Noam Scheiber starts with a good idea in the New Republic today, and then meanders all over the map so the point becomes muddied. He starts by asserting that Deval Patrick’s win is an argument for not reinventing your political identity:
Of all the historical analogies urged on Obama following November’s drubbing-Truman in ’48, Reagan after ’82, Clinton after ’94-the one the White House has opted for is easily the most obscure. That would be Patrick in ’10-as in Deval Patrick, the recently re-elected governor of Massachusetts. Months after Patrick signed the state’s first sales-tax hike in 33 years, political chatterers gave him little chance of surviving to a second term. Not only did he face the same foul, anti-incumbent mood that elected Scott Brown, he’d drawn an attractive GOP candidate in businessman Charlie Baker.
Patrick’s handlers recommended that he distance himself from liberals in the state legislature-and, above all, downplay the tax increase. The governor overruled them. His first commercial highlighted the “combination of deep cuts and new revenue” he’d accepted to close the state’s budget shortfall. “He all but said, ‘I raised taxes.’ Jesus Christ,” recalls one still-traumatized adviser. “He thought the way to do it was to be true to what he ran on [in 2006]”-the belief that voters will support someone who levels with them, even if they don’t love every decision. In the end, Patrick and his “politics of conviction” won by a comfortable seven-point margin.
Scheiber then takes this to support Obama’s refusal to change any of his policies, tactics, or strategies. But this isn’t even half of the analogy Scheiber wants to draw. Sure, Patrick and Obama both ran as progressives and have governed as technocrats, but Patrick has never disappointed, criticized and alienated his supporters the way Obama seems bent on doing over and over. As a number of commentators have said today (for example here and here) the one thing it is always wrong for a politician to do is attack your own base. This is a political mistake of tectonic proportions. Just ask recently re-elected Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
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p>I stuck with the governor, and helped his reelection in my small way, despite his casino proposal. Racinos or no racinos, I remain (partially) alienated over the governor’s proposal. I was disappointed, I am disappointed, and will remain disappointed in that aspect of his governorship for the remainder of his public life.
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p>That said, I agree that he never knocked his base, and I do appreciate that.
^ Chairman (sigh)
You may be a proponent of casinos. And that’s fine.
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p>But most of Patrick’s liberal base are very much against casinos. So that decision was generally popular with his liberal supporters.
…but that despite the Governor’s support he stuck with him. I think the other point JimC is making is that the Governor did not slap around his base despite disagreement, the way the WH has sometimes sounded dismissive.
The governor said he opposed them too, in 2006. When he proposed licensing three of them, I was shocked.
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p>It wasn’t the centerpiece of his platform by any means, but his proposal was a jolt.
casino issue, I felt I would have to drag myself to the polls. When Deval held his ground on the slot machine casinos, I was happy to go vote for him. The man knows how to draw a line in the sand.
had he whittled away on his position and gave in. Because then he not only would have supported a bad idea, but lied about it, too. Thankfully, he didn’t do that. Obama did (and on something that was much more universally hated in the base than casinos in Massachusetts). And that’s a huge and painful difference. I was glad to support Deval Patrick again, but won’t support Obama any longer.
You mean like Jay Kaufman?
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p>Funny I don’t remember that.
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p>This is just more revisionism to justify Obama moving from the “left” (where most Americans are) to the “center” (with Jim DeMint, Wall Street, and the luminaries of the
kill Social Security and cut the estate-taxdeficit-reduction commission).Not all the base opposes the tax package.
The gloves are off.
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p>If there’s smart and enterprising lady or gentlemen seeking to become a Democratic President, and not have to compromise their ideals to do it, now’s the time to get in the race. I’m pretty sure they’ll get free, national press every day of the week on the highest-rated progressive show on tv.
Both viscerally repel the blue-collar electorate.
Obama will quite literally repel those blue-collar votes. Dean always did okay with them and is a populist. Next to Obama, they’ll love Feingold, too. And both would run from the populist left.
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p>The base already can’t stand Obama… another 2 years, given the way things are going, and Obama’s going to have a 25-30% approval rating. Anyone is going to look like a breath of fresh air, and maybe even a Rock Star, next to him.
At this point, Mr. Obama’s competitive spirit only applies to the basketball court. At least, he got stitches there. In politics, he’s afraid to take a punch. Instead, he’s a political anorexic, starving himself, the Democrats, and the country from principled opposition to the GOP. We need a leader! What do we get? Mr. Spock with a jump shot.
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p>To primary Obama would not be to replace him with a more competitive candidate. There simply isn’t one. Running Dean or Feingold would be the national equivalent of Grace Ross running for governor (who knew Jill Stein was even running in ’10?). A primary challenge might offer him some of the (tri)strangulation he seems to crave, but it would ultimately be throwing in the towel, admitting that the current Democratic Party is so pathetic that the country would be better off letting the GOP continue to ruin the country.
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p>The threat of a primary, however, has merit. Obama can’t ignore the dopes slap of a primary challenge. He’ll have to do some soul-searching. When he launched his attack on those of us who oppose his position on the tax extension, he actually sounded half-hearted. Like he knew it wasn’t working, or it wasn’t really what he felt. For better or worse, this is where we make the stand. Obama may never get it, but it won’t be because no one said anything.
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p>My God, getting outflanked on the left by Mary Landrieu!?
