The Good News And The Bad

Commentary By Ron Beasley

OK, the bad news first - it appears Coakley lost in MA. The good news is   - it appears Brown won.  The really good news is that both the Democrats and Republicans will misinterpret what this election means.  From all that I read Coakley ran what was perhaps one of the most incompetent campaigns in political history - she lost which is different than Brown winning.  The Republicans will interpret this as a victory for obstructionism which could hurt them in 2010.  Unfortunately the Democrats will take assorted messages from this loss - most of them wrong.

We have often joked that the Republicans were really good at winning elections but really bad at governing. Guess what?  The Democrats have shown they are just as bad at governing as the Republicans.  We knew that Reid was not up to the task but we had hope for Obama. 

Kevin Drum wrote this yesterday:

The frustration on the left with Obama � and with healthcare reform
specifically � was almost inevitable. During the campaign, a lot of
people chose to see in him what they wanted to see, pushing
to the back of their minds not just the obvious signs that Obama has
always been a cautious, practical politician, but also the obvious
compromises and pressures that are forced onto any president. It was a
recipe for disappointment. The striking thing to me, though, is how
fast the left has turned on him.

Yes, we were fools!  Kevin points out this is exactly what happened to LBJ, Carter and Clinton.  Make no mistake, Obama was in the Clinton mold - talk progressive then govern as a corporatist. Obama had reassured the Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex and the Medical Industrial Complex that he was not a threat or he would have been destroyed by the Corporate Media - think Howard Dean. And Kevin is right -  the reaction from the left was inevitable. 

I truly hope this will result in the death of the health care "reform" bill because while it's failure may hurt the Democrats it's passage will hurt them even more.  It will hurt more voters than it will help and do nothing to prevent the inevitable collapse of the US health care system - political hari kari.  Health care in the US can't be reformed until the system does collapse - at the most five years away. 

So what about the future?  Matt Yglesias gives us this informative if misleading chart:

Yes, a majority consider themselves conservatives.  But what does conservative mean?  If you poll people on individual issues a majority are liberals/progressives.  Don't forget that 60 percent favored the public option.  While they may not trust the government they trust the institutions that only the government can protect them from - Wall Street, the Banksters and multinational corporations even less. 

So it's a message issue.  The problem may have been in part the fault of the messenger but the messenger can't get the message across if the corporate media  won't allow it.

Update:

I think Matt gets it right:

President Barack Obama, conversely, will get a terrible week or two of
press but should actually benefit politically (cold comfort for the
damage it will do to his substantive agenda). It�s much easier to
complain about �Republican obstructionism� if Republicans have the 41
votes they need to obstruct. Similarly, it�s easier to keep your
coalition together if it�s not possible to do anything.

Yes, the 60 filibuster majority was always a myth when the likes of Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln, et.al. were part of it.