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The Massachusetts Election

Published: January 20, 2010

If anyone should have seen it coming in Massachusetts, it is President Obama — the long-shot candidate who rode to electoral victory on a wave of popular impatience and an ability to identify and address voters’ core anxieties.

There are many theories about the import of Scott Brown’s upset victory in the race for Edward Kennedy’s former Senate seat. To our minds, it is not remotely a verdict on Mr. Obama’s presidency, nor does it amount to a national referendum on health care reform — even though it has upended the effort to pass a reform bill, which Mr. Obama made the centerpiece of his first year.

Mr. Obama has done many important things on the environment, and in foreign affairs, and in preventing the nation’s banking system from collapsing in the face of a financial crisis he inherited. But he seems to have lost touch with two core issues for Americans: their jobs and their homes.

Mr. Obama’s challenge is that most Americans are not seeing a recovery. They are seeing 10 percent unemployment and a continuing crisis in the housing market. They have watched as the federal government rescued banks, financial firms and auto companies, but they themselves feel adrift, still awaiting the kind of decisive leadership on jobs and housing — in terms of both style and substance — that Mr. Obama promised in 2008.

Mr. Obama was right to press for health care reform. But he spent too much time talking to reluctant Democrats and Republicans who never had the slightest intention of supporting him. He sat on the sidelines while the Republicans bombarded Americans with false but effective talk of death panels and a government takeover of their doctors’ offices. And he did not make the case strongly enough that the health care system and the economy are deeply interconnected or explain why Americans should care about this huge issue in the midst of a recession: If they lose their jobs, they lose their health insurance.

Mr. Obama has not said or done the right thing often enough when it comes to job creation and housing. He appointed an economics team that was entwined with the people and policies that nearly destroyed the economy. He made compromises that resulted in a stimulus bill that wasn’t big enough or properly targeted. Even now, despite a new, rather awkward populist tone, serious relief for homeowners is lacking and financial regulatory reform is in danger of being hijacked by banking lobbyists and partisan politics.

The victory by Mr. Brown, a Republican, should be setting off alarms in the White House. Most immediately, it jeopardizes passage of the reform that the nation desperately needs. The Democrats could try to get the House to pass the Senate’s bill, although their chances seem dim, or as Mr. Obama seemed to suggest on Wednesday, they could seek a stripped-down measure that could win bipartisan support. They certainly should not try to ram a combined House-Senate bill through the Senate before Mr. Brown is sworn in.

The Democrats had an exceptionally weak candidate in Massachusetts, but the results call into question their tactical political competence. The party now has less than 10 months to get it right before the midterm elections, when they are in danger of losing more seats in the House and the Senate. It is indisputable that the Republicans have settled on a tactic of obstruction, disinformation and fear-mongering, but it is equally indisputable that the Democrats have not countered it well.

Mr. Obama has three years to show the kind of vision and leadership on the economy that got him elected — not just because his chances of a second term are at stake, but because the nation needs to get a handle on joblessness and mortgages or the nascent economic recovery could turn into a lost decade or a double-dip recession, or both.

More . . .

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Do these Editors live in the same timezone/daylight zone as the rest of us?

-- Edited by Sanders on Thursday 21st of January 2010 01:36:46 AM