The Dish

That's the Village Voice's headline today. Suderman points to other Democrats ready to throw in the towel. Andrew Sprung throws up his hands. I know now more than ever before why I could never be a Democrat and feel it vital to defeat the current Republican nihilism. Which leaves me with Obama. This is a critical moment. How he responds will be everything. I think there is a response and that, oddly enough, his chances of re-election in 2012 just rose. He must not return to Clintonism. He must reignite the center around him. More thoughts on how he can forthcoming.

But out of every crisis, opportunity. And the stakes are far too great and this country's crisis far too deep for surrender to the old politics now.

A reader writes:

I so wish that the Democrats will learn a lesson from this Coakley travesty.  I'm an unrepentant liberal and Obama supporter, but this woman is not a liberal.  There is nothing in her record that says anything but police state and nanny state.  You've written about her most well known cases – why in the world would a progressive want this woman in this position?  She is John Kerry squared.  I voted for her, but my gut wanted her to lose.

Another writes:

I was looking at the tally a few minutes ago, and it looks like Brown won by 100,000 votes.  100,000 people get to derail the possibility of health insurance for 40 million? In a state where they have already passed this same reform? How does that make any sense at all? The states represented by Democrats in the Senate have populations that vastly outnumber those represented by Republicans.  They need to represent us.

Another:

I am now sharing the deep gloominess you experienced yesterday. With the news of Brown's win, I find myself sitting here with a pit in my stomach and chain smoking.

And I'm a Canadian living in Canada. From a policy analysis standpoint, like you, I do not agree with serious portions of the Democrats' health reform bill. But I fear that this is the best that the American system can produce. There seems to be little alternative. More broadly, I cannot understand how the American public can forget the Republican record so quickly. We all knew that the Democrats would not govern perfectly, but how can a president that won such a landslide only a year ago receive such a short time to prove his ability to govern? As bad as the Westminster system of government is – inflexible party discipline, the decline in ministerial responsibility, the concentration of power in the prime minister's office – at least a leader can get the time he needs to actually make headway.

Another:

Maybe all that nonsense during the campaign about how "Obama is the new Carter" actually contained a kernel of truth. Jimmy Carter, after all, was the last President to treat Americans like patient, responsible adults, and his effort at this was termed the "Malaise Speech".  This, along with many issues that were out of his control, earned him a one way ticket back to Georgia.  Now, I think Obama is a much abler statesman than Jimmy Carter and has a core of stronger support, but he also has to deal with a nihilistic, part racially-motivated "Just Say No" campaign.  How this plays out will tell us more about ourselves than about President Obama.

Another:

Not much changes after tonight. Dems couldn't get anything real done with 60 votes; still won't get anything done with 59.

Another:

Haven't bothered to vote in years for various reasons. Voted Scott Brown today. Yes, I am a life long Republican. But one important reason the voters rejected Coakley today was that she is a Beacon Hill Democrat, one of the boys. Twice they have fiddled with the election laws in the past five years to rig the system. First, they ripped appointive power away from the Governor. Then they gave it back but moved up the election. The plain motive of each of these moves was to control the process. If they had done neither there would be a Democrat in Washington today, tomorrow and for the rest of the Congressional session. The voters noticed and kicked back. The spirit of liberty still lives and the reds in Boston and Washington are just going have to get used to it.

Another:

All the attention on the senate race in Mass. has brought up the feeling that I can no longer vote for a Democrat in a national election.  The trend for me started in 2004 when I started to vote for 3rd party candidates for some of the local contests.  It solidified in 2008 when Obama was just about the only Democrat I voted for.  Reagan was the last Republican to get my vote. I now feel the system is broken, and while the Democrats are not as bad as the Republicans, in most areas of government  they are either as bad or almost as bad.  Enough is enough.  Real change will have to come from outside the 2 main political parties.  I have washed my hands of them.

Another:

I am so disappointed and angry today. Of course, the Democrats will take exactly all the wrong lessons from this experience. The people did not reject the Democrats for trying to do too much, they rejected them for not doing anything.

