Sara Robinson’s post, “State of the Union: A Status Report on the Far Right ” at the Blog for Our Future helps to put the big Tea Party confab in interesting perspective. After collecting and crunching all of the data, Robinson called up Chip Berlet, one of the leading authorities on America’s hard right, and asked the money question, “…How many far-right wingers are there in the United States?” Berlet responded:

Ten percent of the population….It’s been the same number for most of our history, and it doesn’t change much.

Robinson adds, “How many really hardcore conservatives are we dealing with here?” It’s thirty million people, give or take.”
Many progressives might find the ten percent figure encouragingly low, although it’s scant comfort that thirty million paranoid, sometimes violence-prone reactionaries are out there. Robinson paraphrases Berlet, however, in cautioning that there is another group on the far right, “who are conservative by temperament, but don’t live full-time in that same overwrought, hyper-vigilant, paranoid space that the ultra-right wing authoritarian 10 percent do.” This group is capable of a hard right turn in times of economic and /or social stress, like, well now.
This group is a key base element of the Tea Party movement, according to Robinson and Berlet, and is is “actively decoupling itself from the center-right position of the GOP’s mainstream, and forming stronger alliances with the ultra-right 10-percenters—creating a super-right-wing faction that includes upwards of 25-30 percent of the country.”
It’s a scary prospect, almost a third of the electorate hardening their political views in a rightward direction, including flirtations with racism and anti-semitism, according to Robinson. She continues:

And it’s the combination of the two that’s worrisome. On their own, the far-right wingnuts can’t elect a dogcatcher (and even trying to do that much would no doubt cause a schism that would wind out for years in court. It’s just how they are.) But controlling 25 to 30 percent of the American electorate — while not enough to take over the country in straight numeric terms — is enough for the combined group to win limited but serious victories here and there. And, of course, their power is further magnified by the vagaries of the electoral college and the way we choose senators. In real terms, the system is set up so that this 30 percent can wield the political clout of 50 percent. That’s where we are now — and it’s one reason we’re running into so much gridlock in trying to govern the country.

Robinson notes that Fox News feeds this toxic mix at a time when independent daily newspapers are shrinking and disappearing. She has some harsh words for Democratic leadership:

Another driver is the Democrats’ continued fecklessness in clearly communicating the coherent moral values at the heart of the progressive worldview; and their extreme reluctance to support any kind of progressive populist agenda. Everybody knows now that there’s a rising populist tide in America. Average Americans, left and right, are uniting behind an implacable fury at the big banks — and at Congress and Obama, who seem determined to enable criminal behavior rather than make any serious attempt to control it.
You don’t need me to tell you that the tide is rising. We’re seeing the signs of political climate change all around us. But most of the Village still regards any kind of populism as a dangerous (and avoidable) impulse. “Responsible” consultants are cautioning Democrats not to get out front of that wave and ride it. In 20 years, historians will record this as a mistake on the same magnitude as the one they made in 1972 when they started backing away from the unions…

Robinson sees a remedy, but one that requires new focus and commitment from progressive Democrats:

Any progressive strategy to weaken the right should begin by finding a way to peel the second slice back off from the ultra-right, and bring it back toward the center. That alliance is the keystone on which the entire strength of the conservative movement is resting right now; pull that stone, and the rest of it crumbles. Reviving a vital progressive populism is the best wedge and sledge we’ve got right now…

I’m sure Robinson is right that such a wedge strategy could be efffective. Theresa Poulos has a post, “Five Ways It Could Fail” at the National Journal Online, which could help flesh out the specifics of an effective wedge strategy. Poulos’s post is less an article than a collection of five interesting video clips highlighting weaknesses in the Tea Party movement. The videos address: political infighting in the Tea Party Movement; exploiting the political inexperience of Tea Party participants; the difficulty of GOP attempts to absorb the movement, which includes a Independents; social issue schisms; and the possibility of an improving economy.
The Republicans hope to mimimize the internal disagreements within the Tea Party Movement and portray it as a monolithic anti-Obama/Democrat juggernaut. If we fail to challenge this meme, the blame will be ours.

