Tin Ears All Around
On tonight’s Special Report roundtable, I was struck by how critical A.B. Stoddard was with the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats. The thing she said, twice actually, that caught my attention was that the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats misread the American people. More importantly, she said that they misread their own political party.
I agree with both those points. It’s painfully obvious that they misread both groups badly. To me, the more important question to ask is why they miscalculated this that badly. In my opinion, the biggest reason why they miscalculated voters’ opinions is because their life inside the Beltway’s bubble. The Obama administration hired lots of Washington insiders, including a fistful of K Street lobbyists. When that’s who you’re surrounding yourself with, it isn’t difficult to believe that the administration would see the world through Washington’s eyes.
Miscalculating their party’s reaction, though, is another story. My opinion is that something like this happened: Congressional Democrats, most likely Speaker Pelosi, promised the Obama administration that they could roll the Blue Dogs like they did with the National Energy Tax. This isn’t an unreasonable assumption since they frequently rolled them before.
This time, though, they didn’t factor in all of the unpopular votes they made for this administration. They didn’t think twice that they’d voted for the stimulus and omnibus bills and the National Energy Tax. None of these votes are sitting well with voters in formerly red districts.
Part of this miscalculation happened because Rahm Emanuel forgot who he recruited to win swing districts in 2006. Democrats had to recruit candidates that would’ve identified with the DLC a decade earlier. The Kossacks don’t just dislike the DLC types; they utterly despise them, thinking of them with almost the contempt as they have for Republicans.
Another facet to this administration’s miscalculations is the fact that this administration doesn’t have a health care message. Politicians won’t risk their re-election chances supporting legislation that lacks a coherent message. The Obama administration’s message isn’t coherent. In fact, it’s almost nonexistent.
The Democrats’ message under Nancy Pelosi isn’t nonexistent. Their message is filled with arrogance, elitism and hostility. Simply put, Speaker Pelosi instructed Blue Dogs like Jim Cooper not to even talk with Republicans about health care. That type of hostility has added to the hostility that Democrat Pelosi has fostered since getting the Speaker’s gavel. It’s also the hostility that Speaker Pelosi displayed in saying that citizens showing up at the townhall meetings weren’t real people, just people who were plants transported to the events by evil special interest groups.
When the Democrats’ version of health care crashes in a fiery heap and people look back at what strategic and tactical mistakes the Democrats made, three things will stand out. The Democrats insulted the American people by telling people who read the bill that they didn’t know what they were talking about. The Democrats played a ‘my-way-or-the-highway’ game, shutting out Republicans from the process. The Obama administration’s lack of a message, followed by their flailing in search of a compelling message, killed the American people’s confidence in this administration on health care.
To simplyify that, the Democrats’ hostility turned people off.
Technorati Tags: Democrats, Reform, Health Care, President Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Speaker Pelosi, Blue Dogs, Jim Cooper, National Energy Tax, ARRA
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
August 20th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
To this day, a month AFTER the House passed its version of “health care”, I would be willing to wager there’s not 100 out of more than 400 representatives who’ve read the bill, especially those trying to defend it. That being the case, how can they tell constituents who HAVE read the bill to shut up, except through pure arrogance?
And to this day, we still don’t have an administration proposal. That, of course, is typical of this admin. Anything that fits their particular program and interests would be too dangerous in the hands of the commoners, so obfuscation is, has been and will continue to be the order of the day because the average American would be outraged if the admin’s plans were made public. Transparency, my behind!