By Rob Kall (about the author)
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For OpEdNews: Rob Kall - Writer
Coakley has lost the seat long held by Teddy Kennedy to a far right extremist and pundits will spin the reasons it happened.
I'm particularly interested in those who are using this Democratic debacle to attack progressives.
Right wingers, like Mitt Romney, spin it as attributable to Obama's extreme left-wing, progressive agenda.
Some Democrats are going to do something similar-- blame the loss on progressives efforts to affect the health care legislation. They'll say that progressives did not compromise enough, did not buy Obama's message to not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Those Democrats are looking a lot like members of the Republican party. They're looking a lot like tea partyers.
Me? I say that Coakley faced her difficult situation because the leadership of the Demcratic party decided to forget who elected them. They decided to treat corporations better than constituents. They decided to become more corporatist than populist. Chris Dodd got the message. Byron Dorgan got a message from the White House. His noble bill, which would have given overburdened Americans the right to buy medications from Canada and other countries at more competitive prices was sabotaged by the White House. The Democrats will probably lose Dorgan's seat. I don't think Dorgan would have left if his bill had been passed-- a populist bill that any self-respecting Democrat should have passed. North Dakota was really the first senate race lost because of gutless cowards and misguided DINOs like Rahm Emanuel and the rest of the DLC Democrats in the Democratic party, particularly the ones from the Clinton Cabinet who Obama appointed.
I've written before about how the Democratic leadership has betrayed its constituents. This has happened at many levels. Senate leaders and Rahm Emanuel have hand-picked blue-dog, conservative Democratic candidates to run against solid progressives. The DSCC and DCCC have funded conservative Democrats IN PRIMARIES, helping them to oppose progressives.
Coakley was one of those top-down picks, blessed by the Democratic leaders. Her campaign was overseen by national Democratic leaders. Politico reports that now, Rahm Emanuel is blaming Dem Pollster Celinda Lake and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC,) Headed by NJ senator Bob Menendez for not seeing the trending lead Scott Brown was developing sooner. Bull!! If there is one person to place the blame on, the Coakley loss, it is Rahm Emanuel and, since Obama has kept him on, Barack Obama-- an Obama who has failed to keep his promises-- not just the specific promises he campaigned on, but, more important, the vision, the hope he instilled in his supporters, that he would make real change happen. He failed in that promise miserably, directly or through appointees.
If Nancy Pelosi decides to pass the senate's health bill, as-is, the Democratic party will be deader than the Republicans were after the 2008 elections.
There is still hope for decent health care refortm. They'll have to use reconciliation to pass a medicare for all bill. Then they'll have to pass a simple bill that fixes the most egregious health insurance problems that even the Republicans from Maine can support, like pre-existing conditions, recision (cancelling policies when people get sick for excuses the insurers knew of for years) and unequal rates for men and women.
Will Obama see the problem? Will the congressional democrats face reality and dump Reid and Pelosi? Not likely. That means we will see a massive rejection of the Democrats in November.
Oh, and to get back to my thought at the beginning of this article. Expect those Democrats whose policies literally engineered Coakley's defeat to viciously attack progressives and blame them for the loss.
Thinking about which countries will be affordable once the US dollar collapses, anyone?
Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), President of Futurehealth, Inc, (more...)
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