What Did Dems Mass Kicking Really Mean?

The blue-collar whites, still angry about the Professor Gates race fiasco and the trillion-dollar Congressional health care bill, saw a chance to stick to the president, the snotty Democratic majority party, the haughty Kennedys and Camelot, and declare themselves as allies to the growing GOP tea party movement.

[Fleming’s View]

On the heels of the decisive Massachusetts butt kicking last week, conservative Republicans and their media mouthpieces were shoveling dirt on the political grave of President Barack Obama.

Rush Limbaugh, Gordon Liddy, Michael Steele, and the boys gleefully announced America wanted a divorce from the extreme leftist policies of the president, who they could not find one positive item in his agenda. Even mainstream electronic and print pundits compared President Obama to the last “weak-kneed” chief executive, Jimmy Carter, occupying the Oval Office.

Let’s look closely at the election for the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s seat in the Democratic stronghold of Massachusetts. Yes, the white independents and turncoat Democrats rejected a lame candidate, Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, who was out-hustled by Republican state legislator Scott Brown through sheer determination and energy.

Coakley ran, or shuffled, through the precincts like an aristocratic Marie Antoinette tolerating a “meet-and-greet” with the unwashed locals. And the former followers of Camelot, who had faithfully put Senator Kennedy in that hallowed seat for 47 years, gave her the thumbs down. Maybe Obama should have joined in this pivotal race before he did in a last ditch try to boost her ratings. Although the president attempted to paint Brown, Coakley’s GOP foe, as being lock-step with the far right Republican agenda, his mighty powers of persuasion could not elevate a limping nag into a potent thoroughbred.

Everyone noticed she was slow and unresponsive near the finish. “When the chips are down, when the tough votes come on the fights that matter to middle-class families around this commonwealth, who is going to be on your side?” the besieged president told college supporters at Northeastern University. “It’s hard to suggest he’s going to be significantly independent from the Republican agenda,” he added, referring to Brown.

One of Congressional liberals, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) spelled it out in big letters: “The country is speaking to us.” True enough, the Democrats and the Obama administration are going off the tracks. They need to give the GOP a “smackdown,” as rapper Jay Z says.

Darn right. Even if the voting indicated 52 percent of the votes went to Brown and 47 percent to Coakley, she is lucky that she got that amount of support. Still, where were the Kennedys en masse to protect their beloved uncle’s seat? Where were the big Dem guns? The cavalry arrived too late. It was never neck and neck, as the media led you to believe. The blue-collar whites, still angry about the Professor Gates race fiasco and the trillion-dollar Congressional health care bill, saw a chance to stick to the president, the snotty Democratic majority party, the haughty Kennedys and Camelot, and declare themselves as allies to the growing GOP tea party movement.

When a humbled Coakley finally got a call from the White House, she was shocked that the president didn’t respond like she wanted to. Instead, President Obama replied: “We can’t win them all.” Some Republicans say the White House, with senior Obama senior advisor David Axelrod and press secretary Robert Gibbs, blamed Coakley for phoning in her campaign. On the other hand, members of the Coakley group pointed to the Democratic National Committee officials and leading moneylenders as the culprits for the poor showing. The conservatives got a kick out of all that blame gaming.

It’s too early to totally write President Obama off as an ineffectual, bumbling leader. There is not one American president, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or Lyndon Johnson, who didn’t make serious rookie mistakes. But Mister Obama has got to focus on the pivotal economic issues, such as jobs and bank regulation, and not get side-tracked.

Let the Right pray for him to fail and the country to collapse. If this is a political forecast to the mid-term elections and the complete end of the honeymoon with the Obama administration, so be it. To be honest, the national political environment will turn around once the little guy starts drawing a paycheck, paying his bills, and stop worrying about losing his home. That will be President Obama’s greatest triumph.

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