The Obama Bashing

Some of the Clintonistas and PUMAs have been bashing Obama this week for the loss in Massachusetts and stalling of health care reform. I’ll remind them that the Clintons both lost on health care reform and lost control of Congress, which at that time looked as unthinkable as losing Ted Kennedy’s old seat. However the final score card on Obama is not yet in and the fight for health care reform is not yet over.

6 Comments

  1. 1
    Malcolm says:

    What the PUMAs/Clintonistas conveniently won’t tell you was that Martha Coakley was one of their own in 2008. She not only endorsed Clinton in the primary but she also was one of those who voted for Hillary Clinton at the Democratic Convention. Furthermore Bill Clinton endorsed her senate candidacy at a crucial moment just before the senate primary in a calculated move to boost her chances of winning the nomination and many of Coakley’s campaign team were also involved in organizing the statewide campaign for Hillary Clinton in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

    Added to all of this is the fact that Coakley ran a campaign that was remarkably like Clinton’s -complacent, arrogant, dependent on the establishment and political heavyweights, lacking grassroots appeal and failing to inspire and mobilize the party base.

    If anything, the outcome was a second repudiation of the PUMAs/Clintonistas.

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    I did compare Coakley’s campaign to Clinton’s in a couple of posts, noting that it was based upon entitlement and inevitability, as was Hillary Clinton’s.

    Beyond that I’m not certain if this was a second repudiation of the Clintonistas. Hillary Clinton won the MA primary and it should not be a surprise that she had many Clinton supporters in her camp or even that she supported Clinton. Obama supporters such as John Kerry also supported Coakley, at least in the general election. (I don’t know who, if anyone, he supported in the primary). While maybe it is true, before writing this off as a second repudiation of the PUMAs/Clintonistas I’d need to see more evidence that the actual voters were seeing it this way.

  3. 3
    Pamela Leavey says:

    Kerry did not endorse anyone in MA special election primary. There were very few big name endorsements for the primary – One that sticks out for me is that Pelosi endorsed Mike Capuano. I wasn’t impressed with Coakley, fyi, and as you know I supported Clinton in the ’08 primary. I voted for Capuano in the primary.

    Word I have heard around here is that the many PUMA types supported Brown.

    There’s a lot of reasons why the outcome was was it was on Tuesday and added up together all those reasons caused the loss, not one thing specific.

  4. 4
    Ron Chusid says:

    It would not surprise me at all to hear that PUMAs supported Brown over Coakley considering how many supported McCain and Palin in the 2008 election.

    I’ve already written quite a bit about a number of reasons for the loss in MA last week. These included a combination of the national situation and faults with the Coakley campaign. In addition, there were issues specific to MA, including party corruption and a feeling among some that there was no need to pay for health care reform nationally as they already had it locally. The shorter time scale of a special election also probably hurt. Coakley didn’t campaign hard enough at first thinking it was not necessary. Once they realized she was in trouble there was very little time to change course compared to the time of a normal campaign.

  5. 5
    Pamela Leavey says:

    Ron

    It’s my understanding that MA residents see Mass Health as a test model for a national plan and there is no sense that we already have it, so screw the rest of the country. I’d be curious as to where that idea comes from. And party corruption? Have you got any references for this.

    Local media helped Brown enromously here – his wife is in media and his daughter (was on American Idol) has quite a following. Coakley’s teamĀ and the national party dropped the ball here. Everyone should have seen this coming, as the repubs have coveted a Senate seat here in MA forever.

  6. 6
    Ron Chusid says:

    I’ve both had friends living in MA express this thought and this has been expressed in post-election polls.

    There have been a number of scandals of Massachusetts Democrats to make the news, including indictments of at least one and I believe more recent House speakers.

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