Martha Coakley is a mutt. How the Democrats could have chosen her to run for the seat of the Liberal Lion is beyond comprehension. And so she lost the election to Scott Brown.
The political analysts will be busy today, coming up with rationales for why hemlines go up and down. But it’s nonsense. The Republican have achieved a 41st vote in the Senate (more if one includes Joe Lieberman, who can be bought for a free lunch), which is sufficient under Senate cloture rules to guarantee that nothing is ever accomplished.
The Republicans have no interest in helping anyone, and all the people going to tea parties are fools. They have no friends. Their only goal is to make certain that the Democrats achieve no success. And it’s not an ideological issue; the Democrats do the same to the Republicans. When the Republicans again capture enough votes to press their agenda forward, the Democrats will do everything in their power to make certain that they are incapable of achieving any success.
We have achieved a stalemate.
Whether one loves or hates the Democrats’ plans for health care is irrelevant. Rampant speculation and misinformation from all sides has so muddled the dialog that no one knows what would come of it. But it no longer matters, as it can’t happen. Even assuming passage of a health care bill of any stripe can be accomplished, it will be a camel, a compromise that undermines any possibility of a viable scheme that serves the people of the nation. And when it fails, the party out of power can campaign on “I told you so.” And Americans will buy it, because it’s simple and comprehensible.
And then the tables will turn and the other party will do everything it can to assure failure by the party in power. And nothing will ever be accomplished. And whatever problems exist to be resolved with be merely the ball tossed back and forth. Politicians will tell you that the camel looks like a thoroughbred, only because they believe you are either stupid enough, or enough of a true believer, to buy it. Few will admire the camel, but at least it isn’t the other side’s thoroughbred. We can’t allow that to happen. Then they might succeed, and that would rend the fabric of the political world.
People will argue, strenuously no doubt, how horrible Obama’s health care plan will be. Don’t bother. For a plan of such magnitude to have any chance of success, it would have to be comprehensive and cohesive. Once adulterated, its chance of successfully accomplishing its goals are nil. So the opposition throws monkey wrenches into the plan for the purpose of making sure it cannot succeed, and then basks in the glory of failure.
For those who fervently believe in one team of the other, grow up. Nobody owns right and wrong, good and evil. Both sides have one primary goal in common, mutually assured failure. We win. And we lose. Nothing changes. And Martha Coakley, the mutt, will be forgotten.
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And WHY wouldn’t they?
They are just following the lead of the voters who put them into office.
How many people do you know that vote for “the less of two evils” when voting?
They aren’t voting for someone they WANT in office, they are voting for the “other guy”, to keep the person they hate from getting in.
Until people get out of the Dem VS Rep mindset and actually look at ALL the parties & candidates, and then vote for someone they ACTUALLY WANT in office, it will probably continue this way.
Although I have NO idea what people are thinking in the primaries!
They let news focus voters on woman vs black man in the Dem primary while ignoring any other candidates.
While in the Rep primary the news ignores a strong candidate like Ron Paul, and they end up with McCain, one of the “Keating Five”, from the BIGGEST savings & loan scandals of the 80’s running for President!!
Our system has problems, but lets start fixing it at the beginning…the voters.
(That’s us people!) LoL
Without knowing anything, I saw Martha Coakley’s race as doomed sometime in November. It reminded me very much of the gubanatorial race in Maryland back in 2002, when Katherine Kennedy Townsend ran against Republican Bob Erlich. Like Mass, Maryland is also predominately Democratic, yet Erlich won, partly because (as with Coakley) Townsend’s campaign wasn’t well run and partly because there was something about Townsend that was somehow un-relatable. Townsend and Erlich are both similar in ages, “looks” and personal life (for example, like Brown, Erlich also had a professional wife – in fact, she was a PD).
I know that Martha Coakley is technically, not a Kennedy (like Townsend), however she was running for his seat so there’s some affiliation. There just seems to be something about Kennedy-women running against younger Republic men that doesn’t bode well. In short, I don’t necessarily see the Mass vote as any kind of referendum on health care or even a harbinger of future Dem losses, but just a weird quirk of the personality situation.
“And nothing will ever be accomplished.”
You say that like it’s a bad thing. I mean, sure, there are things Congress could be doing to make all our lives better. But I don’t think those things are at the top of their agenda anyway. The more they get done, the more the meddle in our lives and think of new ways to tax us, regulate us, and send us to prison. Sometimes, gridlock is good government.
No, gridlock is always bad government, just like needless meddling is bad government.
Good government involves not being on either on these extremes and doing good things.
Criminal juries require a unanimous vote; this isn’t a recipe for gridlock, it is a way to protect personal liberty from the tyranny of the majority.
I agree w/Jeff & Windy. I really wish this did create gridlock. With an already massive Federal code that no one person could possibly know the entirety of, the idea that we need more (hasty, unread) legislation passed is insane. Unfortunately, it just means they’ll concentrate on the “bipartisan” issues, meaning the worst of both major parties, which philosophies of government share a huge overlap within which to fuck us over. Get ready for Patriot Act XXIII. They all need to justify their jobs.
There is certainly plenty of bad to point at, but there are occasions that we could use a decent government. And since they have a great deal of my money, I would prefer they do a better job of it than worse. Unfortunately, the only thing they will ever agree on is, as you say, future permutations of the US Patriot Act. We have to be safe, you know.