Why Conservatives Shouldn't Get the Credit For Coakley's Defeat

[Joanne98]

Peter Daou in HuffPo, Liberal Bloggers to Dems and Obama: We Told You So, explores the two most prevalent reasons for the Republican win in Massachusetts:

The first, promulgated by conservatives, is that the new administration has moved too far to the left and alienated a large swath of independent and moderate voters.

The second, pushed by progressive activists and bloggers, is that the administration hasn't been true enough to fundamental Democratic principles, has embraced some of Bush's worst excesses on civil liberties, and has ditched popular ideas (like the public option) in favor of watered down centrist policies, thus looking weak and ineffectual.

The conservative argument is unpersuasive.

I think he's got a point. But I'll take it a few steps further.


In the last year, Obama and the Dems have compromised too much, moving further away from the goals of progressives. The abandonment of the public option is just one example. On the civil liberties front, Obama has not eliminated trial by military commissions and continued many of the overbroad domestic surveillance programs of the Bush Administration. Here's the ACLU's report card on Obama's civil rights' records, out today.

On issues like spying on Americans, monitoring of activists, terrorism watchlists, the Real ID Act and DNA databases, the administration has carried out none of the ACLU's recommendations.

"Our hope a year ago was that the Obama administration would restore our nation's long tradition of respect for privacy and the rule of law by rolling back the privacy-invading domestic security policies enacted by the Bush administration," Romero said. "Unfortunately, many of those policies have not been reversed, and we now run the risk of seeing them become a permanent part of American life."

On criminal justice issues, one year has passed since Obama's inauguration and we still don't have a law equalizing crack and powder cocaine. There's been no federal law passed reducing or eliminating mandatory minimum sentences or increasing good time for prisoners. Obama is still backing indefinite detention for some detainees, without the filing of criminal charges. He missed his one year deadline to close Guantanamo. There's been no action to legalize the millions of undocumented residents. The war on drugs is still in full force

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http://www.talkleft.com/story/2010/1/20/1838/41062

This is a problem too. The Republicans created the police state but now they're acting like WE did it. Of course our clueless politicians haven't noticed that the RW is starting to run against the police state. They are still trying to prove they're not "soft on crime". Get ready for the Republicans to start a backlash against the deeply unpopular prison industrial complex.

They've made us the party of Wall Street, the party of endless war, the party of debt we didn't run up and now we're soon to be the party of prisons we didn't build.

[dkf]

1. They didn't win we lost. We aren't executing on Obamas promises.

[AnArmyVeteran]

3. Obama needs to get tough as hell.

President Obama needs to grow a pair of balls. NO MORE COMPROMISE. NO MORE BI-PARTISANSHIP! During the eight years of misery under Dumbya Bush the republicans crammed anything they wanted through. They started wars. They stripped regulations. They gutted funding for environmental agencies. They bankrupted our country. And the democratic leadership did nothing. A lot of them even voted to authorize war against Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with the 9.11 attacks.

Obama promised a lot of things while campaigning but he has allowed himself to be pushed around by insane conservative extremists. He needs to act like Lyndon Johnson and get tough. He needs to strong arm representatives and senators. And he needs to verbally attack cowardly frauds like Lieberman and strip him of every power he has in the senate. Good god, how can an insurance company whore like Lieberman be allowed to continue his assault against the American people? Obama, WAKE THE HELL UP!!!

[PoliticalOne65]

2. Not once in his speech

Not once in his victory speech did Scott Brown thank the Republican voters. He did however thank the independent majority, The voters of the Common Wealth of Mass, The cross over voters, but never thank you republican voters. Just an observation but it is curious how a man can run for a party and not thank the people in the party that voted for him. Maybe he is ashamed to say the R. word to much.