January 20, 2010 08:46 AM UTC

What should Democrats take from Massachusetts?

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• by: ace41

As any follower of politics or football will tell, the fine art of Monday morning quarterbacking (or Wednesday morning quarterbacking in this case) is a much loved pastime in Washington DC.

I am sure that before long, the media and the talking heads will appoint someone the scapegoat of the whole Massachusetts Senate Special Election mess.  Whether it’s the candidate (who showed a stunning amount of tone deafness in her public statements in the last few weeks), her campaign team (who apparently forgot you have to win both the primary AND the general election to get all the way to the Senate), the White House and the President (who have seemed to abandon the tight message discipline and aggressive style that suited them so well during the campaign) or the national Democratic agenda – conventional DC wisdom says that SOMEONE must take the blame.

Don’t get me wrong, the Democratic Party needs to evaluate what happened here and take a good long look at what went wrong.  Ultimately my own humble opinion is that this was due to a variety of factors and that this defeat did, in fact, have many fathers (and mothers).  I also think Coakely ignored the most fundamental rule in politics – you must ASK people to vote for you.

But of all the things that disturbed and angered me about this loss – this little tidbit from Politico burned me the most: http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0110/Dem_GOTV_picking_up_Brown_supporters.html?showall

“A Democratic operative familiar with Martha Coakley and the DSCC’s massive get-out-the-vote operation says that outreach workers in and around Boston have been stunned by the number of Democrats and Obama supporters who are waving them off, saying they’ll vote for Scott Brown.”

Here in Colorado we have a significant unaffiliated/Independent vote.  And I understand that those independents are often just that – independent.  And Republicans in Colorado have never been shy about telling us where they are at on the issues.

But let me speak to the Democrats for a minute…what the hell is going on out there?  Have we forgotten what we had before 2008?  Do we not recall the administration that led us down the path of financial ruin?  The folks that rushed to make sure Terry Schiavo would not be taken off a feeding tube but couldn’t muster a half hearted response to the mass devastation of Hurricane Katrina?  The Party that wouldn’t vote to approve Children’s Health Care?  The ones who never let the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill see the light of day?  The crowd that shamelessly blocked stem cell funding for over a decade – putting advances in a field that could one day heal spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s unforgivably behind the times?

Have we all really forgotten what it was like?  Because of all the unforgivable mistakes made in Massachusetts that is the most heinous.

I come onto this website, and several others following Democratic politics across the country, at night and inevitably there is some post blathering on about “conservadems” and the oh-so-hated Blue Dogs.  And I read the likes of JeffCo Blue, and David Thielen and RedGreen and Pols himself pretty valiantly trying to make the point that governing is much harder than campaigning and if Dems are ready to throw the baby out with the bath water every time they encounter a policy decision they don’t like…well then we might as well just hand control back to the Republicans.

Frankly…I’ve had it.  Policy discussions are one thing.  We can argue…robustly…the way we should handle a complex and difficult issue like health care.  We can discuss the best manner in which to deal with the tough social issues.  We can go ten rounds on when and where and how we should deal with immigration and other concerns.

As long as Democrats remember one thing – at the end of the day, even the most moderate Democrat is infinitely preferable to abandoning the Party and turning government back over to the hands of those who would drive it into the ground.

The President and Congress have had their missteps over the past year.  But they have had some great success as well.  And generally we are asking them to change 12 years worth of self destructive governing – policies that it really will take a decade to reverse – and make everything better in a year.

There is irresponsible governing.  There is also irresponsible citizenship.  And I think there are many folks guilty of the latter.  We are ALL part of this Democracy.  And our system is messy and difficult to manage – it was set up that way on purpose.

In 2008, Democrats said they wanted leaders who would work hard, who would tell us hard truths and ask us to sacrifice, who would never give up despite the obstacles ahead, who would work to put partisan differences aside to try and get things done.  By and large, we have gotten what we asked for.  Our President may not always tell us what we want to hear, but he is always honest about the obstacles ahead and he cannot be accused of trying to take the easy way out this past year.

Our members of Congress work hard.  They might not vote how we would like them to every single time, but then again, we asked them to be different from their predecessors – to put aside Party and just work to do what is right for the country.  Marilyn Musgrave would not let a Democrat or Democratic cause step foot in her office.  Betsy Markey meets with everyone.  It took years to get Wayne Allard to even agree that saving the Rocky Mountain wilderness was a good idea.  Michael Bennett has been vocal on support for clean energy from day one.

And yet there are quite a few who would sit there and hem and haw about making sure we primary the “DINO’s” and pledging not to work for those who don’t agree with them 100% of the time.  “Being true to who we are is more important than winning!” they proclaim.  But let me ask a pretty fundamental question…doesn’t some part of being true to who we are also involve having the pragmatism to get it done?  We were true to who we were for a decade…and the Republicans drove this nation into the ground while we were soul searching.

I am fed up with folks who worked so hard to bring change in 2008 and then turned around in 2009 and said they had lost “hope.”  Why?  Because it was harder than you thought?  Because half of the country disagrees with us half of the time?  Because everything didn’t happen immediately?  Get over yourself.  Nobody said this would be easy – in fact, I distinctly remember them all saying it would be hard.

It’s time to stop the hand wringing.  Time to put down the guns that are firing in a circle.  Time to stow away the overwrought statements about party purity.  Martha Coakley was full of party purity.  She also ran a terrible campaign that sacrificed pragmatism to complacency.  And that approach was so healthy for the Party that we lost Ted Kennedy’s seat because of it.  It was so healthy for the country that health care reform may go down because of it.

Here in Colorado, we have Democrats running up and down the ticket who work incredibly hard, who ask for every vote, who never take anything for granted and often sacrifice their own idealism for a healthy dose of pragmatism.  That’s called good governing.  And what do they often get for their work?  A lot of talk from the base about how they may stay home on Election Day.

Tomorrow will be a hard day.  But this weekend, I am headed to my local Democratic Party headquarters and am getting back on the phones.  I am going back to knock on doors.  And I am going to give what I can to every Dem running up and down the ticket.  It’s time to wake up and get fired up again.  It’s time to stop the sulking and get back out in the rain and snow and remember that nothing worth doing has ever been easy.

If we lose this November because we worked really hard and there was segment of this country and our state that refused to be convinced, then I can live with that…no matter how hard.

But if we lose because the Democratic base decided they were going to school their elected leaders on being loyal to some vague party platform, or because everything they wanted didn’t happen quick enough, then we deserve everything we get as a result.