Did Scott Brown's Win Signal a Shift in American Political Landscape?

[russ_watters]

Are you really knocking the fact that one of your news channels is focussing on an international emergency?

Well considering the time sensitivity of the election results, I think they made a bad decision on coverage. But no, the main reason I posted that is typically whenever someone references Foxnews, there is random, off-topic, knee-jerk backlash (as we have seen in this thread...). I wanted people to know I actually intended to get the story from CNN and just wasn't able to because they weren't carrying it at that time.

Today on CNN.com, the election results were the lead and the Hati earthquake was second (and third and fourth).

 

[russ_watters]

I get such a kick out of Fox and their hallucinations. The fact is that rather than an indictment of Obama's policies, Coakley lost the election because she got her sports teams mixed up. She was leading in the polls by 30 points until she stuck her foot in her mouth.

I'm not sure if you are serious about this or not. Are you saying you actually believe that not knowing who Curt Schilling is cost her 35 points? Yeah, it's pretty bad, but do you really think Mass votors are that vapid/superficial?

 

[Char. Limit]

There's a reason for that backlash, but that's offtopic, and I even made a poll on that issue, so I won't discuss it here.

Fact is, hopefully this election will knock sense into the Democrats, just as the 2006 election knocked sense into the Republicans.

Political parties should get sense knocked into them
about every five years, from my perspective. Five years for each party.

As to your second message, yes.

 

[russ_watters]

It appears not, at least not in the Senate. Webb has stepped up.

http://webb.senate.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/2010-01-19-01.cfm

USA Today ran an analysis of when he might get seated. 4 of the last 10 times this happened (one of which was Kennedy himself), it was within 48 hours. Most of the rest were several weeks. Legally, it seems reasonable to me that they might wait until the election results are certified, which will probably take about 2 weeks.

The point is, if the democrats want to, they have two weeks to get something done. The senate is probably out of the question, but that doesn't mean the House can't still pass the Senate version of the bill.

I think the current healthcare effort is probably dead, but I am far from certain of that. We'll know more after the state of the union address.

 

[russ_watters]

Since this thread is about hope for America, I'd like to ask the new (to coin a new phrase) superminority what their hope is for health care. Do you simply wish for the current health care legislation to go away and maintain the status quo or would you be willing to vote for the legislation if Democrats made some compromises? What provisions of the senate bill (since that's the one closest to what Democrats could have passed had they maintained their supermajority) would you want added or removed in order for it to be acceptable?

There are very few people in this country who don't want health care reform. Healthcare is too expensive and getting worse.

Besides the things I already mentioned (and malpractice reform is a biggie for me), I also think insurance rates should do more to reflect risk factors. If you're a bad driver, it is reflected in your insurance rates. If you're an unhealthy person (smoker, drinker, fat, old), it should be better reflected in your health insurance rates. I think businesses should be encouraged to provide healthcare via incentives, not punished for not having (or for having, as is the current plan!) healthcare. Private insurance companies need to be better regulated to encourage competition. Drug companies should not be given extra patent extensions. Importing drugs from Canada should be encouraged to help eliminate price-fixing. Don't punish people for not getting insurance, but don't reward them for it either.

If the flaws in the current system are addressed to reduce and better distribute costs, more people and companies will be able to afford healthcare, mostly getting rid of the lack of insurance issue on its own.

 

[mheslep]

I'd also add:
- completely doing away with the employee tax deduction on health care but cutting other taxes to make it revenue neutral. I'd guess this would immediately cut health care costs by a quarter. This is not popular however, so instead allow equivalent tax deductions for private individual health plans, which at least still cuts loose individuals from relying on their employers for health care.
- allow insurance to be sold across state lines.

 

[Al68]

Is it really possible we might be spared from this health care plan now? Thanks to Massachusetts? Massachusetts? Really?

And a Massachusetts Senate race won by a candidate who's entire campaign strategy was "just say NO" to Democrats? Kennedy's seat? Is this April Fool's day?

Never mind, this is obviously a dream. Like the one where I'm married to Halle Berry and Shania Twain.

 

[Char. Limit]

It's all Curt Shillings' fault when you get right down to it...

