cn|2 Pure Politics is reporting strong early polling results for Governor Steve Beshear [D-Ky.] in his reelection campaign against David Williams [R-Ky.] Whether this is good news or bad news for Beshear depends on whether Democrats get complacent.
There is good reason why they shouldn't, and ample reason to fear that they will.
President Obama's 2008 landslide created Democratic over-confidence and complacency.
The cost of the White House' and Democratic Party's hubris that allowed Scott Brown's [R-Mass.] 2010 senate victory is incalculable, but surely extends into the trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives lost.
President Obama's health care reform plan didn't start out with that many teeth, and this one election knocked half of them clean out of the final legislation. The difference between what is and what could have been will be hundreds of billions of wasted health care dollars and the lives of too many Americans who, even with the reforms that went through, will die without the health care they should have had.
But that's not all. Scott Brown's election made future financial crises both more likely and more likely to be severe due to Democratic concessions that watered down the Dodd-Frank financial reforms. This alone could eventually cost the economy trillions of dollars. The Massachusetts election also contributed significantly to hundreds of billions of dollars of deficits brought on by the extension of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, and added to the Tea Party momentum that subsequently radicalized the House of Representatives and state governments across the nation.
These strong early poll results in Beshear's favor create a certain level of risk that Kentucky in 2011 could turn into a replay of Massachusetts in 2010. If Beshear is lucky, the White House and the Democratic Party will remember how dear the loss in Massachusetts was. If not, Kentucky may need new welcome signs where I-64, I-65, I-71, I-75 and that little stretch of I-24 cross our borders.
Photo: Kelley Rouda
