What Massachusetts Means

salon.com — How do Republicans react when they lose at the polls? This is a question that Democrats should ponder as they nurse the painful wounds inflicted by the Massachusetts special Senate election. Based on the history of the past decade or so, the answer is simple and instructive: While the Republican Party may indulge in backbiting and recrimination and occasionally purge a leader to punish a loss, they don’t back down — even when standing fast seems very costly.

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tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com — Republicans lost in 2008 because they'd spent many years implementing clear, extreme economic and foreign policies thoroughly enough for real life to prove them bogus. Democrats are losing now for an entirely different reason. Although in 2008 they, too, won a national election with a great communicator riding on the other party's implosion, the Democrats, unlike Republicans, haven't really tried to implement their promised strategies seriously enough for real life to prove them bogus -- or, like Social Security, indispensable to Americans' safety and freedom. Why haven't they done that?

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truthdig.com — The two issues that mattered on Election Day were the economy, which Obama has sold out to Wall Street—as quite a few disgruntled voters pointed out—and his plea to save health care reform, which the voters who had backed him for the presidency with a huge majority now spurned. It is significant that it was the voters of Massachusetts who have now derailed the Democrats’ efforts to revamp the country’s health care system by denying them the necessary 60th vote in the Senate, for these voters know the subject well.

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ft.com — So, is all that is left of those moments a year ago on the Capitol steps — when nothing less than the rebirth of American governance seemed in the offing — just the presidential grandiloquence, to which the word “empty” is now being habitually attached? Have the Democrats displayed, yet again, their unmatched talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? You heard it here first. The correct answer, counter to the new conventional wisdom, is no. The 44th president is on the mat, but anyone counting him out has not taken his measure. It is just that he may actually need to respond to the unrelenting pressure from zombie conservatism, ravenously flesh-eating and never quite dead, not by turning on more consensual charm, but by taking the gloves off.

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openleft.com — There is something deeply embarrassing about Democratic voters/groups having to fight with Democratic leaders to get those leaders to even seriously try (much less pass) even the smallest, most modest shreds of their promises. Having to do that evokes feelings of genuine shame — shame in front of the other voters we told to vote for Democrats because it supposedly "mattered," and shame when we look in the mirror at a self that may have allowed itself to be unnecessarily duped. Many of us who had stopped believing in the possibilities of American democracy said we'd be willing to believe one last time. And now, seeing that perhaps we shouldn't have relented in our (rightful) cynicism, we are completely mortified.

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thenation.com — This special election is a wake up call and should lead to a course correction. The Democratic party can no longer run as a managerial and technocratic party. Going populist is now smart politics and good policy. The Obama White House needs to show, quickly and forcefully, with concrete, bold and visible action, that it stands with the working people of America. Here's a symbolic but smart start: jettison those on the White House economic team whose slow, timid response to the crisis of unemployment and to Wall Street's obscene excesses helped create the conditions for the Tea Party's inchoate right-wing populism. And here's a no-brainer: Isn't it time to give up on that faith in genteel post-partisanship when the GOP knifes you at every turn? Nice isn't going create more jobs or get health care reform.

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thenation.com — Obama and his aides need to take seriously the wake-up call they got from Massachusetts. He needs to be more populist, not less. He needs to go after the bankers — not go easier on them, as some conservative Democrats will counsel. Democrats got their wake-up call too late and responded too slowly in Massachusetts. They cannot afford to continue stumbling. In particular, they must recognize that they have mismanaged the health-care debate — confusing Americans, offering less than anyone bargained for and spending too much time trying to satisfy the demands of big insurance firms and the pharmaceutical industry. They also must recognize that they have spent too little time focused on jobs and holding Wall Street and the big banks to account.

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washingtonpost.com — A Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts doesn't spell the end of health reform — unless Democrats let it. The Senate has already passed a bill that is far from perfect but far better than nothing. The House should simply enact it in return for strong commitments from President Obama and Democratic leaders that they will fight to improve the bill in the future, including through the filibuster-proof budget process.

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