Discriminations

[This post has been UPDATED twice three times]

For once, everyone agrees: the astounding election of Scott Brown changes everything. But as usual, when everyone agrees it’s wise to wonder what everyone is missing.

What is lost among the cacophony of “cataclysmic change!” that is coming from Left, Right, and Center, I think, is realization of the fact that reducing the number of Senate Democrats from 60 to 59 puts it right back it was shortly after Obama was elected. Actually, it puts it back to one better than when Obama was elected. There were only 58 Democrats in the Senate until Al Franken, who ultimately won 42% of the vote in Minnesota plus a fraction more than Norm Coleman, was sworn in the Democrats held only 58 seats. With Franken’s swearing in they were up to 59, and when Arlen Specter switched parties at the end of April 2009 they finally had 60.

At the time everyone thought that 58, then 59, Senators put Obama in an all but unassailably commanding position to accomplish his hope and change, center-left, change the tone, bi-partisan agenda. Silly everyone. Who knew (other than those out of touch, angry, recalcitrant, racist right wingers) that the president would assume that his election gave him a carte blanche to abandon even the pretense of bi-partisanship and push through an uncompromisingly liberal agenda.

President Obama and his administration have attempted to justify their gleeful spending spree by explaining that they had no idea how bad the recession was until they got into office. That doesn’t speak very well of their understanding, but they can hardly claim that they didn’t realize that if they truly wanted to change the tone, reduce divisiveness, and increase bi-partisanship they’d have to, you know, compromise at least a little. The Democrats like to claim that there is no point compromising because the Republicans oppose everything. In the words of that archetypical “progressive,” Rep. Anthony Wiener (D, NY) this morning, commenting on his “expectations for bipartisanship”:

I don't hold out any hope for my Republican colleagues. From almost the word go they've made it clear their strategy has been to stop anything from happening. That's a given.

Dropping from 60 Democratic Senators back to the post-election total of 59 is only a calamity for an administration that takes it as “given” that there is no point in attempting to compromise with the opposition party, even on issues where polls show the public opposing its signature policy by margins that range from significant to overwhelming.

UPDATE

In an interview with ABC News today,

President Barack Obama is telling Democrats not to “jam” a health care overhaul bill through Congress, instead urging them to coalesce around popular parts of the bill.

If he’d done that a year ago, or six months ago instead of himself trying to “jam” through an unpopular bill, health care reform would have been passed and signed into law by now.

Indeed, other comments the president made in that interview reveal that he still doesn’t understand what went wrong.

“If there’s one thing that I regret this year is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values,” Obama told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview at the White House.

The president said he made a mistake in assuming that if he focused on policy decisions, the American people would understand the reasoning behind them.

“That I do think is a mistake of mine,” Obama said. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”

What Obama doesn’t get is that we did “get it.” We did “understand the reasoning behind” those policies. We just didn’t agree with them.

Heaven help us if the lesson Obama has learned from the trouncing Democrats have taken in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts (Massachusetts!) is that what’s been lacking is his “speaking directly to the American people.” For most of this past seeming interminable year it has seemed like you couldn’t turn on the TV without encountering Obama “speaking directly to the American people” about health care or global warming or the big bad banks or whatever. Are we now going to have to listen to even more of him?

UPDATE II

Coming hard on the heels of the publication of his articulate, light-skinned Negro comment about Obama and his accusation that Joe Lieberman “double-crossed” him on health-care reform, Harry Reid has demonstrated that his remarkable, world-class obtuseness is at least bi-partisan:

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), whose influence has grown in the wake of Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, is puzzled over comments made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about her intentions to strike a bipartisan health care deal.

Speaking with reporters in the Capitol Wednesday, Snowe said she has yet to speak with Reid regarding his critical comments in The New York Times last week. In the article, the Nevada Democrat is critical of the bipartisan talks that failed in the Senate over health care, and Reid says of Snowe: “As I look back it was a waste of time dealing with her because she had no intention of ever working anything out.”

The sad thing is that Wiener and Reid are probably right: not about betrayals and double-crosses, but given what they want to do, it probably was a waste of time for them to talk to Republicans.

UPDATE III

A careful and well-informed reader (and former editor), Linda Seebach, reminds me (assuming I once knew) that my order was wrong: Specter switched in April; Franken wasn’t sworn in until July.

When you check only one of two facts, I told her, you’re often only half right.