It’s about Jobs – It’s about Time

It’s about Jobs – It’s about Time

The vast majority of pundits and politicos are dead wrong about the message being sent to Washington by the voters of Massachusetts Tuesday.

The real message is simply this – it’s about jobs! The incumbents, both Democrats AND Republicans, are not doing enough to get the jobless rate down from 10% to 5%. Until the jobless rate reaches 5% again, you will see incumbent after incumbent being defeated or at least frightened by the voters of this country pounding this message into their thick skulls.

The incumbents are battling over health care instead of getting voters jobs.
The incumbents are worrying about illegal immigration instead of getting voters jobs.
The incumbents are bailing out fat cats instead of getting voters jobs.
The incumbents are continuing two wars instead of getting voters jobs.
The incumbents are sweating climate change instead of getting voters jobs.
The incumbents are pushing the greening of energy instead of getting voters jobs.
The incumbents are spending the voters’ grandchildren’s money instead of getting voters jobs.
The incumbents are plunging the country into ever deeper debt instead of getting voters jobs.
The incumbents are watching U.S. jobs go overseas instead of getting voters jobs.
The incumbents are expanding ugly partisan politics instead of getting voters jobs.
The incumbents are growing ever more arrogant (if that is even possible) instead of getting voters jobs.

This is not the Republicans versus the Democrats. This is the Incumbents versus The Voters.
Martha Coakley was a terrible candidate. She was not an incumbent, but she was not the least bit unusual. She and the Democratic Party in Massachusetts assumed this senate seat was hers. It was hers to lose and she did.

Politicians are amazingly unresponsive to the people who vote them in and can - and increasingly do - vote them out. Incumbents – especially multi-term incumbents – continue to demonstrate the shocking viewpoint that the voters just don’t get it; and we will do whatever we choose to do for them because we know better. We are untouchable. If they continue to push what the voters don’t want without paying the least bit of attention to the voters – the incumbents will pay with their own jobs.

Get the American voters jobs or you lose yours!

So the questions that the voters want answered are these:
· Can Washington hear the American voter?
· Will Washington hear the American voter?
· What if anything will they do with the very clear message?
· How long will it take for jobs to move to Job One?
· When will they start listening to the voters desires about health care?
· Just how big will the outsider landslide be in November 2010?
· When – if ever - will Washington politicians finally ‘get it’?
~~ Dwight M. Lee

The Arrogance of the Left

The Arrogance of the Left

The shocking plunge of Martha Coakley’s credibility as a candidate in the U.S. Senate contest between Democrat Coakley, the state's attorney general, and Republican Scott Brown, 30-point dark horse underdog challenger in the campaign for the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated upon the death of Ted Kennedy, is proof of the arrogance of the Left in America.

Candidate Coakley lost just slightly more credibility every time she opened her mouth as when she chose not to speak. Her conceit has quickly become legend.

What do you want me to do, shake hands with the crowd in the cold in front of Fenway Park? She asked incredulously, shortly after an NHL hockey game was played there. Fans thought nothing of sitting for hours in the cold to watch a game with few implications. Not nearly as many implications as the shocking arrogance of Coakley’s comment, and her abject lack of interest in communing with the people of Massachusetts.

Schilling is a Yankee fan, misspoke Coakley to an incredulous interviewer in one of dozens of the misguided candidate’s blurts demonstrative of her terminal foot-in-mouth disease. Even Rumpelstiltskin knows Schilling, the retired Red Sox hurler, hisses at the Evil NY Major League Baseball Empire as enthusiastically as any rabid Sox fan in New England.

Yes, Martha “Emelda Marcos” Coakley lost this race equally as much as Scott “pin-up boy” Brown won it with his unceasingly hard work attempting to become better known to the voters. The arrogant Left lost this race as surely as the surging rebound Right won. The vote was as much against Coakley as it was for Brown. It was as much against the elitism of the left as it was in favor of the cynicism of the right.

If three months ago any Massachusetts Republican had told any Democrat that Coakley would plummet as much in the polls as she did – the laughter would still be reverberating from Pittsfield to P-town.

If nine months ago anyone had told anyone that the Obama-Democrats would plummet as much in power, pull, and popularity as the president and his supporters have in under a year – the laughter would still be reverberating throughout the country from Obama’s Hawaii to Kennedy’s compound on the Cape.

Sports are as vital a part of the landscape and character of greater Boston, and all of New England for that matter, as their pride in the fact that several hundred years ago the Tea Party concept was invented here. Coakley has one last chance with the voters of Massachusetts. She can be a good sport in accepting her loss as her own failure. Massachusetts sports fans know failure intimately – much more intimately than they ever came to know candidate Coakley – and that in the end was her greatest failure. She simply didn’t care to share herself with the only people who matter in this unique country – its citizens.

Next will come the post mortems. Pundits from all sides will bounce this result around in the air like a hacky sack. But the real adventure in the purely American sport of politics will be to see several things:
· What will the Republicans do with this exhilarating win?
· How long and how high will their rise be?
· How soon will they screw up the opportunity?
· Just how soon will the ferris wheel find the opposing parties curling back around again?
· And at what point will we all be saying “Here we go again”?

~~ Dwight M. Lee