When the Dust Settles

If there is one thing Sen. elect Scott Brown will find out is that American political celebrity is a very fickle thing. On one Tuesday in January he went from being a rather obscure Republican state Sen. from Wrentham, Massachusetts to a nationally known symbol of a rising star in his party and of voter discontent with the party in power. Who would have thought a candidate that was deemed to be cannon fodder when he announced his run was being asked about his presidential aspirations when the race was over?

President Obama is experiencing the flip side of that scenario. Just one year after his historic win he is suffering a significant shifting of the political landscape. The Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial losses could be explained away but a loss of a senate seat in Massachusetts is simply not a fluke.

Much has been said and speculated upon concerning what the Brown triumph means. The facts on the ground are only these: The Democrats still have a significant majority in both houses of congress and they hold the presidency. The 41st vote in the senate only means that without defections of even one of their members, the Republicans can filibuster any legislation they deem to be unacceptable.

Facts and trend lines are two different things and the Democrats better wake up to them very quickly or they are going to suffer a similar fate as Martha Coakley in many races in the mid terms in November. Early polls show Democratic Senators Lincoln of Arkansas, Carnahan of Missouri, Majority Leader Reid in Nevada, and Spector in Pennsylvania all trailing badly. Senator Boxer in California is showing weakness as well.

Did the president and the Democrats receive the message sent on Tuesday? Some have and some obviously haven't. Evan Bayh, a moderate Democrat from Inidana had this to say, "If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake up call then there is no hope of waking up."

An even stronger response to the message came from outside of the party ranks, Mort Zuckerman, Editor in Chief of US News and World Report, who endorsed and voted for President Obama wrote this scathing piece entitled He's Done Everything Wrong.

Our own Senator Kerry seems to continue to be somnambulant as today's article in the Boston Globe points out. The title is Election Energizes Climate Bill Talks. It trumpets the idea that Senator Kerry is putting together bipartisan talks regarding cap and trade legislation. The Globe must be just as sleepy as Kerry to think that Senator Elect Brown is going to be anywhere near Kerry on this foolish legislation.

Climate change alarmism is more and more being exposed as a fraud with this week's revelation by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitting the prediction that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was completely unfounded. This claim was not the result of any science but apparently came from an interview with a reporter. How's that for an example of a rigorous demonstration of the scientific method?

It is not to late for the president to turn things around. Bill Clinton was two years into his first term when he got the wake up call of his life in the 1994 mid terms as the Republicans gained a total of 54 seats and gained the House for the first time since 1954. Stunning upsets included House Speaker Tom Foley.

Clinton was enough of a pragmatist or egotist by moving as quickly to the center of American politics as he could and subsequently saving a second term as president. He did that by a stronger effort at bipartisanship and abandonment of Hillarycare.

Obama needs to turn it around and quickly. It is being described by the punditry as the Obama Pivot. With the news out this week that unemployment increased in 43 states and that the deficit ceiling will be increased by another 1.9 TRILLION dollars, that pivot better happen quickly and it better focus on jobs and spending cuts. Bush lost his way by becoming a profligate spender. In his first year in office Obama has made Bush look like a piker.

He has all the tools at his disposal to accomplish this. Theoretically he is the strongest man in the world! The question of course is who is he really? Is he a man of high intellect with elements of greatness or is he a guy who simply got lucky and is in way over his head and with each passing day it becomes more apparent? Over the next week or two the dust from the Massachusetts election will settle and we will begin to find out.

A Thunderclap

I think Martha Coakley is going to lose tomorrow and I don't think it will be close enough for any miraculously found absentee ballot hijinks to make a difference.

If she does lose, she only need look in the mirror to find the main reason why. Martha was lazy in the early stages and felt a sense of democratic entitlement and inevitability to this job. After all it would be inconceivable for anybody but a democrat to take Teddy's seat.

Her campaign seemingly was filled with gaffe after gaffe. These included misspelling Massachusetts, no terrorists in Afghanistan, calling Curt Schilling a Yankee fan, refusing to openly debate the main contender one on one, taking December off, watching as a campaign aid knocked a nuisance reporter to the ground then denying seeing it, a Washington fundraiser with health care lobbyists, the quote " deeply religious people probably shouldn't work in emergency rooms" and the last round of simply awful television ads.

The Massachusetts Democratic Party ad stating that Brown would turn rape victims away from Massachusetts hospital emergency rooms might be the dirtiest ad seen here in a very long time.

The bigger picture however is that the average Massachusetts person has taken on that Minuteman feeling of once again being the center of American power and influence. This is more than just a special senate election. It has taken on the feeling of a national referendum on congressional performance.

The health care reform bill is not popular throughout the nation and Massachusetts voters understand that Washington is simply not listening. Even as the overwhelming favorite is in danger of defeat, the word out of Washington is hurry up so we can ram this thing through.

People are taking another look at one party rule and guess what? They don't like it. They are also deeply skeptical of the plan itself. We have mandatory health care in Massachusetts and it has resulted in the highest insurance premiums in the land. This despite the fact that we have more health care institutions per capita than anywhere else in the country.

If part of the plan is a reduction of Medicare reimbursement how can that not affect seniors? If substantially more patients are forced into a system without significant increases in personnel, how can that not mean less care?

Even if the average voter is not sending a message to Washington then there are other factors which may lead to a Brown win. He has simply run a superior campaign in every way. Against an entrenched party with a popular and competent candidate with a 30 point lead at the outset, Brown never stopped working. If he wins it will be a thunderclap that no one in the nation and particularly in Washington will fail to hear.

