Massachussetts is voting today
January 19, 2010Jon Brooks Comments OffBecause health care is so critical to anyone’s financial planning, we’ve been covering both the debate and the legislative twists and turns since this blog launched. From the town hall tantrums to the tortured negotiations in the House and Senate to the eruptions of potentially deal-breaking issues like abortion — commentators and reporters have devoted barrelfuls of ink and billions of bytes to the permutations leading to passage of Barack Obama’s top priority, a quest that has pre-occupied the country with a level of intensity usually reserved for presidential elections or debates about war.
Yet, despite all the game theory engaged in by thousands of political kibbitzers, professional and amateur alike, not once — not once – until last week did I see anyone mention the possibility that the fate of the entire enterprise rested on today’s Massachussetts special election to fill the seat left open by the death of Ted Kennedy.
And in case you didn’t know it yourself — it just very well might. The Senate Democrats need 60 votes to end any Republican filibuster on the bill. But one of those votes includes interim Massachussetts senator Paul Kirk, who replaced Kennedy. The election today will decide who replaces Kirk – Democrat Martha Coakley or Republican Scott Brown, who has pledged to vote to uphold the filibuster.
Massachussetts may be the most Democratic-leaning state in the nation, with three times as many registered Democrats as Republicans. The race should have been a gimme for the Dems, sort of a Mike Tyson versus Don Knotts championship bout for all the marbles. But it isn’t. The respected political polling web site FiveThirtyEight, which claims that it correctly called the winners of every Senate race in 2008, puts the odds of a Democratic victory in Massachussetts at just 25%.
Reasons for such an upset, if and when it does occur, will be analyzed ad nauseum starting the moment a winner is declared. But mostly attention will turn to whether the Democrats will try to vote on the health care bill before Republican Brown is seated, whether that would be legal, and whether the Democratic coalition would hold in any case.
One thing is clear: If Brown wins today, political pandemonium is going to ensue.
