From The Marston Chronicles
Clearly there was a huge message sent by the Massachusetts electorate but what exactly was the message? More importantly, what will Obama, Reid and Pelosi think it means? Our take is that the voters were telling the Democrat leadership that they totally misread the message that the voters sent them in 2008. They thought they had received a mandate to veer hard to the left and install socialism lite in this country. That was not the message at all as the Massachusetts voters have now made clear. The 2008 message was that we are tired of the GOP and its many mistakes and we want to try something else as we suggested here in Misjudging the Popular Mood on 1/11/09. The other big factor was the color of Obama's skin. If the Democrats had selected a white male, even McCain would have wiped up the floor with him. A black candidate energized the black community and the under 30 crowd to register and come out to vote, something they have never been known for doing previously.
There is no way that this was a mandate to turn the United States into Sweden. Since the Democrat leadership totally misread the election result, they began a journey of one huge mistake after another. Whatever made them so naive that they could come to such an unwarranted conclusion? The answer is what we wrote here last September called Ideologues Make Poor Politicians. That article is worth a reread. The Democrat leadership is composed of ideologues first and politicians second. That is a very bad idea. They will always read any situation through the rose colored glasses of their own ideology.
They are doing that today once again. Obama plans to double down and be more combative then ever. Reid promises to press ahead on health care. Pelosi promises that they will move forward on health care. Now most people will read these comments and wonder to themselves whether these folks have lost their pea picking minds. What is there about the word "No" that you do not understand? Their next thought is that these people are really stupid because any fool can see that doing this guarantees they will lose control of the House and maybe even the Senate if they do not wise up. They are not stupid but rather they are blinded by their ideology.
They have convinced themselves that they know better what is good for America than the hoi polloi out there. That is what makes them seem so elitist to many Americans. Their obsession is such that they think that once they force their ideas on the "rabble" and they get used to it, the common folk will love it. After all, don't they love Social Security and Medicare now? Of course, such entitlement programs always come with the downside that the government gains more control over your life. To these ideologues, that is a minor detail since the masses are too stupid to make their own decisions anyway. Their problem is that the electorate does see this downside and they do not like it.
America is the last country on earth where you want to try to force people to accept what they have decided they do not want. That may work in Europe but not here. Americans are too fiercely independent to put up with this. The country started out that way with the American Revolution and the "do not tread on me" motto. While a distinct minority of the populace is willing to sell their birthright for a security blanket, the majority are not. As diluted as that feeling is in the most Democratic state in the union, it is not totally lost as 51.94% of the voters in Massachusetts just made clear. They are willing to put up with a lot in Massachusetts but there are limits and those limits have been breached. If that is true in the most Democrat state in the union, you can just manage what the percentage is in Utah, the most Republican state in the union.
That is why it is so ironic that Massachusetts has once again fired the shot heard around the world. That the folks in Massachusetts would decide to fill the seat once held by the liberal Ted Kennedy with a Republican is a repudiation of the Democrat's agenda in the strongest possible terms. The Democrats would do well to hear the real message they were sent and tack back to the right as Bill Clinton did after the 1994 election. Any failure to do that will come to haunt them when the chickens come home to roost next November.
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