What a difference a year makes.
On the anniversary of Barack Obama’s swearing-in, Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown grabbed the prize Senate seat held by liberal icon Ted Kennedy for nearly 50 years — throwing a bucket of cold water on Obama’s big plans for health-care reform.
Worse, Brown did it by pulling an Obama and wooing independent voters with a promise to not be beholden to any party, but do what’s best for the country, “whether it’s a good Democratic idea or a Republican idea.”
Snatching back the independent voters who were key to the Obama victory, Brown gave Dems a wake-up call about independents voters: You rent them, you don’t own them.
So, what should Dems do in reaction to the Massachusetts smack down?
Sadly, the Obama team can’t turn back the clock to undo the massive bungling of the last year:
* Instead of focusing on job creation, they took on reforming health care in the middle of a major economic crisis.
* In an effort to appease the base, they made closing Gitmo in a year a key pledge — despite having no plan for where to send the detainees and with no concern for how this would play among the average American (or for how the GOP would demagogue the issue), particularly the independent voters.
* They continue to have a tin ear for concerns about government spending, an issue critical to middle-of-the-road voters.
Yes, Democrats were always going to face losses in the midterm elections, if history is any guide. The question has always been whether it would be a minor correction to one-party power or a revolution.
There is no perfect analogy to the Obama situation, but the closest would be Ronald Reagan in 1982. He inherited a recession, and unemployment was still in double digits as the GOP entered the midterm elections. Yet, while the GOP took losses in that voting, these were and are much overplayed in the media — since most of the turnover was due to redistricting. (Reagan lost 26 House seats and gained one Senate seat, compared to the 52 House and eight Senate seats that President Bill Clinton lost in the 1994 Republican Revolution.)
Reagan was able to stem the bleeding by offering the country a vision that they could get on board with: a picture of American exceptionalism. He was able to convince most Americans to not change horses in the middle, and to stick with his vision of how to turn around the economy.
Which brings us to the question: What exactly is the Obama vision for America’s economy?
Yes, there are the bailouts and the stimulus, which have had some success. While Americans were queasy with these policies, perhaps they could’ve tolerated them if they were part of a cohesive economic message. But pushing a trillion-dollar health-care plan (yes, I know Obama says it is “deficit neutral”) was a curious choice for the White House, especially when it went all wobbly over the components of the bill that would actually cut costs — such as the public option, bundling of services and the like.
Jim Kessler of Third Way (a think tank specializing in centrist voters) says, “Centrist voters want to hear a compelling story about where the Obama administration and Democrats want to take this country.”
Independent voters don’t feel like they’re being tended to, Kessler has observed: “Most important to them is fiscal responsibility, and they have been turned off by huge deficits. The stimulus, bailout and health care seem like a lot of money, and it makes them nervous.”
It’s time to hit the reset button.
President Obama needs to tell Americans that he has heard their concerns and is going to recalibrate, to answer them. Don’t abandon health care, but scale it down. Craft something that can get some Republican votes — say, ending limits on coverage for those with pre-existing conditions and providing for insurance portability. That would still be a success.
And get back to the big picture: Tell us a compelling story about the country’s future, and make sure everything you do supports that narrative. Stop the blame game. Americans want a leader with a plan, not a whiner.
Rahm Emmanuel likes to say, Never let a crisis go to waste. Well, Mr. President, this is definitely a crisis. kirstenpowers@aol.com