Eric the Blue has been down--in more than one sense of "down"--since the Democrats lost the Senate race in Massachusetts. Not that there has been a dearth of commentary. Today, for example, in the Star Tribune, Katherine Kersten writes that the country, like a man who's swallowed poison, has rallied itself, induced vomiting, spit up the half-digested remains of Obama's dead messianic body, and flocked to this Brown fellow whose victory is a triumph of the American spirit. He drove his own truck across the state and put on 200,000 miles campaigning againt The Elite! She concludes, "[Brown's] victory reminds us that a little-known guy in a pickup truck, who connects with average people, can still beat the odds in the United States of America."
The parts that aren't Horatio Alger puff-cant don't stand up to the mildest scrutiny. Obama, who won 364 electoral votes, campaigned on health care reform, and what he is, or was, poised to deliver was nothing more, probably something less, than what he ran on. She condemns the Dem's back-room bargaining but seems right up to date on the details of what was hammered out in those discussions, thereby proving the back room had windows. The horse trading she condemns--the "Cornhusker Kickback" and "Louisiana Purchase"--was necessitated by the Senate's dumb rules and Republican intransigence.
Oh, but it wasn't all about health care. Brown "hammered home the connection between low taxes and the robust economy needed for job creation." That must be why the Bush record on job creation was so stellar! The tax cuts!
I don't know what Brown "hammered home." The evidence for this claim exists only in the imagination of Republicans.
There is more, of course. Brown is a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts National Guard and called for tough interrogation techniques, "including waterboarding when necessary." No word about when torture is "necessary."
In our two-party system, it looks at the moment as if one of the parties is ineffectual and the other utterly vacant.
UPDATE: Hendrik Hertzberg directs attention to a headline in the Village Voice:
Scott Brown wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate
You can take it as a satiric jab at the rhapsodizers. As Hertzberg points out, you can also take it as an effectively true statement.
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