Who Really Won In Connecticut?

Chris Matthews has often pointed out that Republicans run for office repeatedly before finally getting elected or giving up on their own, while Democrats see to it that those in their party who lose one chance of getting elected to office are not allowed a second.  Matthews was referring to presidential elections, but, as I've often pointed out, these standards apply to other offices as well, particularly with regards to U.S. Senate seats.  Republican Senate candidates who lose a bid for one Senate seat in any given state eventually make a bid for the other, and they mostly win that second bid.  Losing Democratic Senate candidates simply disappear into some party-sponsored witness protection program.  Anyway, you can read my earlier, more detailed post on the subject here.

I bring this up because noted violence peddler Linda McMahon, having failed to win the Senate seat vacated by Chris Dodd in Connecticut, has announced her bid for Connecticut's other Senate seat, which is being vacated by Joseph Lieberman in 2012.  McMahon, who made name for herself - her husband's - running World Wrestling Entertainment, had a realistic shot of winning Dodd's seat last year when her Democratic opponent, state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, was plagued by inconsistencies over his military service record, but even though she lost, she was widely expected to run again if Lieberman retired.  She has since lived down to expectations, making her the latest Republican to run again for a Senate seat after she was denied one in a previous attempt.  Hey, not taking no for answer is a Grand Old Party tradition.  (Giving no for an answer also is.)  Had Blumenthal lost in Connecticut last year, he would have been rendered politically dead. 

Or is he?  Once Blumenthal was sworn in as a senator, he was pretty much forgotten by the mainstream media.  Although Blumenthal was the only freshman Senate Democrat elected to a full six-year term last year, I kept seeing Delaware's Chris Coons and West Virginia's Joe Manchin - both elected in 2010 to complete unexpired Senate terms - on MSNBC instead.  When Chris Matthews led a discussion on his show about Senate Democrats in early 2011, stock footage of sitting Democratic senators - Charles Schumer, Harry Reid, Richard Durbin, Chris Dodd - was shown.  Wait - Chris Dodd? Wasn't he already gone from the Senate?  Didn't Blumenthal take his place? What was up with that?  It was as if MSNBC didn't want to acknowledge Blumenthal's existence, especially after the uncharitable things Matthews said about how the Connecticut Democrat handled his military record in the 2010 campaign.

Then this past May, Chris Jansing reported a news story about a bill pending in the Senate and had Blumenthal on for an interview.  MSNBC had finally realized that he was Connecticut's new senator.

Perhaps I'm being unfair.  Unlike a right-wing Republican senator like South Carolina's Jim DeMint, who attempted to leave his mark on the Senate from the day he set foot in the chamber, Senator Blumenthal has likely been easing himself into the job, as freshman senators are supposed to.  Or maybe his pet cause - fighting for consumer rights and protections - gives him few opportunities for visibility in a Congress where Republicans have successfully kept the issue from coming up, much less coming to a vote.  But even though she lost last year, Linda McMahon created a lot of buzz and got a lot of media publicity for the WWE - and, coincidentally, herself - and has thus won the promise of more interest and coverage when she launches her candidacy for Lieberman's seat in 2012.

And God help Connecticut and the Senate if she wins this time.

Henry Clay Must Die

Henry Clay, the distinguished early-nineteenth-century American legislator, was known in his days in the House of Representatives and later in the Senate as the Great Compromiser for his efforts compromise on the slavery issue. He brought the Missouri Compromise to passage in 1820, which brought Missouri into the union as a slave state and allowed Congress to take the constitutionally dubious act of creating a new state from an existing state by admitting Maine (then a part of Massachusetts) as a free state, preserving the balance of free states and slave states in the Senate. It also closed the Great Plains to slavery. Three decades later, as a senator, Clay sponsored the Compromise of 1850 that brought California into the Union as a free state and allowed territories newly won from Mexico in the U.S.-Mexican War.

Though a slaveowner himself, Clay, who was from Kentucky, believed in a strong Union and supported many industrial and economic policies that would have benefited the North, had they ever been enacted. Realizing he was on the wrong side of history, Clay, great though he was, was willing to broker compromises to keep a war between the states from erupting.

As we all know, it was all for naught. Clay, who died in 1852, didn't know.

Why am I telling you this? Because the Senate is ready to compromise away any chances for meaningful health care reform. With single-pater medical insurance never a realistic possibility, so liberals agreed to a compromise - a public insurance option. By the time the health care bill reached the Senate, it got compromised away in favor of a Medicare buy-in for Americans aged 55 to 64, Just it when it looked like the Senate was ready to pass a compromise bill that everyone could live with, noted closet Republican Joe Lieberman of Connecticut has announced that he will filibuster the bill for including the buy-in. He also remains against the public option, and he insists that health care reform bill must exclude both.

So, in other words, Lieberman supports a health care reform bill that doesn't reform much.

Oh yeah, he actually supported the Medicare buy-in in an Internet interview back in September.

Look, you couldn't compromise on slavery - it clearly had to be abolished. You can't compromise on health care reform - it needs a public option and/or expansion of Medicare. Abolishing restrictions against pre-existing conditions is all good and fine, but only greater public health insurance will keep costs down. Compromise is overrated. Nothing at all is ever achieved or resolved by compromise.

Henry Clay must die.