From Conor:
Only a partisan hack could deny that all aspects of this election bolstering my analysis happened to be most significant, whereas factors that cut against my thesis were ultimately irrelevant to the outcome. Let this be a lesson to my political and ideological opponents in future contested elections — insofar as it is advantages my policy preferences, what happened in Massachusetts is a harbinger of things to come in the 2010 midterms, and even in 2012. Meanwhile all precedents seemingly at odds with my national political proclivities were unique, and should be ignored.
Here’s one thing you can count on for sure. While the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2012 may not drive a truck, he or she will:
a) know the starting lineup and rotation for the 2012 Red Sox,
b) know the starting lineup and rotation for the 2004 Red Sox, and
c) will be seen on TV and in the Boston Globe and Boston Herald shaking the voters’ hands outside of Fenway Park.
Chris Matthews noted during the coverage last night on MSNBC that when Ted Kennedy first won his seat it was in a special election that was necessitated when his brother, who had held the seat since 1952, was elected President. He also noted that Ted was seated in the U.S. Senate the next day.
probably not a good idea to go on vacation in the middle of an election
judging from the reaction of barney frank, jim webb, and anthony weiner; it means the dems are about to blow HRC. I don’t really have skin in that game, so i’m just calling it the way i see it.
actually, i think obama will get involved and just get the house to pass the senate version and leave it at that for now. probably getting house reforms thru reconciliation is too ambitious, but losing HCR is unthinkable for the dems so they should get in line.
Given that the Franken campaign required twice the time and effort as a normal Senate race, Franken should have been able to claim two Senate seats. Then the Democrats wouldn’t be in this fix.
The fact that Franken did not do so I chalk up to the mambmy-pamby nature of the Minnesota Democrats. This is just a long way of saying what we already know: everything is Fecke’s fault.
I don’t think the House will pass the Senate bill. For one thing there’s a lot of provisions in it they can’t swallow. For another thing, a lot of Democratic members are going to sit there and think “JFC, we Lost In Massachusetts over this!” and look to save their own skins. Remember that the House bill only passed with a two vote majority.
I could be wrong. But I think that Speaker Pelosi’s ability to influence her caucus just took a pretty big hit.
I’m finding it interesting that there are a number of commentators out there (Garrison Kellior comes immediately to mind) that think this was due to the Tea Party movement’s influence, that somehow they inflamed the voters of Massachusetts into acting against their own best interests. Yes, the Tea Party movement members supported Sen.-elect Brown. But he didn’t get where he is because Tea Party people swept across the Commonwealth and bought up all kinds of air time and media presence or anything. He spoke to them and asked for their votes, but his candidacy was not a vehicle of the Tea Party movement.
They can keep thinking that, though. It’ll mislead them from the true reasons why he got elected.
What I have seen is that while registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 3:1 in Massachusetts, people who identify as Independents outnumber both of them combined. And Independents apparently went 4:1 for Brown, about the reverse of the 2008 election for Obama.
Sen.-elect Brown is nobody’s tool. It was noteworthy that during his acceptance speech he apparently did not mention or give thanks to the Republican party.
If they think that, they’re dumber than I thought.
While I’m going to insert the caveat that 1962 is a bad precedent because that was actually technically against the law – Ted Kennedy was not officially the certified winner at that point – I agree with the gist of this. I’d like the Dems to try more hardball tactics in general, but delaying the seating of an elected official would be crossing the line and goes against the spirit of democracy. This is one of those “I don’t care if the Republicans do it” issues. Thankfully, the immediate comments from Dem leaders is that they will NOT pursue this path.
Going forward, given what the GOP tried to pull with Franken, however, I would like a Senate procedural rule making seat delaying tactics much harder. Not sure how such a law should be structured. Since almost all such tactics will probably be applied to really close races, mainly because the offending party would not be able to get away with otherwise, a more standardized vote counting process would be ideal.
RonF, I gave a response to this particular tidbit on the other thread. It’s a minor thing to nitpick, as I basically agree with your post #7 – perhaps a disagreement over degree, but not in kind – but regardless, don’t just ignore it and bulldog onto another thread, forcibly trying to push a meme, seeing where it sticks. I hope this isn’t an accurate description and that this occurrence was unintentional. Because those sorts of dishonest games on online forums give the Internet a bad name, making /b/ and MeatSpin look downright classy by comparison.
Slyphhead, I had not read any of the posts in the other thread past my own last one when I wrote the post that you refer to. What you say does make sense in the general case. Is it established that’s what happened in this case?
