Post-Coakley Lib Meltdown

[DarrinS]

I guess Howard Dean is having trouble reading the tea leaves.


UoGaUrwm2TI

[Winehole23]

What, about progressive dissatisfaction with Obama and the milquetoast dems?

[DarrinS]

What, about progressive dissatisfaction with Obama and the milquetoast dems?


So, you agree with Dean's "reasoning"?

[Winehole23]

I disagree with his spin that the election is a mandate for the reinsertion of the public option in health care reform, but otherwise what he said mostly makes sense. Tweety is the one who comes off looking most like a moron in the exchange IMO.

[panic giraffe]

spin is spin
either way, i doubt the people of Mass give a damn about the bill, doesn't affect them if they already have healthcare.

[DarrinS]

MSNBC's Election Night Disgrace

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/changing_channels/2010/01/msnbc-to-massachusetts-drop-dead.html




Watching coverage of the Massachusetts senatorial election Tuesday night, I wondered if MSNBC was getting ready to cut off its cable signal to the state. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, positively enraged that Massachusetts dared to elect a Republican, delivered two hours of nonstop bilious rage toward the state's voters, calling them "irrational" and "teabaggers," engaged in "a total divorce from reality," and hinting that they're vicious racists to boot.

If you watched CNN or Fox News last night, you got a balanced analysis of how Republican Scott Brown pulled off the political upset of the century (or, if you prefer, how Democrat Martha Coakley blew a dead solid electoral lock). Yes, I said Fox News, without irony. To be sure, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity made it clear they were rooting for Brown. But their shows also included a steady parade of liberal-leaning guests -- former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, former Dukakis campaign manager Susan Estrich, Democratic party strategist Mary Anne Marsh, NPR commentator Juan Williams and radio host Alan Colmes. And pollster Frank Luntz interviewed a panel of two dozen or so Massachusetts voters, most of them Democrats, about how they voted and why. Practically every conceivable perspective on the election was represented.

And on MSNBC, you got practically every conceivable expression of venom against Brown and anybody who voted him. From Maddow's dark suspicions that the election was rigged -- she cited complaints about a grand total of six ballots out of about 2.25 million cast -- to Olbermann's suggestion in the video up above that the same Massachusets voters who went for Barack Obama by a 62-28 percent margin had suddenly realized they helped elect a black guy and went Republican in repentance, the network's coverage was idiotic, one-sided and downright ugly.

Olbermann was simply outraged by the vote. "The teabaggers may have elected their first guy tonight," he declared as Brown rolled up a commanding lead. Just in case the connotations of the word teabag might be lost on his audience, he clarified his feelings: "I wanted to apologize for calling Republican Senate candidate, Scott Brown, an irresponsible homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees. I`m sorry -- I left
out the word 'sexist.'"

Maddow added dirty campaigner to the charges. Her sense of fair play was violated by a Brown campaign ad in which his daughter complained about Coakley's attacks on her father: "Martha Coakley`s new negative ad represents everything that discourages young women from getting involved in politics, and as a young woman, I`m completely offended by that," the daughter said in the ad. Sniffed Maddow: "It`s like using your kid as a human shield." Oddly, Maddow made no mention of the Coakley TV ad that started the exchange, which began: “1,736 women were raped in Massachusetts in 2008. Scott Brown wants hospitals to turn them all away...”

MSNBC's idea of "balancing" these rants was to interview former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean. (His main insight: Coakley's loss was, honest to God, George W. Bush's fault.) When a third MSNBC host, Chris Matthews, timidly raised the possibility that Massachusetts voters were concerned about high government spending, Maddow snapped that such thinking was "irrational" and added: "To say it`s fiscally responsible to not reform health care is insanity... It`s a total divorce from reality."

(To be perfectly fair, I wouldn't have believed anything Matthews said, either, after he insisted that Richard Nixon's presidency crumbled not over Watergate but the recession of 1974.)

It may be too much to expect NBC, these days reduced to a national wisecrack, to be embarrassed over the frothing lunacy that passes for news coverage at corporate stepchild MSNBC. But both networks are part of the same news division. If news boss Steve Capus thinks his reporters can continue to appear with Olbermann and Maddow without suffering credibility contamination, he's dumber than whoever was behind the Leno/O'Brien late-night shuffle.

[clambake]

are you excited about this, darrins?

[EmptyMan]

I watch TingleTingle's show quite a bit these days.

Both Dean and TingleTingle appear to be talking to one another, however they are both just putting on a show to get their act across to the viewer.

[mogrovejo]

spin is spin
either way, i doubt the people of Mass give a damn about the bill, doesn't affect them if they already have healthcare.

A republican is the new Senator from MA after running on a platform that was basically "I'm against the HCR bill and I'm in favour of cutting taxes". Reagan Democrats and independents are deserting the Democrats and Dean believes that they need to move left. I doubt Axelrod is that clueless though.

[Wild Cobra]

OMG...

I never thought Dean could become more a joke than he already was.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

I just hope the Dems, and their media cheerleaders, continue to be as fucking clueless as we've seen over the last couple of weeks WRT the Coakley-Brown race.

[Nbadan]

OMG...

I never thought Dean could become more a joke than he already was.

The 'joke' kicked GOP ass in 06 and 08, huh?

[symple19]

Stupid news channels being stupid. Who'd a thunk it?

