Happy GOP boss. RNC chairman Michael Steele discusses the GOP's triumphs in Virginia and New Jersey, and responds to a grilling from Lawrence O'Donnell.
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What do the Voters want?
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Election result: Red-state Dems worried, rethink agenda
Election Day losses in Virginia and New Jersey have congressional Democrats focused like never before on jobs — their own.
While the White House and party leaders are urging calm, Democratic incumbents from red states and Republican-leaning districts are anything but; Tuesday's statehouse defeats have left them acutely aware that their votes on health care reform and other major Obama initiatives could be career-enders in 2010 or beyond.
“I should be nervous,” said Rep. Parker Griffith, a freshman Democrat from Huntsville, Ala.
Griffith said the Democratic rank and file is “very, very sensitive” to the fact that issues being pushed by party leaders “have the potential to cost some of our front-line members their seats.”
House Democrats, forced to take a tough vote on a controversial cap-and-trade climate change bill in June, may have to vote as earlier as this weekend on the even more controversial health care bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team have struggled to get moderates on board for that vote, and Tuesday's results won't make the task any easier.
“People who had weak knees before are going to have weaker knees now,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), a relatively liberal congressman who seemed safe in 2010 but now thinks a Republican challenger might feel emboldened by Tuesday’s election results.
Democratic Sen. Jim Webb — who watched Republican Bob McDonnell and other statewide candidates erase years of Democratic gains in his home state of Virginia — said Tuesday’s results show that Republicans are “energized from what happened last year” but also that “people up here on our side need to get their message straighter, too.”
Party leaders put their best face on Tuesday’s results.
Pelosi, pointing to Democratic House victories in special elections in New York and California, said: “We won last night.”
The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid circulated an analysis arguing that “gubernatorial races are primarily about local issues,” and that it’s therefore “hard to draw any direct comparisons between what happened in New Jersey and Virginia and what will happen in Congress.”
But some Democrats weren’t buying the spin.
“We got walloped,” said Sen. Mark Warner, the junior Democrat from Virginia.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said it was “nonsense” to suggest that the results in New Jersey and Virginia represented a referendum on President Barack Obama. To the contrary, he argued that the results meant that Democrats should redouble their efforts to “make sure we deliver on the promises of the last election.”
But if Tuesday’s results leave red-state Democrats nervous about health care reform, a climate change bill and regulatory reform, it’s going to be harder — not easier — for Van Hollen and his leadership colleagues to develop that record of legislative accomplishment.
And that’s certainly where things seemed to be headed Wednesday. As Pelosi’s office ordered members to stay in town for a possible Saturday night House vote on health care, other Democrats were suggesting that it's time to take the foot off the gas.
As members came to grips with the election returns, Rep. Frank Kratovil Jr. (D-Md.) said he wants “as much time as I possibly can [have] to review both sides and make the best decision I can make” on the health care bill.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), a big swing vote for Democratic leaders, said Tuesday’s elections should tell Democrats that their “agenda needs to be patterned towards” the economy.
“People need to be saying slow it down and don’t add more to the deficit,” Nelson said. “And what have many of us been talking about? We don’t want to see anything added to the deficit unless there’s cost containment.”
On health care, Nelson said: “Let’s see coverage extended, … but at what cost?”
Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, the lone Republican to vote for a health care bill, said Tuesday’s results should slow Democrats down on health care — and “certainly gives pause on how you approach things.”
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who’s threatened to filibuster the health care bill if it isn’t changed before it goes to a vote, said he’s sensing that public fears over the rising national debt “may affect” the Democrats’ broader agenda, noting that there’s been “a very large and quick move of independents” away from the Democratic Party and that public fears of the rising debt are at a “tipping point.”
According to exit polls, Republican gubernatorial candidates took 62 percent of the independent vote in Virginia and 58 percent of the independent vote in New Jersey.
“They’re feeling anxious and they want the government to do something to help them; they’re very worried that we’re going to spend more money,” Lieberman said. “I think one thing it says to me is that whatever we do, we better make damn sure it’s paid for.”
Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in an interview that he’s not concerned about next year’s races, calling Tuesday’s results a “mixed bag” that was not the result of Obama’s agenda.
But Menendez added: “We need to be focused like a laser beam on the question of the nation’s economy and the issues of how we best can create jobs. That’s the laser-beam approach. If we do that, we’ll be fine next year.”
Other Democrats said not advancing health care legislation is not an option, with Karin Johanson, a former DCCC executive director, saying it would “be foolish” if Tuesday’s results had a chilling effect on the health care debate.
“I think people have to keep in mind that we will be judged on if we get a good thing going,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.). “I think failure to get anything done will counted as a huge black mark against us, and rightfully so.”
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said the gubernatorial results said more about Virginia and New Jersey than they did about Congress. But still, she said she is well aware that voters are feeling anxious about what the Democrats are doing on Capitol Hill.
“They’re very concerned about some of the actions that are occurring here in D.C., and we have got to be very sensitive to the fragile economic recovery that’s underway,” she said.
"We got walloped!"
Two big questions loom in the wake of the 2009 elections. The first is whether Barack Obama learned anything new about American voters. The second is whether American voters will soon learn something new about Obama.
For a president who likes always to convey confidence and cool, the returns will test his willingness and capacity for self-critique and self-correction.
So far, Obama’s White House has responded to the results — flaming defeats for Democratic gubernatorial nominees in Virginia and New Jersey, along with better news in the N.Y. 23 special congressional election — exclusively with self-justification.
Obama himself did not mention the elephant in the room Wednesday in public appearances in Wisconsin. His silence came even though he had immersed himself heavily in the New Jersey race in particular, only to see incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine lose a traditionally Democratic state.
National polls for months have shown deep unease among independent voters about Washington spending and about the expansiveness of Democratic proposals. So it was not fully a surprise when, in both New Jersey and Virginia, these voters swung wildly from Obama in 2008 to Republicans this time, according to exit polls.
White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday’s results do not suggest any need for political repositioning or policy reappraisal.
“The CW in town has focused on the governors’ races, but the most portentous event was the New York 23rd because it exposed a major fissure in the Republican Party.”
But what if independents abandon 2010 congressional Democrats the same way they fled Corzine and Virginia Democrat Creigh Deeds?
“If the Earth stops turning, we are all going to die, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen,” said Axelrod. Turning more serious, he said he would tell anxious Democratic candidates, “I understand that there might be some nervousness, and that’s understandable, but we are doing the right things. The best move politically is to show more and more success governmentally.”
Axelrod also emphasized that the winner of the New York House race, Bill Owens, “ran by embracing the president.”
In previous elections, he warned, embattled candidates have learned that “the history of running away from a president is not very good. ... That’s the first thing I’d tell” Democrats in competitive seats this year.
The cheerful public line from the White House carried an echo of Obama’s immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, another president whose political operation reported sunny skies no matter the weather.
Uncertain for now is whether Obama and his political team actually believe their talking points. That will become clear only over coming days and weeks if Obama recalibrates his rhetoric or the substance and pacing of his agenda, particularly on his politically volatile proposals to overhaul health care and impose new regulations to curb greenhouse gases.
But whatever Obama decides, it is clear he must grapple with something new: a sharp divergence of views in his party about the significance of Tuesday’s results. Many activists said the problem was with Democrats such as Deeds who did not more fully embrace Obama.
Notably, however, few of these people were Democratic politicians who run in competitive districts.
Particularly in Virginia — which in recent years has emerged as an emblematic swing state — most Democratic politicians Tuesday night and Wednesday were frank in seeing worrisome trends and eager to see Democrats, starting with Obama, do more to emphasize fiscal responsibility.
In contrast to the Obama’s team sanguine analysis, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told POLITICO, “We got walloped.”
Many Democratic politicians and operatives publicly and privately say Obama’s “big bang” strategy — trying to move several major policy initiatives in his first year — has also caused independent voters to question whether he is sufficiently focused on their primary concern, reviving the stagnant economy.
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Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Google Maps
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