Nate Silver is saying Coakley has only a 25 percent chance of winning the Massachusetts senate election today, which, he reminds us, is not the same as zero. But I’m telling myself not to hope.
Meanwhile, the Peking Duck writes the post I had planned to write today, which saves me a lot of time. See also Bob Cesca and John Cole.
Update: See also Kevin Drum:
The striking thing to me, though, is how fast the left has turned on [Obama]. Conservatives gave Bush five or six years before they really turned on him, and even then they revolted more against the Republican establishment than against Bush himself. But the left? It took about ten months. And the depth of the revolt against Obama has been striking too. As near as I can tell, there’s a small but significant minority who are so enraged that they’d be perfectly happy to see his presidency destroyed as a kind of warning to future Democrats. It’s extraordinarily self-destructive behavior — and typically liberal, unfortunately. Just ask LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. And then ask them whether liberal revolt, in the end, strengthened liberalism or conservatism.
That last sentence is a point I keep trying to make. Maybe it’s because I’m old enough to remember the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s better than others, but the rage from the left against Obama and the Dems is so much like the rage from the left against LBJ and then the Dems and then party politics generally that went on back then, and the eventual result — beyond electing Richard Nixon twice — was to give the nation over to Ronald Reagan and lock progressivism into a dungeon, from which it has not yet entirely emerged.
“Overton window” is the new “spreading democracy in the Middle East.”
“the rage from the left against Obama and the Dems is so much like the rage from the left against LBJ”
I respectfully disagree. I think that there is a ton of difference. Two thoughts: first, neither LBJ, Carter, nor Clinton followed what was unarguably the worst president in well over one hundred years. Those 3 Dem presidents may have followed (or been involved in, in LBJ’s case) some one who was unpopular, whose decisions they voted against.
Second, similar, and I say as an analogy, to the cause of the French Revolution. There was (is still ?) a tide of rising expectations that seem to have been dashed. POTUS led everyone, during primary campaign and up to the general election, to believe there was going to be a big improvement due to “Change You Can Believe In.”
It hasn’t happened. It isn’t the things that we can hang on Bush that are pissing people off, it is the fact that so many bad policies have been left in place.
Chief — I’d say that by the time Carter came along the rebellion had already happened and was a fait accompli. (And Clinton was way post-rebellion.) Carter was elected (by a hair) mostly because Jerry Ford seemed ineffectual and a lot of the Republican base was already moving toward Reagan.
But Carter’s administration was hardly a high point of progressivism. He actually was pretty conservative on domestic policy, arguably more conservative than Obama is now, and that’s because it had already gotten risky to be too liberal. And a lot of the reason for that was that liberal/progressive activists had already ditched the Democratic Party and party politics generally in droves.
And, frankly, in America populist uprising rarely last very long before The Establishment hijacks them for its own purposes.
Great post. I’m asking people to try a little group synergy. Don’t believe the polls. Visualize victory. *See* the headline, “Coakley Wins!” and hold it in your mind today. It couldn’t hurt.
Oh, and further —
Yes. And how can we change that?
You have to look at WHY the GOP activists stayed GOP instead of quitting the party. It’s because they had leaders who signalled and dog whistled them all the damn time. That’s why they went to the mat for Regan, they were convinced if he had all the power he would usher in their utopia. If he couldn’t, it’s because of the system constraining him — thus the Rightist attack on the system and their 25 years of patience.
The left gets kicks in the face and nothing else. What does it cost to dog whistle?
It’s always seemed to me that debate over pragmatism is a liberal thing, while doing the owners bidding without question (the unquestioned dogmatism problem) is conservative. The best debaters on the conservative side are always the “classical liberals†(okay, that was sortof a joke). What about health care at the state level which demonstrates that blue is a safer place to live than red?
This may be endemic to the left but we got more or less what we expected from Bush. Obama’s coziness with Wall Street who have essentially taken our nation to the cleaners is the last thing anyone would have expected from Obama. So that is a much sharper slap in the face to many who have supported him.
This is no reason to run around like Henny Penny shouting “the sky is falling” but the next act by our president will tell us for sure whether he is Obama as we’d expected or Obambi as others, including Krugman, predicted from the start.
