There’s been a lot of heat but precious little light about how long of a lag there will be between tomorrow’s election in Massachusetts and the new senator actually being seated.
It’s a critical question if Scott Brown wins tomorrow because that will be the end of the 60-vote Democratic majority. But just when would the end come? Would it be enough time to get the compromise health care reform bill through the Senate? Or would the House be forced to swallow the current Senate bill as is?
We took a close look and talked to the state election office’s attorney. For the record, it appears the soonest practical date for the senator to be seated under Massachusetts law is 15 days after the election. Why does Massachusetts law matter? Because Senate rules require a certificate from the state of who the winner is before seating him or her.
Insider Advantage, an established pollster with Republican affiliations, polled Massachusetts for Politico: Brown 52, Coakley 43.
TPM Reader JC checks in from the Red Sox Nation on MA-Sen …
I’m a huge MA/NY/CT Democrat. And a huge Red Sox fan. I listen to WEEI online all the time (weei.com); it’s the hugely popular Boston sports radio. Every regular sports guy/gal in Mass and greater New England listens to WEEI. They’ve been talking about the election all day today, and they’ll be talking about it all day tomorrow. 8 out of 10 daily WEEI radio hosts is a huge Republican. They’ve hated Kennedy for years, and there’s always been a lot of Mass voters itching to unseat Kennedy anyway. They/we resent being told what to do. Add that up with the Tea Baggers, and tomorrow is going to be a massive whiplash against Democrats. I predict a landslide for Scott Brown. 10+ points.
I don’t mean to get ahead of things. But I cannot help noting one blazingly obvious fact. If Michael Capuano had been the Democratic nominee, there’s simply no way we’d have gotten to this point (I used to live in his district). No way. Absolutely, no way. That is not simply to say that Coakley has run a bad campaign. That seems obvious; but I’m always a bit dubious of evaluations of a campaign (obvious as it may seem in the moment) because it’s very hard to view as a struggling campaign as a well run one. And I’m not saying Capuano is the second coming. But Coakley is just culturally and temperamentally not suited to the politics of 2009/2010.
She did win a primary. So it’s not like party bosses forced the choice, at least not in the narrow sense. But there’s got to be some reckoning and thought as to why the Dems ended up with this nominee. I don’t think the answer will be a pleasing one.
Whatever happens tomorrow in Massachusetts, this is a critical gut-check moment for Health Care Reform and the state of the Obama presidency. There’s a lot of irony and painfully unforced errors that went into this current moment. And there’s also quite a lot on the line.
Tell me how you’re seeing it.
From TPM Reader BK …
I called into Mass. today via Organizing for America and it did not give me a good feeling about tomorrow. The people I spoke with who said they would vote for Coakley were clearly already going to the polls; my call wasn’t necessary. But considering that I was presumably calling a list of reliably Democratic voters (the script was GOTV, not persuasion), I got too many Brown voters.
An old friend of mine checks in from Massachusetts, TPM Reader JF:
Arrived at my polling station before it opened. 32, grey skies, and light snow falling. Not great weather. Only three people in line. My precinct is a diverse mix of upper to lower class residents – post gentrification yuppies, gays, and working class residents from the local public housing. The voting station is in the lobby of public housing. All the voters I saw in my 15 minutes at the station were white men and woman from the more affluent class of the neighborhood – lots of iPods headphones. A big contrast to the presidential election and even the Senate primary election. Doesn’t look great.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ended the post-9/11 protocol for his military aides of wearing fatigues to work: It’s back to their business uniforms. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.