much better job on the message. People are confused on what this health care bill is going to do.”

Even before the polls closed, the White House was suggesting the outlines of a recovery strategy, a combination of a more populist tone and an embrace of greater fiscal responsibility.

"Angry Massachusetts voters sent Washington a ringing message yesterday: Enough."

At least, that's the message the headline writers at the Boston Globe (a good proxy for the MSM) think was sent (me, I'm not so sure):

Angry Massachusetts voters sent Washington a ringing message yesterday: Enough.

Voter anxiety and resentment, building for months in a troubled economy, exploded like a match on dry kindling in the final days of the special election for US Senate. In arguably the most liberal state in the nation, a Republican - and a conservative one at that - won and will crash the Bay State’s all-Democratic delegation with a mandate to kill the health care overhaul pending in Congress.

It is difficult to overstate the significance of Scott Brown’s victory because so much was at stake. From the agenda of President Obama and the legacy of the late Edward M. Kennedy to a referendum on the Democratic monopolies of power on Capitol and Beacon hills, voters in a lopsidedly Democratic state flooded the polls on a dreary winter day to turn conventional wisdom on its head.

Brown, an obscure state senator with an unremarkable record when he entered the race four months ago, was a household name across the country by the end of the abbrevi ated campaign. Running a vigorous, smart, and error-free campaign, he became a vessel into which cranky and worried voters poured their frustrations and fears, ending the Democrats’ grip on a Senate seat the party has held for 58 years, nearly all by two brothers named Kennedy.

Voters were demonstrably unsentimental about keeping alive the spirit of the late Ted Kennedy in electing the next senator. His widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, tried to bolster the sagging candidacy of Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley in the closing days, to little effect.

Brown’s upset triumph is certain to send shockwaves well beyond the state’s borders and into the fall midterm elections, and will rattle Beacon Hill, where Democrats have absolute power and Governor Deval Patrick is an unpopular incumbent as he faces reelection this November.

To be sure, Brown was the beneficiary of the blundering campaign of his opponent, Coakley, who blew a 31-point lead in two months, according to one poll. But in electing Brown, a large segment of the electorate declared that there is little appetite for near-universal national health care, the chief domestic policy initiative of Obama, who carried the state by 26 percentage points only 14 months ago.

Brown skillfully made the election a referendum on the issue, nationalizing the race when he repeatedly said he would be the 41st vote in the Senate, enough for the GOP to block the Democrats’ bill. Money poured in from around the country. His campaign had an initial budget of $1.2 million but eventually spent $13 million, about $12 million of which came in via the Internet, a campaign official said last night.

Massachusetts passed its own expensive prototype version of universal health care in 2006 and Brown argued that a national version would come at the Bay State’s expense. Obama’s appearance on the stump in Boston Sunday to prop up Coakley had no apparent effect on the outcome.

The tinderbox climate in the state was so hospitable that when Brown declared his support for waterboarding - simulated drowning used in interrogating terrorist suspects - Coakley and liberal Democrats barely protested.

Mass Official: "I am going to do everything that I can to give [Brown the needed] credentials ... as soon as possible"

Boston Globe:

GOP Senator-elect Scott Brown said last night that he wants to be sworn in without delay, but no firm schedule for his installation had been set last night, and if the Senate follows its typical procedures, he might not be installed until Feb. 3.

Although the two-week delay could give Democrats in Congress time to devise a strategy for passing health care before Brown arrives, some Democrats were balking at such a move last night, saying it would further erode voter confidence in the majority party. Brown, who has vowed to vote against the health care bill, would give the GOP enough votes - 41 - to stop the final version of the legislation from coming to the Senate floor, effectively killing it ...

Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin, however, pledged yesterday before the polls closed that he would move swiftly to ensure the seat vacated by the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy is filled by the new senator.

“I am going to do everything that I can to give the winner, whoever that winner is, the credentials they need as soon as possible,’’ Galvin said yesterday. “I’m not going to sacrifice my reputation for any race of any kind.’’

Following the election, Massachusetts law allows for an additional 10 days for absentee ballots to arrive and be tabulated, as long as they are postmarked by the day of the election. Then there is a five-day period to allow the secretary of state to certify the vote. After that, Governor Deval Patrick will have to weigh in, according to the election statutes.

“After such delivery, the governor, with at least five councilors, shall examine the copies,’’ the law states. “They shall tabulate said votes and determine who appear to be elected.’’

However, it is possible that a large margin of victory could accelerate the process for Brown.

