Turnout in heavily Democratic Boston was disappointing.
and he needed to abandon a hard one-party governing strategy that threatened to cost Democratic congressional incumbents dearly this coming November.
and a willingness to adjust his domestic agenda toward entitlement-spending reform.

You lead off with the dearth of Democrats who turned out for Coakley, and your suggestion for how to fix that problem is that Obama needs to embrace more Republican planks?

That'll rally the Democrats. No, really.

I disagree with your analysis. The fact is that it has been the Republicans who have shunned any notion of bipartisanship, expressly stating that their agenda was simply to oppose anything that Obama proposed. Obama reached out to Republicans on both the stimulus package and health care. He was rebuffed. Further, do you really think that if Obama goes after the financial industry that he will get any Republican support? Please. And, in this time of recession and joblessness, why would a Democrat advocate 'Republican lite' policies? Perhaps Democrats are not enthused in these elections because the Democrats have not been aggressive enough in pushing through the agenda that Democrats should be advocating. In other words, Obama & Co. are not on the ropes because they are to partisan; they are on the ropes because they are not partisan enough.
Mike

Democrats not being aggressive enough? That's a blue-state pipe dream. Voters in Massachusetts spoke their piece--they're tired (already?!) of Obama and company focusing on issues that are of marginal importance to ordinary people. What do voters care about? Jobs is number one, by a huge margin. http://www.pollingreport.com/prioriti.htm. What have the administration and Democrat party done to promote job growth for small businesses and ordinary Americans? Not enough. Nobody believes anymore that Obama stands for the man in the street. He gives high-falutin' speeches, fattens up the government, and follows his own desire for a legacy. I don't expect a second term unless the Republicans back Palin.

"Another option would be to step back, add provisions acceptable to Republicans and independents, and come back in a few weeks with a fresh health-care plan."

Oh, that's inspired. Both independants in the Senate voted for the senate democratic version, and the republicans have decided that their health care plan is to have none at all, and no compromising on their stand. Ted, just why are you a democrat? What policies do you wish to be enacted that the Democrats do better than the Republicans? Sometime I'd love to see a column praising a virtue of a democratic party ideal, two even, something that would give those of us that doubt your sincerity a reason to believe in your advice. If you're sincere about doing something like that, include it in your next Wall Street Journal piece. Speak up for something you believe in and then you can tell rest of us to get off your lawn.

In the meantime, count me in with Dr Dean and the Democratic wing of Democratic Party. Bipartisanship is a means to an end and not an end in itself, and voters like a party that has the courage of it's convinctions and the will and discipline to achive their goals. As Truman said, about "If you give the voters a choice between a Republican and a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they'll pick the real Republican everytime."

Here in Seattle we are distant from other places and sometimes the last place to get the message.

What happened Tuesday night was that Massachusetts voters, including large numbers of traditional Democrats, voted "no" on the content of the present agenda being pushed by President Obama. Being a loyal Democrat does not mean supporting policy initiatives that are inappropriate to their time. I have written from early 2009 onward that Obama and Democratic congressional leaders were badly overreaching by attempting huge, expensive, and complicated health-care and environmental legislation
before dealing successfully with financial/economic crises.

Ordinary working people, retirees, small business owners, and middle- and low-income families have taken a beating over many months. They were asked to pay trillions of their taxpayer dollars for a stimulus package
(which contained little economic stimulus), big-bank bailout, and
automobile- and housing-industry rescues. They now feel their futures threatened by federal deficits which, by the administration's own estimates, will be $1 trillion per year over the next 10 years. The health-care package, which is at the center of discontent (and which is opposed by majority opinion) involves a complicated remake of the sector without, for liberals, containing a single-payer or "public option" provision or, for moderates and independents, malpractice reform or
insurance reform allowing health insurers to sell across state lines.
It would, however, cut present Medicare benefits and reduce even further payments to hospitals and doctors. Only a full-court press by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid, accompanied by
financial sweeteners for recalcitrants, brought the present legislation to narrow passage among Democrats. After the Massachusetts shock, so-called Blue Dog and other moderate congressional Democrats will be reconsidering their support for legislation they never really favored in the first place.