Not to pile on with the bad news, but Robert Parry has a must-read bummer at Alternet, “The Right-Wing Media Machine Has Arrived on the Internet.” The title will come as no surprise to political internet junkies, who have noticed over the last year or so a distinct increase in conservative and wingnut web pages that don’t look quite so cheesy as before.
This doesn’t mean that the right has websites as widely-read as HuffPo or Daily Kos. They don’t. And there is still a noticable gap in writing quality favoring the left, at least among the middle-brow political websites. But amplifying Jerry Markon’s WaPo post on the topic, Parry does a good job of explaining why the pro-Republican right’s superior message discipline is providing the GOP blogosphere with a growing edge:

…The Right’s Web attacks on Democrats, progressives and mainstream journalists had much greater resonance because those hostile stories got picked up and amplified by the Right’s talk-radio programs, by Fox News and by print outlets, such as Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times…the Right is now fully “wired” to disseminate a potent political message via the Internet, as demonstrated by the Tea Party assaults on President Barack Obama in his first year and by the Internet-savvy upset win by Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race.

Worse, conservatives have not been shy in tapping corporate resources to nurture and support their blogosphere, in painful contrast to the woefully underfunded left, in which most bloggers work other jobs to support their postings. Parry adds,

Some right-wing bloggers have found their endeavors richly rewarded as right-wing institutes create “fellowships” for bloggers; other bloggers have become influential TV personalities, the likes of Michelle Malkin; and still others, like RedState’s Erick Erickson, wield outsized political influence because their commentaries resonate through the Right’s echo chamber.

It was a hollow conceit to assume that the progressive blogosphere would have a perpetual edge over the right. It was always a question of ‘when,’ not ‘if’ coporate resources would empower the right to level the field. But as the integration of streaming internet audio-visual content with television, telephones and even radio in cars becomes more seamless, perhaps there will be a more permanent democratization of media access. It won’t happen automatically, and it will certainly require an energetic effort from progressives to put in place. The alternative would be even more disturbing than Parry’s post.

Please Democrats, read and understand Ian Millhiser’s article, “How to Kill the Filibuster with Only 51 Votes” in The American Prospect. If Millhiser is right, this may be our best chance to escape the hellish predicament of not being able to enact anything, even with 59 percent support of the U.S. Senate. As Millhiser explains,

With conservatives salivating, and progressives seriously questioning whether American government is too crippled to solve major problems, it’s difficult to imagine that Democrats won’t take additional losses next November. Even if they don’t, however, a minority bent on total obstructionism now enjoys the power to veto nearly any bill or nominee. With the exception of the annual budget, literally nothing is likely to pass the Senate for the next three years.
It doesn’t have to be this way, however. A long line of Supreme Court decisions forbid former legislators from tying the hands of their successors. Thus, although current senators may choose to impose a supermajority rule on themselves, they cannot impose such a rule on a new Senate. Under the Supreme Court’s precedents, just 51 senators will have a brief opportunity to reform or eliminate the filibuster next January — but this opportunity will disappear if they do not act right away.

Millhiser goes on to give an account of two U.S. Supreme Court decisions establishing and affirming the aforementioned precedents, and adds:

Taken together, these two decisions open a narrow window every two years, when the Senate’s newly elected members take their seats. During this time, only 51 senators (or 50 senators plus the vice president) are needed to change the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold, eliminate the 30 hours of delay that the minority is allowed to demand between a successful cloture vote and a final vote on a filibustered bill, or even eliminate the filibuster entirely.