Galvin said earlier yesterday that if the margin were overwhelming - far exceeding the number of absentee ballots still to be counted - and there appeared to be no chance of a recount, he would immediately send a letter to the Senate informing it of the unofficial winner. That could allow the Senate to suspend its rules, which stipulate that only after the vote is officially certified can a lawmaker be given the oath of office.

There is no guarantee that the secretary of the Senate will accept anything but the official certification.

Galvin took the speedier route when Representative Niki Tsongas, a Democrat of Lowell, won a special election in 2007 and was sworn in before the vote was officially certified. But he said that the Senate’s rules are more rigid than the House’s. The president pro tem of the Senate, Vice President Joe Biden, would have to administer the oath.

Nevertheless, some Republicans are insisting that Brown be sworn in before the official certification ... Democratic leaders appear to want to follow procedure. “When there is a certified winner in Massachusetts, the Senate has received appropriate papers, and the vice president is available, the successor to Senators Kennedy and [Paul] Kirk will be sworn in,’’ said Jim Manley, an aide to Senate majority leader Harry Reid.

A Day For Mourning

The class aspect to Brown's win is obvious. Coakley did well in the state's urban areas, the wealthy western suburbs of Boston and the Berkshires. In middle and working class suburban towns, she was clobbered.

Vote. And Make Sure Everyone You Know Does Too.

It all comes down to turn out. If enough progressives and Dems get out to vote, Coakley will win. Take some of that nervous energy and channel it into something positive: pick up the phone and start calling your friends.

Now.

What We Know, And Don't Know, About Today's Race

The Fix provides a useful list:

Voters are voting in Massachusetts! Polls in the Commonwealth are open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. and conventional wisdom has gelled that state Sen. Scott Brown (R) enters election day as the slight favorite to pull an upset of massive proportions over state Attorney General Martha Coakley (D). As always in an election, there things we know and things we don't know. Here's a look at a few of the most critical knowns/unknowns.

What We Know: Independents are breaking heavily for Brown. What We Don't: By how much can Coakley afford to lose independents given the state's strong Democrat leanings? 60-40? 65-35?

What We Know: Democratic intensity/interest in the special election has improved considerably over the last few days. What We Don't: Does the fact that loyal Democrats are now more keen on turning out to vote make Coakley more competitive? Or are these people who would never have voted for Brown anyway?

What We Know: Millions -- upon millions -- of dollars have poured into Brown's campaign account over the past 10 days. What We Don't: With television time entirely sold out, can Brown smartly spend those dollars on get out the vote efforts? Or will millions go wasted simply because the financial piece of the race broke too late?

What We Know: National Democrats with a major assist from organized labor are going all out from an organizational perspective -- they have taken over every aspect of Coakley's campaign -- to save this race. What We Don't: Is everything national Democrats are doing too little, too late? Can organizational might save what has been, to put it mildly, a campaign with deep messaging problems?

What We Know: The broad swath of polling released over the last few days suggests that Brown has the momentum. What We Don't: How reliable any of this polling is given that there is no historical parallel for a Senate special election in January, making it extremely difficult to figure out who will vote and who won't vote.

ALSO NOTE: The Fix will be covering the heck out of the Massachusetts Senate race today so check back regularly for updates. Also, check out  the Fix Twitter feed for more instantaneous updating.

Brown's Position On The Issues: Against Health Care & Marriage Equality, For More Tax Cuts, Against Taxing Bankers, Earned An 'A' From The NRA

Except for being pro-choice, he's a straight line conservative, according to the NY Times:

Mr. Brown has promised to be the 41st vote against the health care bill, which could be a damaging blow for the legislation after months of protracted debate. He has said that Massachusetts has already addressed coverage needs in the state’s 2006 legislation, and has criticized a federal bill as too costly.

Earning the support of the antitax Tea Party constituents, Mr. Brown has built his campaign on a platform of reducing taxes.

Mr. Brown opposes same-sex marriage, and in 2007 he voted to pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Mr. Brown narrowly won his State Senate seat in 2004 in a special election when his predecessor, Cheryl Jacques, left to become president of the Human Rights Campaign. Three years earlier, he had enraged gay rights activists by saying that it was “not normal” for Ms. Jacques, who is a lesbian, to have a baby with her partner.

A lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard, Mr. Brown supports waterboarding as an interrogation technique for terrorism suspects, and opposes civilian trials for them. He supports President Obama’s troop increase in Afghanistan.

He does not support a federal cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions, because of concerns over its cost, even though he once voted for a similar program in Massachusetts.

He has opposed amnesty for illegal immigrants and urged strengthening border enforcement and penalizing companies that hire illegal immigrants. The National Rifle Association gave him an A (and his opponent, Martha Coakley, an F) for his voting records opposing gun control.