For most other than the hysterical left the jury is still out and there is still a desire to support the president. The next act will be, according to Austan Goolsby in the Obama administration, a push for regulation. Thus far there has only been mention of an oversight agency but many are skeptical and wonder whether it will be comprised of the likes of Bernanke, Geithner and Summers.
Financial Times in A Bank Levy Will Not Stop the Doomsday Cycle asserts that without fundamental change we will continue a downward economic spiral by which the only known remedies of lax money and fiscal policies only teach the financial sector to take risks.
Theres something intrinsic in human nature that makes us want to follow someone who will roll up his or her sleeves and fight. People line up behind such a person.
While I don’t fit the stereotype of the hysterical progressive, I’m still looking for such a person. Will Obama be that person?
Some things are better/getting that way. Some things are not. I STILL have the Obama sticker on the car and hope that more progressive things will get done. I do not subscribe to the utterly foolish notions that (1) electing Republicans will accomplish Democratic objectives or that (2) a magical mystical Progressive third party will rise from the disappointments we face.
I still believe that the Republicans have a kind of lockstep discipline that, however corporatist/racist/dishonest it may be, WORKS. There is no denying that. It is even powerful enough to drag along a significant number of other-party elected officials. I think the Republicans will destroy anything in their paths to stop Obama. think they do not need our help.
Obama has sided with Wall Street over Main Street, and that, to me, is a betrayal. Call me naive for believing him, but that was great rhetoric. But I’m not going to vote against him or vote against Democrats in general; I lived through Nixon, Reagan and Bush I and II and know that Republicanism just gets worse. So I’ll hold my nose and vote for any Democrat over any Republican. But here’s what scares me: it’s the independents and young idealists he’s lost. He, with the help of Harry Reid, may have lost them for a generation. Liberals may be angry, but they’ll vote for Democrats. Problem is, there just aren’t enough of them.
I personally am very disgusted with the left for deserting Obama. In the 60s we had a saying: “Give Peace a chance.” Expecting the entire laundry list of the left to be completed in 12 short months was and is ridiculous. Undoing the the last 8 years is not an easy task, especially when one party is the Party No.
I like Libby Spencer’s idea and plan to follow her directions.
But here’s what scares me: it’s the independents and young idealists he’s lost.
Yes, I think you are right, and that’s a shame.
“But here’s what scares me: it’s the independents and young idealists he’s lost. He, with the help of Harry Reid, may have lost them for a generation.”
I’m 29. Let me say that it is easy to get frustrated and wonder why Obama is acting much slower than we thought he would, but lets contrast the choices. The Republicans and the “tea party” movement are totally nuts. I still have yet to personally meet any of these lunatic tea party people, all of my friends are frustrated by Obama.
Climate change is still a big problem that I think most people are still worried about. People I know are becoming increasingly infuriated with the lack of urgency among big business (and many businesses are actually changing paradigms trying to reduce the shipping lines with more locally produced products) and the federal government, concerning global warming. I’d prefer not to force our planet into a cycle of catastrophic self-destruction.
I don’t even think this pro-life issue is one that will pay off in the long run for tea baggers. I am frustrated by the gender inequality across every single section of American society. I think most young people want true gender equality, and that means abortion rights, women in combat (yes, in the military), equal pay for women, better protection from domestic abuse, and government support for childcare so that women can be more than just momslaves.
I had to endure George W. Bush for 8 long years – to think that I will ever vote for a Republican or Conservative candidate is unbelievable. The fact I’m not excited about Obama at the moment is analogous to an episode of South Park where the kids get to elect a new school mascot and the two choices are a “giant douche” or a “turd sandwich.” It seems that neither choice is very good, but the Democrats are what we have for now.
I hope we don’t forget that many people realized LBJ did great things during his tenure but we could not get him to renounce the Vietnam mistake and yes, we all knew it was a mistake. MLK and Bobby were coming out strongly to reignite emphasize equality and the domestic agenda and Bobby would have easily won the election after LBJ left (he could not renounce Vietnam)
We lost both to “lone gunmen” who had no ties to other power bases.
but we could not get him to renounce the Vietnam mistake and yes, we all knew it was a mistake.
