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Mark Shields: Special Elections Can Really Be Special
Special elections are politically freaky. They are hostage to the whim of unpredictable voter turnout on some random date. At least, that’s how some quivering Democrats, still reeling from the jolt of Republican Scott Brown’s smashing victory in the special Massachusetts Senate election, are consoling themselves. Not to be mean, but let’s look at the history books.
On the night of Nov. 5, 1991, Democrat Harris Wofford, after trailing former Pennsylvania governor and U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh by 40 percent in the polls, won the special election to replace Sen. John Heinz, R-Pa., who had died in a plane crash.
To a cheering crowd of supporters, Wofford explained what his campaign victory meant: “Let the word go forth form this place on the Delaware to our nation’s capital on the banks of the Potomac: ‘We want national health insurance.’”
During his 1991 effort, Wofford had formulated the winning argument, “If criminals have the right to a lawyer, I think working Americans should have the right to a doctor.”
The Wofford campaign, led by James Carville and Paul Begala (who would go from there to central roles in Bill Clinton’s winning presidential campaign) put health care squarely on the national agenda. In fact, in Clinton’s Little Rock, Ark., headquarters, Carville — to remind campaign workers what the campaign was entirely about — had a sign that read: “Change vs. More of the Same,” “The Economy, Stupid” and “Don’t Forget Health Care.”
Campaign themes do often become presidential initiatives, as health-care reform did in Clinton’s first White House term. The failure of the new Democratic administration to even get a floor vote on Clinton’s health-care plan in either the House or Senate, both controlled by his own party, contributed to the Democrats losing their House majority in 1994. Special elections often do have enormous consequences.
Nineteen years later, Brown’s special-election Senate victory in Massachusetts could be the bookend to Wofford’s 1991 Pennsylvania upset win. Where Pennsylvania voters then pushed the issue and idea of health care to national attention, Massachusetts voters now may well have sunk the first national health-care reform plan ever to pass both houses of Congress.
It’s both silly and unrealistic to propose, as some health-care supporters have, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., ask her House colleagues to pass the Senate bill. For House Democrats, to vote for the Senate bill with its widely publicized special deals, including the Louisiana Purchase to secure the vote of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and the Nebraska Auction to win the backing of Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., would be political suicide.
Republican managers are already salivating over the prospects of running a campaign against any House Democrat who voted to ratify and justify those rightly criticized Senate deals — so politically objectionable that Nelson publicly asked that Nebraska’s special treatment be dropped from the legislation.
Massachusetts was a major, important victory for Republicans and a major, important defeat for Democrats. Unwilling to face that reality, some White House types argue that “local issues” were decisive in Massachusetts. Sorry, but President Barack Obama’s personal campaigning and the millions spent by the national party committees and affiliated groups effectively nationalized the Massachusetts race.
The easy and wrong way out for losing Democrats is to blame the candidate — failed nominee Martha Coakley. Blaming the losing candidate can sometimes shift blame. But it also ignores the distinct likelihood that voters may instead have found Our Party’s record, ideas or values irrelevant, clueless or objectionable.
Coakley will not be on the ballot next fall in California, Delaware, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania. But the Democratic candidates who will be are a lot more nervous today, after Brown’s upset win, than they were before Tuesday.
— Mark Shields is one of the most widely recognized political commentators in the United States. The former Washington Post editorial columnist appears regularly on CNN, on public television and on radio. Click here to contact him.
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» on 01.24.10 @ 01:26 PM
It’s the height of arrogance for a state political party to think they take voters forgranted so totally that they can slate a lumbering ineptitude like Martha Coakley for U.S. Senate, and expect people just to rubber-stamp her.
They wouldn’t.
It’s the height of stupidity to expect Mass. voters to get excited about national health reform, when they’re already paying for reformed state health insurance.
Why pay the same tax, twice?
It’s the height of dreamland to expect voters to endorse more senate seats for wheel-n-deal Harry Reid, who seems publicly willing to sell anything to Lieberman, Nelson, or whichever senator has their panties bunched up today, to get their vote.
It’s the height of fantasy to expect more support for an administration that forgot
most of its biggest campaign promises the day AFTER getting sworn in.
They won’t.
The national media’s efforts to portray Scott Brown as some kind of Joe the Plumber
Everyman is laughable.
Brown is a small-time, career politician who got lucky, when he drew a Bozo
opponent, and a disgusted electorate.
Brown is pretty much your average Republican:
He supports “family values” AND “choice,” at the same time.
He supports “more decorum” in public life, but also posed nude for magazines to
make money.
He’s just “an average guy” ... whose wife happens to be a big Boston news-media star.
His “normal family” also features a daughter used her family connections to get on “American Idol”, just like the daughters of “average guys” all over the country.
Right.
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» on 01.24.10 @ 01:35 PM
At least Mark gets what the Democrats can’t seem to figure out… YES we want healthcare reform, NO not the way they are doing it! We don’t want it rammed down our throats, we don’t want bribes and special deals made to ram it down our throats, we don’t want to bankrupt the country doing it, and we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater (by destroying the current system that workd just fine for MOST people) for a government controlled bankrupt system adding to the debt! We want something transparent and popular that at least a majority supports, that should not require bribes and special deals for unions. It should not require pork and fat to get it done.
Yes there could be improvements, but they don’t have to be all-encompassing comprehensive and destructive and expensive and favor government control and include invasion of privacy and government making personal decisions and rationing and ruining the current coverage people have and like! Let’s start small, with tort reform, allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines and see how that goes. Make it affordable, don’t add to the cost and size of government. It would be cheaper to simply pay for insurance for the uninsured than to pass this monster!~
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» on 01.24.10 @ 02:17 PM
No, Mr. Shields, you and other right-wing Fox fans are reading way too much into the Massachusetts election. It was not a referendum on President Obama or the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party’s nominee was a terrible candidate, and I say that as a woman who wanted to support a woman candidate. The American people stand firmly behind our President after eight years of the arrogant Bush regime.
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» on 01.24.10 @ 04:27 PM
Get rid of these paid off corrupt union & trial lawyer puppets..
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» on 01.24.10 @ 04:35 PM
Yes Mark, your party’s record, ideas and values are irrelevant, clueless and objectionable. I could add salt to the wound by mentioning your party’s arrogance, condescension and narcissism, but the other party suffers these qualities too. The democrats who voted against their own party last week did so to send a message, “WE the People, have had enough”.
The DNC has had a two decade love affair with socialized healthcare. This was a rebound affair when the cold war ended and the DNC did not have nuclear disarmament to rally behind. Since HilaryCare went down to defeat in ’94 the rally has reluctantly gone to global warming, but oh that first love, healthcare, they just can’t let it go. It swamps everything they think of. “If only we had nationalized health insurance, all would be right with the world” they groan.
It ain’t gonna happen. We don’t want it, it is NOT necessary and we cannot afford that and everything else you mooks want too. Yes the existing system needs work and yes its inherently risky, but so is a free market capitalist economy. That is our system. It works better than any other at providing more wealth and a greater standard of living for more people than any other. It is based on incentive rather than command. It is merit based not special interest based. Yes after 80 years of progressives trying like mad to sell people in this country on the benefits of government dependence, we have become more dependant on government. But Obama has proven government doesn’t work for us it works for the various oligarchies running our banks. Not anymore Mark, not anymore.
The progressive movement is uncovered as a wannabe European socialist worshipping idea that Americans when they come to their senses don’t want. We like taking care of our selves and loath government interference. To you liberals pining away for a more European America, try Canada.
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