The Franken election is far different from this one. It was extremely close and at least in the beginning of the legal battle there were legitimate questions raised. Here there’s no question of who got the most votes.
Also; there’s no requirement that the election go through the 10-day certification before the Massachusetts Secretary of State informs the U.S. Senate that Sen.-elect Brown has qualified for office. There aren’t enough outstanding absentee ballots and the likelihood of a few 1 or 2 vote irregularities in the official precinct counts to swing the election. In fact, Mass. SoS William Galvin said he’d send a letter to the Senate today saying that Brown had been elected. On that basis, there’s no non-partisan reason for the Senate to delay seating Brown as soon as he shows up at the Capitol building.
My opinion on what the election means: compromising with everybody means there’s nobody in your corner. That’s why the Obama administration is unpopular – they’ve got lots of vocal detractors who will never be pleased, but nobody cheering for them. So all anybody hears about Obama is negativity.
Coakley failed to distance herself from the failings of the current Democratic machine the way her opponent distanced himself from Republican failures.
Does this work?
Apparently not.
RonF:
For another thing, a lot of Democratic members are going to sit there and think “JFC, we Lost In Massachusetts over this!” and look to save their own skins.
Jake Squid:
If they think that, they’re dumber than I thought.
Well, I don’t know how much the above contributed to it, but Speaker Pelosi has publicly announced that the Senate bill is DOA at the House. I’ll bet it contributed to some extent.
I think people are misinterpreting what Pelosi said. Here’s her statement, with emphasis added by me:
To quote Jonathan Chait:
These are Democrats, so they might end up not passing the HCR. But there’s still a solid chance they will.
That would mean that they’d have to take the Senate bill, amend it, pass it, and then run it through the reconciliation process. I’ve mostly heard that you only need 51 votes for reconciliation in the Senate, but when I was listening to MSNBC Tuesday night there was an analyst on there that said that there are a number of steps in the reconciliation process that could be filibustered. No details, though. So I’m not sure how this all works. Plus, I’m not sure Rep. Pelosi could get the votes for that, even. I think there’s some people in both houses that would like this to go away now, please. Certainly not Pelosi, of course.
I would imagine that a more limited bill COULD get through both houses. And depending on it’s content, I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed.
A more limited bill could only get through both houses by reconciliation. The Party of No has staked its future on making the Democrats the party that can’t pass anything, particularly on health care. If the two moderate republicans had wanted to have a say in what the bill looked like, they could have done so. That isn’t going to change for a smaller bill.
You also can’t do a smaller bill. The basic think everyone agrees on is no restrictions on pre-existing conditions, but you can only do that with a mandate, and you can only do that with subsidies for the poor and much of the middle class, and you can only do that with a revenue source. I guess you could do community clinics (no, that needs a funding source) and no recision. But I don’t think passing a no recisions law is getting very far towards solving the problems with the American health care (or even health insurance) system.
What the Republican party has staked it’s future on is the idea that the American public doesn’t want what the Democratic party is currently trying to pass through Congress. The returns from Massachusetts (Massachusetts!) shows that’s a winning bet. It’ll get even better if they decide to take up Cap and Trade or gay rights next instead of the economy or the war.
Pfft. Roughly half of Brown voters want him to work with the Dems on their agenda, and only 8% of his voters strongly support him opposing the Dems on health care. Obviously Brown voters are idiots who will be shocked to see what he actually does (or a bunch of national Republicans are going to eat some serious crow if he turns out to be to the left of Snowe and Collins – which is the only way he wins a second term).
The Republicans also overwhelmingly opposed the Dems when they took up the economy last year (and will probably do the same again shortly), and they even tried to filibuster funds for Afghanistan a month ago, so I think they have solidly earned the moniker of the party of NO.
The Republicans believe that if they can prevent the Dems from doing anything, they will discourage Dem voters (who will see their own party as useless), and turn independents against the Dems (since no one supports a useless party). They know that their own popularity is so low that they can only succeed by demoralizing the other side rather than by increasing their popularity. If they can excite the 30% who actually liked the Bush years, keep the 17% who hate the Dems more than the Repubs, and get an extra 10-15% of the 53% who hate them to give up on the Dems and stay home, then they will make significant gains, allowing them to hobble the government even further, making Obama a one termer with few accomplishments (unless the Dems have the sense to retaliate by abolishing the filibuster at the start of the new session and passing the Dem agenda in 2011 and 2012).