Scott Spiegel

Supporters of the Democrats’ health care bill offer the following take on Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Martha “Kennedy” Coakley, a plea they hope will draw on voters’ sense of fairness and magnanimity:

If Brown wins, the health care bill will not be passed.  It is a terrible shame that something this nation has frittered away a year debating and Congress has spent a year drafting, something that may not get another chance again—if at all—for a whole generation, could be dismantled because of the obstinacy of one man who wins a special election in a tiny state.  Brown may even derail Obama’s entire agenda.

As if it will do any good, here’s a point-by-point rebuttal of this selfless appeal by Democrats to our leftist instincts:

(1) The point of a debate is to have two sides present their cases and see which makes the better argument.  The outcome is not predetermined, much as Democrats would like it to be and have tried to make it so.  Republicans spoke, Democrats spoke, and the American people made up their minds: Republicans won.

(2) The fact that we spent a year debating this horrendous bill, in all its myriad forms, is indeed deplorable, when we could have been talking about how to encourage the Iranian protestors, win in Afghanistan, or abolish the Department of Education.  But just because gallons of ink have been spilled and billions of megabytes have been transmitted and trillions of cubic feet of C02 have been exhaled thrashing out numerous claims made by Democrats and debunked by Republicans, doesn’t mean we have to embrace the fallacy of sunken costs and pass something that stinks just to rationalize our squandered effort.

Making a $100 down payment on a $1,000 dishwasher offered by a fraudulent mail-order company that folds does not obligate us to send the company the other $900 so our first $100 isn’t wasted.  If any Democrats want to silently change their positions on the bill and pretend they felt that way all along, I promise you that Republicans will be tactful enough to go along with the charade.

(3) If it isn’t right to pass this legislation in the current generation, just as it wasn’t right to pass it in Hillary Clinton’s generation, or Truman’s generation, or FDR’s generation, then we can afford to wait at least another generation to debate it again, if liberals really insist on holding and losing this contest once more.

(4) Saying that the special election in Massachusetts could destroy the whole health care plan is like saying that the failure of an asteroid to demolish the court building where Bernard Madoff was sentenced destroyed his chance for freedom.  The success of this health care bill has been dangling like an anvil from a spider web since last summer.  The special election in Massachusetts is only the latest in many gusts of wind to threaten to crash the Democrats’ hopes to the ground.

(5) Saying that the travesty of Democrats’ health care bill not passing is due to Scott Brown’s stubbornness upon being elected is like saying that the travesty of Confederate soldiers’ dying is due to Abraham Lincoln’s stubbornness upon being elected.  In addition to its being the right course of action, if Brown wins and votes no on the bill, it will be because he was explicitly elected for that purpose alone, to take that specific action by itself.  Indeed, he barely had to say a word about any of the other issues in order to win fanatical political and financial support from Republicans, Independents, and Democrats in Massachusetts and across the country.

Promising to kill the health care bill is not just the biggest, but the only functional plank in Brown’s platform.  Senator Brown could turn around next month and introduce a bill using Medicare funds to subsidize partial-birth abortions for illegal Islamist immigrant tax cheats with Al-Qaeda ties, and he would still be Republicans’ hero for having voted down the health care bill.

(6) If Obama isn’t buried under a pile of political debris after his dustup with the 41st Senator, and dares to try to foist cap-and-trade, Stimulus II, or other reckless spending debacles onto a battered and bruised Congress, he will find it even harder to pass such legislation than he did the health care bill, and that is saying something.  Indeed, one of the fringe benefits of voting for Brown is that he will block not only the health care bill but anything like it that comes down the chute.

As an opponent of the health care bill, here’s my take on Tuesday’s election, which I hope will appeal to any remaining connection to reality liberals may have:

Even if Brown loses, the health care bill still will not be passed.  There are too many gaping discrepancies between the two versions of the bill to be reconciled; Blue Dog Democrats are too nervous about their own reelection campaigns this fall; and soon-to-be-elected Republican majorities in the House and Senate will do everything in their power to reverse any steps taken to enact this wretched bill.

They may even derail Obama’s entire agenda.

The surest sign that Obama’s presidency is going to turn out to like Bill Clinton’s is that he is already becoming a drag on the Democratic ticket, a state of affairs Clinton took a full six years to realize.