Further, Millhiser reasons,

The reason why the filibuster exists is because the rules of the Senate say that it exists. Article I of the Constitution provides that “each House may determine the rules of its proceedings,” so the Senate is allowed to create a rule requiring 60, 70, or even 100 votes before it can proceed with any business.
What the Senate is not allowed to do, however, is tell future senators what rules must apply to their proceedings. Because Reichelderfer prohibits a previous Congress from tying the hands of a future Congress, the rules governing Senate procedure in 2010 cannot bind a newly elected Senate in 2011. The old Senate rules essentially cease to exist until the new Senate ratifies them, so a determined bloc of 51 senators could eliminate the filibuster altogether by demanding a rules change at the beginning of a new session. Once the new Senate begins to operate under the old rules, however, this can function as a ratification of the old rules — essentially locking those rules in place for another two years.

Yes, the reactionary activists of the Roberts Court could conceivably screw with any such Democratic initiative, as Millhiser considers. He adds, however,

Such a turn of events, however, is exceedingly unlikely. For one thing, if the Supreme Court accepts the continuing-body theory, it would do a whole lot more than simply lock the filibuster in place. Were the mere existence of a legislator who has not stood for election since a law or rule was enacted enough to prevent newly elected lawmakers from repealing a recently enacted law, then all federal laws could be enacted with a six-year shield of invulnerability — untouchable until the last senator present when the law was enacted stands for a new election. Nothing in the Supreme Court’s precedents suggest that erecting such a shield would be acceptable, however — indeed, they say quite the opposite. As far back as the Court’s 1810 decision in Fletcher v. Peck, the justices unanimously declared that “one legislature is competent to repeal any act which a former legislature was competent to pass,” acknowledging no exception for laws enacted within the last three election cycles.
There is also a profoundly practical reason why the Court is unlikely to undo a change to the Senate rules — it lacks the authority to do so. Under a line of precedents stretching back to its landmark 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison, the Court will actually refuse to hear any case involving a matter that is “textually committed to the political branches.” In other words, if the text of the Constitution itself provides that a particular question must be resolved by the Senate, the House, or the White House, the Supreme Court won’t stand in that branch’s way…The Supreme Court would be grossly overstepping its bounds to second-guess the senators.

And lest we forget, we are one justice away from restoring a modicum of sanity to the High Court. Millhiser concludes:

Now that it has enough votes to sustain a filibuster, it is exceedingly likely that a Senate minority bent on pure obstructionism will have enough votes to block virtually all of the majority’s legislative agenda. Meanwhile, health-care costs will continue to grow at three or four times the rate of wage growth. Long-term deficits will continue to threaten the future of American prosperity. Largely unregulated markets will remain a time bomb that could trigger another great recession, and catastrophic climate change will continue to threaten the very existence of many island and coastal civilizations.
Fifty-one senators will have the power to change this outlook next January — but they get exactly one chance to act.

The downside of Millhiser’s challenge is that even under the best case scenario, we are stuck with the current mess for 11 months. However, that should not deter Democratic leaders from making use of the budget reconciliation process as much as possible in the interim, when the stark alternative facing them leading up to November is campaigning with zero Democratic reforms enacted between now and then.
To do otherwise amounts to a pathetic abdication of political responsibility, recalling a skit by one of the guerilla theater groups of the sixties, in which a group of protesters occupies the Dean’s office of a large university. When ordered to leave, they get down on all fours and crawl out of the building on hands and knees, chanting “Grovel, grovel, grovel. Who are we to ask for political power?”
So the question for Democratic leaders is, “do we have the mettle to act on our mandate?” The only acceptable answer for a political party that hopes to have a future is, “Hell, yes.”

