Scott Brown: Win Sends "Powerful Message"

Scott Brown: Win Sends "Powerful Message"
Newly Elected Massachusetts Senator Says Obama Should "Recalibrate How He Wants to Govern"
Obama: Anger management and outrage

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama gets it, both he and the White House are saying todayhe gets the "anger and frustration" exposed by the special election in Massachusetts that cost his party a filibuster-proof Senate.

That said, a reporter asked the White House today: "When does President Obama get angry?"

"I've seen.... uh, look...'" replied a cautious press secretary, who appeared interested in dispelling the "No-drama" myth surrounding a cool and collected president but not in sharing any family secrets.

The press, spokesman Robert Gibbs noted, has pointed out that "the president seemed exercised' when he has spoken of the excesses of Wall Street. That gets the people going, Gibbs said, and it gets the president going, too.

"I can assure the American people that there are things that get him going," Gibbs said of Obama, adding. "You don't see the president pounding on the desk for the sake of political theater."

Does Mass. Result Imperil Democratic Majorities?

What does last night's big upset by the GOP in Massachusetts portend for the 2010 midterm elections? The Democrats have lost their filibuster-proof super-majority in the Senate, and could be losing quite a few more seats in both the Senate and the House come November. Amy Walter, editor in chief of Hotline, offers her insight.

Massachusetts: Revolt of the middle

GOP's Scott Brown Wins Mass. Senate Race
GOP Candidate, a Dark Horse a Month Ago, Represents Crucial 41st Senate Vote for Republicans
Massachusetts: Revolt of the middle

by Mark Silva and updated

A little over a year ago, President Barack Obama carried Massachusetts by about 25 percentage points in an election that signalled a readiness for "change '' -- yet about what one would expect from the only state tthat backed George McGovern in 1972.

Less than one month ago, Martha Coakley, the Democratic attorney general in Massachusetts, held an apparent 15-percentage point advantage in her contest with Republican state Sen. Scott Brown in a special election for the Senate seat of the late and long-serving Sen. Edward M. Kennedy -- about what one would expect in a state that sent Kennedy to Washington for nearly five decades.

Yet tonight, the Bay State went Republican.

This, however, is not a tale of Democrats versus Republicans.

This is a story about the vast middle ground of voters who have no real use for either party. Tonight, they rejected the party in power.

They voted for "change.''

Massachusetts: This is a state where one's political affiliation, like one's religion, or one's ethnicity, might as well have been embossed in one's birth certificate in the old days.

In the new day, more than 2 million of Massachusetts' registered voters are "unenrolled'' in any political party -- more than the roughly 1.5 million registered Democratic, more than the roughly 500,000 registered Republican.

This much is clear: Republicans did not elect Brown, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate.

The unenrolled did.

The implication for the president's party is less clear.

It will be tempting for the president's party to write off the loss in Massachusetts as a lesson in bad campaigning: Coakley's lackadaisacal, take-it-for-granted approach to the race until, too late, recognzing the trouble she was in and calling on the president to help bail her out. But Brown and his pickup truck didn't come from nowhere.

It will be much easier for voters, particulary all of those middle-ground, unenrolled voters whom national polls have portrayed as moving to the right during the past year, to take the Massachusetts vote as a measure of how unhappy Americans are with an agenda that is notable for one thing: Big spending.

Everything that Obama has promoted during his first year in ofice -- an anniversary arriving the day after the election in Massachusetts -- has relied upon big spending. The $787-billion economic stimulus. The $1-trillion-or-so, depending on whose version prevails, health-care bill. The cap-and-trade energy bill. And now, even education, albeit a mere $1.35-billion price tag on Obama's plan to expand the "Race to the Top."

And then there are the wars.

Brown campaigned, at the end, as "the 41th vote'' for the Republicans in the Senate -- a bloc sufficient to stop the Democratic agenda in its trakcs. But he is not so much the GOP's 41st vote as he is the middle-ground's key vote.

