Misreading Massachusetts

The shock that followed Senator Scott Brown’s victory against Martha Coakley in Massachusetts’ Special Election a few months ago left the political world speechless. For a moment. But before long, a story developed. The election was heralded as the beginning of a revolution. A decisive rebuke to the President, the President’s agenda, Democrats generally, and the entire District of Colombia. A new Republican Revolution was underway, we were told, and 2010 was going to look a lot like 1994.

Supporters of this view took great satisfaction when, in one of his first acts, Senator Brown joined with his Republican colleagues in blocking Craig Becker’s nomination to the National Labor Relations Board. That satisfaction was significantly muted, however, when Senator Brown voted shortly afterwards to allow a contested jobs bill to come to the floor of the Senate. In explaining his decision, Senator Brown stated simply that while the bill was far from perfect, he had a responsibility to the citizens of Massachusetts to do what he could to encourage job creation. Some of his fiscally conservative supporters seemed absolutely jilted. Could it be that Senator Brown’s election didn’t mean what we’d been told?

It’s helpful to take a closer look at the supporters who ushered Senator Brown into office. Although he disavowed being a “Tea Party Candidate,” there’s little doubt that the discontent that fuels the Tea Party movement swept him into office. That movement, which takes its name from the famous Boston protest by the Sons of Liberty, is a fractured group of local activists worried about government expansion and a rapidly increasing national debt. As a movement, the Tea Party draws a great deal of its strength from its ideological fervor--for example, Tea Party activists strongly support “Purity Tests” for potential Republican candidates. Accordingly, it wasn’t much of a surprise when a recent poll of Tea Partiers showed a much higher regard for Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck than Olympia Snowe. But Republican establishment candidates like Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell and Michael Steele also fared badly.

But this creates a conundrum. While ideological extremism is useful for drawing people to a cause, in a system of government based on compromise, it has certain inherent limitations. True, it plays well in primaries. In a closely watched Senate race in Florida, the candidate favored by Tea Partiers, Marc Rubio, has come from behind and is now leading the sitting Governor Charles Crist in statewide polls. However, Rubio faces a significantly more difficult general election challenge. So how many Tea Party candidates are likely to enter Congress in 2010? Democrats, without a purity test but with substantial majorities in both Houses, saw their agenda quickly stall in the face of a unified opposition. It’s unclear how much of an impact a severe minority of extremely conservative legislators, disinclined toward compromise, will have on Congress.

Or consider health care. Although both Democrats and Republicans have referenced Massachusetts’ health care plan in the ongoing national debate, few have noted what the aftermath of passing the legislation was. With Democrats all over the country facing stiff reelection battles in November and wondering what the repercussions of passing the national legislation will be, the question is far from hypothetical. So what happened? The majority of voters were unaffected. Massachusetts’ overall rate of coverage skyrocketed to more than 97% and costs increased slightly, although within previous estimates. Seven out of ten residents claim to be happy with the tradeoff.

Perhaps looming larger than any other topic is the economy. In Massachusetts the unemployment rate is lower than the national average, but other factors indicate the Commonwealth may be experiencing a more unsteady recovery than the nation at large. Still, although tenuous, there are promising signs. And with the 2010 elections still more than six months away, there is adequate time for early economic gains to take root. Two quarters of growth--with even small drops in unemployment--could have a huge impact on the electoral landscape. And the candidates that will reap those gains will be those, like Senator Brown, who worked to bring about that recovery by, for example, supporting federal job bills.

So what does all this mean? Secretary Geithner, who must have a black sense of humor, reportedly commented a few weeks ago that while the Obama Administration managed to save the economy, in doing so it seemed to have lost the public. It is an impressive bit of understatement to say that the Obama Administration has had trouble getting its message out. This has to change. All spin aside, Democrats chances in the fall may not be as bleak as they have been made out to be. For all that Senator Brown’s election meant, it did not mean the end of universal health care. Democrats need to begin rethinking the 2010 midterms, and Massachusetts is a good place start.