cross-posted at http://www.starkreports.com
In 2006 and 2008, Democrats enjoyed watershed elections that, on the surface, seemed to herald in a new age of progressive politics. In 2006, for the first time in decades, not a single Democratic incumbent lost in the House or Senate. In 2008, voters elected even more Democrats to both chambers of Congress and, of course, made Barack Obama President.
It can safely be said that both elections were nationalized. Democrats won because they were not Republicans. Republicans lost because they ran the country into a ditch and it was time for them to go.
The new huge majorities imbued the progressive base with a fantastic amount of hope. When Specter switched parties, providing the 60th Democratic vote in the Senate, anticipation amongst rank and file Democrats was ran thick. Finally, many suggested, we’d see our party take the reins and roll back so much of what had gone wrong in the previous eight – or thirty – years. And there’d be nothing Republicans could do about it.
On paper, it sounded great.
And it never happened.
Looking back, it’s not hard to see why.
Especially in nationalized elections, it’s easy to forget that all politics is local. The truth is, legislators like Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, and Mary Landrieu are every bit as concerned about winning re-election as Bernie Sanders and Dick Durbin are. And the progressive agenda espoused by the majority of the majority simply doesn’t wash with their constituents. I know many progressives would have liked to have seen Harry Reid use a system of carrots and sticks in order to compel party discipline, but that was never going to happen, and for understandable reasons. Leaders don’t (indeed, can’t) throw their most vulnerable to the wolves.
Something progressives need to understand is that these folks are under constant assault. Every single day, large swaths of the electorate (especially seniors, aka voters) in Arkansas, Louisiana and Nebraska begin their day listening to Glenn Beck or Laura Ingraham. At noon, Rush Limbaugh is there to tell them that a vote for cloture is a vote for the bill. At 3, Hannity takes over for three hours. When he finishes, Mark Levin picks up the baton and rolls until nine. All day long, if people turn on their radio, they are likely to hear dishonest fusillades attacking the progressive agenda and any politicians advancing it. And when these hosts sense blood, they turn into sharks.
The 2008 electorate heard “Emplyee Free Choice Act”. In 2009, talk radio listeners heard, “Union thugs taking away your secret ballot and using a tire iron to get you to sign your union card.” In 2008, most of American heard that Democrats would end American involvement in ill-defined wars. In 2009, talk radio listeners are hearing that Democrats are surrendering to Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, and providing lawyers to terrorists while they continue to try to blow up airplanes. In 2008 Americans heard that Democrats will enact sensible energy policies and move to counteract global warming. In 2009, talk radio listeners heard that global warming was a fraud cooked up by greedy scientists living off government grants. In 2008, voters heard that health care reform would be open and transparent and paid for by repealing the bush tax cuts. In 2009, over 20 million people heard, every day for 15 hours a day, that the government was taking over the health care system, that Democrats had cut secret deals with insurance and pharmaceutical companies, they’d be forced to purchase insurance from one of health insurance corporations that caused the problems and that if their insurance was too good, they’d have to pay an additional tax.
The truth is, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson, in particular, have been savaged over the last 6 months. The talkers are well-aware that these Senators are vulnerable on a good day; by demagoging the health care debate and scaring the hell out of seniors and tea-baggers, Rush and his ditto-heads owned the summer. In July I watched as an angry crowd of unruly and ill-informed seniors savaged Senator Ben Cardin – in liberal Maryland – at a town hall meeting. One can only imagine how bad things must have been for the Democrats representing red states.
Indeed, if you can read, you don’t have to imagine. The Politico just reported what happened when Ben Nelson went out for pizza.
First, a man heckled him. Within seconds, the entire restaurant was booing him. He had to leave.
This is why Barack Obama has to shoulder the lion’s share of the blame for Democrat’s precarious electoral position. The dynamic I sketched out above isn’t a difficult one to discern – especially for an ex-Senator. Knowing he was swept into power on the tail end of an electoral shift, his team should have realized that he needed to take the lead (and the brunt of the criticism) in selling a progressive agenda to Americans. He should have spent his summer in Arkansas, Nebraska and Louisiana. Instead of flirting with Republicans and constantly extolling the virtues of bi-partisanship, he should have been drawing attention to Republican obstructionism while constantly reminding Americans why they hired Democrats and fired Republicans.
If the President doesn’t move soon to provide cover for vulnerable Democratic legislators, we are likely to see a Democratic caucus in name only.
Progressives and centrists will go their separate ways in last-ditch attempts at saving their own skin. Good people will be replaced by politicians beholden to the Sarah Palin wing of the Republican Party. And Obama’s next three years in office will be his last.