Scott Brown won in Massachussetts and I hope he kills healthcare

Brown: Mass. victory sends "very powerful message' - Yahoo! News

Quote:

BOSTON – Republican Scott Brown, fresh from a stunning Massachusetts Senate victory that shook the power balance on Capitol Hill, declared Wednesday that his election had sent a "very powerful message" that voters are weary of backroom deals and Washington business-as-usual.

Democrats scrambled to explain the loss, which imperils President Barack Obama's agenda for health care and other hard-fought domestic issues. Republicans greeted their victory with clear glee.

"The president ought to take this as a message to recalibrate how he wants to govern, and if he wants to govern from the middle we'll meet him there," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Democrats still exercise majority control over both the House and Senate. But Tuesday's GOP upset to win the seat long held by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy — following Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey last fall for gubernatorial seats that had been held by Democrats — signals challenges for Democratic prospects in midterm elections this year. Even when the economy is not bad, the party holding the White House historically loses seats in midterms.

"If there's anybody in this building that doesn't tell you they are more worried about elections today, you should absolutely slap them," Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri told reporters at the Capitol. "Of course everybody is more worried about elections. Are you kidding? It's what this place thrives on."

Brown, in his first meeting with reporters after the special election, portrayed his victory as less a referendum on Obama or the president's health care proposal and more of a sign that people are tired of Washington politics and dealmaking.

He said his victory sends "a very powerful message that business-as-usual is just not going to be the way we do it."

"I think it's important that we hit the ground running," Brown said. He said he would pay a courtesy call to the nation's capital on Thursday.

"Game's over. Let's get to work," he added. It was not clear how quickly he would be sworn in, but Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia said the Senate should not hold any further votes on health care until Brown is seated. That, said McConnell, probably means there will be no further Senate action until then.

At the White House, Obama adviser David Axelrod said the president agreed with Webb. Brown won the election and "no one is going to circumvent that," Axelrod told MSNBC.

Brown's victory gives Republicans 41 votes in the Senate, upending the Democrats' ability to stop filibusters and other delaying tactics. Counting the two Senate independents who usually vote with Democrats on procedural issues, the party will be able to muster only 59 votes, at most, one short of the number needed.

Brown said that, while he planned to caucus with Republicans, "I'm not beholden to anybody."

Democrats were licking their wounds and demonstrating that they got the message from voters and were willing to reach out.

White House tourists even got a surprise Wednesday when first lady Michelle Obama showed up as their greeter to mark the end of Obama's first year as president. She brought the family dog, Bo, to the Blue Room. She chatted with guests and hugged many of them as they filed in.

Obama himself grimly faced a need to regroup in a White House shaken by the realization of what a difference a year made.

In addition to searching for ways to salvage the health care overhaul, the Democratic Party also faced a need to determine how to assuage an angry electorate, and particularly attract independent voters who have fled to the GOP after a year of Wall Street bailouts, economic stimulus spending and enormous budget deficits.

There was a sense that if Republicans could win in one of the country's most traditionally liberal states, Massachusetts, they could probably win anywhere.

Brown rode a wave of voter anger to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley, the attorney general who had been considered a surefire winner until just days ago. Her loss signaled big political problems for Obama and the Democratic Party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide.

As if in a nod to voter disgust with Washington, Obama signed a directive Wednesday aimed at stopping government contracts from going to tax-delinquent companies. "We need to insist on the same sense of responsibility in Washington that so many of you strive to uphold in your own lives, in your own families and in your own businesses," Obama said.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama's Republican presidential rival in 2008, likened Brown's win to the Revolutionary War's "shot heard 'round the world" in Concord, Mass., in April 1775. McCain said the message was clear: "No more business as usual in Washington. Stop this unsavory sausage-making process."

White House officials acknowledged that one of the lessons from Massachusetts was the intensity of voter anger, but they said it wasn't so much with Obama as with Washington's failures in general and with the moribund economy.

"There are messages here. We hear those messages," senior Obama adviser David Axelrod told MSNBC. "There is a general sense of discontent about the economy. And there is a general sense of discontent about this town. That's why we were elected."

Congressional Democrats were urging their House and Senate candidates to embrace in their campaigns against Republicans the populist appeal the president had made on Sunday as he rushed to Boston to try to save Coakley and the Senate seat held by Democrats for more than a half-century.

His attempt didn't work, but House and Senate Democrats insisted that the pitch — Democrats work for the people, Republicans work for Wall Street — was simply made too late.

Brown, 50, will finish Kennedy's unexpired term, facing re-election in 2012. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pledged to seat Brown immediately, a hasty retreat from pre-election Democratic threats to delay his swearing-in until after the health bill passed.

The message sent is that Democrats couldn't politic their way out of a wet paper bag.

if you voted for Brown over SPORTS COMMENT just kill yourself

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Here it comes. Here it comes! You will be destroyed. You're goin' down! The electoral defeat will be of extraordinary magnitude.

I hope Martha Coakley can see this because I'm doing it as hard as I can.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

This is just depressing, to be honest. I don't know what else to say.

