Obama personally joins Massachusetts quake relief

While early reports leaking out are unclear, as always in these unexpected situations, initial indications from the scene of the unfolding disaster give the impression of widespread damage across a broad area. And major aftershocks are expected for months to come.

Monitoring the situation from the White House, which he moved into just 360 days ago, Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama has decided to make a hands-on partisan commitment to the national relief effort in this man-caused disaster.

And he himself will fly to the scene of Massachusetts on Sunday to help Democrat state Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley in her failing struggle to hold the Bay state's U.S. Senate seat for the Democrats against a Republican state senator from central casting named Scott Brown.

If Brown wins, as The Ticket's poll coverage reported here earlier today, he would be the first member of Lincoln's party to hold the honorary Kennedy family Senate seat since 1952 when a Democratic president named Harry Truman, in national approval trouble in part because of an unpopular, lingering distant war, chose not to run for re-election.

"It's a Brown-out," said David Paleologos, director of Suffolk University's Research Center, a poll partner that found Brown leading Coakley 50-46 just four days before Tuesday's special election. "It's a massive change in the political landscape."

Brown's support seems fueled by a conservative groundswell that's spreading beyond Tea Party supporters in the homestate of the original Boston Tea Party and beyond -- fear of....

...rising deficits, proposed new taxes, massive spending increases, stubbornly high unemployment rates and laser-like presidential attention to an issue (healthcare) not high on their own agenda.

For days now every few minutes an obviously worried Democratic National Committee has been dispatching any shred of information (not to mention some money) that might conceivably hurt Brown and help Coakley, even the endorsement of the Massachusetts Democrat by a Rhode Island newspaper.

Since Obama is going to get tagged with blame if Coakley loses anyway, White House strategists figure he might as well go down swinging. He really only has to convince Democrats, who polls show are losing their enthusiasm, to come out and vote

And if Massachusetts' traditional liberal voters do come home and, more importantly, come out to give her an upset win after all on the last day of Obama's first year in office, then he'll get mucho credit for a miraculous comeback, like Boise State's the other year only that's a Republican state and Obama is a basketball not football fan.

Our sharp-eyed blogging colleague Michael Muskal found this nugget from the Robert Gibbs press briefing:

Q: Robert, you told us, when asked earlier this week, the President was not going to go to Massachusetts. What changed?

MR. GIBBS:  He got invited.

The less-popular president's last-minute appearance could actually be a blessing for Brown. Last fall Obama campaigned enthusiastically for both Democrat gubernatorial candidates in traditionally GOP Virginia and traditionally Democratic New Jersey.

And both lost.

Despite five (5) appearances by Obama with New Jersey's incumbent governor and resident gazillionaire Jon Corzine.

Why? Exit polls confirmed summer indications: blacks didn't care enough without Obama's name on the ballot, Democrats' enthusiasm was fading, independents who loved Obama as the 2008 moderate model had become dubious and Republicans were energized and united, despite a threatening conservative third-party candidate.

The political impact of a Coakley defeat would be right around 6.5, maybe 7.0, and felt way beyond Massachusetts -- or Massachusettes, as one recent ad put it.

That's because after last November's political temblors and Obama's continuing poll approval slide especially on economic matters, some Democrats in Washington were privately starting to get a little skittish about their prospects in this November's crucial midterm elections. Nothing focuses the human attention quite like getting shot at.

Midterm elections in a new presidency are a time when the party controlling the White House traditionally loses some congressional seats anyway, unless you're George W. Bush in 2002. The Democratic mantra has been after eight long years of failed Bush-Cheney policies.

But what if the new change to believe in was something like, after 12 long months of failed Obama-Biden policies? Unemployment still stands at 10%, despite VP Joe Biden's best talking and ribbon-cutting. Not to mention $787 billion in legislated stimulus spending. The jobless rate is up 2 points since Aretha Franklin's hat last Jan. 20. Consumer confidence hangs low. Retail sales surprisingly slipped in December.

It's hard, though the administration tries nowdays, to boast about losing jobs but losing them slower.