The president, whose party faces midterm congressional elections in November that threaten an even deeper erosion of his party's control over Congress, will have to assess in coming days how seriously he takes the message of the unenrolled in Massachusetts. He can take advantage of a slow certification of the vote in the Bay State to propel his health-care legislation in the waning days of a Democratic super-majority. He can push the Senate's passed bill through the House.

Yet, that too, could carry a toll.

The president telephoned both of the Senate contenders tonight. He told Brown, the newest and Republican member of the Senate that he looks forward to working with him.

The president will not have a lot of time to reframe his agenda in the terms of the benefits that Americans stand to gain from it, as opposed to what it will cost them. But if there is any hope for the president's agenda in the coming months, it will take some recasting.

Around the nation, the unenrolled are waiting to vote this fall.

California Dreaming? Governor To Ask Feds For Funds

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says California residents pay more in federal taxes than they receive. He travels to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to make a long-shot request for $7 billion in new federal money for his state.

Massachusetts Election Brings High Turnout
Republican Scott Brown, Democrat Martha Coakley in Tight Senate Battle that Could Alter Balance of Power
White House: 'Frustration and anger' real

by Mark Silva

The White House, for now, is avoiding any post-mortem analysis of the special election in Massachusetts.

And mortem could be the operative word, as it applies to the White House's agenda, if the vote goes the way Republicans hope it will in Massachusetts

At the same time, the administration is providing something of a preview of how it is likely to attempt to explain any loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat, the 60-vote hold that the party has in the Senate, and with that much of the president's hopes for a successful domestic agenda this year

"We're going to have plenty of time to get into the back and forth of all this,'' Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said just now, here at the White House press briefing. "I'd prefer to do that when we know what the result is...

"We'll have a chance to discuss the outcome of the election when we know the outcome of the election,'' Gibbs said with a sober tone and insistence on averting any debate at this stage. "I think there is, obviously, and there isn't something that's known simply because there is an election in one state, I think there is a trremendous amount of upset and anger in this country about where we are economically...

"In many ways, we're here because of that upset and anger,'' Gibbs said of the Obama administration. "I think the president, who reads letters from people everyday, will be in Ohio doing a town-hall meeting later this week -- I think there is no doubt that people will express anger and frustration about where we are...'

"The president understands that there is frustration out there, and is frustrated himsef.''

The White House, however, is not ready to concede its health-care agenda to a potential loss in Massachusetts and loss of the 60th Senate vote. The president wants health care passed today, Gibbs said, and he will want it passed tomorrow.

Gibbs alllowed, too, that the president himself has voiced some surprise at how close today's special election appeared to be in a reliably Democratic state. "He was both surprised and frustrated,'' Gibbs said of Obama -- "not pleased.''

7 Things At Stake In Massachusetts Senate Race

The outcome of Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts has turned into a cliffhanger, with Democrats facing the possible loss of a Senate seat held by Kennedys for nearly 60 years. From the Obama agenda to the Tea Party's momentum, here's a look at what's at stake.

Obama Volunteers on MLK Day
Obama Joins Honors for Slain Civil Rights Leader
Obama's first-year approval: 57 percent

by Mark Silva

Only one president in modern times has ended his first year in office with lower approvalviewed as an average for the yearthan the rating with which President Obama concludes his year.

Bill Clinton.

In the Gallup Poll's measures of job approval since the 1950s, Clinton's average approval during his first year was 49 percent.

With an average first-year approval of 57 percent, Gallup reports today, Obama ties Ronald Reagan for second-lowest first-year average.

It's important to remember in this context that both Clinton and Reagan went on to win second terms.

It' may not be so much Obama's first year, however, as it is his second year that presents a fuller picture of the president's performance..

It starts with Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts, on the eve of the president's anniversary in office. If pre-election polls are rightand special elections, with notoriously low voter-turnout, are difficult to predictthe president's party is in trouble there.

