Obama to double down if Brown wins.

[citizen k]

Democrats see Mass. message: Jobs, jobs, jobs
By LIZ SIDOTI, AP National Political Writer

WASHINGTON – Wounded in Massachusetts, frustrated Democrats on Wednesday urged the White House to focus on jobs and the economy — not the health care overhaul that's now at risk — and pressed President Barack Obama to more forcefully make their case against Republicans ahead of potentially disastrous elections this fall.

On the day after the improbable Senate election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Obama and his Democratic Party raced to re-evaluate their midterm election strategy, adjust their health care approach and assuage an angry electorate. The embarrassing defeat to the GOP in a Democratic stronghold was a bitter end to the president's first year in office, and it triggered furious party soul-searching.

"I would like the Democratic Party as a whole including its leader, the president, to speak clearly about the differences and to define those differences," Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate Democrats' campaign effort, told The Associated Press. And it's not just about Republicans and Democrats, he said: "We have to do a much better job of both engaging and delivering to independent voters."

Obama himself owned up to a failure to communicate.

In a year of hopping from crisis to crisis, he told ABC News, "we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values."

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., put it more simply, assessing the message Massachusetts sent. "Economy, economy, economy," she said.

"We need a jobs bill. We need short-term, focused strategies to create jobs, real fast," said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. "If the dominant message isn't about jobs and spending, we'll be making a difficult challenge exponentially more difficult."

At the Capitol, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., declared, "If there's anybody in this building that doesn't tell you they are more worried about elections today, you should absolutely slap them."

Indeed, there was a grim sense among Democrats that if the GOP could win in a traditionally deeply liberal state, Massachusetts, it could probably win anywhere.

Said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.: "Every state is now in play."

Democrats still have majority control of both the House and Senate. But Tuesday's GOP upset for the seat long held by the Sen. Edward Kennedy — following Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey last fall for Democratic-held gubernatorial seats — was a sign of serious trouble this fall. Even when the economy is strong, the party holding the White House historically loses seats in midterms.

Despite the loss that gave Republicans a 41st vote in the 100-seat Senate, neither Democrats nor most Republicans said they thought control of Congress could be up for grabs. But both parties expect big Republican gains, and fewer Democratic seats would make it more difficult for Obama to pass his agenda.

"I'm not under any illusion that we can take anything for granted. We have to fight," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.

On the anniversary of his inauguration, Obama faced a need to reevaluate both his policy — specifically his endangered health care plan — and his politics in a White House stunned by a shift in the mood of the electorate from just a year earlier. Voters were hopeful and supportive then. They are cranky and belligerent now. Of utmost concern: independent voters who have fled to the GOP after a year of Wall Street bailouts, enormous budget deficits and partisan wrangling over health care.

"The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry, and they're frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years," Obama told ABC in an interview.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters: "That anger is now pointed at us because we're in charge. And rightly so."

From the White House to Capitol Hill, Democrats appeared more determined than devastated after the Massachusetts outcome as they huddled to chart a new way forward.

Obama's sweeping health care overhaul was the most urgent matter at hand.

The president and his fellow Democrats wrestled with options now that they were one vote shy of the 60-vote Senate supermajority they were counting on to block Republican delaying tactics.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky declared the overall measure dead and added: "The president ought to take this as a message to recalibrate how he wants to govern, and if he wants to govern from the middle we'll meet him there."

In light of Brown's victory, Obama said it's time to come together around a bill that can draw Republican support, too.

"The people of Massachusetts spoke," Obama said in the interview.

Said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "We will move forward with their considerations in mind, but we will move forward."

Just how remained to be seen.

In the longer term, Democrats said the White House should do more to reduce unemployment, given that economists expect joblessness to remain near 10 percent through November.

The White House already has begun pivoting to a jobs agenda, and Gibbs said of the president: "We will have him continue to focus on the economy and jobs."

Several Democratic officials characterized the party rank-and-file lawmakers as frustrated by a seeming White House hesitation to get involved in high-stakes races until it's too late, like the Senate race in Massachusetts as well as the Virginia and New Jersey contests last fall.

These Democrats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering the White House, say there's a sense that Obama and his advisers are too cautious and more focused on his 2012 fortunes than on helping Democratic candidates get elected in 2010. They want Obama to use his White House perch to embrace his role as Democratic Party chief.

"There's no doubt that the White House, which has a big megaphone, needs to make sure that the contrasts are very clear to the public," Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the House Democrats' campaign committee, told the AP.

