"I implore my fellow hippie-commie-socialists to relax and take a breath" [View all]

[babylonsister]

http://www.politicalgarbagechute.com/susan-rice-collateral-damage/

Susan Rice: Collateral Damage
December 6, 2012
by James Schlarmann

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Many of us on the left feel that Kerry should have been wrapping up his second term right about now. So if he could have been the country’s chief executive officer, he most certainly can hold down a post that requires much of the same political savvy and acumen that the Oval Office requires. But I know, Democrats have one major worry about Kerry vacating his seat in the Senate: Scott Brown. I implore my fellow hippie-commie-socialists to relax and take a breath though.

To just assume that Scott Brown will be re-elected to Kerry’s empty seat I think is a paranoid assumption to make. We were all so worried that Mitt Romney would ride a tidal wave of Koch and Adelson cash into the White House, and yet we all saw the pictures of the Romney Family Thanksgiving, and I didn’t see a whole lot of jubilation in Mitt’s eyes. Now, maybe we dodged a bullet and got lucky. God knows with Citizens United still on the books, outside money could certainly sweep in and push Brown in, but let’s all just chill out a second, okay?

Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren ran a tough, gritty campaign and beat the now outgoing Brown by over seven points. It would be absolutely silly to assume that another Democratic challenger would be taken to lunch by Brown. Clearly the people of Massachusetts looked up from their bowls of chowder and their cream pies (that’s all you New Englanders eat, right?) and said to themselves, “This Scott Brown guy is a total asshole.” So they voted him out. I have a feeling that as long as the Democrats don’t put up Satan McHatesMinorities that they could probably run a similar campaign and thrash Brown again.

Is it a guarantee? No, of course it isn’t. But there are no guarantees in politics. That being said, the momentum in Massachusetts right now is very blue. Appointing Kerry to the Secretary of State seat will surely open up a hotly contested campaign, but given that the final tallies between Warren (who will surely campaign hard for whomever is going for the other seat) and Brown weren’t really all that close, I can’t say I’d call Brown a shoe-in at all. At this point he’s a one-term Senator who got ousted by his constituents after cozying up to the Tea Party too much, despite declaring himself “independent.” My point is that Scott Brown is no longer someone to be feared, even in the Citizens United world. Frankly, if you think Democratic SuperPACs wouldn’t flood the state with money in the race to replace Kerry, you’re probably a bit too naive.

If President Obama cuts Ambassador Rice loose now, yes he is essentially bowing to pressure from the Republicans. As someone who was watched the party that once a long, long time ago I was part of jettison logic, reality and truth in favor of sycophancy, reality-deprivation and outright lies, that’s not a very palatable idea. However, it does happen from time to time that politics claims casualties. And in letting Ambassador Rice off the hook now, he can also focus all his energies squarely on painting the GOP further into their corner on the Fiscal Cliff. Nobody outside the Beltway or Conservative MediaLand thinks Benghazi is a scandal. It was a tragedy. But instead of focusing on the intelligence community’s glaring issues and failures, the GOP is hyper-fixating on Ms. Rice. That can’t be stopped, and sometimes you have to give a little ground in order to take the territory as a whole. It’s time for President Obama to yield now so that he may reap the bigger rewards later.

And there’s nothing wrong with Secretary of State John Kerry. It actually has a very nice ring to it.