The 1968 election is a good example of what can go wrong when people don’t accept political reality. The left turned on LBJ with good reason — Vietnam. However, LBJ wasn’t running for president in 1968, Hubert Humphrey was. And Hubert Humphrey had a long and excellent progressive record on civil rights and domestic policy issues. However, as Johnson’s vice president he was restricted (mostly by LBJ) from making a clear statement against Vietnam. And the demonstrators went to the Dem national convention, left the Republicans mostly alone, and helped elect Richard Nixon. Nixon might have won, anyway. But in hindsight it’s a damn shame leftist activists abandoned Humphrey.
Bobby would have easily won the election after LBJ left
Probably, but once he was gone and the nomination went to Humphrey, the choice was Nixon and Humphrey. And Humphrey was a good guy. Lefties were fixated on Bobby Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy, and if they couldn’t have them they weren’t taking anyone, but that was stupid. If they’d hauled their heads out of their asses and looked at reality, they might have seen that Humphrey was a far better choice for progressivism than Nixon.
I am old enough to remember that time as well an I would say the “rage” of the left was against the Vietnam War and that LBJ was to blame for its escalation. That tricky dick ran on a false promise of ending the war, coupled with the radicalization of the anti war movement, the fear of “mainstream” folks, and the Dems not offering a strong candidate was contributory to Nixon’s ascent. If not for Watergate and all of it’s accompanying illegalities ( remember, this was shocking to Americans), I am not convinced Carter, or any other Dem would have won on their own otherwise. Reagan got in basically using the same method Nixon had, exploiting a crisis (the Iran hostages). Who doesn’t love their grandpa?
Today, we have a problem with the Democratic party. They are not allowing progressives to fight. Governing from the center is all well and good when determining mainstream policy questions. To make any change you need to fight, and fight hard. LBJ did on all his reforms. Why this is not happening now has more to do with corporate control of both parties. Frustration and pent up passion, yes. But rage? Not yet.
Dems not offering a strong candidate was contributory to Nixon’s ascent.
But Humphrey should have been a strong candidate. He was hamstrung by being associated with Johnson and because the powers that be in the Dem party wouldn’t let him speak out against the war until it was too late. But he was a really good guy who was fighting for civil rights and economic justice when Bobby Kennedy was still in knickers. Look up Humphrey’s record sometime. “Not a strong candidate” might be an excuse for the average voters, but activists need to learn to look past propaganda and appearances.
“Obama has sided with Wall Street over Main Street, and that, to me, is a betrayal”
I call bullshit on that, come on. Lets think if the DOW was still under 7000 where would Obama and the democrats be? You think they are unpopular now! They are going to regulate Wall Street but I think it was prudent to go slow and let the markets recover. What the hell is Obama to do about main street, we have exported all of our fucking jobs to China, get real, stop shopping at fucking wal-mart and buying Toyota’s, that would help.
“He, with the help of Harry Reid,”
What in the hell does Harry Reid have to do with anything?
Thank you, uncledad, for your reminder that if Wall Street had collapsed, we would be the economic version of Port-au-Prince. We cannot have an economic system without the financial section, however much we are dismayed and disgusted by their conduct and its consequences. Just how hard can we whack them without restarting the collapse? We will have to regulate them, but we will have to do it without killing them. The anger that calls for blood is not the state of mind that should be used to formulate progress. I have been cussing mad about what I have learned of the unethical behavior of people in both business and government, but I have to remember that it is more important to be effective than to be angry. Anger is easy. Effectiveness is complicated. Sorry to sound sententious, but it is one of the bits of hard-won knowledge I have been able to accumulate.
Do you remember the movie-making meme of what, IIRC Whoopi Goldberg called the “magical black friend” as a character of color who swoops in and makes things right for the white folks? I really think that is part of the expectation that burdens President Obama. He is a human being, albeit one embodying many hopes and dreams. We should be pointing out the lies and distortions of the right, not shooting ourselves in the foot.
It is politics. It is sausage-making. It is not a surprise.
As, i sat here and read the artical by the peking duck. was gob smacked by the inability of our government to get a helth care bill passed.
,when it is so utterly needed by everyone. Then i said to mysef awshit_fuck it ive done without it so long i guess i can go alittle longer and now its dawning on me that a lotta people cant go any longer. And then i think about whats gonna happen to em including my wife, and i know and you know. How long must this atrosity go on in the name of profit? Then i sit back and really get to thinking about whats gonna happen if things stsand as they are. You think about it.
