Yesterday, I would have wagered that Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts Attorney General and Democratic candidate for the Senate in Massachusetts would in the end squeeze out a victory on Tuesday.
I was wrong. And now we will have endless analyses about what happened and what needs to change. Here's mine.
1. Retail politics. People everywhere like to be asked for their vote, face-to-face as much as that is possible. Massachusetts especially likes retail politics. Martha Coakley didn't seem to appreciate this fact and even if she did she isn't good at it, and this counts in a state that reveres hands-on politics.
Actually, I think Coakley knew her weaknesses and she was determined to coast to victory given the overwhelming number of registered Democrats. Why give a political unknown free publicity with a too aggressive campaign? And this angered Independents and some Democrats and energized the Republicans.
And by the way, where was the White House back when it became obvious that Coakley was running a bad campaign? Why did they wait until it was too late?
Above all, voters don't like to be taken for granted. They read that as arrogance. I saw the same thing happen here in a small town election and it ain't pretty.
2. The divides within the Democratic party. The far more important point is that the Democrats have a huge problem. The opposition Democrats face within their own party in rounding up sufficient votes for victory, whether in reforming Wall Street or health care, has not been lost on the ordinary voter, whether Democrat, Independent, or Republican.
This endless controversy has given the average voter pause. Who is taking their side when they are losing their homes and the banks are thumbing their nose at the Obama administration? And given all the confusion over health care reform, do the Democrats know what they're doing?
3. The confusion within the Obama Administration. The perception that the Obama administration is coddling Wall Street is pervasive in the electorate, among Democrats and Republicans.
The great mystery to all of us is why the president doesn't fire Secretary Geithner and Lawrence Sommers and choose an economic policy team that will fight for real change in our banking and our financial system. The advisers to Martha Coakley claim that they were hurt by President Obama's failure to go after the banks and they are right.
The Obama Administration also needs to create a jobs bill and a financial reform bill that can make it through the Senate and the House and this time the President has to be out in front with his own bill.
President Obama needs to learn how to fight entrenched economic interests rather than endlessly preaching bipartisanship.
Above all, the rapid departure of Obama's leading economic advisers would be a powerful signal that the administration agrees with the electorate that the recession is not over and that someone needs to pay.
4. Reform the Senate's rules. After the upcoming election when the Senate returns, we need to begin the reform the Senate by changing or circumventing the filibuster rule. That won't be easy. We also need to discipline those who vote with us and exploit their leverage and then don't suffer any consequences. I'm not smart enough to know exactly how to do all of this but to allow a handful of Democrats in the Senate to hold us hostage to their threats to withhold their vote is intolerable.
We can't change this machinery of reaction and resistance overnight but we can be far, far better at understanding it than we have been.
5. The enduring crisis within the American democracy. In the United States we progressives are truly caught between a rock and a hard place. Elections have far less consequences than we think they do. Despite an impressive congressional majority for a popular president in an election that promised progressive reform, the machinery of reaction quickly kicked into gear.
We suddenly find that many among the new majority in power are Democrats who are not so progressive, and who really don't care very much for the ideas of the progressive wing of their party, the wing that wants a single payer health care system, or that wants us to get out of Afghanistan or Iraq, and that wants to put banks in their place. And we rediscover Senate rules that allow the minority or sometimes even one senator to stop progress cold.
Instead of swift action, we have a year of sustained stalemate, with the banks still handing out huge bonuses and thumbing their nose at President Obama and the administration determined to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan to placate the war party in their own ranks.
The crucial issue is, and always has been, the forging of a more or less permanent, governing majority for progress in the United States and that will take more than one or two Obama administrations. Health care reform along the line of the Senate bill is a good start.
Action against Wall Street with pro-consumer regulation of the banks and investment banks is key. We must also fight for climate change and face the possibility of a loss.
Within the next week or two, the House has to grow up and vote for the Senate bill. The bill is not as bad as many progressives think and it is the best we can get, even without a Coakley loss.
And the Obama administration must publicly state, after the Senate bill is passed, that the fight for a strong public option will be revisited next year, using the reconciliation process.
Obama must finally, after all, call out the Republican Party for what it is: the party of faction and reaction, the party that is running on empty when it comes to ideas and the party that can't be trusted to govern. I think many among the electorate knows how many wing nuts are in the Republican Party; they just need to be reminded of that on a regular basis by a fighting president.
If we are to suffer significant losses in November (and I'm not convinced this is inevitable) we need to go down swinging.
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