Brownout

People are angry.

by David Faris

The election of a Republican senator from Massachusetts is being painted in the national media as a political earthquake for a state allegedly ideologically located somewhere between Cuba and Maoist China. Why did Bay Staters elect a Republican to the Senate, something they haven't done since 1972? The parties are organizing around three competing narratives: Republicans argue that Scott Brown's election is an explicit rejection of health-care reform; Democrats say the election was about Martha Coakley's obscenely half-assed campaign. Still others contend that Coakley was rejected not because the Democrats' agenda is too far left, but because it doesn't go left enough.

There's truth to all of these narratives: Health-care reform is at this point tremendously unpopular; I've seen elections for fantasy baseball league commissioner contested more vigorously than Coakley's Senate campaign; and yes, Democrats have governed as if, in Jon Stewart's words, they "have their balls taped to their legs."

But none of these perspectives gets at the deeper truth of what happened. Political scientists have consistently found that success or failure in congressional elections is at least partly the result of national economic factors. And statistically, the president's party has lost an average of 27 seats in the House during midterm elections since 1954 — more when the president's approval rating is below 50 percent, about where President Obama now hovers.

(Oddly, people are also more likely — as political scientist Neil Malhotra argues — to vote against incumbents when their college football teams lose, and presumably when their pro football teams do, too. So maybe Coakley might have that job if Tom Brady had found Randy Moss in the end zone a few times in the wild card game.)

If you view the Massachusetts election as the opening salvo in the battle for 2010, the result isn't surprising. Unemployment is high, Obama's popularity has slipped and Democrats have gained more than 20 seats in two straight national elections. It would be quite extraordinary if they didn't lose seats. Democrats might argue that the economy would have been worse without the stimulus, national elections are never won on counterfactuals. But even bad national conditions shouldn't have cost the Democrats Massachusetts.

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Compounding the national troubles, local Democrats have been running Massachusetts like a one-party state for years. With Stalinist majorities in the statehouse (144-16 in the House, and 34-5 in the Senate), an unpopular governor who is cruising toward defeat in November, and 9.4 percent unemployment, people are angry.

Especially unhelpful for Democrats was the whole "Ted Kennedy's seat" narrative. Brown's retort that "it's the people's seat" will go down as one of the great successes of political theater.

If the Democrats want to avoid an even more painful defeat in November, they'd better pay attention to the financial difficulties faced by ordinary Americans, those to whom the bailouts and stimulus projects have meant tangibly little. Obama should target the finance industry. Tough regulations, a new jobs bill and some relief from foreclosures would be a good start. His more strident tone to this effect of late is a good start; but words without actions ultimately don't mean much.

Democrats should also make sure the backroom deals — like the absurd buyoff of Nebraska's Ben Nelson — don't find their way into any final version of the health-care bill. And that bill needs to get passed, and soon, to stem the carnage.

Look, the Republicans were always going to come after health-insurance reform. The insurance industry has its hands down GOP pants, Republicans like how it feels and they don't want to bite the hand that feels them. The minority party will easily go down as the least cooperative minority in the history of the American legislature.

But polls show only a small number of Brown voters were animated by a desire to block the health-care reform bill. (In fact, in the state legislature Brown voted for Massachusetts' universal health-care plan, which isn't all that different from the current Senate bill.) So Republicans taking that particular election as a license to further obstruct might be doing so at their peril. On the other hand, Democrats dismissing Coakley's defeat as merely a local aberration will be in for a very long night this November.

Thanks for nothing, Tom Brady. E-mail David Faris at david.faris@gmail.com.