Bloggers and pundits alike pulled greasy Snuggies around their oversized frames, settled into their La-Z-Boys and fired up Wolf Blitzer Tuesday afternoon as they eagerly waited for the fodder of the Coakley-Brown election they would churn into Wednesday’s talking points.’
I am sure it was a disgusting spectacle: If Rush Limbaugh was able to make his way through the celebratory pill bender, he was certainly slobbering at the prospect of being able to equate Coakley’s winning with the eventual downfall of Obama’s Democratic regime.
Is it true?’ Does the Democratic defeat mean Barack Obama, Harry Reid and company have been stopped in their legislative tracks?’ I’m not so sure.
I resort to a clich’eacute;. Politics is local.’ This election was won and lost on the strength of the campaigner: Brown put on three events to every event Coakley put on in the final several weeks on the campaign.’ With a better candidate, Democrats likely would have been able to preserve their 60-seat majority. Nevertheless, Charles Krauthammer will write and Sean Hannity will shout that this election has punctured the once-lofty goals of Barack Obama.’ Glenn Beck will pull on his messianic robes and weep happy tears over the impending liberation of the United States from the socialist chains made in Obama’s Red Forge.
In a small, trivial way, they’re right.’ This election does say something about Barack Obama, but it’s certainly not what they have argued.’
Let’s look to November of last year: Massachusetts elected Barack Obama to the presidency by 60-plus percent of their voters.’ It was a landslide, a democratic (and Democratic) mandate for America’s first African-American president.’ At the time, I thought they were voting for an agenda as well as a leader. Now, I don’t know.
What happened to that indigo-blue land?’ The state with one of the highest electoral margins for the Democratic president-to-be has just elected the first Tea Party conservative to national office.’
Think of it. The state that once affirmed Barack Obama more loudly than any other’ has just brought into office a conservative whose disavowed the Obama agenda in a seat of its beloved senator whose life mission will be undone by Brown’s election.
One struggles to think of a way in which Massachusetts could have engineered a better slap in the face. How to explain the discrepancy?’ One explanation is voters elected Barack Obama on the basis that he was a blank canvas. But we’re in the real world now, and the first year hasn’t been as rosy as we had have hoped.’ Legislative troubles, banking failures and a series of tepid but damaging scandals have kept Barack Obama’s administration from living up to the utopian visions many voters broadcasted-rightfully or not-on to his incipient presidency.
If the Massachusetts special election speaks to such a trend at all, it’s a deeply troubling indicator for Obama.’ Democrats would be well served to develop a set of deliverable goals for the Obama presidency in the remaining three years so that voters have a yardstick to gauge him by, not merely against their own undefined, hopeful-beyond-measure ambitions. I am reminded of a passage from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.’ The Good Doctor is alone in a hotel room and he sees a vision: the great tide of the 1960s breaking against the badlands of the West, the political tumult of the era ultimately receding against the rocks.’ Will we look at Massachusetts the same way?’ Will the election of Brown be the same breakwater for the Obama tide?’ If this administration cannot give voters something with which they can define the realization of their hopes and dreams, perhaps the sodden marshes of the Massachusetts coast will be where this Democratic administration first began to sink slowly, sadly, surely on Jan. 19.
