A Blue State To Go Brown?

I hope I'm wrong, but I have a feeling Martha Coakley is going to lose the special election to Republican state senator Scott Brown to fill Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts.

The first indication of a "Brown-out" in Tuesday's election is that Coakley is a worse candidate then she appears to be. After seeing audioless clips of her campaigning, on MSNBC, I watched the PBS NewsHour, which played a clip of Coakley speaking - with sound. It was then that I finally got to hear her talk.

To say she's stodgy is like saying Atlanta is uncomfortable in July. She's one of the stiffest women I've ever seen, and her voice could cure insomnia. She needs John Kerry to campaign for her . . . for the charisma.

That's where the second telltale sign comes in. John Kerry, Obama aide Mitch Stewart, and Democratic operative (and Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank's sister) Ann Lewis had e-mails sent in their names today - that's right, today - asking for money to give Coakley a lift in the final three days of the campaign. I got all of them. This is the kind of desperation associated with the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis in 1988, Dukakis, of course, was the governor of Massachusetts.

The thing is that even if Coakley were as glamorous or as charismatic as, say, Scarlett Johansson, it wouldn't help. She's the Massachusetts Attorney General, making her look like an incumbent in a year where being an incumbent officeholder isn't so advantageous right now. Also, Scott Brown has made some key tactical moves that has put him in good standing with voters. Asked by David Gergen in this past Monday's debate if he thought it was plausible that such an arch-conservative Republican like himself could take over Ted Kennedy's seat, Brown retorted that the seat doesn't belong to the Kennedys or the Democrats, but rather to the people. And all across Massachusetts, you could hear voters say, "Ooh, good answer - good answer!"

On top of that, Brown ran an ad featuring a clip of John F. Kennedy - who also held that seat - arguing in favor of tax cuts, which Brown supports. Brown conveniently left out the fact that Kennedy also believed in giving something back to your country, selectively using elements of the thirty-fifth U.S. President's record to make himself look like an appropriate heir to the Kennedy legacy.

Except for one thing - Brown promises to oppose the health care reform bill currently being hammered out in Congress. As noted, a forty-first Republican vote in the Senate to block passage of the bill will effectively kill it, making health care reform a dead issue for another generation. That the fatal vote could come from a senator holding Ted Kennedy's seat is, of course, ironic. But many Massachusetts residents may not care much because the state already has universal health insurance, courtesy of the gubernatorial administration of Mitt Romney, who in 1994 almost won the Senate seat of . . . Ted Kennedy. Brown isn't just a conservative Republican - he's even more reactionary than the last Republican to hold that seat, Henry Cabot Lodge II . . . and possibly even more so than the original Henry Cabot Lodge.

Which is why this blog endorses Martha Coakley for U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. Yes, she's boring, but, in regard to health care, if we don't get boring we're going to get screwed. Brown is a more exciting candidate, no doubt about that - that centerfold photo he did for Cosmopolitan certainly generated heat - but a hostage crisis is also exciting. I don't want excitement from my government. I want a shot at buying some decent medical insurance.

Another reason to vote for Coakley. . . . If you thought that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck were gloating insufferably over the failure of President Obama to get the 2016 Olympics for Chicago, well, if Brown wins this election Tuesday, you ain't seen nothing yet!

I said that I think Coakley will lose. So come on, Bay State voters, prove me wrong.

Kirk Will Work

With the path in Massachusetts cleared for an interim U.S. Senator to be allowed to serve in the late Edward Kennedy's seat until a special election is held in January, Governor Deval Patrick chose Paul Kirk, a close Kennedy friend, for the post. Kirk is a respected party elder and a former Democratic National Committee chairman, serving from 1985 to 1989.

Speculation has begun on who might run in the special election, with the most obvious Democratic candidates - Joseph Kennedy II, Edward Markey, and Martin Meehan - having ruled themselves out. Also subject to speculation is Governor Patrick's decision to pass over Michael Dukakis, the last Democratic governor of Massachusetts before Patrick, as a possible appointee for the interim Senate appointment.

Dukakis was a public servant in the truest sense of the term, having gotten into politics to improve government and and make it work for ordinary people, and he accomplished much in his own governorship, but he still, twenty years and change after his bid for the Presidency, remains a punch line for his emotionless, charismatically challenged persona. Not to mention the fact that his impressive economic record - the Massachusetts Miracle - went up in smoke in the final two years of his governorship.

Serving out part of Ted Kennedy's term would have been a wonderful and honorable way for Dukakis to cap his political career, but it looks like he'll be remembered as fondly as he was at the end of his last job - which means, not fondly at all, if even remembered.

I may have reported this before, but Dukakis recently accepted the blame for George Walker Bush. If he had defeated the father in 1988, he reasoned, no one would have heard of the son.

