What Massachusetts Got Right

The president got creamed in Massachusetts. No amount of blaming this disastrous outcome on the weaknesses of the local Democratic candidate or her Republican opponent's strengths can gainsay that fact. Obama's opportunistic search for win-win solutions to our health care concerns and our larger economic problems is leading to a lose-lose outcome for the president and the country.

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.

The federal proposal is based on their own state's model requiring people to obtain health insurance without the state doing anything to effectively control costs through an alternative to the private insurance corporations. Lacking a public option, the cost of health care in Massachusetts, already the highest in the nation at the time of the plan's implementation, has spiraled upward. Services have been curtailed, and many, particularly younger people, feel they are being forced to sacrifice to pay for a system that doesn't work.

Instead of blindly following the failed Massachusetts model, Obama should have insisted on an extension of the Medicare program to all who are willing to pay for it. He squandered the opportunity to bring about meaningful health care change that the public would have supported had it been kept simple and just. Instead, Obama gave away the store to medical profiteers. They, in turn, hopelessly muddied the waters with well-funded scare advertising tactics that principled leadership on Obama's part could have thwarted.

A mere seven months ago, The New York Times/ CBS poll found that 72% of Americans "supported a government-administered insurance plan--something like Medicare for those under 65--that would compete for customers with private insurers." Even half of those identified as Republican said they would back such a public plan, as would three out of four independents and 90% of Democrats. Instead of heeding that call by endorsing a serious extension of Medicare, along with increased subsidies for those who could not afford it, Obama played to the conservatives in Congress--and they rolled him.

It's a sad say for all of us who support the President. Now, we're stuck with Brown, who will undoubtedly be the thorn in the side of the Dems through at least 2012. Obama will be a one-term president if this loss doesn't open his eyes and make him revamp his Cabinet and start to actually LEAD.

2008 Democrat Primary in Massachusetts Results...

Hillary Rodman Clinton defeats Barack Obama. BINGO!

Remember back in November 2008, how many Democrats in Massachusetts had so much hate that Obama was the Democrat candidate for President, that they said they never would vote for Obama. I think this is a backlash to that election that Scott Brown won the Senate seat.

Same thing happen in Virginia this last fall with the Republicans beating the Democrats.

I'm all for "bipartisanship" as long as it's working....but Obama has held out his hand to the Repubs enough and all they do is spit on it. After a full year of playing the nice new kid on the block, if Obama wants to really bring about positive CHANGE, he's got to stop trying to be that NICE kid and be the TOUGH PRESIDENT...and if that means not letting the Repubs run over him, then he'd better heed the message that they don't LIKE him, they're only going to say NO to him, and HOPE he fails at everything he tries to do. Also, there are the Blue Dogs and other conservative Dems standing in his way. I'm afraid it may be too late for him to try to lead now, the way I'd hoped he would. BUT I'm not giving up all hope yet, but I may if he's not doing any better by the fall of this year.