The Supreme Court has overruled the decades-long prohibition on direct spending by corporations and unions in political campaigns, by a vote of 5-4. The conservatives on the bench were joined by the “swing” voter Justice Kennedy in rendering the libertarian decision.
I’m all for free speech. That’s the principle. But in the practical sense, I also hate all the big money in campaigns. On the other hand, the big money was there anyway, in hidden ways. So it may as well be up-front.
More here.
Obama acknowledges the frustration Americans are feeling.
—But he thinks it is free-floating anger at government in general, and that his administration just happens to be the target of the moment.
He understands that people feel “remote and detached” from what’s going on in Washington.
—But he thinks he just hasn’t explained himself enough, and needs to tell Americans how in sync his policies are with their values.
He gets that people are very distressed by the economy.
—So he will “pivot” his message “to expressions of concern” about the economy and jobs, an urgent “shift in rhetoric.”
In other words: lots more talk will be emanating from the Obama administration, in an effort to explain to the cognitively challenged American people how right he is and how wrong they are.
Think it’ll work?
I believe what we’ve got here is failure to communicate.
“Here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country: the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” the president said in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “People are angry, they are frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”
Is this a complete game-changer? Will the Obama administration now be divided into two eras: BB and AB—Before Brown and After Brown?
There was a lot of trash talk on the part of Democrats and their supporters before yesterday’s election. For example, Speaker Pelosi said, whatever the outcome, ““Let’s remove all doubt. We will have health care one way or another.” And there are simpatico pundits who are still advising passage of that despised and rejected leviathan known as the Senate health care reform bill (see this, for example).
But no less a liberal than Barney Frank is saying “whoa!”—or at least, “whoa for now.” Here’s his statement:
I feel strongly that the Democratic majority in Congress must respect the process and make no effort to bypass the electoral results. If Martha Coakley had won, I believe we could have worked out a reasonable compromise between the House and Senate health care bills. But since Scott Brown has won and the Republicans now have 41 votes in the Senate, that approach is no longer appropriate. I am hopeful that some Republican Senators will be willing to discuss a revised version of health care reform because I do not think that the country would be well-served by the health care status quo. But our respect for democratic procedures must rule out any effort to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened. Going forward, I hope there will be a serious effort to change the Senate rule which means that 59 votes are not enough to pass major legislation, but those are the rules by which the health care bill was considered, and it would be wrong to change them in the middle of the process.”
Although Frank is from Massachusetts, he is not in a threatened district. His constituents voted overwhelmingly for Coakley and for health care reform. But something is driving him, and if I’m any judge of Barney Frank it’s not a sudden concern for doing what’s right.
My guess is that, despite what Frank says, a Senate/House compromise was already a very iffy proposition before the Brown election, and that many House Democrats were balking. Now, with the Brown victory, Frank is getting word from others in the House that they refuse to go the only route possible to avoid a Brown vote against cloture, which would be for the House to pass the Senate bill as is. The only other option that would remain would be reconciliation in the Senate, which would be almost impossible to effect as well.
So Barney is sounding as though he’s taking the high road and refusing to ram health care reform down America’s throat. But is he? Reread his last sentence, and I think you’ll see that a strategic withdrawal is what is going on here. Frank would very much like to change the rules about the filibuster while Democrats still hold a majority in the Senate. That way, the rights of the minority would no longer be protected, and—as in the House—only a bare majority would be enough to pass legislation. If that had occurred, Brown’s election would have been far less influential in terms of its affect on the health care reform bill.
Is Barney Frank dreaming (not to mention the fact that, if Democrats lose a majority in the Senate, this would come back to bite them)? Perhaps, but if so he’s not alone. Abolishing the filibuster has been a rallying cry for the left for quite some time, and it remains so (see this, this, and this, among others). Just a few days ago, on January 16, Frank went on record as asking for a “crusade” to amend the rules to abolish the filibuster. So his post-election remark was not an idle one; it seems to be part of some sort of plan.
Could it succeed? I think not. But it’s hard to get clarity on how it would have to be done (see this and this). As best I can determine, it would appear that the standard approach would be the one used to amend a Senate rule, requiring a super-majority of 67 votes for the cloture vote rule to change. It is very hard to see how the Democrats could muster that number, if they can’t even gather sixty to call for cloture on health care reform.