Just to follow up on Ed Kilgore’s post on “Obama in the Lion’s Den,” the echoes from the President’s visit to the Republican house caucus annual confab are still reverberating across the political terrain, and it was clearly a huge win for Obama. (Charles Lemos of MyDD presents a video and the entire transcript, with another good analysis of what happened right here) There are a couple of strategic lessons, however, that should not get lost amid the many glowing reviews.
For one, if you know you’ve got an edge in terms of policy and the ability to articulate your arguments persuasively, by all means accept the challenge to debate, show up and make your case. This seems obvious enough, but many a politician would beg off, make noises about schedule conflicts and the like, worried about being outnumbered or ambushed.
For another, there is a difference between selling out the store and bipartisanship. Many of my fellow progressives have lamented Obama’s outstretched hand to his adversaries as some sort of sell-out, and they argue that he should basically ignore the Republicans in pursuit of legislative majorities. But President Obama understands that national leadership requires bipartisan gestures, at least. Some opinion polls show strong majorities favoring a more bipartisan tone in governance. People are tiring of the rat-a-tat-tat of partisan warfare. But Obama understands that bipartisan outreach doesn’t mean compromising key principles; it just requires an openness to dialogue and an expressed willingness to search for common ground with the adversary.
Yet another is the power of civility in the throes of heated debate. President Obama projected an image of strength, defending his views with eloquence and courteous respect toward his adversaries. He let fly a couple of light, but well-targeted zingers. But his overall tone was one of respectful engagement. Let the adversary look trifling and snarky, but keep your tone on the high road. This helps to win the hearts of the undecided. As Lemos explained it well in his MyDD post:

Some had characterized the event as Daniel walking into the lion’s den. If so, Daniel mauled himself some lions, off teleprompter no less. Perhaps declawed is a better word. It was a feast for Democrats and hopefully for the nation to behold the President, armed with only his wits, in total and complete command but today’s event need not be necessarily famine for the GOP either… At its core, it was the most clear and poignant call to leave behind the slash and burn politics of the past and instead engage in a constructive dialogue in the interests of good governance….
…It is really must watch television, underscoring the fact that whatever the failings of leadership over the past year, Barack Obama possesses talents that few others do.Arguments may have been demolished but the edifice of state was constructed or perhaps at the very least a foundation was laid to move forward in the national interest. I’d daresay this was Barack Obama’s finest hour yet. Let’s hope that there is more of this to come.

After all was said, Obama’s subtextual message was, “Look, I’m willing to work with those who show good faith. But enough already with the demogoguery. We’re not going to retreat on fighting for reforms the American people want. We welcome your support and sincere compromise proposals, but we’re not going to be deterred by partisan obstructionism.”
That’s a good message for reaching swing voters, and it’s important to understand that these lessons apply more broadly than just to presidential politics. They can be used to good advantage by Dems at all levels of political conflict, especially in this already over-heated political year.

In her HuffPo post on President Obama’s SOTU, health policy analyst Linda Bergthold explains the President’s health reform strategy going forward, and concludes that he is holding well enough. Bergthold also does a particularly good job of putting reform in context of current public opinion:

…A majority of Americans do want reform. They just don’t know what comprehensive reform means, do not understand what is actually in the bills that passed the Senate and the House, and have been led to believe a number of distortions of the proposed reforms.
A recent Kaiser Tracking Poll, conducted after the Massachusetts special election, revealed that when asked if they supported the current reforms, the public was split on the general question: 41 percent said they did not and 42 percent said they did. However, when asked about specific elements of reform and whether or not if these elements were included in the reform packages they would be more likely to support reform, the public had a very different answer. About two-thirds supported 18 of the key elements in the reform legislation that has already passed the House or the Senate (see 8 of those elements below). So, when details were pointed out about what was actually in the reform legislation, more people supported reform than when they were simply asked a general question about support or opposition.
In another analysis of support for reform vs. awareness of it, only a little over half of the respondents could estimate correctly if the element they liked was actually in the reform plans…And a NBC poll in August, in the heat of the summer Town Halls, found that approval for health reform went up significantly when people learned more about what was actually in the reform packages.

