Now Dems have to race to the middle

Michael Smerconish: Now Dems have to race to the middle
1.21.10
By Michael Smerconish - Daily News
Philadelphia Daily News
Daily News Opinion Columnist

STOP ME if you've heard this before.

A telegenic state senator with an attractive wife, two daughters and an intriguing personal narrative is elected to the U.S. Senate.
His parents separated when he was young, and he spent parts of his childhood living with his grandparents. He plays basketball, works out religiously and keeps himself in impeccable shape. He studied law in Boston and appeared shirtless in tabloids.

His election immediately puts him on the national radar, so he runs for president before the completion of his first term, taking the nation by storm.

Barack Obama?

No, Scott Brown.

Don't laugh. The irony in the Bay State is that the insurgent GOP victory now causing President Obama so much consternation is one that bears a striking resemblance to his own path to the White House - right down to the central campaign theme of "change."

And here's what I'm wondering after Brown's out-of-nowhere rise to the Senate: Where has the Republican Party been hiding this guy, and how many more of him are there?

After all, the final margin - Scott's 52 percent to state Attorney General Martha Coakley's 47 percent - looks a lot like the president's general-election victory in 2008.

So does the geography of that tally. Obama ran hard in suburban communities across the country and won 50 percent of the voters from those areas. In Massachusetts on Tuesday, Brown maximized votes from independents in the suburbs outside Boston, while the Democratic share of the vote dropped in every town across the state.

That a little-known Republican state legislator like Brown could get elected in a state where independents make up a majority of the electorate (51.2 percent) is evidence an ability to blur party lines and shake up traditional voting patterns - much like Obama did little more than a year ago. One underappreciated reason for this success - the social issues that have proved so divisive for the GOP were a nonissue in this race. This campaign was all about the pocketbook.

But perhaps most striking is the similar state in which Obama and now Brown have left their opponents.

In the wake of President Obama's inauguration last year, I lamented in writing that "the GOP continues to flounder onward with the same irredeemable leaders touting the same exclusionary politics. Limbaugh, Gingrich, and Palin are important voices for the base (only). But they're the wrong people to lead the GOP out of the political badlands."

Today, I'm noting sentiments like that expressed by Indiana Sen. (and almost-vice presidential nominee) Evan Bayh: "The only [way] we are able to govern successfully in this country is by liberals and progressives making common cause with independents and moderates," he told ABC News. "Whenever you have just the furthest left elements of the Dem party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country - that's not going to work too well."

Consider, too, the words that Lanny Davis, special counsel to President Clinton between 1996 and 1998, published in the Wall Street Journal the morning after Brown's victory: "We liberals need to reclaim the Democratic Party with the New Democrat positions of Bill Clinton and the New Politics/bipartisan aspirations of Barack Obama - a party that is willing to meet halfway with conservatives and Republicans even if that means only step-by-step reforms on health care and other issues that do not necessarily involve big-government solutions."

My sense is that the president will heed those words, and moderate and Blue Dog elements of his party will follow suit. After all, the look and feel of Scott Brown's stunning and sudden rise to national political prominence isn't new to them. They wrote the book on it just 14 months ago.

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.smerconish.com.