Scott Brown wins historically Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts

[rednikki]

Republican Scott Brown handily won the US Senate Seat in Massachusetts that had been held by Ted Kennedy for over 40 years, defeating Democrat Martha Coakley by a wide margin.

While voting was still going on, advisers to Martha Coakley said that they were going to lose because DC Democrats didn't do enough to support her. The Democratic Party

Comments

[pierceheart]

Last I checked, the Senate had already passed a version of the bill.

[fengshui]

Exactly. If the house takes up the exact Senate text and passes it, it goes direct to the President.

[pierceheart]

Bingo, and if the House Dems had any balls, they'd do that, to snub the repugs.

They won't, likely.

[fengshui]

You don't think so? I think the lesson of the Clinton failed HC bill would be sufficient motivation to pass something.

[lintra]

MA voters are in the unique position of already having universal healthcare and also being a state that pays more in taxes than they get back. I think it was in the self-interest of MA voters to vote for someone they hope will kill the bill.

Nonetheless, it sucks.

[hrafn]

So classy, that people in this state - which already HAS mandatory health insurance! (it has its problems, but I am grateful for its existence) - voted to prevent the Feds from implementing any kind of similar thing nationwide. "Massholes" has never seemed a more apt term.

I haven't been paying enough attention to the major media sources to see if they are pointing that out, or if they're just simplifying it to - oh wait, I don't need to independently verify whether they'll simplify it.

Not that I'm pissed off or anything.

[pierceheart]

So classy, that people in this state - which already HAS mandatory health insurance! (it has its problems, but I am grateful for its existence) - voted to prevent the Feds from implementing any kind of similar thing nationwide.

Except that the Senate doesn't matter, if the House adopts the senate bill word for word - the senate couldn't stop it, then.
Brown couldn't do jack shite if the House does nothing to change the senate bill.

[hrafn]

I know, but I'm not optimistic enough to hope that the House will do that, because I disbelieve they could put their own egos and preferences aside long enough to just say, "Fuck it, let's pass this thing as is."

OR: the Senate Democrats -could- let the Republicans filibuster the bill, and wait them out and paint them as obstructionists out to destroy American families and show a damn spine or two. That would probably earn them more than it would lose.

Like I said, I'm not optimistic.

I'll stop preaching to the choir now.

[dcjaywalk]

If it has to go back to the Senate, then I hope Reid actually makes them filibuster. The silent filibuster exists because every Senate majority leader for 25 years has allowed the threat of a filibuster to force the agenda onto something else; Reid doesn't actually have to let it prevent him from scheduling debate on health care. Make the Republicans stand up there and read the phone book, for once.