To be sure, Obama has started laying out a sharper contrast with Republicans by hammering them for opposing his proposed bank bailout tax. He's sought to paint Democrats on the side of taxpayers and Republicans on the side of special interests and Wall Street, trying out that pitch when he rushed to Boston in an effort to save Democrat Martha Coakley. It didn't work in just two days.

Said Menendez: "We knew we had a winning argument. We just got it too late in Massachusetts."

Despite Coakley's loss, Democrats urged their House and Senate candidates to embrace Obama's Wall Street vs. Main Street contrast to tap into voter anger.

Senate Democrats were examining their campaigns to ensure messages are calibrated to the volatile electorate and candidates are focused on jobs, the economy and spending. An edict went out from Menendez that candidates should aggressively define themselves as change agents and their Republican opponents as representing a step backward.

Republicans, for their part, reveled in Brown's victory. They have found what they believe is a surefire recipe for GOP candidates to win against a popular president — focus on opposition to his policies, downplay overtly political Republican ties, and embrace voter anger with populist appeals to ride an antiestablishment wave.



Associated Press Writers Jennifer Loven, Laurie Kellman, Ben Evans, Sam Hananel, Larry Margasak, and Jim Abrams contributed to this report.

[Admiral Yi]

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., put it more simply, assessing the message Massachusetts sent. "Economy, economy, economy," she said.

"We need a jobs bill. We need short-term, focused strategies to create jobs, real fast," said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. "If the dominant message isn't about jobs and spending, we'll be making a difficult challenge exponentially more difficult."

Activate the porkalizer.

[citizen k]

A defeat by Martha Coakley for the seat held by the late Edward M. Kennedy would be embarrassing for the party — and potentially debilitating, since Democrats will lose their filibuster-proof, 60-vote hold on the Senate.

A potential casualty: the health care bill that was to be the crowning achievement of the president's first year in office.

The health care backdrop has given the White House a strong incentive to strike a defiant posture, at least rhetorically, in response to what would be an undeniable embarrassment for the president and his party.

There won't be any grand proclamation that "the era of Big Government is over" — the words President Bill Clinton uttered after Republicans won the Congress in the 1990s and he was forced to trim a once-ambitious agenda.

"The response will not be to do incremental things and try to salvage a few seats in the fall," a presidential adviser said. "The best political route also happens to be the boldest rhetorical route, which is to go out and fight and let the chips fall where they may. We can say, 'At least we fought for these things, and the Republicans said no.'"

Whatever words Obama chooses, however, will have trouble masking the substantive reality: A Massachusetts embarrassment would strongly increase the pressure Obama was already facing to retreat or slow down the "big bang" agenda he laid out a year ago.

Obama, Dems consider pared-back health care bill
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama and congressional allies signaled Wednesday they may try to scale back his sweeping health care overhaul to keep parts of it alive in the wake of a stinging rebuke in the Senate race in Massachusetts.

A simpler, less ambitious bill emerged as an alternative only hours after the loss of the party's crucial 60th Senate seat forced the Democrats to slow their all-out drive to pass Obama's signature legislation despite fierce Republican opposition. The White House is still hoping the House can pass the Senate bill in a quick strike, but Democrats are now considering other options.

No decisions have been made, lawmakers said, but they laid out a new approach that could still include these provisions: limiting the ability of insurance companies to deny coverage to people with medical problems, allowing young adults to stay on their parents' policies, helping small businesses and low-income people pay premiums and changing Medicare to encourage payment for quality care instead of sheer volume of services.

Obama said the election results wouldn't sour his interest in passing a health care bill.

"Now, I could have said, 'Well, we'll just do what's safe, we'll just take on those things that are completely non-controversial,'" Obama said in an interview with ABC News. "The problem is: the things that are non-controversial end up being the things that don't solve the problem."

Yet, the goal of trying to cover nearly all Americans would be put off further into the future.

Obama urged lawmakers not to try to jam a bill through, but scale the proposal down to what he called "those elements of the package that people agree on."

"We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people," the president said. "We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don't then our budgets are going to blow up. And we know that small businesses are going to need help."

One potential Republican convert for health care legislation remained an enigma. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who has been in regular contact with Obama, roundly criticized the Democrats' hard push to pass their bill. But she would not rule out voting for something in the end.

Asked if the Democratic bills are dead, Snowe responded: "I never say anything is dead, but clearly I think they have to revisit the entire issue."