Being a good Democrat does not mean following a party line which is badly out of sync with what Marxists used to call "the objective conditions."
Right now that line is bringing the party downhhill. Obama's approval ratings are the lowest on record for any President on the first anniversary of his inaugural. Independents, not Democrats, are now the largest voting bloc in the country. Survey data show them strongly opposing the present health-care package. Republicans, almost counted out a year ago, have carried three big statewide elections recently (in states carried strongly by Obama in 2008) and are favored to make big gains in midterm elections this fall.

I have been and remain a lifelong Democrat because I believe that party has been, and can continue to be, a powerful engine for positive change and progress in the country. But it temporarily has lost its way. Its most fundamental problem, right now, is the one I identified in my Wall Street Journal piece last summer and which continues. President Obama campaigned in 2008 on the basis that he would reach across party lines and end political polarization in the country. In office, he and Democratic congressional leaders have not done that but have governed in an aggressive one-party manner which has increased polarization and alienated a majority of voters. To many voters, this amounts to cynical bait-and-switch.

Tell voters the truth. Act on their genuine needs. Don't bite off that which cannot be chewed. Stay in touch with the people who brought you to office in the first place. Keep your word. Good political principles which temporarily have been forgotten. Don't worry, the Democratic Party will be back. But, if it is to avoid a Massachusetts-like wipeout this fall, it must get right with voters in a hurry.

The tortured piece of legislation known as health care reform is, in fact, part of the problem. If the 'democratic wing of the democratic party' (I forgot about that Dean gem) would have proposed a simpler version of health care reform that people felt actually addressed their needs (Medicare for all?), if the democrats would have actually attacked the financial sector with the vigor it deserved, if the democrats would have actually tackled the recession with a vigorous jobs program, I think the public would have followed.

There is another problem with trying to pigeon-hole the MA results as the media pundits are trying to do. Given the limited options us voters have (uninspired democrat vs good looking, truck driving, American Idol parenting republican), the way the media plays most issues, and the unseemly jockeying by conservative democrats, it is not surprising that voters vote the way they do. They only had 2 options, after all. As you will recall, early on in the polling for health care, the public option garnered majority support in polling, and people did seem to be behind health care reform. But it has been so strung out by the ineffectual democrats that it is now leaving a bad taste in people's mouths, and they are worried about jobs and the economy, and see no real action on that front.

I may live in the Seattle bubble, but like many folks around here, I am from somewhere else, and the word I hear is that people are upset because the Democrats are not moving with adequate speed to address the urgent issues we face.

And I would still like to know, on the issue of health care, which Republicans, specifically, the democrats should have been working with to get something passed? It's a united front, as far as I can tell. It looks to me, and a lot of people like me, that the republican tactic of 'no', is having its desired effect.

Matthewsbeachmike: Good comments. One other major problem regarding formulation of health-care legislation: The Obama White House essentially ceded control of its content to Democratic congressional committee chairs, entering discussion only after its outlines already had been defined.
A President should never cede control of a main agenda item to someone else. From that beginning, the legislation has become a mishmash of sometimes contradictory provisions and not laid out a credible, comprehensive, understandable path to positive reform.

As to the GOP: When major legislation such as this is proposed, the normal process would have been to consult at the outset with ranking Republicans and relevant committee chairs in both House and Senate. (As I mentioned earlier, this always was Ted Kennedy's way and has been the process in the past when something of this magnitude was being considered). They would have come to the table. Could common ground have been found? Yes, there
were provisions---I have mentioned two---which would have especially attracted Republicans while not alienating Democrats. Now, how many would have become co-sponsors of the product? We don't know; perhaps only a few.
How many eventual Republican votes could the legislation have gotten? Again, we don't know because the process went forward without them and resulted in a product they could not support.