 

[russ_watters]

And a Massachusetts Senate race won by a candidate who's entire campaign strategy was "just say NO" to Democrats? Kennedy's seat? Is this April Fool's day?

To Democrats in general and to healthcare in particular and that was Kennedy's baby! Preposterous!

 

[AverageJoe]

it's all curt shillings' fault when you get right down to it...

THEY BLEW IT UP!

damn you shilling! Daaaamn yoooouuuuu!

 

[Nebula815]

Isn't Yggdrasil the World Tree in the Norse religion?

Yes, but it is also the name of a sand submarine in a 1998 RPG videogame named Xenogears. Since science-engineering types are often videogame players, I figured maybe Ygggdrasil took the name from that.

 

[WhoWee]

Didn't someone want to name the health care Bill "Teddy Care"?

 

[Ygggdrasil]

The problem is the current system does have problems, of which there are ways to fix them, but the Republicans, when they held control, didn't do squat to enact any changes, and then thus the Democrats picked up on this issue as a centerpiece ("The Republicans had years to try fixing healthcare and did no such thing, vote for us and we will enact real change.").

This is the main thing I'm worried about. After health care led to the Republican Revolution in the 1994 midterm elections and looks to do the same in 2010, I'm not sure any future congress or administration will want to tackle health care any time soon. Perhaps we should hope that failing spectacularly at health care reform is only a Democratic trait (assuming the Republicans take a stab at it sometime in the near future). There may be some hope, however, in the fact that Massachusetts enacted universal health care legislation under a Republican governor (Mitt Romney, who was a serious Republican presidential candidate in 2008) that passed with the help of the vote of then state senator Scott Brown (whose senate campaign website states that he supports the 2006 healthcare reform legislation passed in Massachusetts).

BTW, off-topic, but does your screename come from Bart's sand submarine in Xenogears by any chance?

No, it's actually based off of the tree from Norse mythology (as Char.Limit mentioned). The extra g is there because a username with the correct spelling was already taken and (no offense) I don't like numbers at the end of usernames.

 

[Char. Limit]

YES!

Finally, I clearly win an argument on the politics forum!

People, don't confuse the issue with facts.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

YES!

Finally, I clearly win an argument on the politics forum!

People, don't confuse the issue with facts.

LOL

*highfive*

 

[Gokul43201]

Though some people have called the election of a black President one of the profound milestone victories in American history, the idea of a Republican winning the Kennedy seat is a milestone of truly unfathomable magnitude.

Do you really believe that a GOPer winning the MA Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy is a historical milestone greater in significance than a black person being elected President? After slavery, decades of living with a sub-human (three-fifths) status, a civil war, lynchings, segregation, Jim Crow, a civil rights movement that captured the world's attention, and more recently, issues of racial profiling, racial economic disparity, and on the flip side, the debate behind Affirmative Action, one might expect that a black person being elected President is indeed the more historically profound of the the two events. And that's not even comparing the relative significance and power of the two positions involved: POTUS vs. Senator in a minority party (albeit, in this case, a filibuster de-proofing senator).

-Mass has a votor registration of 37.1% Dem, 11.4% Rep and 51.2% Independents.
-Obama won the popular vote in Mass by 62% to 36%, compared with 53% to 46% nationally. It was somewhere around 4th biggest state margin (tied with several others).
-All of Mass's senators and representatives and the governor are Democrats.
-The last time the state elected a Republican senator was 1972 and The Kennedy Seat has been in the family since 1953.
-The state legislature is 85% Democrat, 15% Republican.
-Coakley (the Democratic candidate and state attorney general) won a decisive victory in the primary - Brown has never run a state level race.

On the other hand, Brown has been a MA congressman for 12 years now, having run and won a number of successful campaigns, while Coakley has only been the MA AG for the last 3 years, and as is obvious from her senate "campaign", seems to not know the first thing about running one. And another important stat missing there: 4 of the last 5 MA governors were Republicans. So, the state does not, in general, have an aversion to picking Republicans over Dems.

The national implications of this state senate election are clear. National healthcare was Kennedy's baby and Mass votors knew the filibuster proof majority of the Dems was at stake. Brown campaigned on being That Guy who would break the supermajority. In other words, Brown made sure this election was a referrendum on Obama and the Dems' overall national policies.