Some Democrats weren't ready for that, despite the president's new words.

One option, still alive and stirring strong emotions, called for the House to quickly pass the Senate version of the broader bill — simply accepting it and therefore bypassing the Senate problem created by the loss of the Massachusetts seat to Republican Scott Brown. But that appeared to be losing favor.

"That's a bitter pill for the House to swallow," said the No. 2 Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois.

"Full speed ahead is off the table," said Rep. Earl Pomeroy, a moderate Democrat from North Dakota. "We are still very much in the exercise of drawing meaning from the public disquiet."

Nevertheless, the quick approach remained on the table, despite some House members' deep misgivings. In fact, administration officials were working behind the scenes on that idea, which would be the fastest and cleanest route to getting a bill to Obama, said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe private talks.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders were gauging support for the idea among liberals and moderates. The initial reaction was not encouraging.

"If you ran that Senate bill right now on the House floor, I'll bet you would not get 100 votes for it," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich.

It takes 218 votes to pass legislation. A majority of House Democrats oppose a tax on high-cost insurance plans in the Senate bill that unions see as a direct hit on their members. Stupak and other abortion opponents, backed by Catholic bishops, say the Senate bill falls short in restricting taxpayer dollars for abortion.

A week ago, House and Senate Democrats were working out the differences in their respective bills, and a quick resolution seemed likely. But feuding broke out after Brown's upset victory secured the seat held by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy for the GOP.

Some Democratic senators suggested it was up to the House to save the day by passing the Senate bill.

"The Senate has passed the health care bill. The House has to make a decision how they want to proceed," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of the leadership.

Republicans said that would make their day.

Trying to push the Senate bill through would be a desperate ploy seen as such by voters, said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama's 2008 presidential rival. "If they try to jam it through the House, they'll pay a very heavy price."

As the day wore on, those urging moderation seemed to be winning the argument.

"We're not going to rush into anything," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "We will wait until the new senator arrives."

Many Democrats are wary of starting over with the goal of drafting a bill that reaches for the political middle. They doubt they'll get any cooperation from Republicans.

"You cannot dance with someone if they are not willing to dance with you," said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ. He called GOP complaints that the Democrats wrote a partisan bill "pretty lame, when they have made a political calculation that their path to victory is to have the president fail."

But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said a more modest approach would be a "reasonable alternative" that could appeal to the public even if Republicans still oppose it.

"Given the public concern, I think that we ought to focus on that which...the public can support and will be positive in terms of making health care more affordable and obtainable," he said.

Instead of one big bill, health care overhaul could be broken into chunks and passed over time.

"Medicare wasn't done in one fell swoop," said House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. "You lay a foundation and you get this thing done over time."


Associated Press writers Erica Werner, Jim Abrams, Alan Fram, Gerry Bodlander and Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.

[MadImmortalMan]

At the Capitol, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., declared, "If there's anybody in this building that doesn't tell you they are more worried about elections today, you should absolutely slap them."

Indeed, there was a grim sense among Democrats that if the GOP could win in a traditionally deeply liberal state, Massachusetts, it could probably win anywhere.

Said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.: "Every state is now in play."

Ya think?

Okay, so they aren't the brightest bulbs in the box, but at least they have a decent sense for when to take a threat seriously.

[Fate]

Hardly. They're still trying to push for a government takeover of the greatest private health care system in the world.

The bums shall be washed out in a tidal wave surpassing that of even Aceh in 2004. 

[Eddie Teach]

Fate, have you ever considered toning it down a notch?

[garbon]

Fate, have you ever considered toning it down a notch?

I really don't get why it amuses him.

[jimmy olsen]

Anyways the real reason this is big news is that the Dems are gutless. Unlike the Republicans they have no party discipline and are a loose coalition rather than a real organized political party. Forget about winning elections, until they fix that problem they won't be able to do anything.

[Martinus]

Anyways the real reason this is big news is that the Dems are gutless. Unlike the Republicans they have no party discipline and are a loose coalition rather than a real organized political party. Forget about winning elections, until they fix that problem they won't be able to do anything.

Considering they have the President, the Congress and the kind of majority in the Senate that the Republicans have not had since 1920s, your bar for "winning elections" must be set particularly high.

And speaking of having much in common, the various coalitions in the Dems have about as much in common with each other, as Jewish NY necons with rural Alabama religious fundies.

I agree they are gutless, though.

