Tuesday, Sep 13th the voters of New York City’s 9th Congressional District (neighborhoods in both Brooklyn and Queens) elected a Republican to Congress for the first time since the early 1920's. I served in the NY Assembly for eight years in the 70’s and 80’s from a Queens district. Though I did not represent the areas in the current 9th Congressional District I know the neighborhoods and the people who reside in them. They rarely vote Republican and then only when faced with a really poor Democratic candidate (and David Weprin is not the poor quality candidate that the media makes him out to be) or when they are angry and want a change like when they voted for Lindsay, Guiliani and Bloomberg.
Democratic leaders in DC had pushed Anthony Weiner to resign after his sexting scandal and that resulted in the special election. The election is being played in the media as a repudiation of Obama and the Democrats who now appear to have shot themselves in the foot. Of course the same Democratic leaders who threw Weiner under the bus are now throwing Weprin under the bus and blaming him for the defeat. David Weprin is a competent and effective legislator and a good campaigner – national Democratic leaders want credit when anyone wins and won’t take blame when someone loses.
Special elections are local elections and often don’t give us indications of national mood. But earlier this year the Dems nationalized the NY 26 special election with the Medicare issue and they won. Now the Reps. nationalized the NY 9 special with the jobs issue, Israel and Obama and they won. What are the lessons to be learned here.
Lesson #1 - the electorate is volatile and no seat is safe based on past voter history or registration. No candidate can simply assume they will win because others of their party won for the past hundred years. If a candidate can amass the resources to mobilize an effective campaign and seize upon the popular mood they can defeat the “can’t lose” candidate.
Lesson #2 - President Obama is the leader of the Democratic party . He is now a drag on local candidates. His evident need to talk about everything and seemingly always to do so in a way that turns off part of the Democratic base is a downer. There was no need for him to reiterate the American position that Israel should return to its pre-1967 borders which he did in such a way that most people took it as his new position. So he turns off some of the Jewish voters - a fifty year mainstay for Democrats. After a month of promising a great jobs bill he ends with 1) refusing to call a special session in August, 2) caving to Boehner on when he can address Congress and, 3) now agreeing that he’ll sign whatever little pieces of his package they deign to send him. So people don’t think the bill is going to accomplish anything no less get enacted. And when during his jobs speech he stated that entitlements like Medicare needed to be reformed, if they were going to be secured for the future, he gave legitimacy to the arguments that the Republicans are using and probably convinced seniors that it doesn’t matter which party is in power. Even when he decides, rarely it seems, not to take a position he loses base enthusiasm -- his failure to speak out against the union busting efforts of the Governors of Wisconsin and Ohio clearly dampened the enthusiasm of organized labor.
Lesson #3 - Democrats like Republicans should give their elected officials some slack. If a Democrat commits an indiscretion, like Weiner did, let him finish out his term - no need for a special election to give right wing Republicans another opportunity to spend their millions to defeat progressives. Now if some Democrat elected official steals money or commits a violent crime they should be hounded out of office - but if someone cracks and does something stupid or disgusting do what Republicans do -- look the other way (actually they defend their transgressors and I’m not suggesting that Dems should do that although we did a good job of defending Pres. Clinton)
Lesson #4 - Democrats should stop picking candidates from among the permanent political class. We should stop trying to pick a candidate based on gender or race or ethnic background or religion figuring that will make victory all the more probable. Democrats should focus on solid progressive issues - govt. support for jobs, maintenance of social security and Medicare and rebuilding America not other countries.
Obama can still get re-elected. He has a year to re-energize his base and win again the independents (the Republicans are lost and he and his people need to accept that). He may be able to turn the contest around and not be a negative on down ballot Democratic candidates. But, he will not possess the coattails he had in 2008. And his campaign needs to remember that Harry Truman won even though the Republicans ran their strongest candidate Dewey against him. Obama needs to understand the election will be about him and he has to win it -- the Republicans are not going to lose it. If Democrats think that a right wing Republican is easiest to beat - well I was there in politics in 1980 when Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan (Dems said he was to dangerous to win); and I was there when Dukakis lost to Bush (Dems said he was too elitist to win) and I don’t want to be there when Obama loses to Perry (Dems say he’s too crazy and boorish to win).
15 Sep. 2011
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