Funny how one election has thrown everything up in the air.
Of course I'm talking about the election of Scott Brown as the Republican senator from the bluest of states, Massachusetts, on January 19. The result has been that Democrats of all stripes are running scared, while Republicans can't stop crowing about the renewed vigor that Brown's victory has brought to their party.
I happened to be in Massachusetts the weekend before the election and believe me there was hardly any time for music on any station because the competing ads for Scott and his opponent, Martha Coakley, were going nonstop like some insanely repetitive, yet inescapable, loop.
Brown, as it happens, did not run as a Republican; indeed, he seemed at pains to mention his party affiliation at all. No, he was an independent.
One of Coakley's ads, in fact, identified him as Republican Scott Brown as if this in and of itself was enough in the Bay State to ensure a politician's defeat. Sorry, Martha.
But think about it, have you heard much, if anything, about health care reform in the wake of Brown's victory? Compared to the nonstop barrage of news that kept coming out of Washington for close to a year, the silence on the issue after the Massachusetts verdict is not a little startling.
Of course, there's probably a ton of stuff going on in the back rooms of the House and Senate and White House, but any clear sense of direction is not to be found. [Let me say that this is being written before President Obama's State of the Union address, which may indeed provide some direction on the president's signature issue. Then again, it may not.]
If, as a result of this upset election, nothing or very little comes of nearly a whole year of trying to reform the health care system, there's no doubt the president will take a body blow. Even though he did a terrible job of leading the fight on the issue and never truly made it clear what exactly he wanted in the final bill, it is nonetheless the issue that has defined his first year in office. And if it comes to nothing, what was all the sound and fury about? And further, what about all the other pressing issues that were back-burnered so that health care reform could take precedence?
