Jan 20 2010

The Numbers Don’t Lie

You know, being politicians and all, you’d think the Institutional Democratic Party could READ A FUCKING POLL!

DEMOCRATS LEARNING WRONG LESSON FROM MASSACHUSETTS?

EVEN SCOTT BROWN VOTERS WANT THE PUBLIC OPTION, WANT DEMOCRATS TO BE BOLDER

“In an election between Scott Brown and the public option, the public option would have won.”

– Charles Chamberlain, political director of Democracy for America

HEALTH CARE BILL OPPONENTS THINK IT “DOESN’T GO FAR ENOUGH”

  • by 3 to 2 among Obama voters who voted for Brown
  • by 6 to 1 among Obama voters who stayed home

(18% of Obama supporters who voted supported Brown.)

VOTERS OVERWHELMINGLY SUPPORT THE PUBLIC OPTION

  • 82% of Obama voters who voted for Brown
  • 86% of Obama voters who stayed home

OBAMA VOTERS WANT DEMOCRATS TO BE BOLDER

  • 57% of Brown voters say Obama “not delivering enough” on change he promised
  • 49% to 37% among voters who stayed home

PLUS: Obama voters overwhelming want bold economic populism from Democrats in 2010.

Evidently not!

Morons, assholes, or sell-outs.

Take your pick.

h/t John Amato @ C&L

Updated.

A letter from Birmingham Jail Capitol Hill–

The worst is that I can’t help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done. While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They’re afraid to actually implement them and face the judgement of the voters. That’s the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.

I believe President Clinton provided some crucial insight when he said, “people would rather be with someone who is strong and wrong than weak and right.” It’s not that people are uninterested in who’s right or wrong, it’s that people will only follow leaders who seem to actually believe in what they are doing. Democrats have missed this essential fact.

The stimulus bill in the spring showed us what was coming. In the face of a historic economic crisis, Democrats negotiated against themselves at the outset and subsequently yielded to absurd demands from self-described “moderates” to trim the package to a clearly inadequate level. No one made any rational argument about why a lower level was better. It would have been trivial to write “claw-back” provisions if the stimulus turned out to be too much or we could have done a rescission this year to give these moderates their victory, but none of this was on the table. We essentially looked like we didn’t know what the right answer was so we just kinda went for what we could get. This formula was repeated in spades in both the Climate and Health Care debacles.

This is my life and I simply can’t answer the fundamental question: “what do Democrats stand for?” Voters don’t know, and we can’t make the case, so they’re reacting exactly as you’d expect (just as they did in 1994, 2000, and 2004). We either find the voice to answer that question and exercise the strongest majority and voter mandate we’ve had since Watergate, or we suffer a bloodbath in November. History shows we’re likely to choose the latter.

71 comments

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  1. This is Democracy For America, Dean’s place, and Research 2000, kos’ pollster.

    And TPM.

    Read it and weep.

  2. After all, they pay the bills.

  3. have been saying.

    Obama, Rahm and Harry aren’t listening.

    Now that the GOP has 41 votes, you watch, Democrats will again whine that they don’t have enough votes and have to keep their powder dry.

    They are simply cowards that refuse to govern.

    • RUKind on January 20, 2010 at 22:40
    • #

    Sal Capuano – a true progressive – would have won.

    Inside ball, MA style: all the Reps sat on their hands. They know this is a two year seat warmer. Watch the lawyers, guns and money come out for the 2010 election.

    Also, the big message – Obama is weak. He is getting shoved around by his own party – Nelson, Landrieu, etc. He needs to get under the basket and throw some serious fucking elbows. No more three point land. Go where the blood flows and make it happen. Stop sitting back and expecting it to happen.

    • TMC on January 20, 2010 at 22:44
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     There are new “Talking Point” from the Democratic “Leadership”

    Dem Talking Points: “Mathematically Impossible For Dems To Pass Legislation On Our Own”

    The  talking points direct people to make the case that now that Dems have lost their supermajority, Republicans have a newfound responsibility to help govern, rather than obstruct. The talking points contain this line:

       “It is mathematically impossible for Democrats to pass legislation on our own.”

    Can you imagine Republicans in the majority – who, by the way, never had as many votes as Dems do now – ever saying such a thing?

    The ONE tactic that Bush used well to get his agenda passed was reconciliation. Sheesh. Obama has adopted most of Bush’s criminal agenda but he can’t do the one thing that is LEGAL!

  6. kos.  http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

    It is getting buried by the Rahmites.  It really ought to be on the recommends so they shut their stupid right wing traps for once, hopefully think of retirement.

