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What Can (Scott) Brown Do For Us?

Both parties should take heed of the Mass-acre's message.

Scott Brown's stunning victory in Massachusett's special Senate election on Tuesday may be the most perfect expression of symbolic symmetry in modern American politics. The unknown Republican officially burst the Obama bubble on the very eve of the president's one-year anniversary in office. And, adding insult to infamy, he did it by claiming the cherished seat of liberal America's leonine hero in the bluest of states. The sea-change story practically writes itself, and it already has. Obama-ism has been rejected. Democrats are in disarray. Health care is in peril.

All true to an extent, and all worth serious consideration by my fellow Democrats. But the conventional wisdom coming out of Washington in the immediate aftermath seems to be missing the much larger meaning of this undeniable inflection point . That's not surprising, given that the Brown Mass-acre was a referendum of Washington itself--and a repudiation of the Capital's tendentious, tone-deaf ways. Indeed, if you get past the partisan spin and listen to what Brown actually campaigned on, there's a clear message and menace to both parties about their lack of leadership.

The key word there is "listen." Brown's main argument was that our national leadership has been totally out of touch with the anger and anxiety voters of all stripes are voicing; his main appeal was his sincerity and credibility as a non-partisan, Revere-ian reality check. His call to arms was not anti-Obama or even anti-Democrat; it was anti-status quo and anti-arrogance (could he have found a better foil in Martha Coakley?). Indeed, the galvanizing moment of his candidacy was when he respectfully debunked the idea that he was running for the "Kennedy seat"--i.e., property of the Democrats--proclaiming it "the people's seat."

Now, there's no question Brown was running in part against Obama's policy agenda and his health care plan in particular. He explicitly branded himself as the 41st vote--the stopper to Obamacare--and he consistently criticized the bill for being too big, too costly and too full of tax increases. But it seems just as clear that Brown was also running against the confidence-crushing process that created such an unpopular bill, and all the childishness, divisiveness and hypocrisy that still rules Washington on most issues (in spite of Obama's post-partisan promises). He was saying no one believes that is change, and his message resonated beyond the Tea Party fringes: The final polls showed he was beating Coakley among Obama supporters.

More . . .

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