TIME’s Halperin: Forget What I Wrote Before, There’s Gonna be a Tsunami
Mark Halperin: Voters are going to the polls to repudiate almost everything I was for over the last 20 months.
52 days from the November elections, Mark Halperin finally throws in the towel and says that dreaded “t” word: tsunami. As in, an electoral result that stands to wash away much of what Halperin has advocated for in the pages of TIME.
DBKP STARTED TALKING ELECTORAL TSUNAMI ON DECEMBER 23, 2009
WHAT WAS MARK HALPERIN SAYING THEN?
If you’ve lost TIME‘s Mark Halperin, Democrats may as well pack it in.
Countdown to the Coming Republican Tsunami:
To be sure, there are some remaining acts to play out. Democrats now have new economic policies to flaunt. The President is traveling this week to key political states and holding a Friday press conference, where he will command the stage and can brandish his masterful charisma, intellect and endurance. Some of the anti-Establishment Republican nominees in important races might eventually be disqualified in the minds of voters as unacceptable alternatives. And the country is mere days away from the biannual craze of media speculation about various potential game-changing “October surprises.”
In the end, Democrats could temper major losses by winning a handful of symbolically and substantively important signature races, such as the gubernatorial contests in Ohio, California and Florida. But to paraphrase Churchill, it’s clear that 2010 is going to be a whopper of a Republican year. All that’s left is to determine just how cataclysmic it will be.
Gee, when did DBKP first start using the word “tsunami” to describe the coming voter backlash against arrogant Democrat/Obama policies?
Back before Scott Brown: on December 23, 2009. That was when the “ram it down your throat” tactics were exposed for all Americans to see during the health care fiasco.
2010 Elections: The 2010 Electoral Tsunami is Coming
“Few Democrats understand the depth and intensity of opposition that exists toward them and their agenda, especially regarding health care. Passage of this bill will only heighten the depth and intensity of the opposition. We’re seeing a political tsunami in the making, and passage of health-care legislation would only add to its size and force.“
–Peter Wehner, The Health-Care BacklashCongressional Democrats are an agile, nimble group: they’re patting each other on the back as they whistle past an 2010 electoral graveyard of their own making.
Presidential advisers have been making the rounds, as has the President, talking about the “bounce” the perpetrators of their health care bill will receive. They are right: a great many of them will get a “bounce”.
But, it will not be the “bounce” they are expecting: it will be a bounce from their high-paying, pontificating, sneer-at-the-constituent jobs they hold now.
President Obama got his first bounce in the polls in Rasmussen’s first daily tracking numbers since the 60th vote for health care was secured: he hit a new low at -21. There will bigger such “bounces” to come.
2010 will be an electoral tsunami. The now-voiceless American electorate will finally speak to those who didn’t heed the concerns voiced in countless emails, phone calls, faxes and town halls.
An electoral tsunami is coming in 2010. It will hit Congress and its corrupt members and will wash them away. And if the people elected in 2010 fall into the ways of these current members, they’ll be gone in 2012.
As will our current president and his advisers.
Ordinary Americans voicing their concerns were slandered by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other in what has become an Imperial Congress. These Americans were called “an angry mob”. Americans have been listening to this type of talk from Congress for months.
In 2010, it will finally be time for Americans to talk back–at the voting booth.
While we were predicting an electoral tsunami as a result of the health care bill, what was Mark Halperin saying then?
On December 13, Halperin posted about the President giving himself a “Solid B+”
President rates his own first year in office as a B+ “because of the things that are undone” on Oprah special Sunday.
Adds “If we get health care done, I’d move it to an A-minus.”
On December 17, Halperin posted this statement by Bill Clinton on health care on his little fiefdom at TIME, The Page.
New York, NY – “America stands at a historic crossroads. At last, we are close to making real health insurance reform a reality. We face one critical, final choice, between action and inaction. We know where the path of inaction leads to: more uninsured Americans, more families struggling to keep up with skyrocketing premiums, higher federal budget deficits, and health costs so much higher than any other country’s they will cripple us economically.
Our only responsible choice is the path of action. Does this bill read exactly how I would write it? No. Does it contain everything everyone wants? Of course not. But America can’t afford to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
And this is a good bill: it increases the security of those who already have insurance and gives every American access to affordable coverage; and contains comprehensive efforts to control costs and improve quality, with more information on best practices, and comparative costs and results. The bill will shift the power away from the insurance companies and into the hands of consumers.
Take it from someone who knows: these chances don’t come around every day. Allowing this effort to fall short now would be a colossal blunder — both politically for our party and, far more important, for the physical, fiscal, and economic health of our country.”
As recently as March 2010, Halperin was still looking at the failure of ObamaCare as a political failure for Obama.
And now health reform stands as another crucial juncture. If the President fails to win the upcoming series of congressional votes that are designed to get health care legislation to his desk, it will be a calamitous failure for his presidency and for him personally, dwarfing the potholes he has hit during his first bumpy year in office. Indeed, the notion of defeat is so unthinkable for his Administration that Obama’s foremost argument in rounding up support in the House and Senate is a panoptic imperative: health care is too important — politically and substantively — to fail. Should the effort collapse, regaining political traction would be nigh impossible any time soon, if ever. And a potential comeback would be in further jeopardy because Obama is so unaccustomed to losing.
Obama has faced a strong united front in recent months from Republicans in Congress, on cable TV and talk radio and across the country who have shown discipline in rallying around a common message about the flaws in the Democrats’ health care gambit. So he still has a lot of work to do this week. To avoid a failure of unimaginable consequences, the President needs to inspire equivalent unity within his own party. It won’t be easy to herd Congress’s collection of tense, defensive, anxious Democrats, distracted by tough re-election bids and the grim disapproval of an angry electorate. But as you watch the taut health care endgame, just remember that there is a reason we don’t know much about how Barack Obama handles losing: it almost never happens.
That was Halperin in March, fretting that the failure to pass ObamaCare was a failure for Obama and the Democrats. How quaint those words seem just 6 months later.
52 days before the November 2, 2010 election, Mark Halperin finally gets it–maybe.
Does Hope and Change finally walk the halls of Halperin’s TIME?
by Mondo Frazier
images: dbkp file; iOTW
