Notes on Politics: Mass. Senate Election Ends Obama's Freshman Year with a Whimper

I don't totally buy into the notion that a major reason Republican Scott Brown beat Democrat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race was because Bay State voters are ticked off at President Barack Obama. Other than Brown's declaration that he doesn't like the current health care reform legislation -- being negotiated in secret as pricey goodies are doled out -- and wants to start fresh with a new reform bill, I think this Senate race was about Massachusetts politics more than it was about the president, but the president's going to pay the price, perception-wise.

With a state mired in political scandal after political scandal, Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi said if Coakley lost, Democrats could point fingers at their own performance in the State House. Look at what's happened in Massachusetts state government in the past few years: Democratic House speakers have resigned their post in disgrace including one who's facing federal corruption charges and another who was stripped of his law license last week after he'd pleading guilty to obstruction of justice charges, a Democratic state legislator is awaiting trial on charges that she allegedly stuffed bribe money into a bra and the first-term Democratic governor has an anemic 39 percent approval rating. Vennochi wrote:

"The epic battle between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Martha Coakley is drawing national attention as a referendum on President Obama. But Brown is also tapping into that special brand of anger that helps Republicans beat Democrats in otherwise solidly blue Massachusetts.

When the party in power gets too arrogant -- as often, it does -- the people get mad. Over the past two decades, they sent their message by electing three successive Republican governors."

However when President Obama made a last-minute trip to Boston on Sunday to try to revive the Coakley campaign, he unwisely injected himself into the Senate race. The Brown victory will now add to the perception that Obama is not only weakening, as he suffers from plunging approval numbers nationwide -- went from a high of 61 percent to the current 47, according to the Chicago Tribune -- but is also being dissed by one of the bluest state's in the country, one that gave him a 26-point margin of victory in 2008.

While watching MSNBC's review of Obama's freshman year on Morning Joe, it's clear that what started off on such a triumphant and positive note on a cold inauguration day in Washington, D.C. in 2009 has gone downhill quickly for the president. Hopefully year two will prove to be a better one.

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CBS has a comprehensive, number-crunching summary of Obama's first year including how many foreign trips he made, how many bills signed, pardons issued and rounds of golf.

Watched MSNBC's 9/11 Footage This Morning, Couldn't Help Myself

I didn't want to watch it, the footage from 9/11. I sort of happened into watching it.

Morning Joe was on the TV in the kitchen and, while I was reading the newspapers and nursing my third cup of coffee, I was surprised to see MSNBC re-broadcast the original footage from Sept. 11, 2001 as it unfolded on live TV. And I couldn't bring myself to turn it off.

I gasped at the same places at which I originally gasped when I watched the Today Show eight years ago, especially the moment when my then-3-year-old son and I saw the second airplane crash into the twin towers. I got the chills and a sickening feeling in my gut as the towers collapsed and eyewitnesses told Katie Couric and Matt Lauer about the horrors they'd seen on the streets of New York.

I recalled the intense feelings of uncertainty and fear when, at one point on that fall morning in 2001, people weren't sure if there'd been bombs planted in buildings around New York and Washington, D.C., whether there'd been a bomb at the State Department and exactly how many airplanes had been hijacked. I flinched when I heard the voice of the late Tim Russert, providing updates from Washington.

I kept MSNBC on all morning while I worked and felt as though I was peeking inside of a time capsule, one we open once each year.

Above you'll see an AP photo of the location where the towers once stood. Ground Zero. Still reminds me of an open wound.

Image credit: Matt Lennihan AP via MSNBC.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Palin Stuns, Resigns

If any American governor were to announce a resignation the day before Independence Day, I would've bet you a bundle that it would've been South Carolina's head honcho who would've quit so he could spend more time in Argentina snogging with his gal pal.

I certainly didn't expect, in the 3 o'clock hour on the Friday before a holiday weekend when many people were already on vacation, to learn that Sarah Palin was quitting her gubernatorial post.

After watching the nationally televised speech made in her backyard -- intermittently disrupted by the sounds of a baby and various birds chirping in the background -- here's what I gathered: Palin's angry that she's been the subject of 15+ ethics investigations in Alaska that she said have cost the state in excess of $2 million and have cost her and her husband Todd personally $500,000 in legal fees to fight. (She pointed out that the charges were all dropped.)

"It's pretty insane," Palin said. "My staff and I spend most of our day dealing with this stuff."