Bergthold presents a revealing chart from the Kaiser poll, indicating some of the most popular specific reform measures, including:

Tax credits to small businesses – 73%
Health insurance exchange – 67%
Won’t change most people’s existing arrangements – 66 %
Guaranteed issue – 63%
Medicaid expansion – 62%
Extend dependent coverage through age 25 – 60%
Help close the Medicare doughnut hole – 60%
Public option – 53%

Bergthold credits the President with listening to “more than the “top lines” and having considered “what those responses really mean in terms of specifics.” Bergthold concludes:

If you believed that Americans had really done their homework, studied the bills in detail and come to the conclusion that they opposed the whole package, then there would be reason to listen to doom and gloom predictions. But so few members of the public have done that homework on their own, as evidenced by the Kaiser poll, that the results of the polls seem misleading if not completely wrong.

Although some believe the President back-burnered health reform by not getting into it until a half hour into his speech, he did put the challenge clearly: “Here’s what I ask of Congress, though: Do not walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close. Let us find a way to come together and finish the job for the American people.”
President Obama is well-aware, however, that the Republican policy on health reform is “No.,” and his real challenge is unifying the Democratic Party and winning support from swing voters. But he offered no clues as to whether he thought the bill should be repackaged, or if part of it should be passed through budget reconciliation.
The President is the pitchman-in-chief when it comes to passing needed social reforms. He has admitted his failure to fully execute that responsibility and affirmed his commitment to do better. Although his comments about health reform were generally low-key in comparison to other issues, he was right in saying that congress also has to meet the challenge. In addition, somehow, progressive Democrats need to find a way of better educating swing voters about provisions of the health care package.

Almost slapped myself this morning for an over-long schadenfreude wallow about the wingnut stooges being popped for what appears to be a botched attempt to bug Senator Mary Landrieu’s office. They looked so deliciously stupid standing there in front of the TV cameras, smart asses hoisted by their own petards.
Darksyde reports at Daily Kos that O’Keefe was invited to keynote a fund-raiser for the Salt Lake City GOP on Feb 4, but now GOP Chairman Thomas Wright has told the Salt Lake Tribune: “We’ll be announcing a new speaker shortly.” Even better 31 Republican congressmen had signed on to a resolution honoring O’Keefe for his pimp portrayal in his scam to embarrass ACORN.
As you might expect, Talking Points Memo has the most thorough coverage of the scandal, and if there is more substantial GOP involvement in the bugging attempt, Marshall and company will surely root it out. The shadowy wingnut front groups involvement is being nicely untangled by TPM as you read. I’m sure you’ll be shocked, shocked that Beck, Hannity and O’Reilly, who lavished praise on O’Keefe’s ACORN theatrics, aren’t giving much play to his bust.
Hey, could this be a wingnut plot to deflect coverage from the President’s speech tonight? Nahhh. Nobody could fake that level of incompetence.

Fox News, of all places, has an interesting web post, “Senate Dems Unfurl New Electoral Strategy: Divide and Conquer GOP,” reporting on a new memo from The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. According to the unsigned Fox post, the memo urges Democratic campaign managers to “define their Republican opponents early and to highlight the differences between moderate voters and tea party-style conservatives.” The Fox post quotes from the memo:

Given the pressure Republican candidates feel from the extreme right in their party, there is a critical — yet time-sensitive — opportunity for Democratic candidates,” the DSCC wrote in the memo, which was obtained by FoxNews.com. “We have a finite window when Republican candidates will feel susceptible to the extremists in their party. Given the urgent nature of this dynamic, we suggest an aggressive effort to get your opponents on the record

The DSCC memo rolls out some provocative questions for Democratic candidates to ask their Republican opponents, including:

Do you believe that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen? Do you think the 10th Amendment bars Congress from issuing regulations like minimum health care coverage standards? Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism and should never have been created in the first place? Do you think President Obama is a socialist? Do you think America should return to a gold standard?