While the election may have been perceived as a referendum on Obama, Scott Brown most definitely did not run it that way. Brown did his best to campaign as NOT a GOP candidate, calling himself "independent" in many of his campaign ads and pitches. He even went so far (to the left) as to liken himself to JFK in one of them and was insistent on publicly distancing himself from the idea that the election was a referendum of Obama. He even says explicitly in his final pitch on election day that http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/22267317/index.html "

In my opinion, this tells us clearly that Obama's and the Democrats' vision for the country has already been flatly rejected.

This one second-order data point tells you that? Clearly? So the result of the election doesn't say much about the actual candidates themselves, then? Or their ability to run a senate campaign? And the outcome would have been essentially the same, no matter who the candidates were, and irrespective of whether or not they had bothered to campaign?

And what does, "flatly rejected" mean? That a little under http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/jobapproval-obama.php ?

With the trajectory the economy was on in October of 2008, a massive victory by the Dems, including a victory by Obama was a near certainty.

Easy to say in retrospect, but I don't recall any of the McCain supporters on this forum making this easy call back then. Naturally, I will take that back if you can link some posts to the contrary.

Obama's approval rating according to USA Today is now 50% positive to 45% negative, the worst of any President after one year with the exception of Reagan since WWII.

Let's also recall that Bush was nearly at the same point in just about 9 months following his election, when he got a nearly 40% boost in approval because of a terrorist attack. And it only took him a little over a year to squander away that nearly 90% approval rating...makes Obama's 15% drop in approval look like someone hopping out of bed with a parachute strapped on.

How did we get here, after his inauguration day approval rating of 67% to 14%? Obamamania wore off: The country is now his. The wars are his, the economy is his, the health care situation is his. When the determination on the recession is made, it is likely to be judged to have ended in Q4 of 2009, but just like Bush with Clinton's recession, Obama is likely to have to deal with an extended "jobless recovery" from Bush's recession. That hurt Bush and the Republicans a lot and it is going to hurt Obama and the Dems a lot. It is much too early to project where we'll be politically in 3 years and I still believe that the economy is likely to recover enough for Obama to use it as a centerpiece of his campaign. But for this year, with unemployment likely to still be above 9%, a strong Republican comeback is very likely.

This is exactly right, and in my opinion, is a much bigger contribution to the election results than any specific policy choices of specific parties. The group in power during any extended recession, is expected to suffer a "kick the bums out" tendency, and that was likely a significant contributor to this particular result (just as it was in the last one).

And interestingly, CNN is covering the Hati quake right now while Fox is interviewing a focus group to discuss why they voted how they did. In any case, the votors for Brown mostly confirmed what I said above - that it is a national issue referrendum (and I'm sure we'll get exit poll stats on that).

I don't believe any of the major news networks conducted exit polls.

"Hope" is easy to generate when all you have to be is Not Bush and a good speach maker, but now that he's in office, his policies matter. During the campaign, people either believed his deceptions about how liberal he was or just plain didn't care as long as he was Not Bush. It's probably a little of both, but with the country now his, being Not Bush isn't enough to sustain him and the people are waking up to see just how liberal he is and just how much they don't want liberals running the country.

Do people really see Obama being more left wing than they thought he was, or is this just one of those kinds of things that is said so often without careful retrospection? This was the person that was repeatedly referred to as communist and socialist. The same person who repeatedly, and to the extreme dismay of a significant chunk of the Dem party and its supporters, asserted way back in the Spring, that Universal healthcare should come off the table, and that it would be dangerous to cause a large disruption in the way that healthcare is provided. The same person that has threatened to veto any healthcare bill that isn't pronounced deficit neutral by the CBO. The same person who refused to nationalize the big investment banks, as many in the left would have liked, or even claw back at the bank bonuses, which would have been a bare minimum requirement for any self-respecting socialist. The same person that has not dangerously evacuated troops out of Iraq (as every other Right Wing commentator was predicting in 2008) or Afghanistan (and has, in fact, done the opposite), has continued drone attacks into Pakistan, has stated that he would prefer a legislative process to deal with issues like DOMA rather than using Executive fiat, has argued against swinging towards protectionist trade policies, has done nothing to push for the abolition of the secret ballot/card check for unions (another of those things that was predicted to happen once he was in power). Yet so many of the people that were predicting a dive into communism under Obama seem to find him more left wing than they were expecting - odd.

