If you had told me one year ago as I was standing in the freezing cold after getting up at 4:30 am in the morning to get to the Mall in Washington, D.C. so I could witness Obama's Inauguration that one year from that moment I would see the seat that Ted Kennedy held won by a Republican like Scott Brown in January, I would have thought you were going to follow that up with some wild explanation about how Obama was going to usher in an Age of Socialism that would bring about "recovery" in America. (But, then, I would have asked if you knew something that I didn't about the future of Ted Kennedy.)
Well, it's one year later. Assessments of how Obama did in his first year are now mired in the reality that teabagger Scott Brown just concluded the long, drawn out act of defacation on the Democratic Party that was the special election for the Senate seat in Massachusetts that Ted Kennedy had long occupied.
Martha Coakley was, as Casey Sherman said over at Huffington Post, "doomed from the start." He described Coakley as, "a go-along to get-along kinda gal." When the going got tough, Sherman said, Martha would curl up in the fetal position.
Apparently, Coakley kept a person behind bars for sex abuse despite overwhelming evidence that the person was innocent, opted to let a suspect that violated a toddler with a curling iron walk, and chose to settle a case against contractors out of court instead of going to trial after a chunk of the Big Dig tunnel collapsed and killed a motorist.
So, Democrats were hoping that a politician prone to acts of political expediency, which ultimately wind up lowering voters' expectations to levels that may or may not eventually lead them to just hate government altogether and become raging teabaggers, would successfully win a seat that had been held by a titan for decades.
Democrats were hoping voters wouldn't notice that when Coakley was struggling the most in the last week of the election, she flew to D.C. to meet with corporate health insurance lobbyists who could each give her $10,000 for her campaign. They were hoping voters wouldn't notice even though this health care bill and the way Obama and Democrats have been pushing Americans to buy junk insurance with their health legislation has infuriated Americans.
Now, Cosmo's "America's Sexiest Man" in 1982, the man who posed nude for a centerfold, has delivered a bombshell turd for Democrats to handle. At a point when the media was about to let Obama off the hook and forget about all the criticisms that could be leveled against him because they believe he was dealt a bad hand and supposedly people's expectations were too high, the message in the media on Obama will now be that he is in trouble.
A poll is circulating now that shows the GOP and Democrats are neck and neck in a generic Congressional ballot.
No doubt, if Obama thought he had trouble getting networks to give him airtime for primetime speeches in his first year, he will have to compete with more shows like "Lost", "24", and "So, You Think You Can Dance" now.
The media will be looking at tonight and will likely be giving a megaphone to Bluedog Democrats who are already unleashing their ranks on the population of Americans.
Joe Lieberman would like us to take the toothpick of bipartisanship and choke on it some more. Oh, and also he would like everyone to know this is an indication that the Democratic Party needs to move more to the center.
Indiana Senator and Blue Dog Democrat Evan Bayh thinks the lesson is that Democrats have pushed their agenda too far to the left and have alienated independent voters.
Interesting --- one would think that left wing elements in the Democratic Party would have to actually pass some legislation that could be considered left wing victories in order to make voters afraid.
If the way health care reform was handled is any indication, we can expect more from these Blue Dog Democrats. They will continue to blame the victim when it is they, the abuser, that is responsible for the fact that Republicans have been given a second life after an African-American was elected and signaled the Republicans were in deep trouble.
Blue Dogs mounted campaigns against reform that reinforced the right wing ideologies of those Republicans using thoughts of free health care for illegal immigrants, free sex changes under Obamacare, and death panels that will pull the plug on granny to derail and dilute health care reform.
Blue Dogs beat up on progressives forcing them to give up single payer, then the public option, then the Medicare buy-in at age 55, and then health care coverage that would cover a woman's right to an abortion. And, as we speak, Blue Dogs are convincing progressives to give up more concessions and Republicans love it.
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