Not sure the gold standard question will resonate all that much with swing voters, but forcing opponents to answer the other questions should help flush out the inner tea-bagger in GOP candidates, or even better, amplify divisions between Republican candidates in primaries and encourage flip-flops.
According to Fox, The GOP responded to the DSCC Memo with their own advisory to Republican Senate candidates, including a series of ‘have you stopped beating your wife’ type questions for their Democratic opponents:

Would you support a second so-called ‘stimulus’ bill, even though the first failed to create much-needed jobs? Or do you believe the unspent money should be returned to the taxpayers? Are you willing to hold open discussions to reach an agreement on bipartisan health care reform, or will you continue to support backroom deals — such as the Cornhusker Kickback — in order to ram an unpopular and costly government-run health care bill through Congress?
Do you support increasing the nation’s debt limit by yet another $2 trillion? Do you agree with the Obama administration that terrorists should be afforded the same rights as American citizens, tried in American courtrooms, and ultimately held on American soil?

Maybe it’s just my partisan tilt, but the Democratic questions are less predicated on dubious assumptions, and have more potential for eliciting answers that inflict serious damage.
The Fox post goes on to cite a Rasmussen survey indicating voters are more likely to support tea party candidates than Republicans. The ‘divide and conquer’ strategy outlined in the DSCC memo, in the wake of Scott Brown’s MA upset win, appears sound and promising — provided Democratic candidates get on it early and work it hard.

In her Wall St. Journal article, “Union Households Gave Boost to GOP’s Brown,” Melanie Trottman reports on a new Hart Research Poll:

A poll conducted on behalf of the AFL-CIO found that 49% of Massachusetts union households supported Mr. Brown in Tuesday’s voting, while 46% supported Democrat Martha Coakley…The poll showed Ms. Coakley drew more support among voters with a college education, by a five-point margin, while she lost by a 20-point margin among voters without a college degree.

Tula Connell puts it this way in her FiredogLake post, “The Working Class Has Spoken. Will Democrats Listen?” at the AFL-CIO Now Blog:

The poll, conducted by Hart Research Associates among 810 voters for the AFL-CIO on the night of the election, also found that although voters without a college degree favored Barack Obama by 21 percentage points in the 2008 election, Democratic candidate Martha Coakley lost that same group by a 20-point margin.

Read more…

Now that all of the theories about why Dems lost Kennedy’s senate seat have been vented, we turn to the more challenging ‘where do we go from here? question.’ It’s really a two-parter, with long range and short-term responses needed. Breaking the short term down, the most immediate question at hand is ‘what do we do about health care reform?’
I’m against the suggestion that HCR be back-burnered to bring jobs and financial system reform to the fore. That may have been the best approach months ago, but it’s too late for that now. It would reek of defeatism, rally the GOP and make Democrats look ineffectual. We have to finish this battle, lest we be branded by swing voters as dithering blowhards.
One of the more interesting proposals in the wake of losing our 60th vote is to repackage health care reform into smaller units. Two approaches have thus far been proposed. Here’s William Greider’s suggestion, from his post at The Nation:

If comprehensive healthcare reform is out of the question, Obama Democrats can break it down into smaller pieces and try to pass worthy measures one by one. A bill to prohibit insurance companies from banning people with pre-existing ailments? Pass it the House and try to pass it in the Senate. If Republicans want to filibuster, make them filibuster. A measure to allow cheaper drug imports from Canada? Let Republicans vote against that. Repealing the antitrust exemption for insurance companies — Democrats support it. Democrats need to start a fight on taxes too. Do Republicans want to tax Wall Street banks or not? Obama has proposed it, let’s have a roll call. The attack strategy will focus on all the reforms people want and need and create a new political dynamic.