The official Democratic talking line has been to say that Republicans oppose everything and are blindly obstructionist on health care as on everything else. But there are many who would have participated in good faith if given a chance to do so. I completely understand why Republicans, in the end, opted out. Democrats, in a comparable situation, would have done the same. At least I hope so.

Important to get past bumper-sticker sloganeering and to examine the facts of what is going on. Voters seem to have done that and are angry.

Respectfully, I still don't know which republican would have supported a democratic bill to do something about the woeful state of the health care system in this country. I firmly believe that it is the policy of the republican party to obstruct the president on major social issues, as evidenced by their words and actions. We'll see how many republicans go along with the fees on the financial industry.

I do agree with your points about Obama ceding control of his agenda to someone else. That was a big tactical mistake on his administration's part.

Off to work. Bye.
Mike

what do you mean change course? the guy has broken every promise he made, except to surge in Afghanistan. this is bush III, and with a vengeance. we now have supplementals coming, which he promised not to have. a trillion dollar defense budget, more than the rest of the world combined. the guy is owned by the people who surround him: the big bankers and the generals.
the american people fooled themselves, they always do. this time the dope was called hope. and they flock between the demorats and the pooplkans, and haven 't a clue. and watch television and consume junk food.

"...end polarization and to govern across party lines; and he needed to abandon a hard one-party governing strategy..."

You confuse me. Why is everything that Bush did exactly -- i.e. polarized, governed along party lines and a hard one-party strategy -- and yet Obama is wrong?

I think you are without factual substance that Obama did as you claim. You have just turned it upside down -- Obama should have been a lot less placating and nicey-nice.

But in a technical, mechanics-only sense, why is wrong that Obama has (claimed) that Bush did? Is it simply that Bush was a better politician and could get through his "polarized, governed along party lines and a hard one-party strategy" but Obama couldn't?

Now that the MA special election is over, everyone is suddenly an expert pundit. Including me.

My assessment of the situation has been fairly consistent since the stimulus bill: the problem isn't that the Obama agenda has been too liberal, but rather that it hasn't been coherent enough. The downhill slide began with the stimulus, which also was basically a party line vote. I really wish that the stimulus was written in a way that interfaced with the other key Democratic priorities--clean energy, health care, and climate change. What does putting out vastly more money for highways than mass transit have to do with these priorities? That way, the stimulus would have been the first step in the health care reform process and the first step in the Obama energy plan.

Regarding health care, I wonder if a piecemeal strategy would have been better. A bill to expand Medicare, and that's it. Another bill to regulate the financial industry, and that's it. It might be necessary to do these items in twos, so that at least half of the bill Republicans will accept. That way, each individual piece would have made sense, and people could better understand how each bill would affect their lives. I doubt that most of either opponents or supporters of the current bill can really explain how they will be affected.

"Common wisom", a phrase which I admit irks me to no end, holds that a President must accomplish his big priorities in the first two years, like LBJ did after his 1964 landslide victory. But I wonder if it might be better to use the first two years to pursue bipartisan objecives, such as shoring up Social Security for instance, and then go for the more liberal objectives in the third and fourth year, after having some real achievements and earning bipartisan goodwill. I don't think that Obama really went for either of these options.

Finally, I admit to being deeply torn about how to go about climate change. I despise procrastination, and I see climate change as an issue on which the United States has procrastinated for far too long. I also despise excuses, and good and bad ecomomies alike are used as excuses for delay. And the economy is not going to turn around for a while. But I also recognize that President Obama is not going to be successful unless he is seen as addressing Americans' immediate needs, and honesty compels me to admit that climate change is not seen as one of them right now.

Ted Van Dyck continues to misrepresent the health reform legislation in Congress. He is flat-out wrong to say that the legislation would cut present Medicare benefits. In fact, the legislation enhances benefits by closing the doughnut hole in Part D drug coverage. The House bill would create a generous new long-term care benefit. Both the House and Senate bills enhance primary and preventive benefits. Where does Mr. Van Dyck get his misinformation?

