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eh...whatever.
Big deal...no big deal. Everybody has an opinion...whatever gets you through the night.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...012202278.html
By Chris Cillizza
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Sen.-elect Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts on Tuesday has quickly turned into a sort of political Rorschach test: What it means depends largely on what you think it means. The Republican's upset win was either an upheaval of epic proportions or the result of unique cir stances that don't signify much. Here's a look at five myths that have emerged about the race.
1. Scott Brown didn't win the race, Martha Coakley lost it.
It's undeniable that when the national spotlight shined on Coakley in the final days of the race, she didn't perform well. From suggesting that there is no al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan to seeming unfamiliar with Boston Red Sox great Curt Schilling, Coakley was an awkward and uninspiring presence on the campaign trail. But to simply lay the loss at her feet misses the point. Brown and his team knew from the start that the best -- and possibly only -- way to win the race was to sneak up on Coakley. Throughout December, while she was measuring the drapes for her new Senate office, that's exactly what they did.
Despite a financial disadvantage, Brown went on television first with a now-famous -- and sure to be much-copied -- ad that pictured him driving around the state in a pickup truck, reinforcing his average Joe-ness. In a debate eight days before the election, Brown was confident and reasonable, clearly outperforming Coakley. And, most important, in the race's final days -- with a crush of national press attention and millions of dollars' worth of ads being run against him -- Brown stayed true to his central message ("I'm the independent voice in the race"). He offered Coakley and national Democrats no openings on which to attack.
2. Brown's victory means health-care legislation is dead.
Their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate is now a thing of the past, and Democrats have been left to scramble to salvage President Obama's main legislative priority. Options remain, though, even if none of them are very appealing, particularly since Speaker Nancy Pelosi's pronouncement that the votes are simply not there to pass the Senate bill through the House without any changes. The simple political reality is this: The White House believes that any bill at this point is better than no bill at all. Remember that this president was elected to get Washington working again; an utter collapse of health-care reform would badly undermine that image.
3. Democrats are headed toward oblivion in the midterm elections.
In the immediate aftermath of Brown's win, Republicans were jubilant and even a bit y. "No Democrat is safe," one House Republican strategist told me Tuesday night. (Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) echoed that sentiment later in the week, telling reporters that "every state is now in play.") The Democrats are probably headed for losses in the House and the Senate this fall, it's true. But it's not yet clear whether those losses will be consistent with the historical norm in a president's first midterm, which is 15 to 20 House seats and two to five Senate seats, or will amount to something larger that could endanger the Democrats' majorities in Congress.
The Senate race in Massachusetts is an imperfect barometer for gauging where the midterms are headed, because it was a special election staged in the middle of the president's attempt to finally pass his health-care bill through Congress. There are clearly ill omens for Democrats in the results, most notably the flight of independents from their party. But ups and downs in politics seem to occur on an accelerated timeline these days. Extrapolating from Massachusetts in January to nationwide elections in November is a dangerous game.
4. The Obama brand is dead.
Yes, the president made a last-minute campaign stop in Boston for Coakley. And no, it didn't change the direction of the race. But declaring that the political phenomenon known as Barack Obama has hit a brick wall isn't the right conclusion. Obama remains a potent political force among the Democratic base; internal polling conducted for both parties after his visit to Massachusetts last Sunday showed that his presence had helped energize the most loyal Democrats about a race that had generated little enthusiasm until then. Those same polls showed, however, that Obama's appearance did little to move the dial among independent voters, a critical voting bloc that anecdotal evidence -- all we have without exit polling -- suggested the Democrats lost badly. Obama was the pied piper to independents in the 2008 election, winning them by 51 percent to 45 percent over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). That magic touch has worn off. At least for now.
5. Women can't win in Massachusetts.
A gender double standard was clearly at play in the race. Just imagine if a mostly nude picture of Coakley had surfaced and made the rounds the way Brown's Cosmopolitan spread has. But Coakley didn't lose because she's a woman in a state that doesn't have a great track record of electing women. Coakley, in fact, had everything those who have studied successful female candidates could want: a deep résumé, past campaign experience at the statewide level and a toughness born out of her time as state attorney general. What she lacked was not a Y chromosome but rather a shot of charisma. She lost because she was an insider in an outsider environment. Because she made a series of verbal flubs that made her look out of touch. Because the lines of communication between Coakley's campaign and Democrats were, at best, shaky. Was Coakley's gender an asset for her, as it was in her convincing primary victory? No. But a man running the same poor campaign in an even poorer national environment almost certainly comes up short, too. This loss was about a lot of things, but not about Coakley's gender.
