The Massachusetts Senate Election

January 19, 2010

No matter who wins the special Senate election in Massachusetts today, the last ten days of this race have altered the national political equation in significant ways. While Massachusetts is far more independent than it has been in the past (51% of voters are registered independents), the fact that the Democratic candidate allowed a 30-point lead to evaporate - and permitted the GOP to successfully put her on the defensive - will set the tone for the rest of the 111th Congress, even if she is able to eke out a victory.

If Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley wins, President Obama and the Democrats will get a major health care victory. If she loses, the Democratic candidate will get her share of blame for her lackluster effort and generally unsuccessful attempt to become well-liked.  But the race has been dominated by Congressional action on health care, particularly the Senate debate.

The Republican candidate in Massachusetts, State Senator Scott Brown, has argued that the Democratic health care reform is too much, too expensive and the wrong priority in a time of double-digit unemployment and with an economy that is a long way from recovery.  Some polls show some Americans are angry – about our government’s priorities, our government’s free-spending ways and our government’s willingness to bail out big banks but do little to help more than 5 million Americans avoid foreclosure.

A victory by Attorney General Coakley will likely result in the passage of the health care bill, but it could very well be at the expense of many House Democratic incumbents and probably a few Senate Democrats as well.

There is another important question - how would Democrats respond to a win by State Senator Brown?  Will the House try to pass the Senate health care bill? Or will they start over with a much more modest bill that might win over Senator Snowe?   We suspect the former will be the chosen path, because there is nothing more important to Democrats after today than getting beyond the health care debate.

But the “Massachusetts factor” will surely impact the rest of the President’s agenda in 2010.  Democrats will put together and try to pass a major jobs initiative as soon as they possibly can.  They will pass anything they can that penalizes Wall Street and the banks that took TARP money (and some financial interests that did not take TARP money will take shrapnel in the process).  

The grand proposal for cap and trade is on life support, at best – although an energy bill remains a likelihood.   Immigration appears to be a non-starter - again. An aggressive, high-spending (and probably high-taxing) transportation bill will also be delayed until the next Congress. The rest of the 111th Congress will be focused on jobs, financial reform, attacks on banks and bankers, and a laundry list of second tier issues. Even some Democrats are asking rhetorically “When are we going to start paying for some of these things?” 

It is not impossible that the noise about job creation will far exceed the government actions taken to help increase the number of jobs. The election in Massachusetts will scare critical votes away from the idea that increasing government spending is the solution to the problem. The current proposals may seem short on solutions and long on spending. Those ideas will be hard to sell in the Senate in the next few months. Moreover, job creation is expected to begin flowing from the previous stimulus this spring and to run through August. Trying to push more “public” job creation through the pipeline with that backdrop is likely to be challenged - in the Democratic caucus, among other places. 

Couple the clear signals from the Bay State with exhaustion from the forced victories in the House on cap and trade and the health care bill and the rampant horse trading during Senate consideration of the health care legislation, and you may see a perfect storm rising to oppose the President’s agenda for the rest of the 111th Congress.  On the other hand, Democrats may look back at Massachusetts as a wake-up call that saved Congressional seats and helped the party focus its efforts on the critical year ahead. 

But the key to whether the scenario fully plays out as described above may rest with one person – the President of the United States.  Obama’s view of the proper reading of the Massachusetts special election, and how successful he is in selling that view to Democratic members of Congress, may lead to a slightly different scenario.  He might argue the following:

“The Massachusetts election is primarily a reflection of the current state of progress in Washington – on the economy, on health care, on financial regulatory reform, and on energy.  We have not yet delivered significant economic growth.  We have not yet passed health care reform.  We have not yet protected the country against another banking crisis by passing financial regulatory reform.  And we have not yet passed energy legislation to let clean energy lead the country to economic growth.  In each of these areas, the people have only seen confusing debates and been subjected to gross misinformation and scare tactics.  No wonder they don’t give Democrats a vote of confidence at this stage.”

So, Obama would argue, the central question is not where the Democrats are today, but rather where they will be in November of 2010.  It goes without saying that unless Democrats produce a significant acceleration of economic growth by November, the political situation will be bleak.  But if the people perceive that the economy is on an upward trajectory, then they will ask what Obama has accomplished – what “change we can believe in” that Democrats have in fact delivered.  And the answer to that question lies in the course the Democrats in Congress take now. 

Do Democrats deliver on health care reform?  Financial regulatory reform? Clean energy legislation?  If they do, the President could make a strong case that Democrats can stand before the electorate in November and say, “You voted for change in 2008, and we gave you that change.  As a result, you are in charge of your health care, and we have plugged the biggest drain on the nation’s fiscal health for years to come.  We have protected you from a recurrence of the excesses of Wall Street.  We have given you a path to American economic growth for the 21st century - making use of clean energy.”  Finally, the President would try to convince Democratic members of Congress that the alternative – to accomplish nothing on his agenda – provides voters no reason to vote for Democrats instead for Republican candidates in November. 

In the coming days, watch carefully how the President depicts the lessons from the Massachusetts election - and watch, too, how successful he is at convincing his Democratic colleagues in Congress that he is right.  That may tell us a lot about the prospects for legislation in the next six months. 

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