Here Comes the Flood

No, I'm not referring to the torrential rainstorms we're having here in California, and I'm not referring to that excellent ballad by Peter Gabriel, published on his first solo album and on Robert Fripp's seminal recording Exposure.

I'm referring to the flood of the media predictors of doom after the Democratic Party loses a seat to a Republican in Massachusetts. From TPM to Andrew Sullivan to Bob Cesca to Glenn Greenwald to Jonathan Chait, everyone is weighing in. Sullivan:

As the more honest conservatives (Greenspan, Posner, Bartlett) have noted, the financial crisis was a clear indicator that we need a more active and vigilant government in regulating the financial sector. And when you look at the results of America's hybrid and dysfunctional healthcare system, it is more than clear that the status quo is unsustainable. Yes, this system has pioneered amazing breakthroughs and a pharmaceutical revolution that has transformed lives. But the cost and inefficiency of this is simply staggering. Look at the graph above. If you think it's great, support the GOP. They don't want to change anything, but a few tweaks.

Greenwald, clobbering David Brooks's myopia:

Here we have one of the most common and manipulative tools of the political class: pretending to care about public opinion only when it's consistent with one's own views (it's "worthy of the profoundest respect"), and disregarding it as the irrelevant bile of the ignorant rabble when it's not.

I remember another policy that was even more unpopular with the "American people" than Obama's health care plan. It was called the Iraq War. Throughout 2006 and 2007, overwhelming majorities of Americans were not only opposed to the war, but favored a quick timetable for withdrawal. So intense was the opposition that the Republicans suffered one of the century's most thorough and humiliating midterm election defeats in 2006.

Cesca makes a good point:

I'm wondering if it's even possible for a president to create long-term sustainable change when electoral impatience is so prevalent.

What we're seeing in Massachusetts is an impatience with the economic recovery. Americans are tired of waiting for things to return to the way they were before the
recession.

I remember losing my job as a loan underwriter in 1989 due to the evolving S&L crisis, and the aerospace job implosion in Los Angeles, then the Rodney King beating, the riots over the verdicts, the fires in Malibu, the flooding, and the Northridge earthquake. That downturn lasted about nine years. The next major downturn started happening in 2006, about nine years after it started to recover. It is only just starting to feel like a recovery to me, but the jobs are not materializing. They will, but it's going to be slower this time. I think investors -- and let's face it, investors run the economy -- are a little tired of the volatility and are being more careful about where they put their money. I know I am.

Bottom line, the supermajority didn't accomplish jack shit. I think a Republican in the MA Senate seat until 2012 may derail health care reform as Obama envisioned it, but I know that he's not going to stop negotiating. If the Republicans hold firm, however, he can run in 2012 on a platform of the reformist fighting against the "fat cats" who want to keep things just the way they are (and we ALL know that things cannot keep going the way they are). I like his chances in that kind of climate, especially when he can show he's continued to reach out across the aisle.

But I will say this: if the Democrats in Congress cannot pass meaningful healthcare reform this year, then I will call for efforts to unseat all of them, starting with Reid and Pelosi.