We botched it

This is a politics rant. You might want to stop reading now.

What can I say besides the title? We botched it. We messed it up. It's not, by itself, that we lost. It's that we lost with such a crummy turnout! Less than 50%! I don't care if it's a special election. 50% is rubbish. No, excuse me, it's shit. Now Mr. Brown is going off to Washington, prating about how he represents the will of the Massachusetts people, and his signature campaign issue to kill health care reform. The "will of the people" who moved to universalize health care in their own state, and who have the highest health insurance subscription percentage in the union. Bitter irony.

I feel like we could have done more. I feel like I could have done more. Truth to tell I, just like the Coakley campaign, was prey to the same complacency. I didn't think Mr. Brown could pull it off. I voted twice, once in the primary and once yesterday, and I told myself that was enough. Clearly I voted for somebody who wasn't much of a campaigner. Whether she would have been a good legislator is something we won't get to find out.

We let it be about health care reform, but we let our opponents define what that meant. We let it be about scary CBO finance estimates and the ugliness of the legislative process in DC. We stopped speaking in the language of social justice. Is that so scary? Right and wrong aren't always abstract concepts. Often they're very concrete. Providing health care for our elderly population is expensive and hard. But it's also right. The same rightness applies to extending coverage to other vulnerable groups. The health care bills are both ugly ducklings, no question about that. But it's a dangerous kind of nihilism to reject a bill that isn't all you had hoped--isn't what would have written if only you had the power--just because it falls short of your aspirations. No bill is ever going to be what you wanted. Sometimes you still have to recognize a bill is better than no bill--especially this one--because make no mistake, if we kill this health care reform effort it will not be taken up again for a whole generation.

I am writing so much about the health care legislation because I see Coakley vs Brown as a referendum on Obama's domestic agenda. You may not agree.

So we lost. But what a miserable way to lose! 50%! Where's the passion, Massachusetts?

(edit: but you really shouldn't have called Schilling a Yankee's fan, Martha. That was kind of a blunder).