BOSTON — Republican Scott Brown’s eye-opening victory in Massachusetts Tuesday has unmistakably framed the problem for President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party:
The same forces of disgust with establishment politicians and hunger for change in Washington that vaulted Obama to power 14 months ago can be harnessed with equal success by people who want to stop his agenda in its tracks.
The argument that will now consume Democrats is over the remedy — a disagreement that once again opens up the party’s ideological gulf and vastly complicates Obama’s task in trying to push his signature health care agenda to final passage.
Is the Massachusetts humiliation a sign that Obama and congressional Democrats should embrace the inevitability of mortal conflict with Republicans and respond with a sharper, more combative policy and political message? Even before Democrat Martha Coakley’s defeat became official, some liberal voices on Capitol Hill and others close to the White House were urging exactly that.
Many moderates were urging the opposite, arguing that when Democrats lose a Senate seat that for nearly 50 years belonged to the late Ted Kennedy, they should know they are badly estranged from the center of public opinion.
What neither side disputes is that the Massachusetts results are directly relevant to Obama.
That itself is a sign of Democrats coming to grips with a problem that began emerging last summer, when polls showed independent voters taking flight from Democrats. Even so, after Republicans in November won off-year gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia — two states that Obama won a year earlier — White House officials responded with happy talk, saying these were strictly the result of local conditions and weak candidates. - Politico Story
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