With all precincts counted, according to the NYT, Massachusetts picked Republican teabagger darling Scott Brown over stolid Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley by 52 to 47 percent.
Our neighbor to the south, my spouse reminds me, did after all elect Mitt Romney as governor, despite its Democratic leanings. Of course, it also elected Deval Patrick, its first black governor, more recently. Like Vermont, it’s another usually reliable blue state with a wide swath of “independents” who seem to lean to the right (in this case, the far right), especially in the suburbs.
And now it’s a warning to Democrats here in Vermont and nationally, not that the Democratic agenda is wrong, but that Democrats cannot take for granted their election victories just because they know they’re right on the facts and the issues. The electorate seems not to want “facts” or “hard data.” They are swayed by spun tales of tax cuts that equal more revenue, and of government bogeymen counting your doctor’s use of tongue depressors.
While there is some pressure to urge the House to pass the existing Senate healthcare bill, the state’s own senior Representative, Barney Frank, is already signaling defeat (emphasis added):
If Martha Coakley had won, I believe we could have worked out a reasonable compromise between the House and Senate healthcare bills. But since Scott Brown has won and the Republicans now have 41 votes in the Senate, that approach is no longer appropriate.
I am hopeful that some Republican senators will be willing to discuss a revised version of healthcare reform because I do not think that the country would be well-served by the healthcare status quo. But our respect for democratic procedures must rule out any effort to pass a healthcare bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened.
Going forward, I hope there will be a serious effort to change the Senate rule which means that 59 votes are not enough to pass major legislation, but those are the rules by which the healthcare bill was considered, and it would be wrong to change them in the middle of this process.
There is always the debate over whether behaving as the opposition most certainly would — and ramming a bill through — means becoming the opposition. One other option being that Democrats would give up their internal sense of superiority and get/use some brass knuckles to save the country from ruinous runaway healthcare costs and the inevitable Republican push for the next war — Yemen.
Good night and good luck.
NanuqFC
It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds. ~ Sam Adams
Healthcare is over now. No way will they pass it now. Obama’s agenda is over now. No way will he be able to get anything done. Healthcare will fail on the national level and no one will give a damn. Vermont will most likely not be much better as the demos will be cowed and running scared. If you want good health care at a reasonable cost, emigrate to somewhere else.
The Democrats have whined when they had sixty Senators to caucus with
The Democrats whined when they had forty nine
Then when Jeffords gave them fifty one
The Democrats proceeded to whine
And now they’ll whine while they have fifty nine
From my view the Democrats are much more comfortable being surrender monkeys.
Yesterday in Mass will not change the DC political equation one wit.
I disagree, though feel that Stuart is right. This vote was a referendum on Obama/health care/bailout, etc. and it is a historically blue state now going Republican. This has enormous portent for November. In the corny way that our politics work, nothing much, if at all, will get done because the GOP has enough votes now to effectively block everything Obama and the demos try to do. And so many senators and reps, both demos and repubs, are retiring at the end of their terms, and people like Reid are in serious trouble. I fear that the voter backlash will put the GOP back in again, forgetting how they brought this country to the abyss in 08.
Yeah, I know. The $1.5 million a day spent by the insurance companies kept anything new from happening and got the bill written to their liking. Obama really lost control of it.
I know. You’re right. People are scared. They will get more scared as the GOP can now block anything it wants and the supreme court just had its say on where they want things to go; I fear the damage has yet to begin. But you’re right. We actually need a viable third party. Both parties are useless now.