But do they have some unknown tricks up their sleeves? To attempt to answer that question, take a look at this document. Written in November of 2003, it outlines a number of proposals under consideration at that time to change the cloture rules.
You may note the somewhat ironic point that, back then, with a Senate equally divided between the two parties, it was the Republicans who were trying to make the cloture rules more liberal (at least for judicial nominations) and the Democrats who were eloquently holding forth on the need to protect minority rights and keep things as is. It all came to naught, because Republicans lacked enough votes for it, and were loath to invoke what is known as the “nuclear option,” a proposal to get around the need for 67 votes, but one that might have destroyed the functioning of the Senate itself.
Do the Democrats have the stomach for a nuclear option now? It doesn’t appear that way, although these things are impossible to predict in the current climate (who would have predicted the events of the last year, for example?) But Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana (and probably some others like him) seems more than willing to pull back from a fight.
Bayh has always positioned himself as a moderate Democrat, but when push came to shove he refused to be the forty-first vote against cloture on the health care bill, and now he knows he may pay the price by forfeiting his lengthy political career. So Bayh is backtracking rather frantically now:
“There’s going to be a tendency on the part of our people to be in denial about all this,” Bayh told ABC News, but “if you lose Massachusetts and that’s not a wake-up call, there’s no hope of waking up.”
Many other Democrats in Congress are afraid that the bell that tolled yesterday for Martha Coakley will be tolling for them soon. But even if enough of them hear the voice of the people and respond by dropping this particular health care reform bill, will that bell be silenced? Will voters forgive them for what they have already done by letting such legislation get this far? My prediction is that a sizable number of the American people have taken their measure during the last traumatic year, and will not forget when voting time comes around.
Problems remain for the Democrats whatever they do. The trouble with retreating from the bill now (and perhaps even proposing some reasonable, bipartisan reforms) is that it would make them—and Obama, Reid, and Pelosi—look like fools for having stuck with the present bill so long. And the trouble with failing to retreat from the bill now is the same thing.
HUBRIS:
Followed by…
NEMESIS:
Mort Zuckerman, head of US News and World Report and the New York Daily News, endorsed, supported, and voted for President Obama.
That was then. This is now.
I’ve read a number of pieces by former Obama supporters, but I’ve never read one that shows such a complete disillusionment with the man. Zuckerman doesn’t understand why Obama has acted this way (in this he’s hardly alone). He sees Obama’s failures as incompetence; he doesn’t get that he was a con artist, lying about his ideological agenda as well as his ethics. But Zuckerman certainly comprehends that an Obama failure has occurred, and that it’s not limited to just a few issues.
What’s more, Zuckerman does not mince words. His essay is very simply and bluntly—even awkwardly—written. It’s as though he’s talking to friends in private. His bewilderment and mounting anguish and anger are almost palpable:
In the campaign, [Obama] said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was. I’ve now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I’ve never seen before. It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top. It’s revolting…
He has plunged in the polls more than any other political figure since we’ve been using polls. He’s done everything wrong. Well, not everything, but the major things.
I don’t consider it a triumph. I consider it a disaster…I’m very disappointed. We endorsed him. I voted for him. I supported him publicly and privately.
I hope there are changes. I think he’s already laid in huge problems for the country. The fiscal program was a disaster. You have to get the money as quickly as possible into the economy. They didn’t do that. By end of the first year, only one-third of the money was spent. Why is that?
He should have jammed a stimulus plan into Congress and said, “This is it. No changes. Don’t give me that bullshit. We have a national emergency.” Instead they turned it over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi…It’s very sad. It’s really sad.
He’s improved America’s image in the world. He absolutely did. But you have to translate that into something. Let me tell you what a major leader said to me recently. “We are convinced,” he said, “that he is not strong enough to confront his enemy. We are concerned,” he said “that he is not strong to support his friends.”
The political leadership of the world is very, very dismayed. He better turn it around. The Democrats are going to get killed in this election. Jesus, looks what’s happening in Massachusetts.
Zuckerman is looking at what happened in Massachusetts, and as a Democrat he gets the message. Is the President looking and listening? And when he looks and listens, what does he see and hear? Have the voters—and someone like Mort Zuckerman—become mere obstacles to him now, something to get around rather than to serve?
And was it always that way?