In terms of his statement about the legislation reducing payments to hospitals and doctors, it would reduce payments to hospitals for inappropriate readmissions. The hospital industry has agreed to that, in exchange for the assurance that many more patients would have insurance to pay for their hospital care. Hospital and physician groups see this as a big plus. Again, Mr. Van Dyck misrepresents the legislation to make his polemical argument. It would be better if he made his arguments based on accurate facts.

Democrats of all stripes have supported health reform and universal coverage for decades. Where does Mr. Van Dyck get the idea that moderate Dems don't support health reform? Another inexplicable and unfounded statement to serve his polemical argument.

Sorry, editors, but I seriously question Mr. Van Dyck's fitness to be Crosscut's lead national political writer.

It depends on how you define "present medicare benefits." In the Senate version, I believe Florida was exempted from the cuts to Medicare Advantage for example. How the "savings" would work is not at all clear to me.

Here's a story with a critique of the medicare savings from the chief actuaries for medicare and medicaid:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/14/AR2009111402597.html

excerpt:

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.

The GOP was turned out by the vast middle of the voters because they spent wildly and grew the size and intrusiveness of government substantially. The Democrats are about to get turned out for exactly the same reason. Hopefully for the sake of our country the Republicans who come into office in 2011 will have learned that lesson. The Democrats seem incapable of learning it, as some of the comments here attest.

It's hard to know how to respond to sjenner's comments. Many of the people who criticize the Medicare savings in the Democratic health reform bills, including Mr. Van Dyk, are otherwise in favoring of cutting Medicare as part of "entitlement reform." Now the Dems come along and propose Medicare savings that would go toward expanding health coverage (rather than tax cuts for the rich) -- AND that AARP and hospital and physician groups have endorsed -- and all of a sudden shrinking Medicare spending is bad. I don't get it.

Clearly, the Democratic bills would reduce federal subsidies for private Medicare Advantage plans, which studies have found cost 10-15% more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare. Those private insurers may choose to cut back on benefits like gym memberships for the 20% or so of Medicare beneficiaries who are in Medicare Advantage plans. But that wouldn't affect the 80% of beneficiaries who are in traditional Medicare. Indeed, as I previously said, the Dem bills would expand some key benefits for people in traditional Medicare.

The Dem bills contain a variety of measures to appropriately shrink Medicare spending by improving the quality and efficiency of care, such as paying doctors and hospitals a global fee to coordinate episodes of care. Those efficiency measures have bipartisan support. Republican experts like Gail Wilensky and Mark McClellan think this is the proper way to reduce Medicare spending, and that it will work over time. There are no easy solutions for reducing health care spending, but the Dem bills will set a lot of cost-saving efforts in motion.

I read the Washington Post article sjenner mentioned, about the federal report, and it says expanding coverage to millions of Americans who don't have it now will create bottlenecks in care due to a shortage of providers. Yes, everyone anticipates that to some extent, but the Dem bills also build in structures and funding for increasing the supply of primary care providers. Isn't it a good thing that more Americans can get needed health care? If we have a problem of not enough providers, let's address that problem.

Fom Harris Meyer on the Kennedy thread on 01/19/2010

"So I don't understand Mr. Van Dyck's statement that Congress will be reluctant to pass them. If this legislation passes, over his objections, those revenues measures will become law. That's why the CBO said the health reform legislation will reduce the deficit over 10 years. Again, I don't think Mr. Van Dyck grasps what's going on."

Isn't it true Mr. Meyer that the CBO scored the Health Care reform as a deficit reduction in the first 10 years because they don't actually start providing services until 6 years after they start collecting taxes? Funny how that works. How does it look 20 years out? Why are you so suprised people don't want to follow you off a cliff?

