The Dish

Cindy McCain, joining her daughter and Ted Olson as a conservative for marriage equality.

E.D. Kain on why Brown won:

He’s a guy who can treat his opponents with respect.  He was out on the campaign trail shaking hands, meeting people, and trying to connect with the voters in Massachusetts.  Unlike his opponent, he was able to skillfully run a positive campaign that nevertheless found its strength in discontent and anger.  Unlike Sarah Palin and other Republicans these days, he did not have to resort to anger and conspiracy theories and other silly tactics; he did not have to go out and kiss the talk-radio pundits’ behinds; he did not stoop to pettiness or name-calling.  He was a class act, and the voters respected that.  Maybe that’s entirely personality politics, but it is the right kind of personality politics.  Brown proved that he could speak to ordinary Americans without putting up a facade.  And ordinary Americans appreciated that.

Yglesias looks at Brown's record and wonders what sort of Senator he will be:

The evidence from state of the art political science is that Brown’s voting record as a state legislator is actually incredibly liberal for a Republican. But his campaign didn’t really emphasize that fact, and his statements on forward-looking issues (no on health care, no on cap and trade, yes on tax cuts) don’t indicate any particular desire to break with conservative orthodoxy. And yet, I think the baseline view that Massachusetts is a liberal state that’s not going to re-elect an orthodox conservative still seems pretty compelling.

Ezra Klein argued yesterday that party loyalty trumps everything.

Chait watches the Democrats run in circles:

Here is what I think will happen. The shock and panic will play itself out over a few days. Then the Democrats will assess the situation and realize that letting health care die represents their worst possible option. And then they will make a deal to pass the Senate bill through the House. I am not positive this will happen, but it's my bet, because elected officials at the national level, dim though they can be, are usually shrewd enough to recognize their political self-interest.

In the meantime, the display of hysteria is actually disgusting.

Douthat counters, convincingly.

Greenwald adds to this post:

Democrats under Obama (and before) have been doing everything except "governing from the Left."  But our political discourse, as usual, is so suffuse with blinding stupidity that this clichéd falsehood — Democrats have been beholden to the Left — will take root as Unchallengeable Truth and shape what happens next.  That's already happening.

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Video above from Brown’s Today interview. Suderman watched Scott Brown’s press conference:

Scott Brown mentioned in passing that he supports some kind of basic plan for everyone, but was against the Medicare cuts, tax hikes, and massive spending now being proposed…it doesn’t make much sense. Policies that employ the machinations of government to expand coverage cost money. But it might also be a signal that Brown is open to some kind of scaled-back compromise plan. I can’t think of what that would be, but I’d guess Democratic leadership is making every effort to find out.

If Scott Brown wants to keep his Senate seat, he needs to be more than a GOP wrench in the process of reform. I wonder if he’s canny enough to know that. Why not an invite to the White House to find out?

Now it gets interesting. Beck:

I want a chastity belt on this man. I want his every move watched in Washington. I don't trust this guy. This one could end with a dead intern. I'm just saying. It could end with a dead intern.

Beck seems unaware that Gary Condit has been cleared of any suspicion that he had anything to do with the murder of Chandra Levy. But here's Randall Terry on Brown:

I – like many other political activists – am enjoying the moment of “Ted Kennedy’s seat” going to a Republican. The problem is that Scott Brown supports Roe vs. Wade. In other words, he supports the brutal murder of children in the womb for any reason; he defends the barbaric practice of those babies being decapitated, or chemically burned to death, and then casting their mangled bodies into sewers and landfills for graves. Simply put: He is not a friend of the babies; he is their enemy… We need to replace Scott Brown as soon as we can with a true defender of babies’ lives, not a phony who supports their murder.

Yglesias is deflated by the latest Washington blather about creating jobs:

[T]he measures I can think of for doing so are all the kind of thing I have trouble imagining members of congress really wanting to do. We could use a big package of federal fiscal assistance to state and local governments, for example. The reality is that the politics of “jobs” are coming to look a lot like the politics of “the deficit” in which politicians want to position themselves as “focused” on the problem but don’t, in practice, want to take the steps that would address the issue. This is especially true because the main steps congress could take to increase employment would also make the short-term budget deficit larger.  

A reader writes:

There is so much joy in middle America today. There’s hope that Obama won’t succeed in ruining our way of life. And the bitter irony for the liberal elite: after a year of mocking the Tea Party people as ignorant, redneck “teabaggers,” it’s precisely those “common” folks who smash the whole Obama project. It’s priceless. I’m so happy that I’m going to have dinner at Denny’s and then drink a few Budweisers. You have some quiche and write some more about how stupid we are.

I don't think this is a parody. It smells too much of Fox spirit. But here's the spirit that elected Obama:

Obama is the only politician in recent memory who gives me any sense of hope. There is no panic from either his advisers or Obama himself. Disappointment, yes, but also calm evaluation of the situation and how to move forward on what has been accomplished so far, not just give up. That is called leadership. There are a few Democrats who could learn from that