Saying that she wanted to spare Alaskans the money and the distractions caused by the multitude of negative attacks aimed at her, Palin said she was removing herself from the ring. "I chose not to tear down and waste precious time," she said. ". . . Life is too short to compromise time and resources."

Palin also mentioned the emotional cost borne by her family -- she specifically mentioned folks recently "mocked and ridiculed" her baby Trig -- as yet another reason to resign and not spend time on "superficial, wasteful political blood sport."

"It hurts to make this choice," Palin added. It did not appear as though there were any members of the media present during her speech to pose questions.

When her speech ended, cable talking heads and political pundits were slack-jawed. Many called her decision "erratic," stunningly short-sighted and "political suicide" to appear to knuckle under to the pressure. Others said it was the first chess move for the 2012 presidential race that would enable her to concentrate on building political support "in the lower 48 states." Over on MSNBC, they've been quoting NBC vet Andrea Mitchell as saying that Palin is "out of politics for good."

Palin's Twitter account said, "We'll soon attach info on decision to not seek re-election . . . this is in Alaska's best interest, my family's happy . . . it is good. Stay tuned." I heard Palin's brother and spokeswoman on various TV interviews and neither would say exactly what Palin's plans are once she leaves the governor's office.

Palin has been in the news as of late following her highly publicized feud with David Letterman where she defended her daughters against some of his crude jokes, as well as for being the subject of a harsh Vanity Fair piece snarkily entitled, "It Came From Wasilla."

I'm stunned and will be interested and intrigued to see what comes next.

Image credit: The Drudge Report.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Obama's Congressional Address & the 'Day of Reckoning'

Don't worry everybody. Joe Biden's got it covered. Federal bailout money won't be wasted, President Barack Obama told us last night, because he's put the vice president in charge of a "tough, unprecedented oversight effort." And, as the president added, "Nobody messes with Joe." So we're all set.

But seriously folks, President Obama, invoking an upbeat and optimistic tone that called upon America's can-do spirit, told a joint session of Congress last night, "We will rebuild. We will recover." He hopes that the barrels of federal dollars contained in the various stimulus packages will truly jump-start the economy. He says now's the time to "act boldly" and to fix the health care system, double the production of green fuel, halve the federal deficit within four years, raise taxes only on a tiny fraction of Americas, give soldiers better pay and better benefits, pull troops out of Iraq, move some more into Afghanistan, improve the nation's schools and, oh yeah, beat cancer.

Now I'm an optimist who loves to see an ambitious agenda fueled by smart, innovative ideas, determination and the ability to see that people of all ideological stripes have something worthy to offer. But when I listened to President Obama last night, I kept wondering how in the world we could implement and achieve even half of what he put on the table last night. Is it even possible? To do everything he talked about? Simultaneously?

For the past few weeks, I've been voraciously consuming articles and editorials about Obama's economic proposals, including the ginormous bailout bills, and watched the now-infamous CNBC commentator Rick Santelli off-the-cuff speech where he scoffed at the notion of bailing out the ailing mortgages of people who bought more house than they could really afford. Across the board, there seems to be confusion, uncertainty and no clear path out of this thicket of daily reports about the Dow's latest drop, the jobless numbers spiking and the businesses shutting down. Just yesterday, news reports contained dire info about Target's steep decline in profits.

New York Times columnist David Brooks last week was critical of the bailout for homeowners who've defaulted or are behind on their mortgages, saying the federal plan rewards bad behavior, but asked what other choice do we really have if we're to stop the economic hemorrhaging. ". . . [T]he sad reality is that in these circumstances government has to spend money on precisely those sectors that have been swinging most wildly -- housing, finance, etc. It has to help stabilize people who have been idiots."

President Obama last night said we've arrived at a national "day of reckoning" and that it's time to pay the price for living a lifestyle beyond our means for so long. We need to grow up and settle the bill. After listening to his prescription to pull us out of what some commentators are frighteningly likening to a modern day Great Depression, I find myself agreeing with the New York Daily News' sentiment on today's front page, "Hope He's Right." Americans are giving President Obama high approval numbers because the majority of them are taking a leap of faith; we're praying that he's right.