I'm glad that pepper2000 mentioned Social Security and hinted at its imminent insolvency because the Washington DC debate over Social Security
liabilities did, in some ways, mirror the discussion of health care. The Bush Administration proposed something like individual retirement accounts that would over a great many years reduce taxpayers obligations to the SS system. The Democrats in Congress and elsewhere rejected that (no surprise) but, the parallel I am talking about is that the Democrats then claimed there were no financial problems with Social Security until (maybe) 2037. "We have lots of time to address this problem, if it is a problem" they said and they declined to enter into a discussion of the deficits that Social Security faces starting maybe sooner than even President Bush had predicted (2017). I should admit that Republicans in Congress were not enthused either.

It now appears, with people out of work (paying less into the system) and perhaps retiring early, that the deficit will appear as early as 2015. To me this seems to parallel the Republican's disinclination to join hands with Democrats on the health care bill. Probably good politics in both cases but perhaps not good for the country. I have no special animosity to taxpayer funded health care but I personally think that any new laws that take up 2,000 pages to describe should be voted down

Ted, your read on national politics is much better informed than it is on local politics.

"Here in Seattle we are distant..."? Mr. Van Dyk, are you serious? Have you noticed that we actually have TV, blogs (one of which you write for), and a growing number of poor people here? And we actually have people without health insurance in this very city. Perhaps not you, almost certainly not you, but I know a number of people unencumbered with health insurance, some in my own family. Please, consider retiring to write your memoirs. You don't seem to understand that the Republicans of 2010 are not the Republicans of 1970. As it is, I'm sometimes nostalgic for Nixon.

Harris Meyer's right in everything he said. At least one CrossCut writer's not using "bumper sticker sloganeering."

Maybe I didn’t understand the election, but it seemed to me that the first African American to win in a nation wide election did so not because he wanted to be Bush Lite, but rather because he wanted to change the course of America, perhaps even have the federal government become the tool of the people rather than the corporations.

If Obama has failed, he has failed as a close in knife fighting political leader. He offered his hand and the Republicans chopped it off. The Democrats couldn’t govern with a filibuster proof Senate and a commanding majority in the House. The Stimulus package was too small to create a recovery. Failure of the Health Care bill was not due to Republican efforts. The Democrats inability to keep party discipline, and fend off big pharma, insurance, and Wall Street has made them vulnerable.

Lack of Boldness has Hamstrung Obama. He’s squandered his base. To suggest that he teeters further to the right insures his demise, and condemns us to a Bush repeat.

(Is that Jeb I see peeking around the corner?)

A couple closing observations, following later commments above.

First, the revenues to be derived from new taxes/fees, and the savings to be derived from new Medicare cuts, would not automatically become law if health-care legislation in its present form were enacted. These revenue increases and spending cuts would have to be considered by relevant committees and work their way through the legislative process. Right now they are merely general promises made by the legislation's sponsors in order to get a "revenue neutral" finding from the CBO. Both the tax/fee increases, and Medicare cuts, as I pointed out, would be difficult. In any case, the reexamination my article indicated is now taking place at the White House and among congressional Democrats. It will be several days before we see what determinations are made. The content and prospects of health-care legislation, from this point forward, will then clarify.

Second, we should avoid confusion about the mandate President Obama received in 2008. The election of an African American President was historic. But that does not translate to a conclusion that voters therefore endorsed an ambitious, heavy-spending domestic agenda. Obama
ran as a unifier reaching across party and ideological lines. He got strong support from independent voters. Given the circumstances at the time of his inaugural, it was clear that his new administration's prime responsibility---and the one voters properly saw as No. 1---would be
to resolve financial/economic crisis and, then, to bring the economy back to non-inflationary growth and job creation. One of the reasons his support among independents has evaporated---and why 2/3rds of independents voted Republican in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts statewide elections---is that they and many Democrats perceive that Job No. 1 has
taken a back seat to long and unresolved struggles within a heavily Democratic Congess about health-care legislation which surveys indicate does not enjoy majority support in the country. There also is high and justified anxiety that the deep deficits created by stimulus spending,
big-bank bailouts, and auto- and housing-industry rescues will be made
even deeper by additional domestic spending having nothing to do with
the immediate imperative of setting the economy right.

