Um, it wasn’t the campaign

I’ve been reading all morning that the Democrats are blaming Coakley for her poor campaign against Scott Brown. Eugene Robinson, who writes his column in the Washington Post from under President Obama’s desk, says “Ho-Hum”;

You’d think from the overheated commentary that this was the end of the world (as we know it). Instead of having 20 more votes in the Senate than the Republicans, the Democrats now have only 18 more votes. Run for your lives.

Yeah, Robinson is the only person on the planet that doesn’t think the Obama domestic agenda isn’t dead. But then he’s never been firmly rooted in reality.

EJ Dionne doesn’t stop at just blaming Coakley – he blames all of the Democrats for their pre-election hand-wringing in the media;

There is one thing worse than losing an election. It’s losing your dignity, your credibility and your sense of responsibility.

Long before Republican Scott Brown was declared the victor in Tuesday’s Massachusetts Senate special election, Democrats turned on each other with an unseemliness that does not behoove a party that wants to hold power.

The truth is that everyone who is attacking someone else shares responsibility for this loss. This race was the Democrats’ to lose, and they managed to lose it.

No, actually, the race was the Democrats to win and they lost it. Remember last month when it was absolutely imperative that health care reform get passed before the end of the year? Apparently it was imperative. The more time it took to pass it, the more people learned what Congress was cobbling together for each other. Massachusetts residents apparently read newspapers, too.

Ruth Marcus absurdly warns us against judging Obama too early;

Having covered the inauspicious start of Bill Clinton’s presidency, I know that the first-quarter grades of first-term presidents are poor predictors. This administration’s performance has been far from perfect. But in the panic of the moment, the easy criticism is not necessarily correct, and the caricature is not an accurate portrait.

Aside from the fact that he hasn’t accomplished anything, I guess we can proclaim that the best of Obama is yet to come. That’s an easy bar to clear. In the final hours of the Coakley/Brown race, Obama pleaded with Massachusetts voters to save his domestic agenda and in one fell swoop, Massachusetts voters rejected Obama and his slickery.

No matter how much the White House and the pundits try to blame Coakley for her poor campaign, it should have made no difference with the appearance and pleadings of the President. He made the Massachusetts election about him, and the glaring realities of last night’s outcome should give Democrats the jitters for November.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden