Aggressive Propaganda and the other old media spotters started up the meme about White House mid-year coattails and many picked up the script with intent or curiosity and started to read aloud from it. The elections seem a rebuke to all national power brokers who try to impact races with nothing on offer but their own dubious brands. New York shrugged off attempted influence by just about every right wing maniac of note including the Moose Queen Quitter herself and New Jersey was underwhelmed by White House attention.
Now if the President had not spent most of the last year telling his base “Be quiet, [Insert Conservative Jackass’ Name Here] is talking and by the way send me more money ” I would assume he would have had a stronger hand. That may not be entirely fair but it is pretty fair and getting more so all the time. And that is the point.
Pushed by the Almost Pointless quasi-news and its echo elsewhere, “leaders” in the Democratic Party will forget that they have done everything possible to court conservatives including give a Chairmanship to the most openly self-centered back-stabber in the senate. They will forget that conservative Democrats have crippled their efforts more often and more effectively than any Republican as evidenced by their inability to pass the cheapest most effective health care reform because “moderates” won’t allow it. They will determine that somehow the fate of governors means that Democrats who are not threatened by conservatives should abandon their constituent’s wishes and once again surrender everything worth fighting for in the mistake belief that having done so they can win something that is worth having.
Or, for once, they won’t.



1 Comment







The big egos of politicians often prevent their seeing error and adjusting to it. The Clinton Democrats didn’t want to believe that their failure in 1993-94 to pass health care was due to the substance of their proposals and not some issue of political technique. They brought the wrong lesson to Obama who was ready to believe it anyway because he wanted to stay in the Center ideologically.
Creigh Deeds in Virginia developed a theory that he had to get the White independent vote in order to win. Whe he tried pandering that way and it resulted in further depression of his base,he was incapable of believing that his strategy was wrong-headed so he kept doing the wrong thing and lost by 20 points.
Obama can’t seem to recognize that he’s made a big mistake by bailing out the banks first before Main Street, and he still persists with what basically is a trickle down strategy.
When health care started getting difficult in June and pools indicated that no one knew what the hell a PO was, he persisted with that sort of messaging and began to move even further to the Center, giving the tea baggers their opportunity in August.
Seeing the pattern of politics that occurred when he turned over the stimuls to Congress and Lieberman, Snowe, Collins, and Specter got the power to dictate the shape of the bill, he allows a similar pattern to shape up with health care. Can’t admit that bipartisanship is BS until the Republicans are throughly beaten and sue for peace.
I hope Obama and the Democrats take the right lessons from yesterday. But I doubt that they will. They’re smart alright. But not very intelligent, I’m afraid.