Senate News

With Ted Kennedy's death, seven seats in the United States Senate have been or soon will be opened since the last election, mainly in the form of resignations. This is the highest number in sixty years. Some, like President Obama's seat, are scheduled to be filled by election according to the calendar already, but four of them will be require special elections. The Massachusetts seat requires one by January.

The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1913, turned the power to elect U.S. Senators over from state legislatures to the people. Before that, Senate candidates campaigned to get their would-be constituents to vote for their party's state legislative candidates. (It turns out that, had direct election by the people existed in 1858, Abraham Lincoln might have been elected to the Senate; although Stephen Douglas won re-election because the Democrats narrowly held on to control of the Illinois legislature, the Republicans actually won the popular vote.) Before 1913, governors always appointed people to fill the remainder of unexpired U.S. Senate terms; now special elections are constitutionally required, though the states are given the power to set them up and decide how to do so.

Massachusetts had allowed governors to make interim appointments before a Senate election, but the state changed the law in 2004 and barred the governor from doing so when it became likely that John Kerry would be elected President and Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, could appoint his interim replacement. Homophobes in Ohio and a videotape from a terrorist leader in a cave ruined Kerry's chances, but the law remained in effect. No one ever expected Ted Kennedy to die in office. Also, no one probably expected the Democrats to actually elect another governor in Massachusetts! (Deval Patrick was, in 2006, the first Democrat elected governor there in twenty years.)

So now Bay Staters have an empty Senate seat and Democrats are short a sixtieth vote in the middle of the health care reform debate- which is why Kennedy wrote to have that law changed, as previously noted here. In the meantime, there are in Congress bipartisan - yes, bipartisan - efforts to pass a constitutional amendment requiring and dictating the terms of special elections to be held in all cases of Senate vacancies, taking away that right from the states. Considering the unintended consequences of the situation in Massachusetts, that might not be a bad thing.

Edward M. Kennedy: 1932-2009

Edward Moore Kennedy, United States Senator from Massachusetts, died last night of brain cancer.

This death comes at a peculiarly poignant time, what with his older sister, Special Olympics founder Eunice Shriver, having just died a couple of weeks ago.

Everyone on the cable news channel MSNBC has been talking about what a giant Ted Kennedy was, and it's impossible for even the most politically arch-conservative Americans to argue. Kennedy, in nearly 47 years in the Senate, crafted legislation that reshaped America far more than most lawmakers were able to do, from civil rights legislation and education equality laws to job training programs and expansion of medical insurance. It is this legacy that remained incomplete in Kennedy's last months as President Obama tried to push universal health care through, only to meet unexpected opposition in a political climate more poisoned than anyone realized.

Kennedy was a compromiser in the Henry Clay mold who could work with Republicans and counted several of them among his friends. He commanded the attention and respect of that another Massachusetts senator, Daniel Webster, in standing up fro a stronger nation. His faults and his mistakes aside - that's enough about Chappaquiddick, thank you - Kennedy's personal compassion and his unwavering fight for equality and justice were a perfect match match for the kind of temperament that is so sorely lacking in Washington today. To sat that he will be missed is an understatement. RIP. :-(

Health Care On the Brink

With President Obama's health care reform plan in danger of falling apart, thanks largely to lies and town hall meeting disruptions Republicans have perpetrated with their smear tactics, some observers are wondering if things would be very different if Ted Kennedy were still available.

The Massachusetts Democrat, who's been at home in Hyannis for much of the year fighting a cancerous brain tumor, is not expected to last through the health care debate, much less to the end of his term in January 2013. Therefore, he hasn't been in Washington to help smooth out the rough edges on the health care issue between factions within the Democratic party and to bring in some Republicans, some of whom (like Orrin Hatch, who refuses to participate in the health care debate any further) are among Kennedy's friends.

Be that as it may, Kennedy himself knows that he won't be a part of the debate on an issue he's fought for for most of his tenure in the Senate, and may not even live long enough to vote on the bill - that is, if a bill ever gets through. The irony is monumental. Therefore, he has written Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, another Democrat, to ask the legislature for the right to appoint an interim U.S. Senator once Kennedy's seat goes vacant through death or resignation. The seat would remain vacant until up to 160 days to allow for a special election under current Massachusetts law.

Obama lacks both Tom Daschle at the helm of the Health and Human Services Department and Ted Kennedy in the Senate. Both Daschle, a former Senate Democratic leader, and Kennedy, in office since 1962, are seen as the most experienced people in Washington with health care expertise who can make Obama's reforms happen and get enough Democratic votes for something like a public option. My mother dismissed the idea of Daschle or Kennedy being indispensable on the grounds that this issue doesn't hinge on one or two people.

Umm, it kind of does.

And, thanks to the rhetorical equivalents of dirty bombs Republicans have been setting off in this debate, now more than ever.