But then articles like today's Maureen Dowd column about the gross misuse of federal stimulus money are published (a bank that got $1.5 billion in bailout money and fired 450 employees "flew hundreds of clients and employees to Los Angeles last week and treated them to four days of posh hotel rooms, salmon and filet mignon dinners, music concerts, a PGA golf tournament at the Riviera Country Club with Mercedes shuttle rides and Tiffany swag bags") and steam starts pouring out of my ears. Where's Joe Biden? He's got to get on the case, pronto! Want to restore Americans' confidence, then the Obama folks need to put an end to this kind of this abuse ASAP.




Image credit: New York Daily News.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: 'Morning Joe's' Take on Blago Bye-Bye

The gang at Morning Joe on MSNBC never fails to amuse me. In between in-depth, thoughtful and frequently provocative interviews and debates -- the crew goes on longer than many TV shows might otherwise allow -- the topics are often injected with a hearty dose of humor.

That's why their "Week in Review" segment on the now former governor of Illinois struck me as so funny this morning.

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Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Notes from Election Day

Voting: I took the kids with me to vote in our small town in the western suburbs of Boston this morning at around 10. (There's no school today.)

We saw no lines as we entered the school gym and were greeted by a sweet Girl Scout. We waited patiently as she explained in a whisper-soft voice, where we needed to go first -- to check in by our street address. With my ballot in hand, the kids jockeyed for a good position in which to get a look at it as we crammed ourselves into the polling booth. They couldn't believe how many people were running for president. They thought it was just John McCain and Barack Obama.

"The Green-Rainbow Party?" my daughter asked incredulously.

"Yep," I said, as I read aloud all the different presidential/vice presidential candidates and their corresponding parties and the children shook their heads.

They were a bit dismayed when I wouldn't let them fill in the bubbles with the black pen provided -- there was no chance I was going to risk them filling in the wrong circle and ruin my opportunity to vote in this election -- but I did let them help me feed the paper ballot into the machine when we were done. The dullness of putting a ballot into a machine made me miss the time I voted in my first election in my hometown where they have actual levers to pull and a curtain that would dramatically open and record my choices when I was done. It's anti-climatic to fill in a bubble with a pen.

MSNBC All Day: I've had MSNBC on TV all day. I'm a sucker for their "Election Center" in Rockefeller Center and am a big crazy fan of the crew from Morning Joe.

Random Observations:

I thought Barack and Michelle Obama took a really long time filling out their ballots in Chicago. They must have a huge number of Illinois ballot questions or many contested races. (Massachusetts had three ballot questions.) Their 10-year-old daughter Malia, in her hoodie, looked thoroughly bored and yawned several times.

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw Sarah and Todd Palin leave the polls in Wasilla? Shamefully, it was that, as I looked at the vice presidential candidate, I wondered if she'd already given all the expensive campaign-funded duds away to charity.

Calling the Winner Early: I was disturbed by a piece I saw in today's New York Times about when the broadcast and cable news networks will project a winner tonight. I'm a big believer -- even in the age of the Internet, Twitter and Facebook -- of officially holding back on projecting a winner in the presidential race when people are still in the process of voting.

If a candidate concedes, then that person is affecting the voter turnout in places where the votes haven't yet been cast and it's not the media's doing.

But if a candidate hasn't yet conceded, the decent, patriotic thing to do is to wait until polls have closed before calling a state's results. If the networks call the entire election before the folks on the west coast have finished voting, that move would essentially tell people who haven't yet voted that their votes are irrelevant.

The viewers can wait. A little while anyway.

"Hockey Mom" of 5 Accepts GOP VP Offer

I continue to be stunned by the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate. Some things I have learned in the last few hours:

Not only does the baby to whom she gave birth in April have Down Syndrome, but her eldest son is being deployed to Iraq next month. Her favorite meal is moose stew. She calls her husband Todd, Alaska's "first dude." Her nickname when she played high school basketball was "Sarah Barracuda." After having her baby this spring, she was back at work within days.

As MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski said, "She is the epitome of the modern woman."

Best line of Palin's first speech as a vice presidential nominee, occurred when she was giving a shout-out to Hillary Clinton and her 18 million primary voters who put "18 million cracks" in the proverbial glass ceiling. Palin said, ". . . [I]t turns out the women of America aren't finished yet and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all."



Check out the column I wrote about Palin's speech on Mommy Track'd.

I also penned a piece about the type of political convention speeches expected from working women whose husbands are running for president. It's entitled, "Michelle As First Lady: General Election Edition."