Upset in the Making?

Martha Coakley is in trouble. She may still win the special senate election on January 19th but in order to do so she will need an infusion of cash and star power from outside Massachusetts. What was once thought to be a walkover is now a horse race for a variety of reasons.

I think the primary reason is that Coakley's brain trust has run a very lackadaisical campaign, acting as though it was hers because she showed up.

There is now no doubt that Scott Brown is a formidable candidate in his own right. His performance in the last debate was very good and he had one of those sound bites that resonate with the voter. It occurred when responding to this question by moderator David Gergen,

"Mr. Brown, let me ask you this question, it's on a lot of people's minds. You said you're for health care reform, just not this bill. We know from the Clinton experience that if this bill fails, it could well be another 15 years before we see health care reform efforts in Washington. Are you willing under those circumstances to say, 'I'm going to be the person. I'm going to sit in Teddy Kennedy's seat and I'm going to be the person who's going to block it for another 15 years'?

Brown's reply was a quick one which even Gergen admitted stuffed him. "Well with all due respect it is not a Kennedy seat and it is not the Democrat's seat, it's the people's seat." It doesn't hurt that according to the polls a growing number of people do want health care reform stymied. House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel admitted as much yesterday

That rebellion is being felt in this statewide race by a huge influx of outside money. Brown ads and articles about Brown have appeared on Drudge and other websites with exhortations to donate to his campaign. Reportedly, that resulted in over 1.4 million dollars in donations in a 24 hour period from over 17,000 individuals. Coakley matched that to some degree with a huge media purchase by the Service Employee Union International.

The latest Coakley ad has hurt her for a couple of reasons, the obvious one is that Massachusetts is misspelled. The ad continues with the obligatory pictures and attack on Cheney and Bush however it also includes a photo of Rush Limbaugh with his right hand raised. Red Mass group immediately attacked the picture as a visual Nazi reference.

Limbaugh responded with a blistering attack on Coakley. One has to wonder who advised Coakley on this strategy? The old adage of let sleeping dogs lie is appropriate here, Limbaugh has an enormous listening audience and what good did it do for Coakley to inject him into the race?

The poll numbers released over the last couple of days and are all over the place in terms of predictions. One had Brown up by 1% another had Coakley ahead by 15%. One thing is obvious to this political gadfly and that is visibility. Republicans are a relative rare breed in Massachusetts and their campaign visibility is generally low, that is not the case with Brown. There are many Brown signs and in a good many places considered democratic strongholds. As a very political friend of mine says, "signs don't vote", but when a republican has a lot of them it certainly is note worthy.

Generally speaking, when a statewide election is over it quickly fades into distant memory. Because of the timing and because of the national implications of the 60th senate vote and the Obama agenda, this one may be talked about for a long time.

Backing In?

A new poll out January 5 had Martha Coakley leading Scott Brown by 9 points. This raised a good many eyebrows across Massachusetts and the nation as anything less than a blow out by Coakley in the bluest of all states will not bode well for the democrats.

Perhaps the reason for the tightening in the race is that Coakley has been so sure of her election prospects that she has been acting as if it is more like a coronation than an election.

In this article, the New York Times points out that Martha hardly even campaigned last month. This week she did get some splashy front page space in the Globe as the Kennedy family rolled out to endorse her at the Medford senior citizens center. This was hardly unexpected for two reason:

The Globe already has its endorsement of Coakley printed the moment she announced even though they sought some objective cover with the endorsement of the impossible to elect Alan Khazei in the primary.

The Kennedy's endorsed Coakley because they had no alternative. Rather than be king makers in this election they are simply falling in line as good party soldiers. No one at the affair admitted that Coakley had trumped all the Kennedy's and diminished their political weight in the state when she had brazenly made plans to run before Teddy stopped breathing. She didn't care that Teddy wanted Vicki to succeed him and she didn't care what Joe's plans were.

One irony was the selection of the senior center as the announcement site. A center piece of the health care reform legislation is the reduction by $500 billion of Medicare reimbursement. This is sure to hit seniors in a couple of ways. Since there is already much grumbling from the medical community some doctors and hospitals will surely stop accepting Medicare patients. The Mayo

Clinic took just such an action last week.

Going forward the demands on the system for elderly care will dramatically increase with the now aging baby boomers soon to join the ranks of the retirees in huge numbers. Are services likely to be rationed simply because of demand outstripping supply even without considering the effect of mandatory health care?

Coakley's lazy attitude in trying to back in to the post and Brown closing the gap has national implications. With the recent announcement of a number of democrats not seeking re-election, most prominently are Dorgan and Dodd, the Massachusetts race is getting more attention as a bellwether for the national mid terms in November.

Brown is using a very effective strategy in focusing on what are the nation's most pressing concerns of jobs and the deficit. Coakley's and the democrat's main issues of health care and climate change are way down the list.

The fact that Coakley will be the 60th democratic senate vote is not lost on any politically astute observers in the nation. Ardent opponents of the health care legislation will not be voting Coakley. Only 59 votes would not be able to invoke cloture and a long filibuster of the legislation might mean its death.

There is no way of telling for sure what all of this will mean until the results are in. There is however a formula for disaster brewing for the democrats nationally if this race is closer than a double digit blow out for Coakley.

If the Obama agenda isn't soundly endorsed here in Massachusetts then you can be sure it is wearing thin through out the nation. With each passing day the majority will weaken its resolve and the opposition will become more emboldened.

God forbid Coakley loses, it is likely that Obama would be considered a lame duck the very next day.