Losing the seat of the late and longtime senator from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, champion of the health-care reforms which Obama is now attempting to push through Congress, will certainly be taken as a comment on the presidency itself. Obama put his chips on the table with an 11th-hour campaign appearance in Boston.

Throughout the country, independent voters who have a way of deciding contests have grown restless during the past yearand any revolt in Massachusetts, the bluest of blue states, will be seen as an ominous precursor of the 2010 midterm elections.

It's not only health-care that's at stake for Obama this week. It's financial regulation, energy legislation, immigration reform and more, an ambitious domestic agenda for which a second-year president heading into volatile midterm elections will need all the help he can get.

Saving that seat, however, won't get the president's party out of the woods. Even if Democrats can hold their 60-vote grip on the Senate, pushing the final agreement that leaders reach on health-care through the Congress could be the highest hurdle Obama has faced yet.

It's not so much popularity as performance that clinches a second term.

Clinton was elected with less than 50 percent of the vote during his first bid for officebenefitting from the vote-splitting presence of the third-party Ross Perot candidacy. Obama was elected with an Electoral College landslide, albeit a modest majority of the popular vote.

George W. Bush was elected without the majority of the popular vote his first time running, yet, thanks largely to the impact that the attacks of 9/11 had on the public's view of him after a year in office, he enjoyed an average approval rating of 68 percent his first year. Public concern for national security carried him to a second term.

First-year measures of popularity may not amount to much in the long run. Performance, however, counts. And the outcome of this week's special election in the Bay State, at the threshold of Obama's second year in office, will have a great bearing on this president's performance the rest of this year.

Opponents Threaten Court Battle On Health Mandate

A major component of the health bills grinding through Congress right now is a new requirement that nearly everyone buy health insurance — a so-called individual mandate. But conservatives who oppose the health care overhaul have threatened to challenge this mandate on constitutional grounds.

Video: Obama Remembers Dr. King
President Obama spoke at services at the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church in Washington, remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and how faith has guided him through troubling times.
Obama: Faith keeps him calm

by Mark Silva and updated with service

President Barack Obama, speaking today from the pulpit of a church where the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sometimes spoke, called on the congregation to rally around the spirit which had helped their ancestors pursue a long road to freedom.

"It's that progress that allowed me to be here today,'' said Obama, the first African American president.

The president, who doesn't frequently attend Sunday church services in Washington and has not found a permanent congregation for his family in the capital, joined in the services this morning at the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church. The president arrived with First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha.

The church, founded in 1866 by seven freed slaves, originally was known as the Fifth Baptist Church of Washington, DC.

"It feels like a family,'' Obama told the congregation.

There are at least a couple of occasions which might have prompted today's outing -- the deaths of tens of thousands of Haitians in an earthquake which has shaken all of the Americas, as well as the birthday of the slain civil rights leader, King, whose birthday is celebrated on Monday with a national holiday.

"We gather here on the Sabbath at a time of extreme difficulty for our nation and the world,'' the president said, speaking much like a preacher from the church pulpit. "We are not here just to ask the Lord for his blessing. We're also here to call on the memory of one of his servants, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.''

Obama said he had come to "a church founded by freed slaves... whose congregants set out for marches... from whose sanctuary King himself would sermonize from time to time.''

This was as much of a sermon as it was a speech. King "trusted God,'' the president said. "He had faith that God would make a way out of now way...

"Folks ask me sometimes, 'Why do you look so calm?'' Obama said on a particularly personal note, with his voice rising in a crescendo.

"I have a confession to make here,'' he said. "There are times when I am not so calm... There are times when the words spoken about me hurt. There are times when the barbs hurt... During that time, it is faith that brings me calm.''

With a recitation of the history of the modern civil rights moment, the president spoke today of the "despair about whether the movement they had placed so many of their hopes... could actually deliver on its promise...

"Here we are more than a half century later, once again facing the challenges of a new age... once again marching toward an unknown new future,'' Obama said.

