It is interesting to see the difficulty  the Democratic Party is having from the pro-life constituency within its ranks. I would have thought the Democrats would have been more solid as a pro-choice party.  It is interesting to see the struggle they have with a big tent.

The Republicans have been struggling with this for years and has struggled with disparate constituencies with strong litmus tests.  I believe that if the Republicans tried to undo Roe v Wade that they would find an even bigger and more vocal pro-choice constituency within their ranks.

The Democrats have had strong dissents within its ranks, but they are more likely than the Republicans to set aside their differences when the vote is at hand.

We will see if that holds true today with the House Health Care vote.

The threat of the Slaughter Rule to pass the Health Care legislation leaves us wondering if the cure to our health care problems is not worse than the disease.  It seems that there are only two reasons to resort to this tactic.  Either Pelosi does not have enough votes to pass the bill or she wants to provide cover for those who do not want to face the consequence of their vote back home.

In either case she stands ready to thwart the will of the voters.  After so much outright bribery and arm twisting this does not speak well for the bill. If she really thinks that everyone will like the bill afterwards then she is speaking very poorly of her party’s ability to communicate anything.  More likely she is simply arrogant in believing that the great unwashed do not really know what is good for them.

The Blue Dog Democrats have the most to lose from deem and pass (which is really a by-pass).  If voters cannot see how their Congressman voted and this obfuscation is intentionally constructed by the Democrats in power, then their only option is to vote out every Democrat regardless of their fiscal conservatism.  That will be the only way assert the will of the voter.

In an effort to give cover to their Congressmen, the party leadership may bury them.

It is stunning to see such a reversal in the Democrat’s fortune in the course of one year.  As the electorate sees the hopes and dreams degenerate into deficits and taxes, the administration will be inclined to spin the outcome into something other than the rejection that it is.

It is clear that the Democrats misread the mandate. But what should they have done?

Clearly the financial system needed reform. Obama could have started by addressing problems in the banking and financial system that would have clearly enjoyed bipartisan support, and would have been seen as a consensus builder.

The administration could have addressed unemployment with tax credits rather than reckless deficit spending.  But when the first program out of the box is to force unions down the throat of business, trample bankruptcy law in the case of GM, pass a hugely flawed Cap and Trade bill, and then force and even more flawed Health Care bill riddled with blatant bribes, then he has created such political uncertainty that economic remedies are effectively neutered.

But the voters’ rejection is as much about style as policy. The unmitigated partisanship, arrogance and deafness to public concerns has pissed off the electorate.

The president prefers making grand speeches to the dirty process of passing legislation. He may have promised change but what we got were old leftists exploiting a crisis to pass unpopular legislation.  His call for openness was greeted with contempt by his own party leaders.

If I were a Democrat I would place a large portion of the blame for this destructive hubris at the feet of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  The party picked two horribly divisive leaders. If the Democrats hope to save the ship they need to mutiny and get better captains.

This is how desperate  and how low the Massachusetts Democrats are willing to go. This is the Democrat Party mailer Scott Thomas is suing over.  I realize that political operatives from both parties have often believed in the effectiveness of such negative campaigns, but it has appeared to me that they rarely work.  Such action assume that the voters are stupid to believe such extreme statements. What such statements really say is that the candidate distributing such vile tripe has absolutely no compelling reason for you to vote for her.

I doubt if I am alone.

The race in Massachusetts is stunning.  If Democrat Coakley is unable to beat Republican Brown in the bluest of blue states, then any Democrat is vulnerable. Just the fact that this race is close  should be a startling wakeup call to the Democratic party.

It appears that Brown is doing and saying all the right things and Coakley is doing just the opposite. If defeated the party will blame the candidate , and refuse to see it as a referendum on the current administration. Brown is running against Coakley on her statements, her policies, and her record. Brown is being attacked by invoking references to Bush and “tea baggers.”

Last Wednesday the odd at the trading site Intrade had the odds of a Coakley win at 85 to Brown 15, this morning it 53/47; a remarkable shift.

The Democrats have grossly misread their mandate and their hubris has dwarfed even that of the Bush administration. This mismanagement of their party’s victory should be laid squarely at the feet of their leaders, especially Pelosi and Reid. Their first constructive step to clawing their way back from the abyss should be to quickly replace both of them.  It is their hubris, partisanship and arrogance that are putting the nails in Kennedy’s coffin.