I have Hope today because this affirms my belief that the US is a center-right country at heart.

It's pretty plain to see that the US leans to the right. Did you really need such an oblique connection as this to feel confident about that? And as a single data point it hardly carries the statistical weight to draw conclusions about long-term/large-scale behaviors.

It really does want small government and personal freedom.

This is also trivially true, at least in comparison to most of the rest of the world. But also, in this particular instance, it wants a Senator that actually gets out on the streets and shows a direct interest in the welfare of the people.

And more importantly, without the filibuster proof majority, I'm hopeful that the damage of a long-term rule of democrats and democratic policies will be mitigated.

I wouldn't use the same words, but I too am happy that one party no longer has a filibuster proof majority. That feeling, however, is rooted in the belief (now fading) that there are at least a handful of relatively independent, non-sheep members in both parties.

 

[mheslep]

After health care led to the Republican Revolution in the 1994 midterm elections and looks to do the same in 2010, I'm not sure any future congress or administration will want to tackle health care any time soon. ...

I disagree. Every employer continues to scream that health care costs are out of control. I suspect if the Republican's take a majority in 2010, or perhaps even before, we'll see some changes, just not the ones championed by the D's. Remember McCain ran hard on some large health care reform in '08. The reforms sited often by Republican leaders include:
-Tort/Malpractice reform
-Insurance across state lines.
-Allow individuals and small businesses to form pools.

 

[Nebula815]

Do you really believe that a GOPer winning the MA Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy is a historical milestone greater in significance than a black person being elected President? After slavery, decades of living with a sub-human (three-fifths) status,

The three-fifths clause was to limit the representation of the pro-slavery Southern states, which wanted to count blacks as whole persons so that they could hold more representation in Congress. Blacks made up a huge portion of population of the South. The North wanted to count blacks as nothing, to prevent the South from being able to keep slavery. The three-fifths clause was a compromise to limit the power of the pro-slavery South.

While the election may have been perceived as a referendum on Obama, Scott Brown most definitely did not run it that way. Brown did his best to campaign as NOT a GOP candidate, calling himself "independent" in many of his campaign ads and pitches. He even went so far (to the left) as to liken himself to JFK in one of them and was insistent on publicly distancing himself from the idea that the election was a referendum of Obama. He even says explicitly in his final pitch on election day that http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/22267317/index.html "

On JFK, he likened himself in that JFK was a tax cutter, not raiser, and being that this was the seat Ted Kennedy had held, and Brown wants to cut taxes, it was a very nice piece of political marketing.

I do not know if the election was a referendum on Obama or not, but just as I be so quick to say it was, I wouldn't be so quick to say it was not, either. Brown may have said it wasn't, but he ran his campaign pretty much specifically against the entire Obama agenda: raising taxes, carbon cap-and-trade, Obamacare, civilian court trials for terrorists, etc...

Let's also recall that Bush was nearly at the same point in just about 9 months following his election, when he got a nearly 40% boost in approval because of a terrorist attack. And it only took him a little over a year to squander away that nearly 90% approval rating...makes Obama's 15% drop in approval look like someone hopping out of bed with a parachute strapped on.

Much was said about Reagan being a one-termer presidency early on too, until the economy turned around for him. Clinton was smart enough to pivot politically to a degree. Time will tell regarding Obama.

This is exactly right, and in my opinion, is a much bigger contribution to the election results than any specific policy choices of specific parties. The group in power during any extended recession, is expected to suffer a "kick the bums out" tendency, and that was likely a significant contributor to this particular result (just as it was in the last one).

Well, I think what has people spooked right now is what they see as reckless spending and bailouts and corruption (Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker kickback, the union payoff (exemption from tax), etc...), and also many are uneasy about the treatment of terrorists from the Obama administration as they see it (Scott Brown made this a point in his campaign as well).

I believe multiple polls also showed that more Massachusettes voters were concerned about healthcare rather than the economy.

Do people really see Obama being more left wing than they thought he was, or is this just one of those kinds of things that is said so often without careful retrospection? This was the person that was repeatedly referred to as communist and socialist. The same person who repeatedly, and to the extreme dismay of a significant chunk of the Dem party and its supporters, asserted way back in the Spring, that Universal healthcare should come off the table, and that it would be dangerous to cause a large disruption in the way that healthcare is provided. The same person that has threatened to veto any healthcare bill that isn't pronounced deficit neutral by the CBO. The same person who refused to nationalize the big investment banks, as many in the left would have liked, or even claw back at the bank bonuses, which would have been a bare minimum requirement for any self-respecting socialist.

The people calling him a communist and socialist aren't going by the way he has currently governed per se so much as they are how he ran as a candidate early on. Early on, he talked about significantly raising taxes, the minimum wage, infringing on free trade, universal healthcare, etc...plus the people in his background, a lot of people were struck with the idea that he was a closet socialist or very influenced by socialism.

Also, the way he got the attention of the hardcore Left. Many of them were enthralled by him, so they had to think he was very left as well.

Then in one of his first speeches as President, he showed himself to be very far to the Left, in saying he wanted to re-make three pillars of American society: healthcare, education, and energy.

The same person that has not dangerously evacuated troops out of Iraq (as every other Right Wing commentator was predicting in 2008)

He had said he was going to do that.

or Afghanistan (and has, in fact, done the opposite), has continued drone attacks into Pakistan, has stated that he would prefer a legislative process to deal with issues like DOMA rather than using Executive fiat, has argued against swinging towards protectionist trade policies, has done nothing to push for the abolition of the secret ballot/card check for unions (another of those things that was predicted to happen once he was in power). Yet so many of the people that were predicting a dive into communism under Obama seem to find him more left wing than they were expecting - odd.

He is still pretty far to the Left, it's just that the Democrat party is not, as a whole, Left to the same degree, nor is the country. If so, they should have been able to pass healthcare through within the first year of his Presidency fairly quickly, then they could move on to things like carbon cap-and-trade, union card check, etc...but healthcare got tied up.

On Afghanistan, remember Obama himself and the Democrats had argued that Afghanistan was the good war that had to be fought, it was Iraq that was the wrong and unnecessary war, the war that was diverting resources away from Afghanistan. Kerry himself ran on this issue in 2004. So it shouldn't be shocking to anyone that Obama hasn't pulled out of Afghanistan and has increased the troops there IMO.

 

[WhoWee]

While the election may have been perceived as a referendum on Obama, Scott Brown most definitely did not run it that way. Brown did his best to campaign as NOT a GOP candidate, calling himself "independent" in many of his campaign ads and pitches. He even went so far (to the left) as to liken himself to JFK in one of them and was insistent on publicly distancing himself from the idea that the election was a referendum of Obama. He even says explicitly in his final pitch on election day that http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/22267317/index.html "

I agree that Brown is basically a "Tea Party" Republican - that is not following any party line and most interested in representing his state.

 

[Char. Limit]

Er... The Tea Partiers are the undisciplined lackeys of Fox News, in my book.

On the liberal side, did anyone see Keith Olbermann talk about Scott Brown? That guy can rant! Too bad none of his rant is based on fact...

 

[BoomBoom]

meh...I think his opponent's stupid comment about Schilling was the 'nail in the coffin' for her campaign.

I think his win had more to do with disgruntled Boston sports fans than anything else really... people want to make more of it than really exists IMO.

Voters are easily swayed by 'popularity contests'.

 

[Nebula815]

I find it amazing people actually think a sports comment swung the election!

One thing I think did not help Coakley was when President Obama was campaigning for her, and did two rather stupid things:

1) He knocked trucks. DO NOT KNOCK TRUCKS IN AMERICA. He basically made fun of Brown's truck, kind of mocking it as if it was just some stupid prop he purchased to win votes.

2) He said, to quote him: "Now, I don't know his background..." well what are you doing campaigning then!? That is dangerous politically, always know your opponent before telling people not to vote for him.

 

[BoomBoom]

I find it amazing people actually think a sports comment swung the election!