Robert Creamer, writing at The HuffPo, argues that HCR could be repackaged into two bills, but via a different route:

One option under consideration involves the House passing the Senate version of the bill as well as a second bill that includes the agreements negotiated in the conference between the Senate and House. The second bill would then be considered under the “budget reconciliation” rules that would not be subject to a Senate filibuster and could therefore become law with the support of a majority vote.
…In the short term, unless a Republican agrees to join with Democrats to cut off debate and bring the health care compromise to a vote in the Senate, the bill negotiated between the House and Senate leadership should be passed using the budget reconciliation rules.
The use of this procedure is not at all unprecedented. The States’ Children’s Health Insurance program (SCHIP) was originally passed using reconciliation rules. The Bush tax cuts were all passed with a simple majority vote using budget reconciliation rules. Nobody argued these measures were being “jammed through” because they did not require 60 votes.

Creamer also offers a response to the Republican whinefest that would follow this strategy:

…To hear some the Republicans, a few conservative Democrats, and portions of the media, you’d think that the idea of passing something with a majority in the Senate is a grave perversion of the Rule of Law — and would involve “jamming” the legislation through Congress. That formulation could well have come from the Mad Hatter. In democracies, the majorities get to make laws. In a democracy, the Minority tail should not be allowed to wag the Majority dog.
What is undemocratic is the idea that a minority — that also happens to represent the insurance industry and other wealthy, vested interests — can block the will of the majority.
During the last few years we’ve gotten so used to the idea that all major legislation requires 60 votes to pass the Senate that it now sounds “natural.” Some people even believe it is in the Constitution. But of course that’s not true. The Constitution assumes that both the House and Senate require a majority to conduct business and pass laws.
…And as we consider major legislation over the next year, we need to remember history. Voters don’t remember the the procedures used to pass major pieces of legislation. How many everyday Americans know — or care — that the Bush tax cuts, or SCHIP were passed using reconciliation procedures? Does anyone remember the procedure used to pass Social Security or Medicare? How many remember that the House Republicans kept the roll call open for an unprecedented three hours to round up the votes necessary to pass their prescription drug plan, Medicare Part D? Talk about jamming something through!
A month after something is passed, no one remembers or cares about the procedure used to pass major legislation. Major programs are judged by the voters based on their actual effect — not the procedure that was used to pass them…Scott Brown was not elected to be the 51st Republican in the Senate. He was elected to be the 41st Republican. That should not entitle Republicans to block every significant piece of legislation — to block fundamental change.
If we allow them to, shame on us.

Creamer is making good sense here. The budget reconciliation route is a more palatable option now, especially since our available choices have narrowed. He is clearly right that the GOP’s ’60 percent is the only real majority’ argument is a loser that invites ridicule, and Dems should not hesitate to provide it.
Both of these approaches have merit, because they guarantee Dems at least one, and likely more major victories. Elimination of “prior condition” as a disqualifying criteria is as close to a sure thing as is possible. Other measures in the current package also have a good chance of passing. It could certainly be said Democrats, and Democrats alone, provided the leadership that got these urgently-needed reforms passed.

After reading my favorite pundits’ unsurprising takes on Coakley’s MA meltdown, I thought I’d check out the Beantown rags, to see if they had any fresh angles. After all, these are the folks who saw the ad campaigns, heard the buzz in the watering holes and supermarkets and followed the story longer than those based elsewhere. Here’s the skinny from The Globe‘s Brian C. Mooney:

Brown, an obscure state senator with an unremarkable record when he entered the race four months ago, was a household name across the country by the end of the abbrevi ated campaign. Running a vigorous, smart, and error-free campaign, he became a vessel into which cranky and worried voters poured their frustrations and fears…To be sure, Brown was the beneficiary of the blundering campaign of his opponent, Coakley, who blew a 31-point lead in two months, according to one poll. But in electing Brown, a large segment of the electorate declared that there is little appetite for near-universal national health care, the chief domestic policy initiative of Obama, who carried the state by 26 percentage points only 14 months ago.
Brown skillfully made the election a referendum on the issue, nationalizing the race when he repeatedly said he would be the 41st vote in the Senate, enough for the GOP to block the Democrats’ bill. Money poured in from around the country. His campaign had an initial budget of $1.2 million but eventually spent $13 million, about $12 million of which came in via the Internet, a campaign official said last night.

