Associated Press photo
Repugnican Massachusetts state Sen. Scott Brown celebrates his come-from-behind win of the late Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts today. With him is Repugnican former Massachussetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Can you tell which one is which? (Neither can I…)
“In an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts,” The Associated Press breathtakingly reports right now, “Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in a U.S. Senate election [today] that left President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in doubt and marred the end of his first year in office.”
Oh, please.
“Epic”?
Embarrassing to the Democratic Party, to be sure, but “epic”?
Look: According to the accounts that I’ve read, Democratic candidate Martha Coakley, Massachusett’s attorney general, sat on her ass — er, laurels — while her Repugnican challenger Scott Brown actually campaigned. It widely has been reported that he even campaigned across the state in his pickup truck, apparently to make the voters of Massachusetts think that he is one of them.
Wikipedia notes that Brown is an attorney who is married to a local TV reporter and that the couple own “a 3,000-square-foot primary home [in Wrentham, Mass.], a second home in Rye, New Hampshire, three small rental units in Boston, and a timeshare on the Caribbean island of Aruba.”
So yes, Scott Brown is just like you — if you’re an attorney, if you’re married to a local TV reporter, and if you are loaded. (And if your pubes have appeared in a national magazine…)
Brown “rode a wave of voter anger”? Maybe. Or maybe he just lied — er, campaigned — harder than did his opponent. (Which is what the consensus of the news accounts has been.)
Further to pick on The Associated Press’ overblown lead paragraph, when did the Democrats ever have a solid, filibuster-proof 60-vote majority? There always have been those problematic senators wanting to have their asses licked because they threatened to withhold their vote among the 60 if their demands weren’t met.
The “public option” died some time ago, did it not? “Barack Obama’s health care overhaul” — “Obamacare,” as the wingnuts love to call it — was in doubt long before today’s election in Massachusetts.
And how can you “mar” the end of a new president’s first year that was lackluster at best anyway?
I don’t see that much has changed as a result of the election in Massachusetts today. I don’t see some automatic Repugnican resurgence.
It’s true that we live in the United States of Amnesia, and that after a group of stupid white guys just ran the nation into the ditch after their eight long nightmarish years of unelected rule, the voters in Massachusetts apparently thought that it was a swell idea to put another stupid white guy in charge of things.
But, I surmise, even if we can extrapolate voter sentiment in Massachusetts to voter sentiment nationwide, that would be because voters have unrealistic expectations as to how long it takes to turn the Titanic back around.
George W. Bush and crew didn’t get us into our predicament in just one year; it is unrealistic to expect Team Obama to get us out of it in just one year.
But hey, Scott Brown is hot! In fact, in 1982, he was a centerfold for Cosmopolitan:
Nice treasure trail there, Scott! (But it looks like there was some manscaping going on there, and, as I recently noted, I hate that.)
Brown still looks edible — here he is gloating some more today:
Associated Press photo
— and apparently he has a bit of that Mitt Romney thing going on; apparently, your soul can be as black as pitch, but if you look good, the voters of Massachusetts will give you their vote. (Call it the Mitt Mystique, I guess…)
I see nothing but good coming from Brown’s win.
The Democrats have been way too fucking complacent. They needed this wake-up call.
But an “epic” loss for the already shaky Democrats it ain’t. Per The Associated Press, Brown won today with only 52 percent of the vote to Coakley’s 47 percent, with 97 percent of the state’s precincts reporting. That’s not an “epic” landslide. It was a close election.
And U.S. Sen. Brown will be up for re-election in only three years, as that’s when the six-year term for the U.S. Senate seat that he won today ends.
Wake up and get to work, Democrats.
Stop taking votes for granted, even in places like Kennedyland, and don’t let the voters be fooled by more rich Repugnican former centerfolds who successfully bamboozle the voters into thinking that they’re just one of them.
Robert's Virtual Soapbox 