Democrats never had a 'super-majority' in the Senate
  --Some things have definitively not changed since the special election in Massachusetts Tuesday. 1) There was never a 'filibuster-proof' majority for Democrats in the Senate, with Sen. Joe Lieberman there. 2) There has not been 'bipartisanship' in Congress, with the GOP determined to destroy President Obama and to defeat any slightest improvement in conditions for ordinary Americans. 3) There was never a 'honeymoon' for Obama and the White House, with people like the WashPost's David Broder and the rightwing noise machine ensconced in media.

However, the infamous special election that put a self-advancing tool into the senate (under the rubric of 'independence') did clear other paths and carries some useful lessons:

1) So much for uniting the party behind one candidate in a primary. A winning party needs engaged citizens in primary elections.
2) So much for picking the 'safest' candidate and supposedly the surest bet in the primary, in hopes of winning the general election.
3) So much for counting on party registration to do the job.

What happened in Massachusetts is that when Democrat Coakley defaulted, figuratively speaking, the race came to be defined by the Republican candidate--a perpetual careerist named Scott Brown--and by a loose triangle of pols, media and some public supporters. And how did they define it? --as 'health care in the balance.' This in MASSACHUSETTS, which already has RomneyCare--opposed by a substantial majority of voters in the 2008 election--and does not particularly like it. What RomneyCare did in the Bay State was to turn millions of new customers over to the insurance companies, like it or not, with state subsidy provided by the taxpayers. So basically the pundits talked uncritically about RomneyCare as 'health reform,' framed the Dems as needing Massachusetts to sell it to the nation, and then defined a win for Coakley in MA as a win for that plan, and voting down the senate bill as a defeat for the White House and for Dems.

The Dems could not have come up with a more disastrous argument for Massachusetts is they had hired Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin as their campaign consultants. What's worse--since presumably Brown will not be a fixture in office, once Massachusetts voters see how he votes--is that the Democratic party apparatus seems largely poised to do a bigger version of the same, to sink into a bigger hole, for 2010. The giant sinkhole of RomneyCare helped suck in Coakley; the giant sinkhole of 'jobs' can do the same on a larger scale.

To be clear: Unemployment is a major problem and--like foreclosures--will get worse. These giant problems are the legacy of past years and were accelerated by the disastrous fiscal and economic policies of George W. Bush. Any president with a heart should mention, and address, unemployment.

But a president cannot wave a magic wand and end unemployment. President Obama cannot singlehandedly create millions of 'jobs.' Some measures can be taken; for a combination of reasons, we could sorely use a new WPA.

But owners of businesses do not go into business in order to hire their fellow Americans. We have already seen ample evidence that a Democratic president cannot count on cooperation or support from Wall Street or its allies. --Did anyone notice that Goldman Sachs postponed announcing its upcoming bonuses, so as not to bring out that news item on the eve of the Massachusetts special election?



Time to move on:

CREDO (formerly Working Assets) is sending around the following, which compares favorably to what passes for political analysis in some of our media outlets:

"With its "filibuster-proof" majority gone, will Senate Democrats use reconciliation to pass a public option?

"The voters of the ultra-Blue state of Massachusetts have decided to elect Scott Brown, a conservative Republican to the Senate in a special election. With the election of a Republican senator from Massachusetts, the Democrats' so-called "filibuster-proof" majority in the Senate is officially dead."

"As the election neared, it became increasingly likely that a disappointed and unmotivated progressive base of Democrats and progressive-minded Independents would not turn out to vote in numbers large enough to counter the smaller but more committed conservative base."

"Now that Democratic candidate Martha Coakley has conceded the race, this appears to be what happened."

That overworked word 'message' does indeed seem to be applicable:

"The loss of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat sends a clear message that the Senate health care bill does not go far enough. Sign our petition telling President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid that the Senate must use reconciliation to pass a better health care bill with a strong public option."

"While the message might be lost on the power brokers within the Democratic Party, the message of the Massachusetts special election is clear. Voters did not elect President Obama and a Democratic supermajority in the House and the Senate so that health care reform could be written by the likes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson. Progressives have been told for months that we must accept a mediocre bill in order to overcome a filibuster. The fact of the matter is Senator Harry Reid and President Obama took reconciliation off the table even though it represented our best chance to get an up-or-down vote on real reform."

"The reconciliation process is a way for the majority of the Senate to pass items that affect the budget under rules that prohibit a filibuster."

These are good points. CREDO is sending around a petition for the White House and Congress, asking that legislation be passed via the 50-plus-one plan of reconciliation (otherwise known as "50 plus Joe Biden").

A good list of commentators calling for more 'bipartisanship'--from the White House and from Democrats, naturally--will be a useful handy reference guide to tools in the media.