Dems=Canary, Mass=Coal Mine

Tonight...regress vs. progress

If Ted Kennedy were still alive this would never happen.

Democrats are on the verge of losing the one Senate seat they could always count on for the last 47 years. I don’t like to make predictions, especially when it comes to elections, but Martha Coakley is about to lose the Massachusetts Senate race to Scott Brown in a special election to replace “The Lion of the Senate”. This is unthinkable to most Democrats, but they had better start thinking the unthinkable and get used to it. We are witnessing the Tea-Partying of the USA.

Scott Brown was indeed endorsed by the Tea Party Republicans (a movement more than a political group), and that has helped him wipe out a double-digit lead that Coakley held just a few weeks ago. True, she ran an awful campaign, but this election will break the super-majority, filibuster-blocking, 60-seat Democratic party hold on the US Senate. And whomever ran Coakley’s campaign should be tarred-and-feathered for their lack of vision as to what this means for the entire country.

Healthcare reform? Dead on arrival. Scott Brown has vowed to vote against it. And the Democrats are acting like they’ve had spine-removal surgery performed on them by letting Joe LIEberman muddy the waters last fall when a bill should have been passed. Whatever happened to the Christmas deadline? Whatever happened to acting on a basic 51-vote majority? Why do Democrats play nice while Republicans play to win?

And now along comes a GOP Senate candidate about to steal a seat at the worst possible moment in our country’s opportunity to make some progress. Democrats took this race for granted. They figured that it would be automatic to keep MA blue. Well, this is gonna be a painful wake-up call.

Will it be the dreaded referendum on President Obama? Not likely. His 53% approval rating is the same as his popular vote margin when he won the election last year. But I do think this is the beginning of an anti-incumbent movement. And right now the Democrats are the incumbents. It’s 1994 again. Get ready to get nothing done for the next 3 years.

How come this never happens to the GOP? They are political killers and that is part of their political DNA. They know when everything is on the line and they band together. I don’t live in Massachusetts, but a race this important should have been waged on a national level. The message should have been this simple: if Coakley loses, healthcare reform loses. If Coakley loses, the Democrats lose senatorial power. If Coakley loses, Ted Kennedy’s ghost loses. If Coakley loses, the Tea Party wins. That’s the kind of message that would resonate all along the Mass Turnpike, and straight out down Route 66 across the country.

So tonight we will lower the canary’s cage down into the mine shaft to see if there is a Republican gas leak emanating from the state of Massachusetts. If the Democrats come up dead, then they’ll have to look elsewhere for their political fortunes. Fast.

And that sound you hear will be the late, great, Ted Kennedy rolling over in his grave.

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UPDATE @ 9:30PM, 1/19/10

Watching Scott Brown’s acceptance speech on TV. His supporters are cheering and screaming, but I can’t help hearing TMK doing a big underground spiral. Rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling…American politics can be so heartbreaking.

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Ok, I’ll say it: Al Franken for President (one of these days).

It’s time to take Al Franken seriously. It is for me anyway.

Al Franken was Stuart Smalley, and today he is the Junior Senator from the state of Minnesota. Although elected in 2008, he wasn’t actually sworn in until July 7, 2009. He was too busy defending his victory over wannabe chad-counter Republican Senator Norm Coleman. The GOP hates Franken so much. They hate how progressive he is. They hate that he’s another Harvard-educated liberal. He was born in ultra-liberal New York City, and raised in “St. Jewish Park” (St. Louis Park), MN. Franken is Harvard-educated (he majored in Political Science), creative, charming, famous, rich, adored by the millions of fans he’s entertained since the 1970s, and he’s Jewish.

He sounds like the GOP’s biggest nightmare.

I always laughed my head off whenever I saw Franken, I mean “Senator Franken”, do his Stuart Smalley routine. I always knew he was smart, and he really caught my attention with Rush Limbaugh Is A Big, Fat, Idiot. He was good enough, smart enough, and gosh darn it-I always liked him. But I didn’t realize he had guts.

And then he kicked lame Joe LIEberman’s butt back to his desk. Watch the 2.5 minute video HERE.

Al Franken told Joe LIEberman to sit down and stop talking about his self-centered, hypocritical viewpoint on healthcare reform as soon as he hit the customary 10-minute limit. He didn’t even give LIEberman a Hanukkah gift of an extra minute or two. I love it.

And get a load of John McCain acting all put off by Senator Al Franken doing what he had every right to do–deny LIEberman any extra time to speak by refusing to honor J-LIE’s request by unanimous consent. John McCain is Mr. Anti-Pork, and he talks about preventing waste, and then he wastes precious time on the tax-payer’s dime talking about procedure and proper behavior in the Senate, and BS like that, instead of talking about fixing healthcare. John McCain is the epitome of Old School, with the emphasis on old.

So Senator Al Franken has the brains, the guts, the politics, the money, the charisma, and the first real legitimate shot to be the first. Jewish. President. Ever. That’s my opinion. Would he be in the Democratic Party, or will he christen the Progressive Party? Will Obama give Franken Joe Biden’s Vice Presidency to re-capture the progressive wing of his base and win reelection, thereby allowing Al to gain incredible perspective and experience as the apprentice to the most powerful job in the free world?

From there anything is possible.

Election Day 2009

It’s the first Tuesday in November, so that can only mean one thing: time to vote. But for the vast majority of the US electorate there is nothing to vote on today. NY, NJ and VA have some important elections and Maine has a gay marriage issue to vote on, but outside of that what does election day mean when there is no President or even a mid-term to go to the polls on?

Today’s election results will provide America with a barometer of where we all stand after just one year into Barack Obama’s Presidency and the Democratic takeover of the Congress. Some call it a referendum on the President. Others call it a measure of the GOP’s power. It’s kinda like taking the PSATs–the results will tell us how best to prepare for 2010.

2010 will probably be one of the ugliest election years in American history. The Tea-Baggers will be losing their minds all year. Democrats will be running scared if they don’t get healthcare reform signed into law, and even if they do they’ll have a lot of problems if a bill passes that doesn’t make the Liberal/Progressive base happy. Rush Limbaugh will flap his gums for months about Obama and Socialism (will it morph into Communism by that time?). Glen Beck will lie about anything he can. Keith Olbermann will get nastier and angrier. Michael Steel will spout stupidity and insanity. Joe LIEberman will flip-flop on everything. And the gang over at Air America radio will rake in the ratings. But what about the voters?

That’s why today is the most important off-year election ever. By the time all the results are in tonight we will know how the country feels about Barack Obama much more accurately than the public opinion polls show. Have the Conservative lies and smears sunk in and caused the reform-minded voters on this country to lean towards the right? Or have they backfired and made voters turn to the left in disgust?

If VA, NY’s 23rd district, and NJ all vote Republican today does that mean the Democrats are in trouble next year? Yes AND No. Somebody once said “the numbers don’t lie” and that’s just as true for election returns. But while those numbers don’t lie, they can be deceiving. From a Democratic perspective, no matter what happens today will be good news for Democrats. If they get beaned in NY/NJ/VA then they will get confirmation that their agenda is off track and it will be a warning sign that they have some hardcore explaining and campaigning to do to their base in 2010.

However, if the Democrats do well today (and here’s also hoping everyone in Maine voted “no” on repealing gay marriage), then we will all know that the Conservative dirty work of 2009 has no traction, and we can expect to pound them into oblivion in 2010.

So I will personally be kicking back tonight and watching the news for all the returns–for clarity of vision in 2010. Because in this case, as Joey LaMotta (Joe Pesci) said in Raging Bull, “If you win you win, if you lose you still win.”