The AP has called it. Wow.
Also, per Fox News, Coakley has called Brown and conceded.
Link to an AP story on Yahoo! News.
Cue insufferable conservative gloating.
Aaand she’s conceded.
- Will the Democrats have the balls to pass the new supposedly negotiated health care bill before Brown is seated? By the letter of the law, it looks there’s a 15-day lag for the certificate of election from the security of state.
- If they cave into the noise machine demanding he be seated immediately, will they just pass the Senate bill as-is in the House? From what I’ve read the answer sounds like “no”, which is rather inexplicable.
- Will this turn the Senate leadership or Obama more radical in terms of the filibuster?
- Will the Democrats overreact and shy back on their agenda?
I predict a little bit of this given some of the “a little change is better than no change at all” coming from some politicians.
I think what we will see in the near future is the continuing failure of Congress as a useful, representative, honest institution. But we would have a lot of that had Brown lost as well.
If this hastens Pelosi’s exit from leadership I’m unfortunately for it. She completely failed to capitalize on Democrat’s gains.
Personally, I thought Reid was far more ineffective than Pelosi ever was.
I always saw them as a six of one, half dozen of another when it came to flaccid, ineffective leadership.
May I ask in what way? The passage through the House appeared to go a lot smoother than the way the Senate turned into. Though that impression may some from the fact that the House didn’t have to overcome a filibuster.
This is seriously depressing the shit out of me. Unfortunately the “DINOs” will take this to mean that the Dems should bend over even further and take it up the ass more in negotiating with Republicans. The opposite is needed.
Pelosi isn’t ineffective; she’s passed literally everything with no problem.
Reid isn’t ineffective, unless you mean “doesn’t want to get rid of the filibuster” - he has to somehow come up with a bill that gets the 60th vote without enraging the base.
In many ways the campaign in Massachusetts became a referendum not only on health care reform but also on the openness and integrity of our government process. It is vital that we restore the respect of the American people in our system of government and in our leaders. To that end, I believe it would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated.
What the fuck?
I count Reid in there too. It’s not just about passing bills, it’s about how the two of them left all of the momentum from the 2008 election behind them. The summer was the killer - they failed to forsee that Republicans would try to delay things. The whole Tea Party movement is a failure on the part of democratic leadership to frame the health care message appropriately.
See what I mean? A typical spineless dickheaded DINO more worried about his job than what’s good for the country.
Sigh. I despair.
I doubt healthcare reform will pass now. Senators are already falling all over themselves to keep it from happening - see Webb, Bayh, etc.
This country is driving right toward a cliff. I have no idea what can be done to stop it. By the time things get so bad that the Senate really considers eliminating the filibuster, it will be too late.
Electing Brown was a good first step.
SHAZAM! :)
Yes, the Republicans did such a wonderful job with solving our countries long-term problems over the last few years.
A good first step toward flying off that cliff, sure.
Amazingly, the republicans also managed to get just about every single thing they wanted done in those 8 years though!
Must have been that supermajority they had the whole time right? Oh wait, they didn’t have that?
Tell me again about how effective Reid and Pelosi are.
Cute zinger. Like Jason pointed out - the GOP is largely responsible for the shitty shape we’re in.
More to the point though - it doesn’t matter who gets elected. The only way to get anything done in this country that’s not tax cuts is to get sixty votes in the Senate. The GOP aren’t going to be able to do that any time soon either. We’re going to end up totally paralyzed while the country falls apart around us.