"We've inherited the progress of unjust laws which are now overturned...
We've enjoyed the fruits of prejudice and bigotry being lifted.... From human hearts.''
Noting that this progress had made his own election possible, Obama said: "There were some who said that somehow we had entered into a post-racial Americaall of those problems would be solved... There were some who said we had entered into an era of post-partisanshipthat didn't work out so well...

"We know the promise of that moment has not been fully fulfilled,'' the president told the congregation.

This is a president who hasn't quickly found a new sanctuary for his family in a town far from home, a town where the president's former longtime association with one church -- particularly one pastor -- became a problem for his campaign for the White House.

Since severing his ties with the United Trinity Church of Christ in Chicago where the now-retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered sermons which, by the president's own admission, were racially "incendiary,'' Obama has been in search of a new church.

Time magazine once reported that the Obamas had chosen the chapel at Camp David, the Maryland mountain retreat that presidents have used since the 1950s. The White House said Time got the story wrong.

Observers thought the president had signaled his intentions in visiting the little St. John's church across the park across the street from the White House, a sanctuary that his predecessor often used. But Obama hasn't attended services there very much.

"Folks are wondering, where do we go from here?'' Obama said to a larger question about economic hardships today.

"Yes, we're passing through a hard winterit's the hardest in some time,'' Obama said. "But let's always remember that, as a people, the American people, we've weathered some hard winters before.''

Obama cited the slaves who escaped via the Underground Railroad"they weathered a hard winter.''

"What we need to do is to just ask what lessons we can learn from those earlier generations,'' Obama said. "Let us, in this Joshua Generation learn how that Moses Generation overcame.... They did so by remaining firm in their resolve...

"The economy is growing again,'' Obama said. "We are making progress.''

The president also made a pitch for his health-care initiative, to applause from the congregation. "This will be a victory not for Democrats,'' he said. "This will be a victory for decency and dignity.''

It is "tempting,'' Obama said, "to give up on the political process... Progress is possible. Don't give up on voting. Don't give up on advocacy. Don't give up on activism.''

As King had said, Obama said today, "progress must come from within.'' Obama, noting that people are wont to say that he is addressing the black community on occasions such as this, said, "No, no, no -- I'm talking to the American community.''

Video: Trying to Keep Haiti Alive

Video: Trying to Keep Haiti Alive
Some reports indicate that the death toll could reach over 100,000 in Haiti. CBS News' Jeff Glor, Kelly Cobiella, and David Martin provide coverage of this historic disaster.
Obama, Bush, Clinton: U.S., Haitian unity

by Mark Silva

Three presidents from opposing parties stood united outside the White House this morning to signal the launch of an aggressive private fundraising drive for the earthquake-stricken nation of Haiti.

"These two leaders send an unmistakable message to the people of Haiti and the world,'' Obama said of the former presidents flanking him in the Rose Garden. "In a moment of need, the United States stands united.''

Obama, in turning to his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, and Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton, has borrowed a page from the Bush playbook in the aftermath of a South Asian tsunami that claimed a massive toll in 2004: Bush tapped Clinton and the president's father, former President George H.W. Bush, to spearhead fundraising.

"This is a model that works,'' Obama said.

Bush spoke bluntly of the challenge posed by an earthquake that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and left the Haitian capital in ruinsand he spoke even more bluntly about what Americans can do.

"Our hearts are broken when we see the scenes of little children struggling without a mom or dad, or the bodies on the ground or the physical damage of the earthquake,'' Bush said. "The most effective way for Americans to help the people of Haiti is to contribute money...

"I know a lot of Americans want to send blankets and water,'' Bush said, with a knowing nod, looking at the cameras: "Just send your cash.''

Clinton, who also already is serving as the special United Nations envoy to Haiti, said of the earthquake's survivors: "Right now, all we need to do is get food and medicine and water and a secure place for them to be.'' But in the long-term, he said, the rebuilding of Haiti will require a sustained effort to capitalize on what could be an opportunity.

