Brown Out

Analysis…

Newly elected U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) holds up a special edition of the Boston Herald declaring him the winner during his victory speech at the Park Plaza in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 2010. Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley in a bid to fill the U.S. Senate seat which was left empty after the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA). UPI/Matthew Healey

Tuesday’s special election to fill the Massachusetts senate seat left open by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy resulted in the election of current Republican state senator Scott Brown.  After having been in Kennedy family for 56 years, the seat was perceived by the Democrats as unlosable.  However, they did lose 52 percent to 47 percent.  Is this race a bellwether for the political leanings of the country or a wake up call for Democrats to get their act together?

The Next Right | Scott Brown’s victory is an enormous opportunity – for the Democrats.

That is if we repeat the mistakes of the past in interpreting a “change” election.

There is no doubt that President Obama and Democratic over-reaching on stimulus and health care – to no immediate effect – fueled the Brown momentum in Massachusetts.  They know that and after they get through finger-pointing and in-fighting, they will do some serious soul-searching in the wake of Brown’s election much like we did after November 2008.

Huffington Post | The seed of the Obama debacle was there long before the tea party protests, the relentless pound from Rush Limbaugh, the Fox News Network, the pack of right side talk jocks, and Republican National Chair Michael Steele. The seed was in the silly belief that Obama’s victory was tantamount to FDR’s 1932 smash election victory and the even sillier belief that the GOP had been reduced to a dwindling bunch of tobacco spitting rednecks in the Deep South and know nothing heartland voters. Neither was ever true.

Alternet | Barack Obama went to Boston to rally voters and got a pie in the face. He lost his innocence as the valiant young president and also lost his sixty-vote majority in the Senate. Now we will find out what the man is made of — either a true political leader or just another show horse. Dozens of explanations are being offered for why the Dems were humiliated in Massachusetts. Democrats incline to grab easy answers. The president, if he is tough enough, will instead face the hard message of this political fiasco.

Crooks and Liars | Coakley and this election is a wake-up call for the left and for the Democratic party. No, actually, it’s an ear-shattering warning siren going off, and if the DNC doesn’t dig the crap out of their ears and start listening to the very people who voted them into power a year ago, every hard won victory they’ve had is in jeopardy.

Just because the Democrats won the White House and Congress doesn’t mean the rightwing and its hordes of wingnut teabagging loonies have magically been defeated and sent back to the netherworld to languish for all eternity. They’re watching and waiting for the DNC to screw up badly enough that the tide of anger and disappointment that swept the right out of power will sweep them back in again.

The Plum Line | I just talked to GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, who did that exit poll on the Massachusetts race I reported on below, and he confirmed my interpretation: It’s a reach to see the outcome as a wholesale repudiation of Obama and his overall policies and agenda.

That seems a bit at odds with what many Republicans and pundits have argued today — that the results last night amounted to a referendum on Obama’s whole presidency.

On the Web…

The NYT Will Charge Online | Columbia Journalism Review

A metered model will allow the Times to continue to get traffic from the millions of casual readers and preserve most of its current ad revenue while getting a significant second revenue stream directly from heavy readers. As we’ve said, the press must focus on its core minority of readers, who bring in the vast majority of pageviews and revenue. Shaving off some Digg traffic or something is not going to make that big a difference to the big picture. The top quarter of readers account for 86 percent of all pageviews at newspaper sites, according to one survey.

Five Year Phone Concept Phone Finally Hits Sustainable Design Points | TreeHugger

Designer James Barber has come up with a concept phone for Nokia that we can really start to get on board with. Built with the dual problem of embodied energy and recyclability of our electronics in mind, Barber worked out a phone that will last until the break-even point – where the embodied energy of the device and the device itself finally balance out – and then be quickly and easily recycled.

Why Do We Pretend an Insurance Mandate Will Help the Health Care Crisis? | Slate

Some time ago, Massachusetts weighed a new, innovative health care plan to cover the uninsured. As a result of a new mandate to buy health insurance, reported the New York Times, “no one would go uninsured” in the state. Following a tough political fight, the bill passed and prompted the same newspaper to editorialize, “Massachusetts last week ventured where no state had gone before: It guaranteed health insurance for every resident.”

The year was not 2006 but 1988, and the Democratic governor who presided over this legislation was Michael Dukakis. The result? The proportion of state residents who were uninsured subsequently rose and remained unchanged for almost two decades.

Rape Victims Vs. Prison Rape Victims | The Sexist

I recently headed over to the Web site for Just Detention International (formerly Stop Prison Rape) in order to learn more about this sad study reporting high rates of sexual assaults against juvenile detainees in the U.S. (Short version: one-in-eight detained youth report being sexually assaulted within their facility within the past year; 80 percent of these victims were abused by a member of the facility’s staff).