A Democratic majority in the U.S. House and Senate. A newly elected Democrat starting his second year in the White House, yearning for health care reform. The year? 1994... no wait 2009... or was it 1994 after all...? The correct answer: it’s both...
The Democratic party once more personalizes the epitome of stupidity: doing the same thing all over again, expecting different result... In 1994 the GOP wasn’t interested in producing meaningful healthcare reform, they wanted the newly minted presidency of Clinton to fail. The party of no hasn’t changed a bit in 16 years, on the contrary...
As a result, the party that never learns risks losing it’s majority again... Why did they squander this opportunity? Because, unlike Republicans, they’re afraid to govern as if they’ve won the election.
In 2000 after a very disputed election George W. Bush scraped in with the smallest presidential majority in over 130 years and with a tied Senate. Did he govern from the middle? No! He acted like he had won in a landslide. He started working to achieve his party(s political agenda. An agenda which stank and caused mayhem we’re still recovering from, but he delivered for his base. In 2008 Obama wins the presidential election and enlarges his majority in both Houses of Congress. But does he start governing like he won? No! He acts and governs as if he already had lost the midterms. People nonetheless like decisiveness. But what they see is just the opposite...
With Scott Brown’s recent election, we have something of a game changer. It probably means the end of the Obama presidency in its current form. With the 60th senate vote lost, Obama is politically speaking back to where he started in January 2009, but with lower approval ratings and with egg on his face. As a U.S. Senator, Scott P. Brown will most likely vote pretty much in lockstep with his Republican colleagues: the party of no is again ascendant. But how did it come this far? Because Obama and the Democratic party made some crucial mistakes.
Bi-partisanship was never a viable option... Personally I never for one second believed it could ever work. If the political history of the last 40 years have proven anything, it’s that the Republicans aren’t interested in such things... But why does the Obama administration still want to cling to it? Even if it has been months since it became abundantly clear that the GOP has no interest in it at all and were merely "negotiating" in bad faith? The inclusion of (some of) them in negotiations was as if injecting pure poison in it. Exclude them! Lieberman and company are poison enough to deal with! If you have 258 seats in the U.S. House and 58-59-60 seats in the U.S. Senate, use them to your advantage! After all, "use them or lose them" is an old adagium. The Obama administration naively fell in the GOP trap. Barack Obama sure is no Lyndon Johnson... and it safe to say that given the congressional tools, he and the Democrats have under performed. Imagine what a master of the Senate as President Johnson would have done with such a majority!
And the meek reaction of the White House against the "Tea Parties" and so on, is partly to blame for this mess too... when you cede the ground and take the moral high ground; people don’t hear any push back! And thus they start to believe the claptrap. I hoped the 1993-1994 health care experience and John Kerry’s swift boating in 2004 should have learned us at least that... after all, dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.
This means that Obama now has two options if he wants to achieve his political agenda:
- in effect a continuation of the failed current policy of trying to wiggle a GOPer away in order to get his 60th senate vote (no sinecure as in the unlikely event a GOP senator defects on an issue, the Dem caucus isn’t united either, it also would mean moving even further to the centre) or
- ignore them all together, and just find the necessary 51 votes and go through the budget reconciliation process if needed in order to achieve all things political. I’d much prefer the last route (which in my opinion should have been done from day one: they should never have tried to negotiate with GOP senators who clearly were negotiating in bad faith), but do Harry Reid, President Obama and Rahm Emanuel have the balls for it? As I said, Obama surely is no Lyndon Johnson! The danger in the first route is that you probably achieve little and might estrange your base even further so that come November, they’ll stay home too... The second option has its risks too, but if you couple it with an effective pushback and real achievements, it has high rewards too.
In my opinion it also holds a dire warning to Obama and the Democrats: you’re fumbling health care reform so badly, you might be heading to a 1994 like electoral catastrophe if you don’t deliver or be careful.
That’s the sad part, even more than in 1994, in 2009 the Democrats had all the aces to finally achieve real health care reform: the White House and large majority’s (the largest in fifteen years) in both Houses of Congress. The Democrats have less than 10 months to start governing as a people-powered party, or they will lose both the House and the Senate. In that there may be a blessing: as this defeat comes in January 2010 the warning signs are evident. So let us hope this is a wake up call and that it comes soon enough to get things done and turn it around. At least the Dem operatives will now not be taken by surprise as they were in 1994... I hope...
But as I said, the warning signs are starting to appear: the public is dissatisfied with the incumbents and – as they control both houses of Congress and the White House – the Democrats will take the blame for it. Even of the Republicans are the main reason for deadlock. Secondly: a wave election occurs when the public is dissatisfied and a large number of incumbents throws in the towel. This is what happened in 1994, 2006 and 2008. With the spate of recent retirements in hostile territory (TN, AR, KS,...) and a number of vulnerable incumbents (AL, MS, ID,...) in equally hostile territory, many of them not yet entrenched... the spectre of 1994 grows even more. What enlarges this effect is that the base is dissatisfied as well and thus might stay at home come election day. In the USA, elections are won by the party which energizes its base the most... and Democrats are doing mightily their best of pouring cold water over the enthusiasm of their base...
If the Democrats lose their large majority’s in Congress come November, as the 80th Congress was known as the "Do Nothing Congress", the 111th Congress should be known as the "Congress of Wasted Opportunities".