"I believe that, before this earthquake, Haiti had the best chance in its history to escape their history,'' Clinton said. "I still believe it... But it's going to take a lot of help and a long time.''

Obama, making his fourth public address on the Haitian crisis in four days, also suggested that the intense media attention focused on the island nation now soon will shift to other areas. It will be the job of Bush and Clinton, he said, to keep American generosity focused.

(Photo approaching Rose Garden by Mark Wilson / Getty Images.)

"In times of great challenge in our country and around the world, Americans have always come together,'' Obama said today, standing with Bush and Clinton in an overcast Rose Garden.

"At this moment, we are moving forward with one of the largest relief efforts in history,'' Obama said, and his predecessors will ensure that the U.S. government's own commitment of $100 million and rising will be matched by contributions from "beyond the government.''

The White House has created a Web-site for the fundraising effort that the two presidents will lead: www.clintonbushhaitifund.org.

Obama, citing "destruction and suffering that defies comprehension, said "we also know that our longer term effort will not be measured in days and weeks. It will be measured in months and even years.''

"Here at home, Presidents Bush and Clinton will help Americans do their part,'' the president said. "This time of suffering can and must be a time of caring and compassion.''

When he had spoken this week with each of his predecessors, Obama said today, "They each asked the same simple question: 'How can I help.'' In the days ahead, he said, they will be enlisting the help of many more Americans.

Following a half-hour private meeting in the Oval Office this morning, Bush stood to Obama's left during a brief appearance outside. Clinton stood to Obama's right.

The two former presidents each spoke of their personal involvement with HaitiBush citing his wife's journey there to oversee U.S.-sponsored efforts at AIDS prevention, Clinton complimenting the Bush administration for its work on disease prevention.

"The Haitian people have got a tough journey,'' Bush said, suggesting that catastrophes "bring out the best of the human spirit... President Clinton and I are going to work to help tap that spirit.''

Clinton, in 1975, celebrated his wedding in Haiti, traveling there for a delayed honeymoon with a wife who is now Secretary of State Hillary Clintonmaking her own first journey to the earthquake-stricken nation today.

"I have no words for what I feel,'' Clinton said today. "I was in those hotels that collapsed. I had meals with people who are dead. The cathedral church that Hillary and I sat in 35 years ago.... is rubble. It is still one of the most remarkable places that I have been.''

Obama Pitches Bank Tax To Recover Bailout Costs

President Barack Obama on Saturday pitched his proposed tax on banks to recover the cost of bailing them out during the financial crisis, saying if they can afford billions more in bonuses, they can pay back the taxpayers, too.

Census Finds More Moms Bringing Home Bacon
Number of Working Mothers as Family's Sole Breadwinners Reaches All-Time High; More Dads Staying at Home
Obama Massachusetts-bound: 60th vote

The president has recorded "robo-calls'' and appeared in a Web-based video for the Democratic candidate, and now will campaign in person in a close Senate race.

by Mark Silva and updated

Earlier this week, the White House said that President Barack Obama had no plans to campaign in Massachusetts for the Democratic Senate candidate, Marha Coakley.

That was before a new poll showed a virtual tie between the Democrat and Republican Scott Brown in the special election for the seat of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a contest that could deprive the Democrats of their 60-vote hold on the Senate at a time when Obama appears on the verge of winning his health-care initiative.

Now Obama is Bay-State bound Sunday.

"The president sees a pretty clear distinction" between the candidates,'' White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said at today's press briefing. "It's an important Senate seat," Gibbs added. "That's why the president's going."

The Hill's Aaron Blake notes: "The trip represents an unprecedented role for Obama in a special election. He didn't appear during the runoff in Georgia's Senate race in December 2008 or in an early 2009 New York special House election.''

Poll: GOP's Brown Leads Massachusetts Senate Race

As momentum shifts in the direction of the Republican candidate in Tuesday's special Senate election in Massachusetts, President Obama will campaign on Sunday for Democrat Martha Coakley.