Other then that, fuck McCain, he sold his soul and have never gotten it back.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

there will be a movement to end the two-party system, and then the party that represents that movement will replace the Democrats

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

So by the end of the decade we'll have perhaps 4 different parties: Republican, Democrat, Tea Party (depends on how willing they are to keep the R brand going), and Progressive.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Dullenplain

So by the end of the decade we'll have perhaps 4 different parties: Republican, Democrat, Tea Party (depends on how willing they are to keep the R brand going), and Progressive.

Suck it, Libertarian, Green, Reform and Constitution Parties

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

We already have like three dozen parties

The problem isn't that they don't exist

the problem is that they are total jokes

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Bradylama

there will be a movement to end the two-party system, and then the party that represents that movement will replace the Democrats

more like a bowel movement

also: oh my god tea party as a serious political entity, are you fucking serious

How ya doing, buddy?

Hey maybe the Socialist party will finally have a leg to stand on in this country by the end of the decade.





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HA

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by wvlfpvp

Hey maybe the Socialist party will finally have a leg to stand on in this country by the end of the decade.

Zombie Eugene V. Debs to run for President. Pledges to redistribute wealth, brains.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Pangalin

We already have like three dozen parties

The problem isn't that they don't exist

the problem is that they are total jokes

there are real barriers to entry for other parties to enter the political realm

numbers are important, but you also need exposure, media attention, ballot access, campaign finances, etc.,

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

How many of those barriers came down as a direct result of some bitch not becoming senator

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I'm gonna join the Suck It party, who's with me?

Additional Spam:
*streets full of young men pointing at their dilz*

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Originally Posted by Lord Styphon

Suck it, Libertarian, Green, Reform and Constitution Parties

What would the platform of this Suck It Party consist of?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I heard the Suck It party got the coveted PUA endorsement

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Dullenplain

What would the platform of this Suck It Party consist of?

Platform of the Suck It Party:

1. Win elections.
2. Tell losers to suck it.
3. Become corporate whores.
4. Profit!

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Lord Styphon

Platform of the Suck It Party:

1. Win elections.
2. Tell losers to suck it.
3. Become corporate whores.
4. Profit!

5. jo

How ya doing, buddy?

Up here in Canada, we have about five political parties that aren't generally considered insane fringe elements. Thing is, they're all equally full of horseshit. So, two groups of assholes who can't agree and accomplish nothing vs. five groups of assholes who can't agree and accomplish nothing. Not really that much of an improvement.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by knkwzrd

Up here in Canada

There's your problem right there.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Pangalin

We already have like three dozen parties

The problem isn't that they don't exist

the problem is that they are total jokes

Ahh, so it's the same as here in the UK. You can have other parties, they just can't ever challenge the big two. I mean, there's no rule, or anything. It just never happens.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Soluzar

Ahh, so it's the same as here in the UK. You can have other parties, they just can't ever challenge the big two. I mean, there's no rule, or anything. It just never happens.

There's a slght difference though in the way our local MP's theoretically work for thier local constiuency and as such, can be effective even without being a member of the two primary parties. For example, our MP is Norman Baker, a Lib Dem and in the last couple of years he's won a ton of funding for flood defences in Lewesm as well as being the primary instigator for the MP's expenses scandal and one of the main driving forces behind the Iraq war enquiry. Sure he's unlikely to ever form part of a government (Unless we get a hung parliament come election time which is not entirely unlikely) but he's a damn good MP and will continue winning elections here until he retires I imagine, especially given the competition these days. Also Scotland has more SIP or whatever they're called MP's than Tories so it's pretty open up there. The Tories and Labour would like you to think we have a two party system but we really don't, at least not to the extent the US has.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Shin

(Unless we get a hung parliament come election time which is not entirely unlikely)

No matter the situation, we'll now always be graced with a hung Senate.



How ya doing, buddy?

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

The message sent is that Democrats couldn't politic their way out of a wet paper bag.

Is it really, or is it just that (as I've read elsewhere) the Dems put up an unappealing candidate? Senatorial elections are going to be about local issues to some extent, right? Not so much about parties as a whole but about your own local candidate? You don't think plenty of people have Dem agenda in their hearts and minds but couldn't bring themselves to vote for the current candidate? Considering the place has been a Dem stronghold since forever, seems likely to me.

The real message here is that you can't expect to put up half-assed campaign, even in a stronghold. The people expect to be treated with just as much commitment as you'd offer in a hotly contested territory.

Now admittedly not being American all of that is just a general guess based on my experience of the way politics works, but what do you say? My last comment in the thread was just a flippant remark that Shin rightly corrected me on, but this is a genuine substantive post... I hope.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Quote:

You don't think plenty of people have Dem agenda in their hearts and minds but couldn't bring themselves to vote for the current candidate?

Given that:

1. Brown winning the election would break the Democratic supermajority in the Senate and kill the health care bill that the Democrats had been investing so much time and political capital in last year
2. Brown explicitly said during the campaign he was going to do just that

if the Democratic agenda was really that popular, just how unappealing a candidate was Martha Coakley if all that was at stake and still lose?

In the 2006 elections, Ted Kennedy was re-elected with close to 70% of the votes. In that same year, Coakley was elected attorney general with close to 75%; numbers like this show just how much of a Democratic stronghold Massachusetts is. If the shifts in this election were solely the fault of the candidates, Coakley must have been one of the worst candidates in the history of democracy, and the idea of Brown running for president in 2012 isn't nearly as ridiculous as it sounds.

Jam it back in, in the dark.