[NOTE: for those who weren’t around back then, the slogan on the T-shirt refers to the following: in the 1972 election, Massachusetts was the only state (along with DC) that didn’t vote for Nixon, but went instead for McGovern. During and after Watergate, you saw a lot of bumper stickers in Massachusetts that read, “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts!”]
[ADDENDUM: I just listened to Brown’s speech; it showed what a natural he is. He exudes strength, sincerity, intelligence, humor, and is also at the same time very much a regular guy (except with model good looks).
Can’t believe the Republican Party got so lucky. Note, though, that in his speech he was careful to mention neither party by name. That’s quite a trick in an acceptance speech.
Smart man, with good political instincts.]
Well, the polls are closed. Now we wait. Here’s a thread where you can talk about it.
It’s election day and there’s light snow in New England, but certainly not enough to keep the hardy and the motivated citizens of Massachusetts away from the polls.
Just three short weeks ago I didn’t think Scott Brown had a chance to win this thing. Then I started thinking he might, or that he at least might do well enough to put the scare into the Democrats who are pushing the execrable health care reform bill.
Then the polls started to tighten, and I thought it had become—not just a possibility, but a good possibility that he’d be competitive. Maybe, if there wasn’t a lot of cheating, if the protest voter turnout was good, if the stars aligned just right, he could even (gulp) win.
Now most of the polls have shown Brown as ahead, some by a little and some by a lot. But no one really knows who will turn out today; we’re in uncharted waters. And no one really knows how many votes the Democrats could manufacture, and how willing and able they are to do so.
And so I’m nervous. In some paradoxical way, the recent encouraging polls have made me more nervous, not less. Have they been manipulated to help the Coakley turnout and give Brown voters a false sense of confidence? I think Brown voters are tremendously motivated and Coakley voters much less so, but who knows how this all will go down.
All I know is that by tonight we’ll probably know who won, unless it’s really close.
And then, if the winner just happens to be Brown, the real fun would begin. What do I mean by “fun?” Every piece I’ve read indicates that the Democratic leaders have absolutely no intention of pulling back and heeding the message that the public is trying to send them.
No, apparently it will be full speed ahead with the health care bill; the only question is which one of the many convoluted machinations being considered will be the strategy de jour.
This is not a moment that causes the president or anybody who works for him to express any doubt,” a senior administration official said. “It more reinforces the conviction to fight hard.”
I’m not sure what form that hard fight will take ((see this for a list of possibilities). But the Brown campaign has made me think that there are an awful lot of foot soldiers on our side (which I like to think of as the people’s side—it’s Obama, Pelosi, & Reid v. The People). This is the sort of thing many of us are worried about:
If Obama were a liberal he would be advancing his agenda in terms of “the possible.” He would give and take with the opposition so as to get the maximum of what he wants while still building national consensus. But he is not a liberal at all. He does not recognize the opposition as “the honorable opposition.”
For him there appears to be no middle. And as I often am reminded, Freud said, “Every exaggeration carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.” But is the Scott Brown election going to be the start of a counter movement or is it the last stand of the opposition that is only going to be crushed by the full force of an Obama offensive.
Sadly, I no longer see any limit on the use of every means Obama and his allies are willing to engage in. SEIU thugs, limitless quasi-bribes to Senators, outright voter fraud, court rulings that ignore fairness and the law for the sake of partisan advancement. I suspect that Congress will ignore its precedents or make ad hoc changes in procedural rules to force passage of their agenda. And I have no faith in the Supreme Court to rule in other than partisan ways.
As I said, I will be nervous today, and fervently hoping that Brown will emerge victorious. A great deal is riding on this; perhaps more than has ridden on any other state election in history.
But whatever the outcome, the groundswell for Brown in a place like Massachusetts has shown how powerful this movement could become. Remember, whatever today’s outcome, this is just the beginning of our fight.
[NOTE: I moved this post to keep it at the top of the page.]
Here’s what the unions stand to get—their money’s worth, if seems—if Obama and the Congressional Democrats have their way with the health care “reform” bill. Never was a piece of legislation given such an Orwellian descriptor.
Obama promised to change the way government does business. And he has, he has—he’s made it even more corrupt, and more obviously so.
[NOTE: The title of this post is a pun on the following song:
Brown is the male Sarah Palin—with a law degree.
Coakley is the female John Kerry—without the charm.
House member from Massachusetts Barney Frank says that if Brown is elected, “it’ll kill the health bill.”
Memo to Frank: that’s a feature, not a bug.