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p>That is absolutely absurd.
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p>Dean was the first candidate to grow a real grassroots army in the modern political age — and he could certainly unite the activist and netroots base if he ran. Had the national democratic leaders not torpedoed his campaign by assassinating his character, he would have won that nomination — and probably beat Bush. The national elites were just able to sell the fact that Kerry was the only guy who could take Bush on, war hero and all that, but they misjudged Kerry’s capabilities as a candidate, misjudged the public’s vehemence against the war in Iraq and were more afraid of Dean than they were wiling to let him win the Presidency.
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p>Let’s not also forget that he went on to be one of the Democratic Party’s most effective chairs in its history, with his 50 State Plan that gained massive majorities in both chambers of the legislative branch, and did a great deal toward providing Obama with the infrastructure to win. And let’s not forget that he was a very popular Governor in Vermont.
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p>Feingold has a history of proving that standing for your convictions doesn’t mean the sacrifice of pragmatism in office. Unlike Obama, he knows how to pass bipartisan legislation — by standing tall. He’s also won as an underdog in a tough state every time he ran, save this last race, in which he lost a close one in what was possibly the worst climate for Democrats to run for office… ever. Finally, he’s had huge legislative victories as a member of the United States Senate.
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p>How are either of these candidates at all like Grace Ross, who’s not only never won anything, but hasn’t won so much as 5% of the vote in a statewide election? Both Feingold and Dean have done very notable things, shown they can run strong campaigns and that they know how to win. Both of them also are guided by their convictions.
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p>I truly think you should reconsider that opinion. Either of them could mount credible challenges to Obama that would have a legit chance to win if Obama doesn’t turn things around. They’re not the only ones, either.
unelectable for the intended office.
I take issue with comparisons of Obama and Patrick. Yeah, they’re friends. Harvard Educated. Lawyers. Charismatic campaigners. I’m not sure I can back up an assertion, so I’ll leave it as a question: Is the comparison driven more by race than other similarities?
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p>Patrick was pretty awful in his first year or two, but he realized the importance of politics and has done his best to learn. Obama seems to be actively against learning.
like Axelrod and Plouffe and many of Deval’s field people became field people for Obama. Obama threw his support to Deval in the 2006 primary but Bill Clinton & Hillary Clinton didn’t and in the 2008 primary Deval supported Obama. While they are both firsts (Deval’s our first African American governor, and Barack’s our first African American president), I have to say that the answer to your question is NO. There are too many other links and similarities to say that this is driven more by race than other similarities.
That could still all be true, and there would still be fewer comparisons if they weren’t both African American.
and while neither of them featured the fact that they’d be the firsts in their positions to be so as part of their campaign, they were both acutely aware of it, too, and didn’t shy away from it. Being the first minorities in their positions certainly contributed to the message of “change” in the “Together We Can” and “Yes We Can” campaigns. It was one more thing on the list of things to do that everyone knew ‘we could’ do. It’s not a bad thing, or a racist thing, to point out the similarities between the two candidates, up to and including the fact that they both happen to be black. Sheesh.
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p>Should I ever enter a race as a candidate (though I almost certainly won’t), and should I be the first person to be gay to run for that position, I won’t consider you homophobic to point that out. And if some other guy should come around later with a similar middle/working class family background as me, who also happens to be gay and running for a position never held by a gay person before — and should that person use the same campaign advisors to win the campaign as me — I won’t consider you homophobic to recognize that fact or point it out, either.
They both had the same communications guy and shared messages that were so similar as to get Obama tripped up during the campaign by it (the “just words” speech, for example). They both shared similar background traits — from being minorities, to growing up without means, to winning scholarships and succeeding academically. Both of their meager beginnings — and how they were able to rise above that — featured heavily into their campaigns.
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p>I think what explains both their first, tough year was a lack of real political experience (and in Patrick’s case, I certainly wouldn’t say his first year was “awful” — it was just dominated by a recalcitrant legislature and a few trivial gaffes that the media wouldn’t let go). Patrick recovered from that because of his strong convictions, Obama’s clearly dominated by his own ego and, at this point, I think is a lost cause.
Because of this paragraph…
Obama had a chance to really make the Republicans look weak in the eyes of the billionaires who donate millions to the GOP. Making David H. Koch and Rush Limbaugh and the 1% or 2% over $250,000 pay their fair share would probably turn down the flow of cash into Rove’s treasury.
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p>Bad politics, bad policy from Obama. Another own goal (after approving deepwater drilling)
Patrick’s ’10 campaign (see above).
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p>I was pretty irritated with the Governor’s education policy, which, unfortunately, is miles better than the President’s. I was also pissed at his multiple gaffes early and goofs early on. I can stand people I support doing things I don’t agree with; I can’t stand people I support who are ineffective.
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p>I supported Patrick this season, not only because I had no choice, but because I thought he improved substantially. I was particularly pleased when he made DeLeo look like a hack for crassly pushing racinos for his district. In the end, Patrick campaigned on who he is, what he believes, and what he has done. At the moment, I don’t like who Obama is, don’t like what he believes, and I’m disgusted with what he’s (not) done.
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p>Shreiber also doesn’t have the whole electoral picture, i.e. how bad Charlie Baker and his campaign were and how distracting Tim Cahill was. Without Timmy, that 7-point margin would have become a squeaker.