Hmm, well ASAIK, she was leading before the comment, and trailing after the comment.

I think you underestimate the passion of Boston sports fans...

 

[lisab]

I find it amazing people actually think a sports comment swung the election!

One thing I think did not help Coakley was when President Obama was campaigning for her, and did two rather stupid things:

1) He knocked trucks. DO NOT KNOCK TRUCKS IN AMERICA. He basically made fun of Brown's truck, kind of mocking it as if it was just some stupid prop he purchased to win votes.

2) He said, to quote him: "Now, I don't know his background..." well what are you doing campaigning then!? That is dangerous politically, always know your opponent before telling people not to vote for him.

So you don't believe that a sports comment swung the election, but a comment about a truck did? To-MAY-to, to-MAH-to.

I can easily see how such silly comments could sway voters. Logically it doesn't make sense, but for many people, the way they vote is based on emotion. And wow, are people ever emotional right now. They're pissed off, frustrated, and even desperate. They are, as my mom used to say, in no mood.

 

[Nebula815]

So you don't believe that a sports comment swung the election, but a comment about a truck did? To-MAY-to, to-MAH-to.

No, I don't think it swung the election, I said I don't think it helped Coakley at all though.

I can easily see how such silly comments could sway voters. Logically it doesn't make sense, but for many people, the way they vote is based on emotion. And wow, are people ever emotional right now. They're pissed off, frustrated, and even desperate. They are, as my mom used to say, in no mood.

People are emotional certainly, but I do not think they are that illogical right now. I think it was a variety of variables, such as Coakley came off as elitist to some, she did not run a good campaign, many were concerned about this big healthcare bill (in particular many were concerned with how it would affect Massachusettes's own healthcare system as well---one of Brown's points was that this should be done on a state-by-state basis, and Massachusettes should refine its universal healthcare model to cover basic healthcare well and then the model can be copied by other states as they see fit, but it should not be done on the national level), concern over the spending, concern over the treatment of terrorists (Brown was pretty specific in that he is okay with enhanced interrogation tactics such as waterboarding), etc...

 

[Char. Limit]

As a great man once said, "A man never lost money betting against the intelligence of the American voter."

I say "a great man" because I can't remember who said it. If it turns out to be someone like Hitler,
I'm sorry.

However, IMHO, the point is correct, and "IMHO" should always follow and be followed by a comma.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I thought this was interesting.

Look, the fact of the matter is, you're right, it was a stunning victory. But the people in Massachusetts already have healthcare reform. In fact, Senator Brown voted for the healthcare reform that Massachusetts has. He said he wouldn't vote to repeal it...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35014151/ns/meet_the_press/ns/meet_the_press

So maybe this really was about health care after all. Massachusetts already has universal health care and Brown supports it.

 

[Char. Limit]

You mean he supported. Joseph Loserman... er, I mean Lieberman used to support health care too.

I'm no Democrat, but Joe Lieberman (and Arlen Specter, to be fair) sickens me. Can you guess why?

 

[Al68]

You mean he supported. Joseph Loserman... er, I mean Lieberman used to support health care too.

I'm no Democrat, but Joe Lieberman (and Arlen Specter, to be fair) sickens me. Can you guess why?

No, but the anticipation is killing me. :!)

 

[Nebula815]

I thought this was interesting.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35014151/ns/meet_the_press/ns/meet_the_press

So maybe this really was about health care after all. Massachusetts already has universal health care and Brown supports it.

Healthcare was definitely one of the issues involved. Brown's position is that universal healthcare that covers basic healthcare needs should be a state issue, like public education, not something the national government handles.

Brown says that Massachusetts should reform its healthcare program and make it a model so that other states can copy it (although from what I have read it has too many problems to be copied anytime soon though).

 

[Al68]

Healthcare was definitely one of the issues involved. Brown's position is that universal healthcare that covers basic healthcare needs should be a state issue, like public education, not something the national government handles.

A believer in constitutional federalism elected in a Massachusetts election?! To Kennedy's seat? I know I'm dreaming all this now.

I guess I have no choice but to rethink what I [STRIKE]think[/STRIKE] thought about [STRIKE]The People's Republic of[/STRIKE] Massachusetts. :!)