He supports abortion rights, with a caveat: he is against the procedure known to opponents as partial birth abortion and advocates strongly for parental consent.

As a former model and actor (according to his Web site, he still has his Equity card), Mr. Brown seems as comfortable in the spotlight as his wife, Gail Huff, who is a local television reporter. They have been married for 23 years and have two daughters who have campaigned alongside him.

One daughter, Ayla, was a semifinalist on “American Idol” and is now on the Boston College women’s basketball team.

Scott Brown Supporters Call Martha Coakley Supporters NAZIS Outside of Obama Rally

Also see Brown's Extreme Supporters Show He's A Palin / Tea Party / Wing-Nut Republican.

Brown's Extreme Supporters Show He's A Palin / Tea Party / Wing-Nut Republican

Though he likes to claim he's an independent guy, the evidence is mounting that he's a Sarah Palin Republican ... and draws strength from the same misogynistic, racist pool of supporters as she does. Joan Vennochi (for examples of what she is writing about, see Brown Supporters Get Physical With "Billionaires For Scott Brown" and Scott Brown Supporters Call Martha Coakley Supporters NAZIS Outside of Obama Rally):

Scott Brown is running for U.S. Senate as a pleasant guy in a pickup truck. But a mean spirit drives some of his campaign.

At a West Springfield rally on Sunday, a Brown supporter yelled out “Shove a curling iron up her butt’’. The remark was a crude reference to Brown’s opponent, Attorney General Martha Coakley, who was criticized in a recent Boston Globe story for failing to aggressively prosecute a sexual abuse case involving a curling iron.

After that charming rallying cry, a video clip shows Brown grinning and saying, “We can do this.’’

A campaign spokesman said the Republican state senator didn’t hear what was said and was merely giving his standard stump reply. But if Brown didn’t hear it then, shouldn’t he - especially as the father of two daughters - be outraged now ?

Instead, when Sen. John F. Kerry called upon Brown to curb his supporters, a Brown campaign spokesman replied “People are tired of John Kerry’s partisan politics. His baseless accusations reflect the desperate last gasps of a flailing campaign.’’

If Brown isn’t outraged by the crudeness of the curling iron remark, you would think Massachusetts voters would be. But so far, they’re more outraged by Coakley’s misstatement on a radio show that ex-Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling is a “Yankee fan’’, as in the evil empire, New York ball club.

Coakley is accountable for her record as a prosecutor - and for her campaign mistakes. But her opponent should also be accountable for the unpleasant rhetoric that some of his supporters are embracing in the last hours of this hard-fought campaign.

Messages posted on Coakley’s campaign Facebook include these vicious sentiments: “Scott Brown should rape Martha Coakley and then deny her emergency contraception’’. “Martha Coakley getting raped would complete my life.’’ “Abortion is wrong. Kill her.’’ After one message that states “Looking forward to the rally Friday, Martha,’’ a woman named Amelia Bosley writes:“Hope she gets shot.’’ Imagine putting your name to that in the name of political change.

According to Coakley campaign spokeswoman Alex Zaroulis, some Brown supporters surrounded Coakley’s car on Saturday in Gloucester and yelled “You suck.’’

On Monday, a Brown supporter in Pittsfield lay down on the road in front of Coakley’s car, Zaroulis said.

Brown should answer for some of the ugliness, which is reminscent of the misogynist attacks directed at Hillary Clinton when she was running for president.

Yet, somehow Coakley is getting all the blame for the tenor of their bitter showdown. Yes, she ran negative ads - and bad ones at that. But, Brown supporters put up the first negative ad, which distorted a statement Coakley made about taxes. Brown said he wished the ad would go away, but did nothing to make that happen. Will not-my-problem be his attitude in Washington?

Brown backers say they are voting for change. Instead, they are supporting a slick, packaged politician who is happy to manipulate them.There’s nothing new about that.

Brown appeared at Monday’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast for a purely political photo-op. Then, Brown called out Coakley for giving a political speech at the event.

He hid behind his daughters rather than admit the truth. He did sponsor an amendment that would have allowed emergency medical personnel to deny emergency contraception to rape victims. If he believes in that principle, he should acknowledge it. Who will he hide behind in Washington?

The polls are reportedly breaking Brown’s way and he may win. The only way to stop him is to get out and vote for Coakley.

Turnout is key. The Democrat’s best hope is a strong ground game.

That’s why Brown supporters are trying to suppress the vote, by bullying and making Coakley supporters believe the cause is hopeless.

That’s the picture Brown is trying to paint. It isn’t pretty, like a lot of his campaign