It's The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Fun Fact - As An Online News Source In A Blue State, This Is The Only Picture of Scott Brown We Are Ever Allowed To Run!

As most of us know, the world as we know it came to a crashing end last night when the Massachusetts Senate seat that had been held for about 5 decades by Ted Kennedy fell into the waiting hands of Republican heartthrob Scott Brown, America's first Naked Senator. Depending on what news source you're listening to, this event will always and forever be remembered as either a Very Good Thing (America being saved from a thousand years of oppressive Socialist rule) or The Worst Thing Ever (the death of all health care reform for eternity and the crushing of any hope that any Democrat will ever again be elected to so much as the Dogpatch City Council).

As the hue and cry wears down, the facts of the matter will probably fall somewhere in between.

First the bad news: health care reform may be dead in the water, unless House Dems see fit to pass the Senate bill they're already looking over and send it to the President's desk as-is with hopes they can get some of the changes they want later in reconciliation. As of today, all signs point to this being a non-starter, for rank and file Representatives. What effect not passing some sort of health care legislation at this point would have on Democrats running for reelection in 2010 (including Washington's own Patty Murray) is a matter of conjecture, but it's going to hurt - the real question may just be how much.

But the end of the world it ain't. Botching this election in grand fashion may serve as the wake up call that Democratic legislators have needed recently. A gut-check is not necessarily a bad thing - it gives Democrats in DC an opportunity to reassess, to present a united front, and to get down to governing rather than continue engaging in the petty squabbling and nit-picking that has been their hallmark for the last few months. Perhaps they'll realize as a party that they either get to stand together or fall apart.
And maybe without a supermajority, people will finally notice that Republicans in the Senate have been nothing but obstructionist since this administration began and expect the minority party to start playing nice and get things done.

We're not arguing that this is a good thing for Democrats across the country - it is not. It represents a crisis in the party and the looming specter of a midterm bloodbath in November. But it may more accurately be a crisi-tunity - a last chance for Democrats to find out where they really stand and make their case to the voters without apologizing for the things they believe in.

Granted, there's a lot of maybe in that prospect - frankly, it would represent a sudden sea change in the party. But for progressives, it may be the best hope they've got right now. November's a long way off, but it Dems are going to get right with God, they have to start now.

Of course, all of this ignores perhaps the worst news of all about the election of Scott Brown - for the next six years, every time this pickup truck drivin', naked centerfold posin' with the single daughter does something stupid (and he has it in him) we'll all have to not quite see his schlong all over the damned Internet. Yeesh.

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