The media understandably THRIVES on gossip as we have become a nation consumed by need to get all the details of the latest celebrity scandal. Eyeballs on copy make money. The Republicans march like geese in a line so that there is no accidental screw-up from the official party line. The Democrats on the other hand constantly act like a convention of tabby cats. Virtually no organization exists and far less strategic communication. Herein lies a season of dumb political moves that the goose stepping republicans always capitalize on to their great political benefit. Chronologically let’s move back to January 20, 2009, roughly one year ago.
Barack Obama, a colored man, was now the President of the United States. Barack’s qualifications are impressive, graduate of Harvard Law School, Editor of the Harvard Law Review an honor in itself, and United States Senator from the State of Illinois. Barack excited the electorate with his promises of change. He was swept into office on the wings of national hope for change in America for many, but a silent hate filled sizeable group of Americans were looking for anything that they could use to show their contempt and hatred for this new black president. For a long time all they could do was circulate racist jokes and cartoons about Obama, but after a while the Democrats gave them an organizational gift.
Obama for all of his academic brilliance has been a political failure since entering the White House. First of all he unwittingly copied Jimmy Carter’s playbook for staffing. Obama made his campaign managers his closest advisors in the White House. Second mistake, he made Rahm Emmanuel his chief of staff. Third mistake, he appointed Larry Summers his economic czar. With only a few exceptions all of his staff selections have been disasters.
Think of Obama’s first year as a baseball game. It’s the Obama White House team against a team composed of a depression level economy and eight years of uninhibited spending by the previous president and his Republican controlled Congress. It is obvious if your team does not match up against the opposition no matter how good the coach is your team is going to lose the game. This is the current problem that Obama faces. Unfortunately he is fiercely loyal to all those people he has around him so chances are slim that he would ever wise up and clean house, and he needs to clean house if he is ever to change course and achieve the goals that he desires. Frankly the people comprising the present White House staff are just not creative enough to come up with answers to solve America’s unemployment and economic problems.
Fourth mistake, Obama put Joe Biden in charge of the Stimulus project. Wrong guy, a real duck out of water with NO ADMINISTRATION EXPERIENCE to effectively manage a project of this size. Now a year later the Republicans are starting to carp about a gigantic waste of Stimulus money and that no jobs were created. They have planned all along to use this for the 2010 Congressional campaign. They decide upon this course against Obama as soon as it was made public that Biden would be running the Stimulus project.
Fifth mistake, not controlling the Democrats in the Congress. Obama was so busy trying to woo the Republicans into some form of bipartisan relationship that he neglected to work closely with the Democrats in the House and the Senate on the Health Care Reform (HCR) bill. As a result, the Democratic House members decided to schedule “Town Hall” style meetings to inform the public about the provisions in the bill, and to counter the intense propaganda campaign that was being waged by the health care industry against the HCR bill. These town halls gave the anti-Obama racists an opening to raise hell “On Camera”. Town Halls became a media circus as Democratic Congressmen were badgered and threatened by people holding signs calling Obama a black Hitler. Out of this racist turmoil around the town halls was born the “Tea Party” movement, a product of a not to imaginative racist trying to connect this racist anger and outrage to something historical in American history. Now the “Tea Party Express” has been validated and elevated by the media from a mob of rag-tag howling crying racists to a legitimate populist movement with third party possibilities. From the media’s point of view it’s George Wallace all over again. However, if the Democrats in the House had the common sense to recognize that the Health Care and Drug lobby money was setting up people to disrupt Democrat Town Hall meetings, they would have scratched the idea from their agenda, and if that happened , presto NO TEA BAG PARTY. Unintended consequences.
Finally, what is know in Democratic circles but never mentioned was that Ted Kennedy’s ego actually helped Scott Brown become the 41st Senator. Get this. In the final days of his life Kennedy knew that if he resigned his Senate seat, that Gov. Patrick would appoint another Democrat to fill out his term. This would have guaranteed that his beloved HCR bill would pass Congress and become law, as it would maintain the 60 votes that the Senate Democrats needed. Kennedy was approached quietly with this suggestion and he refused. He was not asked again because of the frailty of his health and no one wanted to be guilty of verbally harassing a man facing death. Kennedy dies in office so a special election is now required. However, there is no time to hold a statewide convention so that the party faithful can pick their candidate. As a result a weak inexperienced Martha Coakley with a small base was able in the primary to beat out the other Democratic candidates none of which had any sort of base at all.
Coakley’s campaign inexperience showed up very early in the general election when Scott Brown was over 30 points down in the polls. Coakley went on a two week vacation. Meanwhile Scott Brown started driving his truck around the suburbs of Wrentham and knocking on doors. The Tea Party people liked what they saw in Brown and sent money and volunteers in to work. The tea Party people also got the attention of the RNC and their money started flowing in. Meanwhile Coakley continued running the same old TV ad crowing about the 100 million she retrieved from the insurance companies as the Massachusetts Attorney General. Coakley DID NO political ORGANIZING in the African American and other minority communities, which meant she had no presence in Roxbury Dorchester, New Bedford, Fall River, Lowell, Lynn and Springfield. Minorities in these communities did not vote for Scott Brown, they just did not come out to vote, period. These votes Coakley effectively threw away. The National Democratic Party noticing Brown’s rise in the polls offered their help to the Coakley campaign and were turned away until the last 9 days before the election. They advised the Coakley campaign to go negative in a last ditch effort to pull out the election. The Scott Brown voters were composed anti-tax people, anti-Washington people, anti-people-of-color, anti-immigration people, and other racists. These people did not need to be motivated to go to the polls and could hardly wait until the polls opened to cast their votes. You know the rest of the Scott Brown story. Check this out… The number of votes cast in the heavily African American community of Roxbury Massachusetts was 129!! Yep, that was ONE HUNDRED TWENTY NINE votes!! Nuff said! Unintended consequences!
Finally, Democratic Congress people are scared stiff by the media hype about independents engineering Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts. As I just explained above, this is pure B.S. So now Congressional Democrats are scrambling to protect their seats. Obama now has the awesome task of trying to herd this group of Congressional cats to work towards stabilizing and rebuilding the national economy, which continues to promise only a heavily subsidized jobless recovery.