Lots of blame to go around for the Coakley debacle. But there's also lots of ways to get going again. Let's start with the top.
The Obama administration. One message from the Coakley debacle is that President Obama and his people need to realize that they can't stop campaigning and "just govern." In order to govern, they need to embrace "the permanent campaign." If the Obama administration isn't willing to campaign relentlessly for everything they promised, they'll lose it all.
More as the day goes along.
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3 comments:
The Coakley loss is a reflection of the people's dissatisfaction with Obama's socialist ideology. It took them a while to figure it out. However, it is not a president's responsibility to get a senator elected.
I'm glad that you are so obstinately clueless and hope that the rest of the libs remain so.
I can't wait till November.
Neal
Okay, enough of the doom and gloom from the left. Coakley lost, that sucks, it happens.
But the world didn't come to an end on Tuesday. A year ago the Democratic caucus had 58 votes in the Senate. Today, after Coakley's loss, they have 59. So things have gotten better in the last year, not worse.
And Democrats really need to stop obsessing about the filibuster-proof majority and start figuring out ways to govern with a mere 18 vote margin in the Senate. I've been watching Congressional Democrats wringing their hands about the Massachusetts Senate seat for the the last 2 weeks and it's embarrassing. They were likely to lose seats in 2010 anyway. Did they have a plan B once they dropped below the magic 60 vote margin or not?
Besides, they never really had a filibuster-proof majority. I've watched with disgust as Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and Mary Landrieu not only reserved their right to vote against cloture on the Health Care bill, but publicly threaten to use it if their personal demands weren't met. So did Democrats lose their 60th vote on the bill? Or were Lieberman and Nelson going to find yet another reason to derail the process?
A lot us would be quite happy to get by with just 55 Senate Democrats if it meant we could rid ourselves of the people who've spent the last 6 months stabbing us in the back.
I'm with Jinchi in that I don't think the Dems should panic. But things could be done differently and better. Obama was in Ohio today saying he would "never stop fighting." I would have liked it better if he had followed John Paul Jones and said "I have not yet begun to fight."
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