It would seem to be the flailing tail of anti-politics.

Greg: It’s Massachusetts, not the whole country, and a seat even Teddy struggled to keep towards the end.

That’s not really true (the bit about EMK not having a safe seat at the end.)

I’ll make same base political observations about MA political history that will help explain why a simple election that threatens to bring Obama and his allies to a grinding halt happened in the first place.

Kennedy faced a serious challenge in ’94 from a young Republican businessman named Mitt Romney—an attractive political moderate who declared in one of their debates together that he didn’t want to take America back to the “extreme policies of Reagan and Bush”, and therefore the people of Massachussetts should elect him as he was a good old fashioned New England Republican, not some ideologue.

Unfortunately for Mitt EMK had spent the last few years turning his life around, remarrying and getting off the grog. Even though Teddy had never taken the voters for granted, he was now more ready than ever to see off a strong challenge, and eventually won with more than 55% of the vote. The junior senator for the state, John Kerry, faced an even more intimidating foe in his reelection bid two years later, when the popular and effective Republican governor William Weld looked certain to beat him. Kerry worked his arse off in the electoral ground game, and tirelessly debated Weld in a surprisingly large number of televised debates, reestablishing himself with the voters. The result on election night was even closer than it had been for Kennedy.

Flash forward to 2008. EMK is diagnosed with incurable brain cancer. He could have stood down, allowing a special election to be fought alongside the presidential campaign of Barack Obama and the reelection of Senator John Kerry. In that scenario the seat would have been easily retained by the party, thanks to the massive general election turnout of liberal voters. Even as poor a candidate as Martha Coakley, a woman who would boast of having no intention of standing in the cold outside Fenway baseball park to shake the hands of anonymous voters, even as poor and anti-political a politician as she wins.

But EMK never considered that almost every party establishment figure around him in his homestate was prone to complacency, indolence. “A one party state is a no party state,” wrote an Arkansas politician who had served as Bill Clinton’s defence counsel, fighting charges of high crimes and misdemeanors on the US senate
floor.

Maybe EMK thought his hard work in the congress and on the election trail every cycle was a penance, to be endured alone because of that sin. Who knows. Whatever the reason, I think he never got it just how those around him could let their incompetence hurt the greater good. Thus he serves the electorate until he dies.

I like the above micro-narrative a lot more than I like the meta-narrative about the US government being a tool that just won’t work in the hands of reform, or, indeed, the only slightly smaller narrative about how the American party of reform is made up entirely of cowards and potential sellouts. The narrative I like the least is that about the vast majority of the American public being well informed enough to make a rational choice against wanting government to improve their lives.

A lifelong Democratic voter, a seventy three year old woman, tells a newspaper reporter she is voting for Brown to send “a message of ‘that’s enough.’ Let’s stop the giveaways and let’s get jobs going.” What possible giveaways could she be upset by? TARP? The automakers bailout? It couldn’t be in regards to a medical public sevice for all, as Massachussetts is unique in being the one state in the union with publicly mandated private health insurance laws, prohibiting the breaking of contracts by the insurers, keeping the cost of premiums far below the national average. Senator Brown explicitly says this system is so good he is dedicated to stopping his fellow Massholes from having to subsidise a similar policy for the undeserving rest of the country.

If that is the best material the anti-Obama narrative has to work with, then you’ll excuse me for having nothing but contempt for the `silent majority’ goons pushing it.

I just hope I won’t have to feel contempt for the POTUS himself for caving in the very face of this bullshit.

The filibuster is an example of when having a tie is as good as winning. It is kind of crazy when you think about it, and even more so when one considers the very large number of small states in the US with relatively high representation and when one considers that they don’t have PR and preferential to prevent plurality candidates getting it all their own way.

At the very least, there ought to be joint-sitting mechanisms to resolve filibusters maintained for longer than 30 days.

Sometimes when you win, you really lose, and sometimes when you lose, you really win, and sometimes when you win or lose, you actually tie, and sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose. Winning or losing is all one organic mechanism, from which one extracts what one needs.

This applies generally in politics and it may well prove very applicable here. If interpretation of the Massachusetts result hardens the division between more traditional Republicans of the William F Buckley type and the hardcore conspiracy-mongering tea-bagger birther crowd it may well be that this will make coherent and plausible policy much harder to develop and implement. The Republicans will wind up with a solid 25% floor and a 35% ceiling which they simply can’t break out of.

1) Republicans destroyed the country

2) Everyone wants change

3) Dems offer change candidate

4) Dems Take Power

5) Nothing changes

6) Everyone hates the Dems, and the party that destroyed the country gets elected again. Whee!

I think they call it democracy.

The election in Mass probably reflects the general pessimism in the US brought on by the GFC downturn (aprt of the Bush legacy). Also the seat has been with the Democrats for a long time and as we all know a change is as good as a holiday. The health care bill is probably about as important as AGW for most people.
Anyway don’t sweat it. Obama is only a quarter of the way through his term and the GOP are still fractured and leaderless and likely to remain that way (see above). If the US economy improves the GOP will be so tightly behind the eight ball you won’t get a fag paper in there.

Isn’t it funny that Americans want to appoint representatives into government who’s ideology is fundamentally opposed to government?

Of course this isn’t totally true, because the neo-conservative movement does in fact agree that we need a government. And the general conservative populace is totally willing to trust the government when it comes to PROTECTING it’s to PROTECT us but NOT to SERVE us.

Doing some thinking out loud. At risk of pointing out the obvious, here are the steps that led to Massachusetts electing a total dipstick:

1) Republicans destroyed the country.

2) Dems took power.

3) Repubs blocked everything Dems tried to do, which is easy because 1/3 of Dems are basically Repubs.

4) Progressives get angry at Dems for not doing enough, while wingnuts go ballistic at Dems for trying to do anything at all.

5) Everyone hates the Dems, and the party that destroyed the country gets elected again. Whee!