    • Big Tex on January 20, 2010 at 22:58
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    to this mess is a list of talking points tells you everything you need to know about how we got into this mess in the first place.  I have a feeling things are going to get worse before they get any better.

  8. make Rahm Rahm the frying pan man? I mean this is the U.S.A. after all.  

  9. with no spine and apparently no brain. polls have shown public supports progressive agenda, yet the DC dickheads keep selling out with precompromises in pretext of gaining votes from asshat GOP that only seek to weaken “reforms” so that implementation of laws will only worsen life for us all in the names of the morons who trump power, ego and money over humanity, life, morality and reason. fuck them.

    ah, i feel better. 🙂

  10. dipshits…

    • TMC on January 20, 2010 at 23:46
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    Random Observations on Last Night’s Massachusetts Knockdown

    Rhetorically, Republicans were articulating this message: “You will die and the government will take your money.” Democrats, meanwhile, were stammering, “But, no, wait, pre-existing conditions, insurance exchange, ‘Cadillac’ health plans.” While he might not have been the slickest messenger, Rep. Alan Grayson had the message right: life and death. “What if you lose your job? What if your kids need the doctor?” That would have required a bill that was clear in its objective, instead of whatever mutant clusterfuck of a thing is shat out of whatever committee or negotiating group is trying to bribe someone into voting.

    If Republicans had wanted universal health care, you would have seen commercials with heartless insurance agents stabbing babies and drinking their blood. You would have seen ads with desperate, laid-off old men offering to blow people for quarters so they could afford their insulin. You would have seen ads about how sad it is that a depressed middle-aged woman with a dream of a scrapbooking store is now suicidal over not being able to follow her small business dream because if she left her shitty office job, she’d lose her health care. The ad would have ended with a gunshot in darkness. People would have been begging for health care reform because Republicans would have made it seem like the world would fall apart without it.

    Hope was a great message to get Obama elected. But it only goes so far. Conservatives used fear to create the teabaggers. Republicans used fear in Massachusetts. Fear of “terrorists” being put on trial in America. Fear of mythical higher taxes. Republicans are using fear on members of Congress, as in “Pass these things and you will be voted out.” Fear fucking works.

    The Republicans played to the left wings opposition to the HCR bill and did it well.

    If the Democratic Leadership’s answer is

    “It is mathematically impossible for Democrats to pass legislation on our own.”

    The Obama agenda is doomed. It may well be doomed already becuase of the attempt to “play well” with Republicans, bipartisanship.  

    • BobbyK on January 20, 2010 at 23:52
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    • TMC on January 21, 2010 at 00:03
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    From Josh Marshal at TPM

    I want to recommend that everyone read the email we just got from a Senate staffer who will have to remain anonymous. Here’s one part of the email that stood out to me. The whole thing is after the jump …

       

    The worst is that I can’t help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done.While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They’re afraid to actually implement them and face the judgement of the voters. That’s the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.

    I’m so happy somebody from the Democratic side feels relieved.  

  14. and sadly, the staffer comment isn’t even a tiny bit surprising.

  15. in a recent CBS poll:

    CBS Poll:

    The article written around it was focused on how unpopular it is, but the real story is in why it’s unpopular, and the data shows that pretty clearly:

    Moreover, there is little consensus that the reforms under consideration represent the right approach. Only about one in five Americans thinks the reforms strike the right balance when it comes to expanding coverage, controlling costs and regulating insurance companies.

    The public is divided on whether the reforms go too far or not far enough in providing health coverage to as many Americans as possible, and about four in 10 think the reforms do not do enough to lower costs or regulate insurance companies.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2…

    Jon at FDL wrote about it:

    CBS Poll: For Many, Health Care Reform Does Not Go Far Enough

    http://fdlaction.firedoglake.c…

  16. drawn and quartered.

    tweety just beat on howard dean with what tweety calls logic.

    disgusting.

    GOS is still denying the poll results and making like it is impenetrable.

    if and when they wake up, it will be too, too late.

  17. The main difference is that R’s can brag about being corporatists and their sheep will beg for more.  

    The difficulty for the D’s is that at least some among their rank and file (excepting the gangs of GOS) expect them to side with people over corporations at least once in awhile.  

  18. Check this guy out, trying to prove his loyalty to the O-block STASI: http://www.dailykos.com/commen…

    • Temmoku on January 21, 2010 at 15:39
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    have risen…a very expensive “hobby” even for “rich”, “non middle class” teabaggers!

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