Chris Cillizza is a national politics reporter for The Washington Post and the author of "The Fix," a politics blog.
eh...whatever.
Big deal...no big deal. Everybody has an opinion...whatever gets you through the night.
Can anybody give FACTS about whether Brown ran as a Repug, talked up Repugnancy, and/or mentioned Repug in his winner's speech.
Repug poll approval numbers remain in the toilet, as do their election prospects.
mmmmm. mmmmmmm. mmmm
barack hussein obama
Myth: This was just an isolated occurence. Like Virginia and New Jersey.
What about NY_23....Democrats hadn't held that seat in .....what? 100 years?
Don't worry bleeders, it was just a fluke. Just an isolated incident. As a matter of fact, please continue pressuring the radicals to push through the Pelosi, Reid and Obama agenda as fast as they possibly can. Tell them you want healthcare now! Just keep on going, keep on fighting for it, nothing to worry about here. Call them all now!
lmao...
...the longer we wait the worse the problem will get, but then again, that's why we are where we are today - so the wing-nut view on health-care reform is not surprising...
GOP strategy
1. Say you want reform too!
2. Obstruct any reform!
3. Declare victory!
....that's why there is no wing-nut health-care plan - they don't want reform...and their health-care and insurance lobbyists friends don't want reform either...they like things just the way they are...
+1
Yeah get back to that cap and trade bill you were working on.
No kidding. Keep pushing that authoritarianism and see the results in the 2010 elections.
The GOP has been trying to make suggestions on healthcare reform but they don't have a seat at the table.
Progressives Strategy
1. Say you will work in a bipartisan fashion
2. Try to buy 1 republican vote and call it bipartisanship
3. Fail!
Are you daft?
Did you forget that the democrat was running a conservative platform and the republican was running a liberal platform? The third party candidate was a close second...
Please Dan, when will you give such stupidity a break?
Bill Owens won with 48.3% of the vote. The republican candidate endorced the democrat candidate after losing in the polling data and withdrawing. The conservative candidate has 46% of the vote. The republican, Dede Scozzafava, still had 5.7% of the vote after withdrawing. I think it's safe to say Doug Hoffman wold have won if Scozzafava endorsed him instead, but she couldn't get her panties unbunched, so out of spite, she railroaded Hoffman for stealing her voters with a conservative rather than her liberal platform.
And they will remain in the toilet until the republicans get rid of the RINO's.
The less "impure" RINOs and moderates, the more extreme nutcase the Repugs.
In spite of all the paid-for noise they make, there aren't enough nutcase sheeple and rabble to elect enough nutcase rabble rousers to take over Congress.
Really? What was the Republican plan for health care? The last time they brought any ideas of their own, it failed to address increasing coverage, stopping the practice of people being dropped from insurance plans, or lowering health care costs overall. And that was about 8 months ago.
Did we miss some cogent Republican plan that they've been hiding from us?
The reality is, Republicans have the most to lose from some restrictions on the worst of insurance companies practices, so they haven't invested any time or effort in coming up with a solution. Plenty of Democrats and independents have investments in insurance companies ( o, Joe Lieberman) which is why the process has taken so long. Insurance companies have big money to throw around, in all directions.
We will get a least some health reform passed. There isn't an American around with an IQ above 70 who doesn't support the de able practice of insurance companies dropping people when they get sick, and that alone will be a huge win. Even Olympia Snowe and other moderate Republicans (read: Republicans who still have a conscience) have said they support that.
Like Brown? He's the kind that's winning elections...
Denial
Brown didn't run as a Repug, can anybody find me his election speeches where he put even the word Repug front and center? Apparently it wasn't the Repug party that elected him, but tea-bagging rabble.
Brown was helped by a weak candidate running a ty campaign.
No matter what the Dems put forward, no matter what compromise was offered, the Repugs said and vote NO.
It's not the RINO's the republicans need to worry about. It's the social conservatives & evangelicals.
He ran as the anti-Obama candidate and won.
Get over it.
http://www.brownforussenate.com/issues
Dude, you must wake up to a new and increasingly simple world every ing day. You've reduced yourself to a caricature of bitter partisan hackery.
Tea bagging rabble.
Reduced? I see consistency. As long as I've been on the board b_d's been like this.
You nknow why good people don't go into politics?
It's because of the politics of destruction that the democrats engage in. Nobody is perfect, and the democrats go after anyone people with lies and slander to such unreasonable degrees. So few people are willing to subject themselves and their families to such things. Worse yet, you lib s are cheerleaders of the evil process of personal destruction.
you.
I disagree. Ignore the evangelicals and listen to the conservatives.
.
politics of destruction and democrats...
sincerley,
swiftboaters..
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