As I wrote, above, Obama ran on one platform which got him elected in 2008. Since then, he has governed in an entirely different manner than promised. Entering 2010, he and congressional Democrats with reelection
contests face a year in which unemployment is projected to continue near 10 percent and in which Afghanistan casualties, given the troop buildup there, are certain to rise. Voters properly will be focused in this election year on those two big things: The economy and jobs...war and peace.

Another matter: It was noted in comments above that Presidents traditionally have a limited honeymoon period in which to get their
major initiatives enacted. They do. But circumstances also must dictate
the agenda. President Johnson already had been in office for a full year before his 1965 Great Society agenda was enacted. But he would never
have attempted something that ambitious had he not benefited from electoral and congressional majorities which followed his landslide 1964 win over Sen. Barry Goldwater. FDR, facing financial/economic crises,
also had big electoral and congressional majorities in 1932. But he devoted his first two years solely to addressing those crises. His big domestic initiative, Social Security, was not enacted until 1935.

If Obama had enjoyed majorities comparable to those of LBJ and FDR (his were much smaller) and IF the economy were booming, as it was in 1965 for LBJ, it would have been appropriate to launch ambitious domestic initiatives. But it was not appropriate to do so in the climate prevailing in 2009 and, now, 2010. I had thought he would devote all his energies to financial/economic revival and, then, capitalize on the momentum and popularity generated by that revival to move a further agenda forward. Over the past year he has been trying, politically, to pour
100 pounds of flour into a 50-pound sack.

This is not about liberal or conservative. Any leader's agenda has to be appropriate to the times. If they think it is not, voters will react as they have in Virginia, New Jersey and, most stunningly, Massachusetts
over the past several weeks. Time for a reset.

Mr. Van Dyk is flat-out wrong in saying that the tax and fee increases and spending cuts contained in the House and Senate bills would not immediately become law if Congress passes them as part of the current health care legislation. Those provisions absolutely WOULD NOT have to be considered by congressional committees after passage and then passed again. I have no idea where he gets this type of misinformation.
Second, Mr. Van Dyk can go back and check Barack Obama's campaign positions and speeches prior to his election, and he'll find that Obama (and Hillary Clinton) ran strongly on a platform of expanding affordable health coverage for all Americans, and he laid out a proposal quite similar to the legislation now before Congress. Then he was elected with 53 percent of the vote. And Democrats, who also campaigned on health reform, gained the largest majorities in Congress in decades. If that's not a mandate for health reform, then I don't know what is.

Wow, now Ted has wandered right off into la-la land. Surveys have consistently shown that over 60% of Americans think a single-payer universal coverage plan should be adopted.

When you see someone like Van Dyk, who has been "studying" politics for a long time, so totally uninformed about what's happening, you can start to worry. In a better world, the rich would realize they have more to lose than any of us if the country goes broke, but that's not happening here.

Until quite recently I couldn't believe such a large and diverse nation could fail- especially because the result of such failure, a nation and world held hostage by insane nuclear weapon-wielding American rightwingers, is so unattractive.

A step down the road to such failure would be the continued rise of healthcare costs as a percentage of the GDP. A moral step down the road to such failure is the knowledge that tens of thousands of people are dying because they have no health insurance, and feeling no outrage.

Dealing with this mess should have been a bipartisan effort, but not one Republican could be found who would go as far as Ben Nelson or Kent Conrad in the Senate. Blaming Obama or the Dems for this is simply looney-tunes.

Well, Ted, I wish you a long life, as I would dearly love for you to see how all of this plays out.

Harris,

Please answer the question about the CBO scoring of the health reform plan. It's smoke and mirrors is't it? 10 years of taxes VS. 4 years of providing services?