The Democrats Who Deserve Blame for Their Loss in Massachusetts
Charles Krupa / AP
Brown supporters celebrating in Boston, Jan. 19.
Blame is more fun than praise. Yes, Scott Brown was a seemingly anodyne, handsome, smiling, and at least superficially reasonable Republican who was in the right place at the right time: appearing out of nowhere in the midst of a nagging recession at a time of continued voter alienation with the powers that be—who happen to be Democrats. Congrats to him.
But I've been listening all day, on the phone and in e-mails, to people distributing blame on the Democratic side. The circular firing squad is blasting away. Here is my neutral assessment of who among the Dems deserves to be criticized for the Boston Massacre. Here they are in approximate descending order of blameworthiness:
1. Martha Coakley. Wooden, oblivious, haughty, inept, and ill prepared. She won the nomination because she was a woman and not part of the Washington scene or the party establishment. But she didn't realize she needed a plan to be an outsider, and an empathetic one.
2. Barack Obama. No, this wasn't a referendum on him or his presidency. Nor is it a flat-out rejection of the health-care bill per se. People still like him and wish him well. But his twin decision to put all his chips on health care and to let Congress take the lead made him seem unfocused on what people care about, which is the economy and jobs.
3. Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Jim Messina, and Patrick Gaspard (the White House political brain trust). This crew wants to blame the Coakley campaign and her consultants and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and—who knows?—maybe the Boston Celtics. But national politics today is a centralized operation, and it is centered in this White House. They should have made sure that the Coakley campaign was up to speed and had a real message. It was also their advice and counsel that led Obama to put the fate of his health-care bill in the hands of the hapless and ineffectual Sen. Max Baucus. The result: there's still no bill.
4. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.). The DSCC under Menendez seems not to be the fearsome machine it was under Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
5. Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. He blazed a trail for Obama in 2006—an Ivy League African-American with good political and oratorical gifts. But the Democrat has become an unpopular figure, and is surrounded by other Democrats who have dragged him down by their own misbehavior. Some of the vote for Republican Scott Brown was blowback against Patrick.
6. Organizing for America (OFA). The Obama campaign left an e-mail list of 13 million supporters, and the organization that came out of it, OFA, was supposed to use it to “promote the president’s agenda.” But it has been a nonfactor in policymaking or off-year elections to date, and the president’s agenda may suffer for it.
7. "Progressive" blogs. I'm sure I missed some of the early posts, but I didn't hear much of a firestorm early on about what an evil dude Brown is. That is now orthodoxy on the left, but whatever dirt there is was dug up only in the last days, or so it seemed to the mainstream junkies.
8. The Massachusetts congressional delegation. Out of jealousy or obliviousness, this group of 13—all Democrats—sounded no alarm bells and didn't pay much attention until it was way too late. They were all in the state last weekend—again, too late to do much good.
So that's the rundown, at least for now. It will surely get uglier and more specific. And that's what we're here for!
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
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