[UPDATE: I hope this point isn't lost in my sarcasm. Individual candidates have a hard time beating a wave election, whether by being more progressive, or more conservative. A wave is a wave. This diary digs passed the BS, and asks where those big changes in voter sentiment come from.]
Remember former Democratic Senator Lincoln from Arkansas?
She was instrumental in shaping the Health Reform Bill of 2009. As you remember, the bill was far too Liberal and Progressive for America, and Ms. Lincoln worked hard to water down any result that might improve the lives of average Americans, so that the bill could win "bipartisan" and "free market" approval.
Which brings me to some bad news about Blanche Lincoln.
She lost.
[corny slide whistle sound]
Did her "pragmatism" and "bipartisanship" inspire respect among independent voters looking for a bill that neither Republicans nor Democrats especially liked? No.
Did her support from Conservative organizations like "Americans for Tax Reform" cause Republican voters to embrace her as the best of both worlds? No.
Mind you, Blanche Lincoln didn't just lose. She was crushed. Notably, Arkansas has elected Democratic senators consistently for 130 years, interrupted briefly by 6 years. If we can call a congressional district engineered by Republican gerrymandering a "swing district", then Arksansas would be considered a Democratic stronghold.
To understand what happened, we need to get a few facts straight.
We know that midterm elections like 2002, 2006, and 2010 are special. More than the general election, they're largely about turnout, which is largely about voter enthusiasm. GOP enthusiasm was through the roof, and Democrats of all stripes suffered (particularly Blue Dogs in the House). Strangely enough, watering down Democratic legislation didn't make it more palatable to Republican legislators. Nor Republican voters.
In fact, Republicans weren't even nice enough to stop calling Obama a socialist. Ouch.
With a straight face, Republicans said Obama was trying to destroy Medicare, one of the most popular social programs in America. Funny that even 68% of "Conservatives" oppose cutting it. Kind of makes you wonder if counting up the number of self-described "Conservatives" is a smart strategy if they don't actually resemble Grover Norquist in reality.
DailyKos has been here since 2003, when Democrats were losing over and over and over. We remember when Democrats ceded the ground to Republicans on almost everything. The Patriot Act. The Iraq War. Tax Cuts (repeatedly). In 2006, we were even going to cede the ground to them on Social Security, when something funny happened. We influenced our representatives to make strong contrast with Republicans on a program that makes a visible difference in peoples' lives.
I'm talking about Social Security.
In 2006, a "bipartisan" group of Democrats were ready to throw in the towel. Even blue state Democrats were ready to put "all options on the table". After all, voters are "Conservative". We'd lost three straight elections to Republicans. Therefore it must be completely pragmatic to slash the New Deal.
Then something funny happened. A few Democratic survivors gained some traction by opposing any and all cuts to Social Security. Their unwillingness to negotiate away one of the most popular programs in history became a powerful message: Democrats are for working people, and Republicans are not. It was a turning point in the Bush administration, and a huge part of the Democratic wave that took back the House in 2006.
The lesson is twofold:
1. There aren't enough of hardcore progressives to prop up our social safety net by themselves. The only reasons social security and medicare are still around is because they produce results for all Americans: conservative, independent, and liberal.
2. There are plenty of "pragmatists" who complain when I suggest a strategy of fighting obstruction with obstruction, because the only way to score a "win" is to secure enough votes to pass a bill. I have observed elections enough to be confident in this belief: voters don't want laws. They want results.
Here's a little exercise for you. Go get a piece of paper, and write down the result that YOU think America needs the most in 2011. Ready? Wait, fuck your piece of paper. Before all the spin kicks in, we could actually just ask Americans what they want.
What results do Americans want in 2011?
The answer is JOBS. By margin of 2-1.
Alright. So, what if you write up a bill with a bunch of crappy compromises, and attach the word "jobs" to it? That should win over the voters, right?
Wrong. Voters didn't ask you to create a law. They asked you to create JOBS.
Which is why 2010 was so difficult.
Good products sell themselves. I've never had trouble convincing my friends that they should try group-buying websites for a great discount, or that social networks are a great way to stay in touch, or that smart phones are fun and useful. As pragmatic as it may seem to produce something, putting out a half-baked "only half-working" product is not a very practical way to win the marketplace.
We have a Health Care reform bill. But Health Care premiums are still rising. We can talk about whose fault that is. We can talk about how silly it is to give more money to insurance companies without having any incentive to lower their prices. But at the end of the day, it's hard to brag about a bill when the results are vague at best, and there are just as many bad anecdotes as there are good ones.
We have a stimulus bill. GDP is up. Profits are up. CEO bonuses are up. But people are still out of work. Funny, it sort of reminds me of the Health Care bill. We give a ton of money to these huge corporations, but we don't add any incentive to actually invest that money back in America. I've tried selling this as "we prevented a great depression". For families that still have loved ones who are unemployed or underemployed, saying the stimulus helped is just insulting.
This is the world that Americans operate in.
I'm a young guy, but I'm here for the long haul. I've done the online thing. I've argued and debated with friends across the country, and signed up volunteers. I've phone banked in every election since 2004. I've done my part.
I've been watching in slow motion as Democrats have engineered the collapse of social security and medicare. First by extending the unsustainable tax cuts, then by caving on the debt that they enabled, and soon by setting up the "bipartisan" recommendation committee.
If Democrats allow Social security and Medicare to be decimated under Obama's watch, we will lose in 2012. Maybe not the white house, but certainly the other chambers. Losing won't have anything to do with how hard the Republicans twisted our arms, or how bipartisan the process was. It most certainly won't have anything to do with me.
It will be about results and responsibility.
A few months ago, Paul Ryan proposed a bill to end Medicare as we know it. We could have done the bipartisan thing. But the result would have been bad for America. Democrats opposed it, and made big gains on Republicans for the first time in a while. It was one of a few rays of light in a rough couple of years. Instead of negotiating with the Tea Party to achieve halfway cuts to medicare, we opposed it entirely. Imagine if we then shat on the Tea Party by shifting out attention to what voters actually want and need: jobs.
That's how we win reelection, sweep them all out of office, destroy the credibility of their entire ideology, and position our President for a transformative second term.
I'm telling you, the American people are smarter than their representatives in DC. Don't ever forget that.