As The Ticket also reported here this morning, Obama made a somewhat unusual evening political pilgrimmage Thursday to lavish so much sweet praise on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that it threatened diabetic shock on some readers.

Obama also lobbied for the Democratic House caucus' ongoing support in crucial healthcare votes coming up very soon. Despite the overwhelming majority dispatched to the House by American voters when they elected Obama in 2008, with Republicans united in opposition, Pelosi really only needs to lose three votes from her fragile caucus coalition to doom Obama's beloved healthcare bill. It's now being rewritten by senators and representatives behind non-transparent Democrat doors.

A disaster in Massachusetts could cause a number of would-be Obama supporters to start mentally balancing their career vs Obama's reputation. And come down on the side of self-preservation, as politicians often do.

The possible Massachusetts disaster has already caused a hurry-up in intra-party Democrat negotiations to draft the final version of healtrhcare because Brown would be the GOP's 41st Senate vote, meaning Democrats would no longer hold their filibuster-proof 60-seat margin.

As the newly-crowned political pundit called Sarah Palin put it on-air Thursday night, "I anticipate victory there. But even if he (Brown) doesn't win, already, poll numbers showing that his message is resonating. And his message is common sense conservative values, principles, solutions being plugged in to meet the challenges facing America today.”

Palin says she hopes to interview Brown on Fox News. But probably not about what newspapers he reads.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos: Associated Press

Comments

[Scott W.Somerville]

"Man-caused disaster." Nice! But let's not be sexist--this is a woman-caused disaster. Martha Coakley has made every campaign misstep I've ever heard of and invented some new ones. (Misspelling Massachusettes [sic] was a deft touch.)

I spent twenty years in MA and NH... and the last time I saw this kind of energy was for the 2004 Red Sox. I don't know about female voters in Massachusetts, but Massachusetts men have a crazy streak in them that mostly only shows up when the Red Sox get one game ahead. I've seen otherwise sane men mortgage their houses to bet on the Patriots in the Super Bowl--and that was in the 80s, when the Patriots had no more chance of winning than--well, Scott Brown.

Here's a tip for any future contested race in Massachusetts--get on sports radio early. If you lose the Fenway fans, you might as well kiss the game goodbye. (Coakley didn't just lose them--she openly dissed them. "What am I supposed to do? Shake hands at Fenway Park? In the cold?")

If Obama pulls this one out, he's going to deserve a lot of credit. If Martha loses, I won't blame Obama for it--but it's going to hurt him, anyway, on top of the Copenhagen Olympic trip. If he's 0 for 3 in VA, NJ, and MA (of all places), the public perception will be that his "coattails" cover less than than Scott Brown's centerfold, no matter what special circumstances explain this debacle.

[Mary]

I can probably ask him myself what newspapers he reads as he travels around the state..face to face with constituents. He is taking his case to the fed-up people and not to the lobbyist crooks in Washington DC!

[Democrats steal to buy votes]

Haiti may need more government, but everyone in the US knows that we need less federal government here. Everyone except Comrade Obama and his bitter enders.

[Michael Kennedy]

If Brown wins, he will be a huge GOP star. He is a great retail politician and, as one Democratic operative said after he won a special election for the state Senate a few years ago, "We cheated and he still won !"

[joinamerica]

Great column. Andrew Malcolm hoists Obama on his own petard.

[Dan]

Clever article!

(Hey, thanks! Appreciate you and everyone reading.)

[John Blake]

OK, it's twelve years and counting since 1997. Wanna see my Hawaiian birth certificate?

[gilvoice]

Democrats are not going to give up the “Democrat” seat in Massachusetts. You can rest assured that this weekend the absentee ballots are being filled out in sufficient quantities to cover any eventualities.
This is about power. The will of the voter means nothing.

[Hostile Knowledge]

Win or lose, the events underway in Massachusetts are going to send a very huge BANG across the entire political landscape of America.

The people of this country are FED UP! They are not going to take it any more!