So how bad was Coakley’s campaign? Mooney adds,

…Brown withstood the most blistering assault of late attack ads the state has ever seen. As Coakley began to collapse, her campaign, Democratic Party committees, outside organized labor, and environmental and abortion rights groups bankrolled a desperate multimillion-dollar carpet bombing ad campaign in an effort to halt Brown’s surge. It backfired. The ads, some of which distorted Brown’s record, created a blowback that scorched the Democrat. Coakley entered the campaign as a well-liked politician and ended with high negative poll ratings. She will probably face withering recriminations in Democratic circles, and her weakened status could produce a challenger to her reelection in the fall.

And perhaps most tellingly:

…The unflinching Brown had much more experience in tough partisan elections than Coakley, and it showed in this campaign. In 2004, the Republican won a close special election and November rematch to capture and then hold his state Senate seat. Coakley, by contrast, won the offices of attorney general and Middlesex district attorney over token Republican opponents.
Brown’s chief consultants were battle-tested not only in bruising state elections but also at the national level. Eric Fehrnstrom, Beth Myers, and Peter Flaherty, all principals of The Shawmut Group, were veterans of Mitt Romney’s 2002 gubernatorial and 2008 presidential campaigns. They provided strategic advice, developed the communications plan, and created Brown’s distinctive and highly effective television advertisements..

Mooney goes on to describe a controversial Brown ad, which got lots of attention, featuring JFK morphing into Brown, running 5 days, with no Coakley response, apparently because of “her run-out-the-clock strategy.”
In his article “How Brown Won,” David S. Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix adds to Mooney’s point about Brown’s campaign advisors:

Give credit to the brain trust behind Brown’s campaign: Mitt Romney’s top people, bred in Massachusetts politics and trained at the top levels of presidential combat. They were assembled on the stage at Park Plaza last night: Beth Myers, Beth Lindstrom, Peter Flaherty, Eric Fehrnstrom (texting away even as Brown delivered his victory speech), and of course the former governor himself, taking a victory lap in front of a national audience of cable-watching conservatives (and potential 2012 primary voters).
Watching them, it occurred to me that the same group spent most of 2007 traipsing across Iowa, having built the Romney strategy around winning that state’s caucuses; and that during that time they may have picked up a lesson or two from watching another campaign that bet heavily on Iowa: Barack Obama’s.
As that campaign’s manager David Plouffe describes in The Audacity To Win, Obama’s strategists knew from the start that they could not beat Hillary Clinton among the people who normally participate in caucuses. Thus, they had to expand the playing field — greatly increase the number (and type) of participants, so that the people who don’t normally vote would overwhelm the regulars.
Brown faced the same dilemma. It was widely accepted that turnout for the special election would be no more than 30 percent, or 1.2 million people — and that number would include more than 600,000 who had already voted in the Democratic primary. The math isn’t difficult.
If you like poker analogies, Coakley had a winning five-card hand, so Brown decided to make it a seven-card game.
…They did their job with Brown brilliantly, turning the well-to-do political hack suburbanite into a pickup-driving man of the people. And Brown, like Romney, is an outstanding candidate: disciplined, hard-working, and malleable.

The coverage in the Boston Herald was less revealing, other than relating U.S. Rep. Barney Frank’s assessment: “Martha Coakley was a lousy candidate. She let herself get involved in a personality debate.”
Mooney also notes that “Brown worked the talk radio circuit relentlessly…” All in all, the local accounts make it sound more like Coakley was outmaneuvered and outworked, and less like a pivotal majority was all that bent out of shape about the Democrats’ health care reforms. Absent any exit poll data, however, it’s impossible to say how much voter discontent about unemployment and the bailout influenced the vote. But it appears that Dems have been bested in candidate recruitment and campaign management in MA, as we were in the VA governor’s race.