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Nightmare Scenario

January 15th, 2010 at 11:00 pm David Frum | 10 Comments |

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Of course we cant overlook what has to be the more probable outcome in Mass: that the Dem wins as usual. If so, what lessons do the Dems draw from their near-death experience? That they have to accelerate, right? For that to happen, somebody has to yield … and the lefties in the House of Representatives seem in no mood to defer to their more nervous Senate colleagues. That non-deference after all explains why this special election is such a big deal. If the House Dems were willing to defer, they could just pocket the Senate vote they already have …. But they want more, more, more.

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10 Comments so far ↓

  • communists-basher // Jan 16, 2010 at 12:16 am

    Radicals tend to take irrational actions, especially when the window of opportunity is about to close.

  • Mandos // Jan 16, 2010 at 2:59 am

    Hunh? The message is that the Democrats didn’t deliver to their base in any fashion (rhetorically, in terms of policy, etc), and they’ve lost the base momentum from 08. The health insurance companies will not be imploding or even under some kind of stealth expropriation any time soon; this is effectively a form of failure for much of the Democratic base (and rightly so).

    This is not the message that the Democratic party will learn, though. They will learn the message that David Frum wants them to learn.

  • mlindroo // Jan 16, 2010 at 5:21 am

    Given the virtual impossibility of passing sweeping legislation and major reforms in the Senate these days — we have seen even a 60-vote majority is barely enough! — I think liberal House Dems would be wise to settle for half a loaf and just pass the Senate bill since it’s still the biggest expansion since Medicare 45 years ago. Once approved, the GOP will find it almost impossible to roll back Obamacare as they would need their own bicameral supermajority to do it.

    These kinds of opportunities come very infrequently, and liberals ought to be kicking themselves for not accepting Nixon’s universal health care proposal of the early 1970s.

    MARCU$

  • sinz54 // Jan 16, 2010 at 10:17 am

    If the election is a close squeaker (as it now appears it will be), that will just add one more datum to the growing body of evidence that liberal Dem legislation is being rejected by the voters, even in the most liberal states of the nation.

    Health care reform WILL pass, no matter what, even if Scott Brown won in a landslide. The Dems will fall on their swords if necessary to pass this one.

    But cap-and-trade will be in big trouble, unless the Dems relent on nuclear power.

    And a liberal immigration reform bill is dead, totally dead, absolutely dead, for the foreseeable future.

    The one piece of good news for Obama is that any Republicans who win are likely to support, not oppose, his troop surge in Afghanistan. He may end up with more support from them than he’s getting from his own base.

  • Mandos // Jan 16, 2010 at 10:56 am

    If the election is a close squeaker (as it now appears it will be), that will just add one more datum to the growing body of evidence that liberal Dem legislation is being rejected by the voters, even in the most liberal states of the nation.

    Except that datum would be false. Poll after poll suggests that if the Congressional Dems were able to produce a health care bill which expanded government-run/paid health care (single payer, actual public option, etc), a majority of Americans would back them, and they would presumably be even more popular. Just for example.

  • Michael Balay // Jan 16, 2010 at 10:35 pm

    How do you account for Republicans rallying around someone as moderate as Brown undoubtedly is?

    The Democrats should conclude that their current course is political suicide. Last fall they were more afraid of not passing Obamacare than of passing it. A fatal miscalculation.

  • communists-basher // Jan 16, 2010 at 11:08 pm

    Mandos:

    You meant to say a majority of Socialist Liberal Americans, right?

  • Mandos // Jan 17, 2010 at 1:05 am

    No, a majority of Americans, period. You may infer whatever you like about them from that.

  • communists-basher // Jan 17, 2010 at 2:48 am

    Oh my God …. Ed Schultz from MSNBC proposes to CHEAT on MA Election: ‘I’d Cheat To Keep These Bastards Out’:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/16/ed-schultz-on-ma-election_n_426068.html

    Fascists…

  • mlindroo // Jan 17, 2010 at 12:50 pm

    > If the election is a close squeaker (as it now appears it will be), that will just add one
    > more datum to the growing body of evidence that liberal Dem legislation is being
    > rejected by the voters, even in the most liberal states of the nation.

    Sinz54 — you are an intelligent level-headed person but I think you are wrong about voters rejecting a particular ideology in favor of another. Having said this, I hasten to add that the great GOP meltdown of 2006-08 was mostly caused by the general perception of widespread incompetence in Iraq and elsewhere (=Bush Administration) and corruption (=GOP Congress). Partisan ideologues zero in on either Terri Schiavo or bloated Big Government spending, and these certainly didn’t help since they angered the opposition while having a demoralizing impact on the GOP base. But they were still secondary issues: the economy, the war and corruption scandals were the deciding factors — not ideological purity.

    The millstone around Obama’s neck is the economy, particularly high unemployment. If McCain-Palin were running the show now, their job approval would be no better. This is a global problem and there is comparatively little that can be done about it in the short term, particularly since the Senate cannot agree on expensive government initiatives to alleviate the suffering.

    > Health care reform WILL pass, no matter what, even if Scott Brown won in a landslide.
    > The Dems will fall on their swords if necessary to pass this one.

    As well they should.
    Much like the 1930s and 1960s arguments against social security expansion, today’s conservative arguments against Obamacare are based on abstract hypothetical fear-mongering (“death panels” etc.). Sign this thing into law and it becomes something concrete that cannot be easily repealed in the coming years. And the economy is the main make-or-break issue to voters, anyway. If the economy is strongly rebounding next fall, the Dems won’t be doing that badly even if GOP voters dislike the newly signed Obamacare bill.

    MARCU$

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