The result in Massachusetts was a bad blow for the Democrats. A previously solidly blue state turned into a relatively easy GOP win can only be described as a poor result for Obama, almost a year to the day since the inauguration. Obama needs to come out fighting after this setback and the previous setbacks in Virginia and New Jersey. For too much of the past year, the Obama team have allowed an increasingly hysterical Republican right to set the idea and to use the language that frames the debate. The Obama team need to change this before the mid terms.
Drew Westen, the author of the excellent ‘Political Brain’ makes an excellent point in the Huffington Post today. He says that:
“It is a truly remarkable feat, in just one year’s time, to turn the fear and anger voters felt in 2006 and 2008 at a Republican Party that had destroyed the economy, redistributed massive amounts of wealth from the middle class to the richest of the rich and the biggest of big businesses, and waged a trillion-dollar war in the wrong country, into populist rage at whatever Democrat voters can cast their ballot against.”
On the economy, despite having inherited the biggest economic mess of any US President since FDR, Obama is rapidly being blamed for a perceived failure to rapidly turn round rising unemployment. And lets be clear, it is worries about jobs that have driven people to vote GOP in the past few months. He is being blamed for a perceived cosiness with Wall Street, as opposed to Main Street. As Westen says, Obama has not successfully painted the recession as Bush’s recession in the same way as FDR managed to term the depression as ‘Hoover’s depression’.
Take healthcare. The US is in dire need of healthcare reform. 30 million Americans are uninsured. Reform was a fundamental plank of Obama’s election victory. Despite this, all of the language around healthcare has been dictated by the Republican right. Phrases like ‘death panels’ and ‘socialised healthcare’ are designed to scare. Given that only a few months ago, a large majority of Americans were in favour of a public option, never mind the watered down option that emerged from the Senate, it is astonishing that the Democrats have managed to have the issue turned against them.
In the past twelve months, the Republicans have spared no piece of rhetorical exaggeration as they denounced Obama. From Palin through to cheerleaders on Fox, such as Beck and Hannitty, the right in American politics has grown hysterical and utterly attack minded. After years of the GOP governing for a small minority of Americans, the Republicans have been thoroughly populist in their opposition. At the same time, Obama and the Democrats haven’t fought back. They have abandoned the populism that made them such a powerful force in the last electoral cycle. They have allowed the Republicans to frame the debate and shift the debate increasingly rightwards.
Obama needs to take the fight back to an increasingly narrow and increasingly right wing GOP. He needs to rediscover the populism and the passion that fuelled his campaign. The Republicans have deserted the centre and that will probably do for them in 2012. But Obama needs to take back control of the agenda. And this has to start with the State of the Union address.
Related posts:
Well said David.
I find it incomprehensible that a great Nation like the USA which has many attractive features to it and is peopled by a most generous spirit can live so comfortably with a healthcare system that fails 35million of its own citizens.
I would never want the spirit and tone pf the present Republican Party to take over our Conservative Party. Sadly thee are are signs that this is the way some on the Right want us to go. More strength to David Cameron in standing up to them.
Given that David Cameron would make many Democrats look rightwing Peter, I don’t think there is much danger of that.