Just a week or two ago, few people expected that a Republican would rise up to win election to Ted Kennedy‘s old Senate seat. Then again, it was just two years ago that Democratic Congressional candidates swept to one of the largest majorities their party has enjoyed in my relatively short lifetime.
What changed?
Charisma is the first obvious culprit here. Coakley comes off as rigid and possibly detached, and unfortunately anyone in electoral politics needs to have figured out by now that a lot of people would rather vote for the individual than their policies. A warm inviting personality can win a bunch of election support even if their actual political ideas are insane. Yes Timmy, there are many reasons as to why a Democratic Republic is not a perfect form of government..
The healthcare boondoggle definitely isn’t helping the incumbent Democrats, either. While a lot of Americans are upset about their coverage, the cost of healthcare, or the fact that they don’t have any coverage – there is also a slim majority of workers who are covered under employer plans. These people are pretty much detached from ever paying for their medical expenses (and they even receive some tax benefits for being so aloof from paying the bill!), so they’re pretty happy with the status quo. Yet even if a majority of Americans are happy with having their own needs taken care of, they’re willing to entertain ideas that would drive down costs or help those in genuine need acquire the medicine we have available. The problem is, the Democrats took the opportunity and compromised it down to what resembles a massive corporate handout: individual mandates, taxes on employer-based plans, a cheap new exit-strategy for employers who are sick of providing medical benefits, and various protections for the insurance, pharmaceutical, and ambulance-chasing industries. Even without the loss of a Massachusetts seat to Scott Brown, House Democrats are having a hard time swallowing the pill that was developed in the Senate.
And of course, there’s something we don’t have any of that is influencing the decision:
Jobs, jobs, jobs! Any time the economy is tough and people can’t find work, the first person to be blamed is someone who shared party affiliation with the current majority. In this case it doesn’t really matter if Bush‘s overspending, corporate bailouts, and useless wars are the cause of our financial troubles, because voters believe that if the Democrats were capable they would have been able to fix the situation by now. In fact, if a fraction of our banking bailout had gone directly to some time of employment with a strong economic return (ie: infrastructure development, toxic cleanups, etc..) we could have a lot more work available and would probably save money in the long run because we wouldn’t be getting ready for the next round of bailouts and stimulus. Trust me though, it will be coming down the pipes soon whether or not we can ultimately afford it. And speaking of what we can afford…
The country is broke! I’m not saying the government can’t continue to pay off its debtors for the time being, but to do so we’re rather reliant on our ability to devalue the currency and tax labor. With the world united in quantitative easing and labor vanishing rapidly, the government’s ability to pay liabilities may be tested if trends don’t reverse. But I’m talking about being broke on the individual and state levels – and that’s something we have a big problem with as more and more houses enter default, more couples & individuals file for bankruptcy, and more states like California face budgetary crises that result in serious credit downgrades and warnings about repayment odds.
Will Scott Brown negotiate healthcare in good faith? He says he wants to send it back to the drawing board, but does this mean we could end up with a new bipartisan version of the legislation that is even worse than the currently unpopular bill the Senate came up with?
The Democrats have an opportunity here – or they had one at least – to deliver a healthcare reform bill that actually reduces costs and expands coverage. Sound impossible? Well, all of the international comparisons suggest we have a lot of room to work with and it would be realistic to achieve both goals. The problem is all of the middle men we’ve institutionalized with legislation, tax breaks, and “deregulation” (where deregulation accurately means a government policy designed to maximize demand for a product or industry, while protecting said industry from any threats that would undermine profitability.) Wait, you didn’t think deregulation meant a free market economy, did you?!