Brown, GOP Win; Kennedys, America Loses

January 19, 2010: Today, Republican Scott Brown has won the special election to United States Senate seat left open by the passing of the late Ted Kennedy. In the weeks leading up to today's election, many pundits had argued that today's special election in Massachusetts was intrinsically linked to the national healthcare debate. As it turns out, they were right - but not for the reasons they thought.

It is poetic, in a twisted sort of way, that just one day short of exactly one year after President Obama took the Oath of Office, that the Democratic Party suffered a catastrophic setback in this election, costing them the crucial 60^th vote in the Senate; a vote that would have prevented the filibustering of the much-debated and urgently needed healthcare reform bill. In other words, one of the bluest of blue states has replaced the long-time champion of healthcare reform with a man who has sworn to see his predecessor's final dream die on the Senate floor.

One can't help but note, with no small amount of irony, that the denial of 1/6^th of the nation's populations' chances of finally getting healthcare is, in a way, the result of a "pre-existing condition". Actually, several:

- Democrats - especially President Obama and the late Sen. Kennedy - have long encouraged voters to focus on the person they're electing, not the party. Oops.

- Massachusetts Democrats changed the rule for replacing US Senators from one of gubernatorial appointment to the present special election system just a few years ago, in 2004, when they thought Sen. Kerry would be vacating his seat to move into the White House - and Mitt Romney (a Republican) happened to be governor. Can we say 'backfire'?

- Most of all, the state's Democratic party leadership nominated a god-awful candidate for the special election, whom, by all accounts, knows less about her would-be constituents than the carpet-bagging Madame Hillary did when she sought - and won - an equivalent post in New York. And her victory was far from a 'gimmie'.

While this most recent epic failure of a candidacy is a rather recent development, such a terrible nominee's very presence on the ballot as one of only two choices is symptomatic of a chronic illness that has long belamed America's political system. Namely, the practice of having two sets of out-of-touch party elders each selecting a single person to run against his or her equally ineptly chosen counterpart is what has created the present situation as much as anything else.

When voters are only given a say as to which of just two bad choices they would prefer, the only thing for certain is that the results will be less than stellar.