The Liberal Blog Reaction To Scott Brown’s Election In Quotes

As you’d expect, the netroots have their saaaaaaadddddd faces on after the big loss last night. Also unsurprisingly — well, to me anyway — the general consensus seems to be that a big part of the problem has been that Barack Obama has been too bipartisan and not nearly liberal enough. Oh, if only Obama had been an ambitious, far left-wing radical who acted like he won instead of playing patty cake with those Republicans, voters would have loved him and the seat would have been held in a cakewalk. Also, just in case you’re wondering, although some of the bloggers are skeptical about health care passing, as far as I could tell, nobody is calling for the Democrats to forget about Obamacare at this point. Now, on to the actual quotes:

Well, it looks like so-called “Independent” Scott Brown has won a Senate seat in our most heavily Democratic state. Just for the record,

HE CAN GO TO HELL.

Screw him. The campaign to unseat this lying, Republican Tea Party son a b*tch is starting NOW, and I’m starting it. — Yosef 52, Daily Kos

I don’t know much about Martha Coakley. I doubt she’s any more crappy than the rest of our nation’s embarrassingly horrible political class– although she did seem to want to break the world-record for conceding defeat last night.

…The media had their narrative in the can and ready to break out: “Democrats are too liberal.” And you get a couple of bad faith reactionaries like Evan Bayh and Holy Joe Lieberman to repeat it on TV a couple of times and a chorus of other Republican-like Democrats to do the same and the Village will have it playing from every jukebox in the joint.

…The problem was that immediately after the election, like one nano-second after, Obama and his centrist, defensive team Democrats began “undermining themselves with faux-bipartisanship and tepid policies.” — DownWithTyranny

John Kerry:

I hope as a party we don’t succumb to the temptation to form a circular firing squad.

Hmmm…A circular firing squad would eliminate all the current leaders of the national and Massachusetts Democratic Party as well as their legions of grossly overpaid consultants, advisers, and strategists.

And that’s a bad idea…why, exactly? — Hullabaloo

Millions of Obama voters — me included — naively believed that he was going to stand up to corporate special interests in behalf of working people. He didn’t. People do not like wimps who compromise their principles to stay in power. That’s why Reagan was able to create a whole category called “Reagan Democrats.” Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry. Whatever.

The jubilant folks at FOX News et al. are correct that the Massachusetts election today has national significance — but not for the reasons they claim. They think people are upset at “government” but they’re really upset (whether they know it or not) with corporate control of government, which makes corporate interests synonymous with the national interest. The Democratic Party has been hollowed out by the same kinds of corporate interests that own the Republican Party. Progressives believed that after eight miserable years of George W. Bush and the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression we had an opportunity to create a stronger social safety net. But Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, Mary Landrieu, and Joe Lieberman put the kibosh on that.

Ben Nelson and Max Baucus could never win a national election. Obama did win but instead of standing up to Wall Street and to the health insurance lobby he made a strategic decision to play nice with them even though both industries are toxic waste in the eyes of most Americans. A year ago Time magazine ran a caricature of Obama as FDR but Obama has yet to deliver anything concrete to the voters who worked so hard putting him in office. — Joseph A. Palermo, The Huffington Post

In the special election to replace Edward M. Kennedy, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party leadership were handed their heads in the most stunning, avoidable repudiation of ineptitude in recent political memory.

…Now we’ve lost Massachusetts to the Republicans, emboldening them further, dreams of defeated Dems dancing across their heads. Rubio in Florida the first to get a boost, Blanche Lincoln further endangered, with Harry Reid’s days now surely numbered, if they weren’t already. Imagine that sight come November. It will make Daschle’s thumping by Thune, seen today as a possible presidential contender, look like a blip.

…Instead, Barack Obama reached across the aisle and let the Republicans stymie the Democratic agenda on the altar of Let’s Make A Deal, which they had no intention of doing. For one full year Pres. Obama has laid back, waited, and let things spin completely out of control until even Ted Kennedy’s old seat has been squandered on the altar of bipartisanship.
The President pretending he wasn’t a Democrat so much as some mediator in a policy dispute, making sure not to pick his own side over the other. — Taylor Marsh

Aside from tax cuts, George Bush spent eight years in the White House and really wasn’t able to advance the conservative agenda in any major way at all. Now it looks like Obama and congressional Dems aren’t going to have much luck advancing a progressive agenda in any major way either. We complain a lot, but when all’s said and done, apparently the status quo is still pretty popular. — Kevin Drum, Mother Jones

I can’t even process the Massachusetts election right now. Last night, knowing that all I would be able to do if I stuck around my computer was watch the recriminations fly on Twitter, I just went straight to the tub with a good book.

…If the media is acting like this means the Republicans have won the Senate, it’s because as far as the Democrats are concerned, they have. The paranoid in me tells me this is what they wanted—now that they can hide behind the filibuster, they can tell themselves there are no expectations that they’ll get anything done. The result will be a bloodbath in 2010, because the public will not agree that you should let a minority party run the Senate. If the Republicans are going to own it, the logic will be, let them. — Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon

Screwing hillary out of the nomination has caused the democrats all the backlash they can handle. The male “progressives” who pushed Obama down everybody’s throats, and cheated women out of the candidate they preferred, pushed this country so far right that now there may very well be no way back. This is why I told Obama during the campaign that he must bow to the women voters’ concerns, or fail big time.

He has betrayed women, working people, the troops, black america, acorn, and every single person who voted for him time and time again. Rahm Emmanuel sucks, and so does David Axelrod, Obama’s whole team of right wing Bushies and con men. ONE TERM is all he will have. What a waste he is, what a joke.

The sexism of Ted Kennedy to turn against the women’s vote, is what has lost Mass. Women were so disgusted by the gutting of Hillary and Single Payer, that they have turned against the democrats exactly the way I said they would. — Roseanne World

I’ve long said that the Dems will get shellacked in 2010. But they could at least go down fighting and enact some policies that will do some good. Or, conversely, they could just turtle themselves and realize after the inevitable reaming in November that they spent two years accomplishing close to nothing. — Sadly, No!

Are you feeling nostalgic for Election Night 2008? This is almost exactly like that night, with a few small differences. For one, it’s again illegal to be black in America, so go back to Socialism-land, Rahm! Also, Andrew Sullivan may move back to Canada, he’s so bummed. There’s also a very good chance the beloved Health Care Reform will be passed. But still, SO SAD, right? MARTHA COAKLEY IS AMERICA’S BIGGEST LOSER. Let’s enjoy the final liveblog of the final night of the final election of Soviet America, because life is going to be awesome once the Republicans use their complete control of the White House and Congress to send you back to prison, hippie. — Wonkette

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