If the Democrats lose the Massachussets Senate seat, as it appears likely will happen, they will have only themselves to blame.
Forget the local aspects of this — the awful campaign run by the Democrat, the hypocritical way in which the party rewrote electoral law to fill the seat on a temporary basis — the fault for this loss lies in the party’s failure to energize its base not just in Massachussets, but around the country, to get a real health reform bill passed, to fight for a more robust stimulus or enact strict financial regulations to rein in the banks.
Basically, as David Sirota — among others — has pointed out, there needs to be a vibrant and aggressive push from the left to pull the Democrats leftward, but a mix of timid gamesmanship on the part of elected Democrats and an unhealthy willingness to become part of the establishment by groups like MoveOn and other Democratic-leaners has robbed progressives of much of their steam, much of their force.
So now, with the Democrats holding only 57 seats in the Senate — including a half dozen small-state conservative Dems — the illusion of unity and power has been broken. Now, the party has little reason to humor people like former Democrat and putative independent Joe Lieberman or even Democrats in Name Only Ben Nelson and Max Baucus.
If the Democrats are to salvage any part of their agenda, they are going to have to go on the offensive, the president is going to have to forgo the cautious incrementalism that has marred his first term and turn the bold rhetoric he used back in January 2009 into reality.