Obama followed around Democratic candidates Jon Corzine of New Jersey and Creigh Deeds of Virginia like a puppy for months during their gubernatorial campaigns.  The President made two visits to Virginia to stump for Deeds and three to New Jersey to rally for Corzine, including stops in Newark and Camden two days before the election.  On Sunday, Obama exhorted New Jersey crowds, “I want everybody in this auditorium to make a pledge that in these next 48 hours, you will work just as hard for Jon as you worked for me.”

In yesterday’s off-year elections, both candidates were soundly defeated.

In New Jersey, Obama beat McCain by a 16% margin in 2008; this year, the Republican beat the Democrat by 5%, a 21-point reversal.  This, despite the presence of a third-party candidate who took votes away from the Republican and a five-to-one Corzine-to-Christie spending advantage.

In Virginia, Obama beat McCain by 6% in 2008; this year, the Republican beat the Democrat by 18%, a 24-point reversal.  In both Virginia and New Jersey, independents—who voted heavily for Obama and other Democratic candidates in 2008—voted 2-to-1 for the Republican candidate in 2009.

Meanwhile, Obama never showed his face in upstate New York’s 23rd congressional district, where Democratic candidate Bill Owens squeaked past Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman with a victory in Tuesday’s special election.  Obama didn’t directly endorse liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava, but she received heavily publicized support from ACORN, Obama’s pet community organization, which helped solidify her lack of popularity and set in motion events that led to her withdrawal the weekend before the election.

In New York 23, 52% of the electorate voted for Obama in 2008; 49% voted for the Democrat in 2009.  It is miraculous that Hoffman did as well as he did, given the presence of a Republican on the ballot and the fact that Hoffman doesn’t live there, wasn’t familiar with local issues, and joined the race at the eleventh hour.

Bill Clinton’s pariah status in Al Gore’s presidential run and other Democratic congressional and gubernatorial campaigns in 2000 was based, of course, not on drooping support for his policies, but on his drooping boxers.

George W. Bush became a hindrance in 2008 only partly because he didn’t consistently govern as a conservative, but partly because Republican candidate John McCain ran from conservative positions every chance he got.

It was not Obama’s mere presence that flipped New Jersey and Virginia, or his absence that gave New York 23 to the Democrat.  The elections in New Jersey and Virginia—the former with its link to the New York City metro area, the latter with its proximity to D.C. and increasingly industrialized northern suburbs—were more ideologically focused on Obama’s agenda of taxing, spending, and increasing the size of government than the election in rural, upstate New York.

Hoffman lost, and Christie and McDonnell won, because New York 23 was not a referendum on Obama’s legislative priorities, whereas New Jersey and Virginia were.  The election in New York 23, a district that probably has more cows than people and more soldiers (from Fort Drum) than policemen, was about local issues.  In contrast, exit polling revealed that 62% of Virginia voters cited taxes or the economy as their most important issue.  In New Jersey, which has some of the highest income, sales, and property taxes in the country, and was rated last of all 50 states by the Tax Foundation for its business tax climate, 58% of voters mentioned property taxes or the economy as their most pressing concern.

According to Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics, “I do not think that a special election – any special election – is a particularly good barometer of the political climate of any place outside the district in question.”  He is correct—about New York 23, whose results say almost nothing about the country’s concern with the current administration’s goals.  New Jersey and Virginia—whose populations are 12 to 13 times larger than New York 23’s—are far more attuned to and potentially affected by Obama’s agenda.

As former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers noted, Democrats’ battle in New Jersey “can’t be completely attributed to a bad economy and to an unpopular incumbent in New Jersey.  There is something afoot in the land that people are uncomfortable about and one of the issues is spending.  And that is probably the biggest issue.”

Similarly, John Judis of The New Republic notes, “[I]n early August, the margin between Deeds and McDonnell jumped, and remained high for the rest of the election.  At the very same time, Obama’s approval numbers in Virginia plummeted.”  Even Deeds admitted on the campaign trail that Obama’s policies in conjunction with his support were hurting Deeds.

Obama’s blessing is turning into the kiss of death—as witnessed during the health care debate this summer, when the population turned against Congress’s legislation in precise proportion to Obama’s attempts to “explain” it in his press conferences and Sunday talk show appearances.  Beyond widespread mistrust of his agenda, there is growing distaste for Obama as a political figure as a result of his incessant, narcissistic TV and radio appearances and thin-skinned bullying of critics.

The question is when Obama the politician will start to become synonymous with Obama the purveyor of a hated agenda.