It breaks my heart to say this, but I fear that we elected another Jimmy Carter. A good and decent and intelligent man who cannot get things done. President Obama has not demonstrated leadership on virtually anything this year (except the stimulus). His cautious style is out-of-step with the realities of Washington and the 24-hour news cycle. I know Reid sucks and Baucus sucks, etcetera, but leaders lead and I have seen very little leadership from the President (or should I say Rahm?). I am so profoundly disappointed by the wasted opportunity and, for the first time in my life, am entirely cynical about the Democratic Party.

In short, I am the problem the Democrats face in November.

Nate Silver does the math in explaining a 31 point swing against the Dems in one year in one state:

The final score: national environment 13, Coakley 14, special circumstances 4.

If you follow through on the math, this would suggest that Coakley would have won by about 8 points, rather than losing by 5, had the national environment not deteriorated so significantly for Democrats. It suggests that the Democrats would have won by 9 points, rather than losing by 5, had the candidate been someone other than Coakley. And it suggests that the race would have been a 1-point loss (that is, basically too close to call), rather than a 5-point loss, even if Coakley had run such a bad campaign and even if the national environment had deteriorated as much as it has, but had there not been the unusual circumstances associated with this particular election.

A perfect storm of specific and broader factors that killed the prospect of substantive reform on any major issue in this country for a very long time.

"I have two reactions to the election in Massachusetts. One, I am disappointed. Two, I feel strongly that the Democratic majority in congress must respect the process and make no effort to bypass the electoral results. If Martha Coakley had won, I believe we could have worked out a reasonable compromise between the House and Senate health care bills. But since Scott Brown has won and the Republicans now have 41 votes in the senate, that approach is no longer appropriate. I am hopeful that some Republican senators will be willing to discuss a revised version of health care reform. Because I do not think that the country would be well served by the health care status quo. But our respect for democratic procedures must rule out any effort to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened. Going forward, I hope there will be a serious effort to change the senate rule which means that 59 are not enough to pass major legislation, but those are the rules by which the health care bill was considered, and it would be wrong to change them in the middle of this process," – Barney Frank.

DiA recommends rebuilding:

The best way to discourage that kind of attack is to snuff it out, clean it up, and pretend it never happened. Israeli terror incident response policy calls for cleaning up an attack site within three hours and restoring it to its pre-attack state within four days. The principle is essentially the same as the "broken windows" theory of policing, with its insight that quickly repairing damaged buildings and graffiti ultimately deters vandals. One obvious response to yesterday's attacks in Kabul would be to make a high-priority emergency effort to rebuild the Faroshga market.

Drum isn't as gloomy as Cowen:

My guess: America will spend a billion dollars a year in Haiti for the foreseeable future and keep maybe a brigade or two of troops there. Conditions will continue to be dire, but not so dire that they affect American politics. That combination will be enough to keep it under the political radar and off the nightly news once the initial media coverage has worn off.

This youtube of Haitians chanting "USA!" to a group of LA firefighters is making the rounds. A reader sends along another scene of survival after six days, adding, "Wait for her answer to the first question, and her singing":

Jonathan Bernstein studies the current composition of the Senate:

Look at this graph, which I've linked to many times: the thin part of the distribution isn't at the ends; it's in the middle.  That's especially true on the Republican side.  There are four outliers to the right (Coburn, Bunning, DeMint, Inhofe), but after that, there's not much difference between the 5th most conservative Republican and, say, the 26th (Wicker).

Then, once you get close to the middle, the Republicans are strung out again, with Snowe.  The same thing is basically true on the Democratic side; there are a handful of moderates, then a larger group of moderate liberals, and then the bulk of the caucus, who are mainstream liberals.  There are no "15 'theological' senators from the Progressive Caucus."  In fact, the 15th most liberal Senator (Schumer) appears to be statistically indistinguishable from the most liberal and also from the 33rd most liberal Senator.  And, really, that sounds about right to me; with the possible exception of Sanders (whose voting record turns out to be to the right of Schumer, for what it's worth), I don't think there are a handful of Senators I'd think of as the "most" liberal.