[sofa]

"You can rest assured that this weekend the absentee ballots are being filled out in sufficient quantities to cover any eventualities.
This is about power."
-gilvoice

Expect that. Expose it.
And remember that Acorn still receives $$$M from taxpayers via Congress. They are all descending into Mass, to earn their money.

"Irregularities" need to be exposed to salvage the legitimacy of voting which was tossed aside and found in abandoned cars to 'make' Franken the supermajority 60th vote.

Hoping for vigorous process and the rule of law.
Expecting widespread "cheating" and then cover-up by partisan State and judges (rule of corrupt men). Will they be able to cover a 2% margin? Or 5%? We need forensics to sift through the data and estimate the number of questionable votes, and the number of fraudulent votes. How many votes were tampered with? What methods did they use? Precinct by precinct, what were the names of the individuals responsible?

The January election has to be carefully monitored, to understand what our votes will mean in November. Is "cheating" is now acceptable in the bannana republic of corruptostan?

Close observation and analysis will clarify our new reality.

[tom]

Look out for the reincarnation of 1000's of dead voters - probably moved fom the Daly Precincts in Chicago - the same ones that put Jack Kennedy in the Oval Office - Oh yea, Sam Giancanna has passed away. Perhaps there is chance he did not leave a clear path of succession..

The lawyers will be busy. This will be close. The only hope is that it has been a long time since the Democratic machine in Mass has had to rely of old fashioned voter fraud to win and maybe they forgot how?

[Forrest]

We can all see where Obama's (and democrat) priorities lie. While the democrat machine is busy doing "disaster" relief in Massachusetts, the often maligned (by democrats) U.S. military is doing the real disaster relief in Haiti, while the much vaunted U.N. is standing around waiting for its palm to be greased with $500,000,000 so that it can send in its token bureaucrats in style in fancy jets and limos to take credit for what our Soldiers and Sailors are doing. Then to add even more insult to injury, the UN will somehow tie this disaster to “global warming” and then, once the situation is stabilized, send in a paltry force of “peacekeepers” to rape the survivors.

[ag]

It will not be easy to for Scott Brown to win the election in Massachusetts because Obama is calling out acorn, dead absentee voters, fraud voter counts at some polls and every other kind of chicago crimminal type win at any cost vote they can think of. He makes promises he dosen't keep and tell lies everytime he speaks.

[Z40]

Vote for Brown to help stop the one sided control obama, reid and pelosi demand. They want things their way only no matter the cost, and refuse to hear and represent the majority americans.

[Dan]

That is absolutely the most awesome headline ever.

[Sam East]

Chicago operatives are already out to blame the whole thing on Coakley it looks like.It is a "man caused disaster "should a democrat loose in MA-not "woman caused" one and the man in question is our inept President.
Nice try.

[jackie p]

I'd like to know what the Republican party has committed themselves to do about the situation in Haiti?

[mtnth]

Wow, people really wanting to elect a GOP'er. Does everyone seem to forget its 8 years of GOP control that got us here in the first place? Anyone who serious believes the GOP is the party of fiscal conservatism better spend sometime reviewing the last 30 years. And last time I checked, we spent more of our tax dollars building up foreign countries (after destroying them) that we have on our own Country during the 8 years of GOP control. Just brilliant,...

[winkeysmom]

Very funny and some of the most clearly stated, straight forward commentary
I have read so far. Thank you.

(Well, thank you too. Hope you return for more just like it.)

[Daganstein]

I get the humor, but I think this metaphor is inappropriate given the dead bodies in the street and the double amputees in Haiti.

[Michael]

Even if Brown wins the obamanation is plotting to get a healthcare package, ANY healthcare package voted on. The dumbocrats are running scared. Wonder why the obamanation always tries to get congress to hurry up and pass legislation? Especially the HUGE MONEY packages. Hurry up and spend it. THEN, he'll raise taxes on everyone to pay for all his BS. Pelosi will retire with a huge pension, as will the obamanation. All for sending us down the cr*pper with astronomically HUGE deficits.