“Just how hard can we whack them without restarting the collapse? We will have to regulate them, but we will have to do it without killing them. ”
I think a better framing is, “we’ll have to find votes in Congress.” I have very little doubt that, however bad anyone may think they are, the administration will be orders of magnitude better on financial regulatory reform than Congress will be, for both ideological and systemic reasons. For one thing, while it gets ignored because it doesn’t help the “Obama is a sellout stooge” meme, Congress is more conservative than the President. Especially the Senate. Secondly, financial regulations won’t be eligible for reconcilliation, so any sort of proposal will have to get 60 votes. Now I happen to agree with the Yglesian take that Obama should draw bright lines and be willing to kill the whole thing if he doesn’t get a great package out of Congress, but if he doesn’t do that and accepts a watered down bill, it will be watered down because the banks own Congress, at the margins anyway, not because the administration is excessively friendly to banks.
I was very young, but barely old enough to recall that 68 was a three-way election
Nixon/Humphrey/Wallace (with Wallace even winning some of the south’s electoral votes).
43.4% 42.7% 13.5%
I have never seen analysis of how Wallace affected the outcome though.
I was reading CNN – IF Coakley is defeated, HCR is not dead. There are 2 options. The House could pass the Senate version, in which case, the bill goes directly to Obama’s desk. OR, Congress has 15 days before the teabageer must be certified – and they can make the changes and get a compromise bill past the House and Senate.
Since I don’t trust all 60 Senators to vote again as they should, I favor the first option – have the House vote and don’t ever let the HCR bill in the Senate chamber again. The President has the State of the Union Speech on Jan 27 – let’s give him HCR bill to brag on. Even of Coakley goes down in flames.
I am thinking a lot about where that will leave us, if we lose the supermajority in the Senate a year before we expected to. If you subscribe to the theory that politics is theatre, we will have 10 months of succesful conservative obstruction to display to the American voter for the November election. So maybe we can run in 2010 on the long list of what the GOP prevented, and make it a list the voter will identify with.
We are finished getting anything through the Senate. So let’s not try to legislate anything and concentrate on exposing the GOP and teabagger philosophy to the moderate voter who, after all, decides the outcome of elections. The swing voter doesn’t like liberals and he doesn’t like teabaggers. We have to convince him that he dislikes teabaggers MORE than he dislikes Democrats. Given half a chance, the Tea Party Express will help us out there.
Make them fillibuster. Really fillibuster. Let them stand for 10, or 24, or 36 hours straight and have them explain to the American public that only the superior people in Congress deserve a comprehensive publicly-paid-for heathcare package. Not the minions, who go by the collective name “citizens’.
Let them explain that the people who committed the biggest financial fraud in the history of this country shouldn’t be burdened with regulations which could keep them from doing it again.
Not in 30 second sound-bites, but in hours and hours of fillibustering.
If you want the citizens of the nation to understand where the problem lies, let the GOP indict themselves by spending hours upon hours of their time explaining it to the people.
NBC is reporting Coakley has called Brown to concede.
Now all I can hope for is that the House leadership will hold it together enough long enough to pass the Senate bill, and get something passed, before the party destroys itself in a fit of fearful ‘reaching out to the right.’
Silly, silly MA voters. It’s South Carolina that is supposed to elect right-wing morons to the Senate. Massachusetts is supposed to send the good guys.
Well now that the 60 seat thing is over can we take Loserman’s Homeland Security Committee chairmanship away already?
I agree with Maha about Humphrey. He was a really good candidate who was tarred by Johnson’s war. I was working in a hotel in Seattle in 68. Humphrey came to Seattle to campaign and stayed at the hotel I worked in. I ran into him and his wife (long before candidates had to have Secret Service) in the elevator with about two other nobodies; and, he and his wife were so very nice. They spoke to us in that short time about substantive issues, not the weather.
I think biggerbox’s comment needs repeating: “Silly, silly MA voters. It’s South Carolina that is supposed to elect right-wing morons to the Senate. Massachusetts is supposed to send the good guys.” What has this country become?–the United States of the Stupid?!