[jimmy olsen]

Anyways the real reason this is big news is that the Dems are gutless. Unlike the Republicans they have no party discipline and are a loose coalition rather than a real organized political party. Forget about winning elections, until they fix that problem they won't be able to do anything.

Considering they have the President, the Congress and the kind of majority in the Senate that the Republicans have not had since 1920s, your bar for "winning elections" must be set particularly high.

And speaking of having much in common, the various coalitions in the Dems have about as much in common with each other, as Jewish NY necons with rural Alabama religious fundies.

I agree they are gutless, though.

What I meant was that winning elections doesn't seem to matter to them. Even with the biggest senate majority in 30 years they couldn't get much of anything done. In contrast Bush got Department of Homeland Security, No Child Left Behind, Medicare expansion, and the Iraq Surge passed

[Fate]

We are a center right country. Of course leftist radicals aren't going to get anything substantial done. The Founders set up the Senate to operate under strict supermajorities on every issue for good reason.

[DGuller]

Anyways the real reason this is big news is that the Dems are gutless. Unlike the Republicans they have no party discipline and are a loose coalition rather than a real organized political party. Forget about winning elections, until they fix that problem they won't be able to do anything.

Considering they have the President, the Congress and the kind of majority in the Senate that the Republicans have not had since 1920s, your bar for "winning elections" must be set particularly high.

And speaking of having much in common, the various coalitions in the Dems have about as much in common with each other, as Jewish NY necons with rural Alabama religious fundies.

I agree they are gutless, though.

But that's the point.  Democrats have a decisive majority in theory, but not in practice, since they can't rely on that majority holding together on anything even remotely controversial.  What winds up happening is that they have all the responsibility and not much of the power.

[grumbler]

What I meant was that winning elections doesn't seem to matter to them. Even with a the biggest senate majority in 30 years they couldn't get much of anything done. In contrast Bush got Department of Homeland Security, No Child Left Behind, Medicare expansion, and the Iraq Surge passed

The problem is Democratic leadership.  It takes a lot more leadership to herd cats than to herd sheep.  Agree, though, that Bush accomplished little that was controversial via legislation - his "leadership" was to pretend the Constitution didn't exist and issue Executive Orders as fiats to accomplish the controversial.

[KRonn]

Anger over the current Health care bill was one of the leading, or lead issue, for many Mass voters according to this poll. From focus groups I've seen, which have included mainly Dems, that would appear to be true, plus that people are very angry at how govt has been running, spending, not listening, deficits.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/massachusetts/first_look_at_massachusetts_election_night_poll_data

First Look At Massachusetts Election Night Poll Data
Health Care Top Issue for Massachusetts Voters


Tuesday, January 19, 2010
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Rasmussen Reports has conducted an Election Night survey of 1,000 voters in the Massachusetts special election for U.S. Senate. Data will be released on this page throughout the evening.

Polls closed in Massachusetts at 8:00 p.m. Eastern in the race between Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown.

Health care has been a huge issue in this election. Fifty-two percent (52%) of Brown voters say it was the most important issue in determining their vote. Sixty-three percent (63%) of Coakley voters say health care was the top issue:

· 78% of Brown voters Strongly Oppose the health care legislation before Congress.

· 52% of Coakley supporters Strongly Favor the health care plan. Another 41% Somewhat Favor the legislation.

· 61% of Brown voters say deficit reduction is more important than health care reform.

· 46% of Coakley voters say health care legislation more important than deficit reduction.

· 86% of Coakley voters say it's better to pass the bill before Congress rather than nothing at all.

· 88% of Brown voters say it's better to pass nothing at all.

Results include:

    * Brown leads among middle-income voters ($40,000 to $100,000).
    * Coakley leads among those at upper and lower end of income range.
    * Brown leads by 13% among political moderates.
    * Among those who decided how they would vote in the past few days, Coakley has a slight edge, 47% to 41%.
    * Coakley also has a big advantage among those who made up their mind more than a month ago.
    * Seventy-six percent (76%) of voters for Brown said they were voting for him rather than against Coakley.
    * Sixty-six percent (66%) of Coakley voters said they were voting for her rather than against Brown.
    * 22% of Democrats voted for Brown. That is generally consistent with pre-election polling.

More data will be released soon.

Two weeks ago today, Rasmussen Reports released the first poll to show Brown pulling within single digits.

One week ago, Rasmussen Reports showed the race to be a toss-up. Brown was up by two among those most likely to vote.

[Caliga]

Activate the porkalizer.

That wasn't a very nice thing to call Barbara.