Spinning the Massachusetts Election

The Democratic spin is working overtime in the wake of the upset victory of Scott Brown on Tuesday. The White House and other Democratic leaders want people to think the only reason Martha Coakley lost was because she was a bad candidate who ran a terrible campaign. Coakley fires back and blames the national Democratic party for not getting involved in the race soon enough. Now, we all know there's nothing more enjoyable than watching a circular Democratic firing squad. But these analyses are ridiculous. I will readily concede that Martha Coakley ran a terrible campaign and Scott Brown ran an excellent, even brilliant, campaign. But that's not the reason Brown won. Brown won because his message resonated with Massachusetts voters, and his message was uniformly conservative -- lower taxes, no government takeover of health care, an aggressive approach to terrorism, and a government more responsive to the people. If it hadn't been for the anti-government mood of voters, which was a direct response to the policies of Democrats running Massachusetts and the federal government, then a virtually unknown state senator named Scott Brown would have never even been competitive. Martha Coakley's gaffes and mistakes did not occur until after the race had already become competitive; they were not the reason the race was competitive. Remember, Coakley was elected to the statewide office of attorney general only about three years ago with 74% of the vote; I didn't hear anybody saying she was such an unelectable candidate then.

The message from the Massachusetts election for Democrats, if any of them are willing to listen, is that voters are angry. They are angry that Obama and Reid and Pelosi are trying to force a massive health care entitlement down their throat that they don't want. They are angry at the hyper-partisan nature of the health care negotiations, with backroom deals and corrupt payoffs in exchange for votes and secret meetings. They are angry at the out-of-control spending. They are angry that no matter how loud the protests, as seen by townhall meetings and a barrage of letters and phone calls and marches on Washington and unfavorable polling, the politicians continue to show indifference and even contempt for their opinion. And they took that anger out on the Democratic party on Tuesday. Obama explicitly campaigned for Coakley as his 60th vote on health care, and even left-wing Massachusetts rejected him.

A few Democrats seem to be getting the message, as seen by the statements by Evan Bayh and Jim Webb yesterday. But for the most part, the Dems remain clueless. Last night, I briefly watched MSNBC, a channel I normally avoid because of its unbelievably blatant left-wing bias. But I was in a victorious mood and wanted to watch the Rachel Maddows of the world squirm a bit at the election results. Shockingly, the folks at MSNBC think it should be full steam ahead on Obama's agenda. First, I watched Maddow interview Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. Stabenow certainly didn't seem to have learned any lessons from the MA results. She rambled on and on about how it was so hard for the Democrats because no Republicans would reach across the aisle and work with them because the GOP doesn't care about helping people, but the Democrats would do the best they could with the paltry 59 votes they had. Oh yeah, and she whined about how the Democrats needed to get rid of those annoying filibuster rules but unfortunately they didn't have 67 votes (a 2/3 majority is required). Awww. It's a rough life. Then Maddow gave her own analysis, and she was livid that the Democrats seemed to be backing off of health care reform. She accused Evan Bayh and Joe Lieberman, two senators who clearly got the message from the election, of being cowards who wouldn't stand up and fight. In her opinion, so what that the Republicans won one seat? The Dems still have 59, so pass it through reconciliation or whatever. It's as though the election on Tuesday never happened.

I hope all the Democrats in Congress were watching her and take her advice to heart. I hope they try to ram this thing through using reconciliation and keep up their scorched-earth tactics. Because if they do, they will get a shellacking in November that will make 1994 look like a status quo election. I can't wait.