What Happens Tomorrow?

So has anyone heard? There is an election tomorrow. It is the special election to see who will serve out the remainder of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s term in Massachusetts’ Senate seat. To the surprise of just about everyone, the incredibly blue state of Massachusetts (they gave President Obama %61.8 of the vote in November of 2008) is most likely going to give the majority of its vote to a Republican candidate, State Senate Scott Brown, who opposes just about every item on the President’s agenda, while turning heavily against the Democratic candidate, Mass. Attorney General Martha Coakley. For a more complete rundown of what the polls look like going into the election tomorrow, check out Nate Silver’s analysis. The key point:

Overall, while I would probably take Coakley’s side of a 3:1 wager, her situation looks to be increasingly difficult. She is basically relying upon getting solid turnout from a “silent majority” of voters who have done little to make themselves seen and heard. We know that there are a huge number of potential such voters in Massachusetts, which remains a very blue state and which until the past three weeks had not behaved unusually in any obvious way. But the pollsters are no longer seeing and hearing from them.

So the question on everyones mind is: what does the result of tomorrows election say about the chances for health care reform? On the one hand, a win by Coakley would basically ensure the passage of a compromise bill, as negotiations between the Senate and the House have proceeded basically as expected, and both could pass the final bill in the next two weeks. However, if Brown wins, what happens? The Democrats would lose their “supermajority” of 60 seats in the Senate, and thus would be unable to break a Republican filibuster in the Senate. So, considering the stakes for not only the Democrats politically, but also more than 30 million uninsured Americans, what can we expect the Senate to do if Coakley cannot hold on?

Jonathan Chait at The New Republic has outlined the options for Congressional Democrats and the President:

1. Finish up the House-Senate negotiations quickly and hold a vote before Scott Brown is seated. Republicans will scream, but how could they scream any louder? It’s a process argument of murky merits that will be long forgotten by November.

2. Get the House to pass the Senate bill, and maybe use a reconciliation bill (which only needs a Senate majority to pass) to implement as many House-Senate compromises as possible.

3. Go back to Olympia Snowe. I have not seen any persuasive reporting, or even conjecture, about what Snowe is actually thinking. Her substantive demands have been met. By the end of the process, her only demand was to delay the bill by some unspecified time period, which is such a vacuous demand that it’s hard to believe it represents her actual beliefs. Did she turn against the bill completely? Did she decide that she couldn’t take the heat for voting yes? Or did she figure that, with sixty Democrats, her voted wouldn’t really be needed so there was no reason for her to take the heat? If options 1 and 2 fail, we may find out about Snowe.

Obviously, the alternative is option 4: Crawl into a hole and die

Setting aside the insanity of requiring 60% of a chamber to make something a law, as the Senate does with the filibuster, this incredibly unavoidable and very peculiar situation shows us another side of the insanity of Washington. It isn’t just the lawmakers. Its the Washington media. It doesn’t really matter what the situation is, every political situation must be explained by who won and who lost. Thus, the election tomorrow is only going to be discussed as a referendum on President Obama and the health care bill. If Coakley wins, it will most likely be by a narrow margin, which in the blue state of Massachusetts will be seen as a loss for Obama. If Brown wins, Democrats will more than likely still pass a bill by one of the methods that Chait described, and the Republicans and the media (who love a racket) will howl about how the Democrats are going against the will of the people. You can just tell its coming, and it is ridiculous. Not only will they have passed this bill with 59% of the Senate, but those 59 Senators represent 61.20% of the population of the United States (based on U.S. Census data). Not only THAT, but I really doubt that if Brown wins it will tell anyone anything about what the population of Massachusetts thinks about Obama or his health care plan. Massachusetts has universal health care, its plan is very similar to the current Senate plan (which is closer to what the final bill will look like), and it polls very highly. The only difference is that the Senate plan controls costs better than the Massachusetts plan that Republican Scott Brown voted for. Guess what Republicans like to pretend is the worst part of the health care bills? Its expense.

Will Fox News or MSNBC or CNN or Mike Allen (from Politico) or Mark Halperin (at Time) or any other MSM political reporter ever bring up any of these facts? No. They will ignore the fact that this election, whether Coakley wins or loses, is mostly about Coakley running a terrible campaign, being a lackluster candidate, Brown running a solid underdog campaign, and the economy being in bad shape due to the lack of any sort of fiscal sanity during President Bush’s term (yes, its still his fault).

But of course, this election is all about Obama, right?