Morning Must Reads — Mid-Atlantic meltdown

The elections were not a referendum on Obama, but perhaps on his party’s policies and priorities and certainly were a test of the president’s ability to help fellow Democrats in tough times.

Whether Republicans can press the advantage into 2010 is an open question, illustrated by the loss in a New York House race caused by friction between base voters and some party leaders.

But as writers Jonathan Martin and John Harris show, the immediate effects of the elections on the president’s agenda will be more clear:

“‘Any Democrat from a border or Southern or even a rural district has got to take a deep breath and look for some ways to get some distance from from Obama,’ [former Republican Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, an outspoken moderate who is often frustrated by his party’s rightward tilt] said.”

Wall Street Journal — Democrat Wins New York House Race

It will be Republican Party leaders, officeholders, and candidates who take the strongest cues from the party’s loss in an upstate New York congressional race.

To avoid defeats like the one handed to them by Democrat Bill Owens, the party will move to placate the small-government populists and try to stoke their anti-incumbent attitudes without getting burned.

Had upstate New York party elders chosen someone less liberal than Dede Scozzafava (pro-union, pro-stimulus, pro-bailout, endorsed by the state ACORNite party) Tuesday night would have been an unalloyed success for their party.

That’s the message establishment Republicans will take from the defeat of Conservative Party candidate — backed by the national GOP for three days — Doug Hoffman.

Writer Anton Troianovski has the details from Saranac Lake:

“‘I just got off the phone with Bill Owens, and I congratulated on his win tonight and I told him I would be glad to work with him to help rebuild the economy of the North Country,’ Mr. Hoffman said. ‘Most importantly this is only one fight in the battle, people, lets keep the fight going, let’s make sure that our voices are heard and that we stand up.’”

Wall Street Journal — Crist Faces Test From Right in Bid for Senate

Most establishment Republicans can get with the angry-at-Washington program.

But there will be some races where even an opportunist won’t be able to climb all the way down.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist dove into President Obama’s post-partisan pool head-first early this year and found out too late that the water was only an inch deep.

Unpopular decisions kept up – appointing a retainer to warm a Senate seat, etc. – and Crist has lost 20 points in approval overall and is rather dire shape among Republicans. Florida’s young former House Speaker Marco Rubio, once a long-shot to beat Crist for the GOP nomination for the Senate, is gaining ground, propelled by the outrage of the tea party team at Crists’ moves.

An unimpressive Democratic frontrunner makes the race irresistible to the anti-establishment wing of the GOP.

Thanks to writer Peter Wallstein for a timely look at a key race:

“FreedomWorks, a conservative group led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, has identified the Florida race as the conservative movement’s biggest primary prize of 2010. It is laying plans to marshal thousands of volunteers to target GOP voters with charts contrasting Messrs. Crist and Rubio on fiscal issues.

‘If you take a look at the people who are committed in that race, it’s the same cast of characters, all the Republican establishment that haven’t spent a great deal of time on the ground in the state,’ Mr. Armey said.”

Washington Post — Senate moderates flex muscle on health-care bill


With Harry Reid still sounding unwilling to ask his members to walk the plank on health care as Nancy Pelosi seems itching to do, each step of the process in the upper chamber looks to be agonizing, made more difficult by Tuesday’s results.

To even get the measure on the floor, Reid needs Democratic moderates to go along and they’re anxious about any kind of new government insurance plan, especially since the House bill is looking more and more extreme. Moderates want a better bargaining position when the conference negotiations begin.

Writers Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery explain:

“Moderates have raised numerous concerns about aspects of the bill, including the public insurance option that liberals persuaded Reid to add last week. Although Reid included an “opt out” provision for states that don’t want to participate, many moderate Democrats prefer a “trigger” mechanism, proposed by their lone Republican ally, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine). Her approach would allow government-backed coverage only in states where private insurers fail to offer broadly affordable plans.

The list of complaints stretches on: Some senators, including Mary Landrieu (D-La.), want to do more to protect small businesses. Sen Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) has sought to shield the medical-device manufacturers in his state from hefty fees. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) dislikes provisions that would lift federal antitrust protections for insurance companies and would create a new government insurance program for long-term care.

Resolving such disputes could take weeks, making it increasingly unlikely that President Obama will meet his goal of signing a health-care bill by Christmas.”

Washington Post — Merkel urges Congress to act on climate


Will Obama go back to Copenhagen next month for Kyoto II?

As Examiner colleague Susan Ferrechio explains there is no appetite among moderate members of the Senate to take up Barbara Boxer and John Kerry’s elephantine global warming legislation.

German Prime Minister Angela Merkel gave Congress a good talking to about carbon emissions on Tuesday as part of her visit to try to get Obama pumped up about Copenhagen – I mean he’s going to Oslo next month to pick up his Nobel Prize. Why not stop by, have a little akvavit, create a new global governance for industrial activity?

But with climate change the easiest part of his three-part, year-one agenda to ditch and no love in Congress, Obama is probably not too stoked.

Writer Juliet Eilperin was there:

“While the entire Democratic side gave those remarks a standing ovation, most Republicans — including key swing voters, such as Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.) — remained in their seats. When Merkel added that curbing greenhouse gas emissions would spur growth in “innovative” jobs worldwide, the same partisan divide marked lawmakers’ reaction.

Merkel tried to assuage lawmakers’ concerns that any agreement coming out of international climate talks in Copenhagen next month would not include binding commitments from China and India, saying those nations will make serious emissions cuts once the leaders of industrialized nations “show ourselves ready to adopt binding commitments.”

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