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Rahm Emanuel’s Crisis Management Hurts His Party (Big Time)

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Of all the losers in yesterday’s special Senate election in the Bay State, few have seen their governing strategies so thoroughly repudiated as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. “You never want,” he said shortly after Obama’s election in November 2008, “a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

Yet, as David Boaz, Executive Director of the Cato Institute. put it:

But Obama and his team overinterpreted their victory. A desire for change didn’t translate into support for a sweeping statist agenda. Starting with his February 24 speech to Congress, Obama began to overreach.

His administration sought to use the financial crisis to implement an agenda that wouldn’t have been plausible in calmer times.

It was that overreach which fueled the popular discontent which led, in large part, to Scott Brown’s upset victory yesterday in Massachusetts.  Contending, “It’s the substance, stupid!“, former Clinton aide Lanny Davis agrees:  “Somehow, in the last 12 months, we allowed the party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to morph into the party of George McGovern (or more accurately, his most ardent supporters) and Howard Dean”.

The Democrats would not have lost the Massachusetts Senate race had they not overreached as they had since Obama’s inauguration.   They might be better situation politically had they passed a less expensive “stimulus,” proposed more modest health care reform, developed a less aggressive legislative strategy and adopted a more transparent process.

A Coakley campaign memo reported that the candidate’s “lead dropped significantly after the Senate passed health care reform shortly before Christmas and after the Christmas Eve ‘bombing’ incident. Polling showed significant concerns with the actions of Senator Nelson to hold out for a better deal.”  That is, voter anger over the “Cornhusker Kickback” and related payoffs helped position Scott Brown to win the election.

It was the Chicago-style politics, stupid.

You know, the way Rahm Emanuel has learned to manage a crisis.  Perhaps, had he not believed the Democrats could use this crisis to push items long on their wish list, they could have held the Massachusetts Senate seat and be better positioned to hold a lot more seats this fall.

RELATED:

Hill Democrats are demanding that Obama’s brain trust — especially senior adviser David Axelrod and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel — shelve their grand legislative ambitions to focus on the economic issues that will determine the fates of shaky Democratic majorities in both houses.

Comments

  1. I disagree, and so does my good friend John Loudon:

    Like rats fleeing a sinking ship Democrat pundits have been blaming Coakley for running a failed campaign. While it is true that the path to victory checklist laid out by her strategists probably did not include insulting Catholics and Red Sox fans, to blame a Democrat for losing in the bluest blue state in this environment is a convenient oversimplification. Further, it is incredibly insulting for the political class to dismiss the voters as being that petty.
    For their part, Republicans who argued that it is not about Coakley’s gaffs offered up disturbingly similar alternative explanations. Mitt Romney speaking on Fox news said it was:
    Overwhelmingly an outpouring of support for Scott Brown and his vision”.
    No, it is not about Scott Brown. Or his vision.
    This election result is not about personality it is not even about policy. It is more.
    It is true that the poll numbers began the dramatic swing the more the Democrats in Congress pushed the health care bill. Brown was down 9% before the Senate passed the bill. As the Democrats pushing the bill made shocking statements like “they need any bill’ or in the case of Obama advisor David Axelrod opponents of the bill are “insane,” Coakley numbers continued to shrink.
    Health care reform policy was the backdrop. It would be fair to stop there and say the voters rejected the policy of health care reform. I believe it goes a step deeper.
    If Massuchusetts voters looked beyond the personalities and were troubled by the policy of health care, did those blue staters who embraced universal health care in their state, suddenly reject the idea of universal health care done by their fellow Democrats in Congress?
    I believe the voters rejected the operating principles of the Reid, Pelosi, Obama oligarchy. Just as Republican voters lost faith in their leaders for the bloated spending, Democrats and Independents have looked with horror at the principles dominating this Congress that said any health care bill is a good bill. They were shocked when taxing “Cadillac” plans suddenly did not include union Cadillac plans. Most of all they were dismayed that all of these discussions were occuring not in the transparent way, on C-SPAN that candidate Obama had promised, but behind closed doors in smoke filled rooms–probably not cigar smoke, but clove or “medical marijuana” smoke filled rooms. The voters found this disgusting.
    So was this a victory for Republicans?
    Before the GOP celebrates the personality of Brown, or the victory for moderates or begins believing the GOP is back, they need to consider that the same body politic that now distrusts the Democrats is the body politic that reviled the GOP just 14 months ago.
    The Democrats have lost three major battles because the voters saw the incongruity between the stated policies and the actions. Similarly, they rejected Republicans in 2008 because the Party, my Party, dominated by moderates calling themselves “fiscal conservatives,” grew entitlement spending, war spending, and deficits in a way that contradicted their public pronouncements. In short, both parties suffer a huge credibility gap. The American public has not so much rejected personalities or even policies, they have rejected the lack of principles.
    So now begins a new race. A race for credibility. The Party that hears the voters and regains the trust of the American people will be in control in 2011.
    The first step to regaining trust begins with an apology. I have heard a number of hapless GOP incumbents make statements like “we probably spent a little too much”, or “we should have said ‘no’ a little more”, or “except for the war on terror, we only grew Federal spending by 5% on an annualized basis before factoring in inflation,” blah blah blah. Just once I want to hear a Republican leader say this: ”Yes, we spent like (pick your metaphore) a. drunken sailors, b. college girls with a new credit card, c. lotto winners on Rodeo drive, and you took the credit card away from us, you were right, and we are sorry.” The emphasis needs to be on a heart felt, full out mea culpa apology. Admit you did a terrible job carrying out the duties we elected you to do! Admit it, dammit! You overspent. You were wrong. You need to own up to it.
    If the GOP will do that, and beg for another chance, we may be able to save this Country from the economic collapse driven by the leftists elected by the reaction to the wayward Republicans. They need to swear to cap the spending, cut failed programs and guarantee that they will shrink the federal government back to its Constitutional limits.
    If they do that, we just might have a chance to leave this country just as our forefathers left it for us-better.

