Brown wins! Has hot, single daughters?
Click to viewYes, this guy is the next senator from MA.
Some people are already calling him the "White Obama". People are talking about 2012. They're interpreting the election not as a result of a really really poor democrat who didn't even put much effort into campaigning until the last week, but a referendum on Obama.
A lot of this talk is the typical over analysis that comes with these kinds of elections. We'll see.
The more pressing issue is what happens in the next few weeks. The house has a choice of passing the Senate version of health care. The senate passing it before Brown sits has probably been ruled out. So there's a pretty good shot that health care will die too.
So here are things I'm pissed at:
a) obstructionism worked for the republicans. The filibuster is a powerful thing, and they could have easily extracted concessions, individually or as a group. As far as I'm aware, their only objection to the bill was that it would make the Democrats look good*. And as a result of their obstruction, they've been rewarded with a Senate seat. Oh, and no bill will be passed, which means that anyone with a pre-existing condition, a vagina, or a lack of a job is going to have to keep paying more for health care.
b) Max Baucus delayed the health care bill for, what, 4 months?, in committee to win over Olympia Snowe who didn't even vote for it in the Senate vote. For this, he will face no punitive action.
c) Harry Reid didn't take really any punitive action against Lieberman for stripping the bill of the public option. At the very least, Lieberman should be stripped of his Chairmanship of the Senate Committee of Government Affairs, since its clear he is no longer voting with the democrats in that area.
d) Joe Lieberman for threatening to filibuster the vote against the wishes of 66% of his constituency, and for reasons that didn't make any sense at the time and still don't.
*And seriously, what are their substantive objections to the bill? Olympia Snowe's objection during the Committee hearings was that she didn't think the public option was necessary, but a public option isn't even in the final bill. It is entirely run through private insurance companies, so they can't seriously argue that it's a government takeover of health care. It doesn't increase the deficit. It doesn't extend benefits to illegal aliens (although if it did it would actually lower costs by $8 Billion). It can't be a "we can't afford this given the recession" thing, because none of it would actually even come into place until years from now when the recession is over. I've heard the argument that by giving subsidies to insurance programs that pay for abortion, it's as if the government was funding abortion. But we don't prohibit federal employees from getting abortions, nor do we prevent people from using money from tax breaks from getting abortions. And even if that was the objection, a stupak-like agreement would have easily passed through if Republicans compromised.
I mean under normal circumstances there are two somewhat rational arguments to these things, but I really don't understand the rational attack on this from the right. From the left, I can see that it doesn't go far enough. We could argue that we shouldn't have insurance companies in the first place, and that it would be cheaper for everyone if we just had a literal government takeover of health insurance. And that's correct. But that's not what's happening. At all.
Mostly, I'm angry that I've been waiting for so long to get to the real things I care about. As health care goes, I think it's important, but not as important as Cap-and-trade legislation, repealing DOMA or DADT, or even a reformation of capital gains/estate taxes.
And now, thanks to a Republican block who doesn't offer up any constructive criticism and Massachussetts running a terrible candidate who doesn't know a Mooninite from an explosive device , none of these issues will be resolved any time soon. And for many of these issues, time is running out.