[Winehole23]

Kill (The) Bill (http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2010/01/21/kill-the-bill/)


Posted on January 21st, 2010 by Daniel Larison

This Hardball segment (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p-9hkdZSEE&feature=player_embedded) is a prime example of why cable talk shows and cable news generally are such useless venues for discussing politics. In the segment, Howard Dean refers to data from the Research 2000 Massachusetts post-election survey (http://act.boldprogressives.org/cms/sign/mapollresults) and makes an argument that a huge proportion of Obama voters who also voted for Brown were hostile to the current health care bill because they wanted a more progressive version of health care legislation. Matthews is left sputtering in disbelief, because the survey data would seem to show that Matthews and practically every other talking head and pundit in the land has missed what a significant number of independent Obama voters in Massachusetts were actually trying to accomplish by voting for Brown. Tom Bevan (http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2010/01/21/howard-dean-wanted-to-scream-2/) thinks this is one of Matthews’ great moments on televison. In fact, it is a display of how insipid and shallow so much political commentary can be, especially when it is reduced to the format of cable talk shows.



At one point, Matthews asked, “Are voters crazy?” The right answer is that voters know what they want, but sometimes have an odd way of expressing this when they vote. An overwhelming majority of Obama/Brown voters and Obama voters who did not vote on Tuesday favor a public option, a large plurality of both groups opposes the current bill, and most also oppose the mandate. Brown vowed to kill the current bill, and this is something that almost half of Obama/Brown voters wanted. These voters apparently wanted to kill it because they believed it was too compromised. Another 32% of them support the bill Brown has vowed to kill, which tells us that their votes were probably cast primarily as protests against Democratic establishments in Boston and Washington, but they were also among the 82% of Obama/Brown voters who favor a public option. Of Obama/Brown voters, just 14% oppose a public option. If the first priority of many of these voters is to scrap the current bill, and if voters are angry with the majority party because it crafted a compromised bill, there is an odd way in which a vote for Brown makes sense. It will certainly not get them what they ultimately want (i.e., the public option), but it may achieve the immediate goal of killing a bill they oppose or only support grudgingly.



The damning thing about this segment for Matthews is that he did not even attempt to consider the evidence being presented. All that he needed to know was that Brown won, Brown opposes this particular health care bill, and therefore it is obviously an endorsement of policy views on the national level that even Scott Brown doesn’t hold.



The conventional wisdom has already become entrenched that Massachusetts independent voters recoiled from “statism” or “big government,” when the survey data indicate that the independent voters who backed both Obama and Brown expected much more from Obama than the shabby corporatist compromise in the Senate, and they were angry enough about his underwhelming performance to go so far as to elect a Republican to demonstrate the depth of their dissatisfaction. As Matthews’ and Bevan’s reactions show, their protest message is one that virtually no one is going to hear or understand.
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/

[SouthernFried]

Really, OBAMA just needs to push his agenda harder and faster. No compromising. People are pissed cuz he's not going far enough left...not that he's gone too far left already.

It is up to us, to make sure Democrats and the left understand they MUST push even harder to get things done. Another Stimulus package, more restrictions/regulations on Automakers, banks, insurance companies and other corporate interests is in order here. Health Care is a win-win issue. If you don't keep promoting this, it will all be for naught.

Keep pushing. This is what American's really wants and voted you in for.

Your supportive Freinds.
The GOP

[Nbadan]

The conventional wisdom has already become entrenched that Massachusetts independent voters recoiled from “statism” or “big government,” when the survey data indicate that the independent voters who backed both Obama and Brown expected much more from Obama than the shabby corporatist compromise in the Senate, and they were angry enough about his underwhelming performance to go so far as to elect a Republican to demonstrate the depth of their dissatisfaction. As Matthews’ and Bevan’s reactions show, their protest message is one that virtually no one is going to hear or understand.

Yep, the data is all there, but the wing-nuts would rather live in their fantasy world of Faux populism because the decimated GOP is looking for any positive sign of life..the only politicians that voters are dissatisfied worse in than Democratic politicians are Republican politicians...none-the-less, as I've pointed out in previous posts, if Brown doesn't work out Massachusetts voters can always reject him and go with a real Dem in 2012...

[baseline bum]

LOL. It's obvious to anyone who isn't retarded that one of the most liberal states didn't become conservative overnight, and that this was a protest against the incompetence of Obama and the Senate in drafting this piece of shit bill of corporate welfare.

[mogrovejo]

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/

There were 4 public polls made in MA during the election day. There weren't exit polls.

Each of those 4 polls found different - even contradictory - results about the motivation of voters. Not to mention internal polls (for example, Brown's strategists and pollsters said that national security was a bigger factor than health-care, economy and anti-incubent anger).

Relying in a single one of them to construct a thesis isn't worthy of comment. Not surprisingly, the author picked the one made by a democrat pollster (Peter Hart).

[spursncowboys]

spin is spin
either way, i doubt the people of Mass give a damn about the bill, doesn't affect them if they already have healthcare.

They would lose theirs system for the national one. It would be a huge difference with higher cost for them.

[symple19]

LOL. It's obvious to anyone who isn't retarded that one of the most liberal states didn't become conservative overnight, and that this was a protest against the incompetence of Obama and the Senate in drafting this piece of shit bill of corporate welfare.

:tu

[spursncowboys]

"You're being silly"
That is classic. That goes up there with "ahhhhhhhhhh"