  2. since DAY ONE, Lanny Davis has defended, day in day out, the same policies that just got the Dems NUKED in MASS.

    I never seen Lanny nor any other big time Dem, including BOB BECKEL & SUSAN ESTRICH , repudiate one mistake or botched policy manuever by the Dems, since THE ONE ASCENDED INTO THE WHITE HOUSE.

    the problem with liberals is they cannot stand THE TRUTH. I have never seen or read or heard so many ad nausem DENIALS over the last 12 months about the fiasco this administration, especially due to the willful ignoring of job depletion, repeatedly occurring over the last year.

    The have said lies & hateful & cruel innuendos against Bush, Palin, Romney et al until they have become the lies they say others supposedly practiced.

    people from all political, social, & age spectrums despise their policies. a strong economy, a strong military, respect for the military and for those who work hard in the civillan work sector, as well as a respect of USA traditions and support of those countries who have been loyal allies. plain simpl timeless successful policies is all anyone wants, with simple innovations where contemporary situations warrant them. but not wholesale destruction.

    these clowns would rather the enemies & the radicals of the USA be coddled & respected rather than the USA’s own loyal & hard working citizens.

    something is rotting in DC and it isnt conservatives or patriots…its the lack of honest liberals who are instead more like gang members, who have lost a sense of working with & sustaining the timeless truths, that builds up & do not tear down, this great country & her resilient peoples.

    nuff said…

  3. Well the 08 primary was all about whether the Democratic Party was going to stay the Clinton, New Democrat, Party or try to go more liberal, younger, Obama Democratic Party. I am not sure why Larry Davis is surprised about this, we saw endless political discussions about the direction the Democratic Party would take if elected Obama or elected Hillary.

    I’m not saying Hillary is less liberal than Obama, at least not on social/domestic issues, but she knew when to change. You could definitely see her shift her tone and her message, even if it was too late. I have a hard time believing the Clinton White House would have not seen the red flags early enough to change course. They are way more about survival and holding on to power than losing it all for the sake of ideology.

  4. I think Dan and Eric are both right, its a combination of a too-radical agenda and very disturbing tactics.

    But I think its important to remember that what we call “overreach” are really Obama’s core values. Obama is NOT a politician first and foremost. First and foremost he is an ideologue, and this agenda is his idea of moderation.

    Remember, he thought he was pulling a fast one on America. He thought he could smooth-talk us into accepting a trojan horse for socialized medicine by calling it competition.

    In other words, he doesn’t have the faintest clue how to moderate. Moderation is itself an anathema to him. He only knows how to lie, and trick and cheat.

    And THAT, I honestly fear, will be the most sinister development of Brown’s victory — I think Obama is going to try to take even more of his agenda underground, abusing his office to install it rather than by passing it through congress — as he has already shown that he is more than willing to do.

  5. #4: “But I think its important to remember that what we call “overreach” are really Obama’s core values. Obama is NOT a politician first and foremost. First and foremost he is an ideologue, and this agenda is his idea of moderation.”

    You nailed it, AE. The Lanny Davis quote is getting a lot of attention, but he doesn’t get it either. The “party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama” morphed into the party of McGovern’s “most ardent supporters”? Bullshit. The scariest thing about the legislation Obama has signed and supports is not the legislation itself–it’s the fact that they are all trojan horses for Obama’s true legislative wish list. We’re talking about a man who was employed as a Constitutional Law professor and is on the record stating his disappointment that the Supreme Court has not taken a more active role in the redistribution of wealth. But liberals are so mesmerized by the fact that Obama is a “light-skinned, articulate Negro,” it all sounds so wise and enlightened and hopey and changey. Obama has shown dreamy-eyed, rich, white liberals like Lanny Davis EXACTLY who he is (and who he learned it from, i.e., Wright, Ayers, etc.) but their guilt-complexes and paralyzing fear of being called racists prevents them from doing anything but smiling, applauding, and tearing-up. It’s surreal.

  7. Lanny Davis is full of crap.

    The party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama is the party of George McGovern and Howard Dean — and their most ardent supporters. It has been for decades.

    No one forced the Democrats to behave as they have since January 2009. But that behavior is of a piece with previous behavior: politicizing the war with the terrorists, supporting a president who committed perjury, savaging a judicial nominee for correctly viewing Roe v. Wade as unconstitutional. Everything they do is designed to enhance their own power and that of their leftists supporters.

  8. It occured to me yesterday… we know Democrats knowingly, intentionally undermined their own nation at war for political gain.

    We also know Democrats blocked reform of Fannie and Freddie despite dozens of warnings from Bush, Republicans, and top economists including Alan Greenspan that failing to reform F&F would result in a financial crisis exactly like the one we had.

    We also know that Democrats have been using the economic disaster to push through their totally unrelated ideological agenda while doing nothing to help people who are really suffering.

    Nonetheless, it never even occurred to me until yesterday that Democrats were doing anything but being ignorant and ideological when they blocked Fannie and Freddie reforms.

    Did they block Fannie and Freddie reforms KNOWING that the testimony they heard was probably correct? Did they intentionally allow this disaster to happen because they thought they could blame it on Bush and use it to get back in power?