1. Buh-bye, Arlen. You won’t be missed. (But this should be a fascinating general election campaign.)
2. It’s great that Bill Halter has forced a run-off in Arkansas, but D.C. Morrison’s votes should break for Blanche Lincoln, since he ran to her right. But really, who cares? Whoever wins the nod is going to get trounced by John Boozman.
3. Rand Paul’s win may be a great victory for the Team Party over the Republican establishment, but it could well turn out to have been a Pyrrhic one, as Paul seems too extreme and angry to win a general election in even deep-red Kentucky. Notice also that both Democratic candidates received more votes than Paul, and nearly 50% more Democrats voted than Republicans, in a year in which conservatives should naturally be the far more energized wing.
4. Mark Critz’s 10-point margin of victory in the PA-12 special election is astonishing, but it’s important to remember that this is one special election in a single Congressional district. Don’t let’s make too much of it. That said, I think Daniel Larison has by far the best analysis.

Okay, one last thing: the most heartening piece I’ve read all day is Larry Kudlow’s characteristically cocky take on the midterm elections, because that asshole is always wrong.

I know you’re just as excited as I am. Here’s a brief rundown of the four marquee races:

• Pennsylvania Senate: Nowhere can the right-left divide be seen more vividly than in the Keystone State. On the right, former Congressman and Club for Growth president Pat Toomey has the Republican nomination locked up. “Club for Growth” is, naturally, the euphemistic name for a group of anti-tax zealots. What’s more, Toomey managed to achieve a remarkable 97% rating from the American Conservative Union during his congressional career. He is very conservative. On the left, however, liberal Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak has a slight edge over five-term Senator Arlen Specter, the political chameleon who only switched to the Democratic Party last year when it became apparent Toomey would likely defeat him in a Republican primary matchup. Talk about lose-lose. In general election polling, Toomey has a 6-point lead over Sestak and 9 points over Specter. It’s not an insurmountable lead, but Republicans are viewing this as a prime pick-up opportunity.
• Arkansas Senate: Again, the GOP nomination is almost certainly decided, with Congressman John Boozman holding a commanding lead over all others. Both Arkansas Senate primaries force a runoff if no candidate wins a majority of the votes, but Boozman’s 46% in the polls seems soft in such a large field. On the Democratic side, the drama of a runoff could well unfold. Popular liberal Lt. Governor Bill Halter entered the race during the health care debate, as Senator Blanche Lincoln’s support cratered, and while she’s maintained a nearly 10-point lead, it remains to be seen if she can top 50%. It’s all a bit of theater, however, as structural and demographic conditions strongly suggest conservative Arkansas will elect (can you believe this?) only its second GOP Senator since Reconstruction come November.
• Kentucky Senate: The power of the Tea Party will be on full display in the race for retiring Senator Jim Bunning’s seat. Rand Paul, son of Dr. Congressman Ron, will likely breeze to victory over establishment Republican pick Trey Grayson, the Secretary of State. Paul will probably then go on to defeat whichever Democrat wins the dead-heat primary race, Attorney General Jack Conway or Lt. Governor Daniel Mongiardo, although general election polling shows either race closer than he’d probably like. This should be an interesting contest, as it turns out Kentucky voters are actually insane.
• PA-12 Special Election: The race to replace the late Congressman Jack Murtha is going down to the wire, with former Murtha aide Mark Critz and Republican Tim Burns in a statistical tie. Structural factors are against any Democrat, and President Obama’s favorables are under 50% in the district, so Burns has a good chance to win. But Murtha was outrageously popular in the district, so it’s possible Critz could win by virtue of their long-time association.

All in all, today should be a good day for Republicans, and especially for the Tea Party, as Rand Paul would be its first actual member to win a high-profile race. (Scott Brown had the support of the Tea Party, although he has never been a member.) Of course, a terrible economy, several divisive policy debates and a general anti-incumbent political atmosphere ought to give the GOP a natural advantage against Democrats in power this year. But it doesn’t help progressive hopes when laughably amateurish mistakes turn what ought to be a cakewalk (Linda McMahon!) into a real race.

Stay tuned. This should be interesting.

Or rather: Yay, it happened!

I’m not going to wade into the actual politics that led to health care reform’s passage — Yglesias and Chait do a fine job of that, and Bart Stupak is just so tiresome to think about, and really, Peggy Noonan, is “demon pass” the best you could come up with?

The noise is just noise, especially when there are practical consequences to think about. Soon everyone will have health insurance! And yes, while it is true that the whole nightmare debate isn’t quite over — the reconciliation bill, which, don’t let’s forget, improves the package, still has to tumble through the Senate — it is also true that the bill passed by the Senate in December will, with the President’s signature this week, become law. A huge part of American life will be improved by the stroke of a pen.

What I think is interesting is what can happen next. Can, not will. There are so many predictions and opinions, and all the pundits are so convinced of their right(eous)ness:

It’ll kill the Democrats in November! Think again! Major reforms always become popular over time! It’s poisoned our politics! We’ll repeal it! Good luck with that! Baby killer!

Shut up, all of you. (Especially the last.)

If there’s any advice I would give to a casual observer of this mess, it would be to turn off the TV, click “close tab” on everything except cat videos and your Netflix Instant Player, and reflect on the fact that half a century of work by progressives has finally paid off. That’s a long time, and anyone who thinks they can untangle the meaning of it in less than 24 hours is fooling themselves. 99% of what the pundits are saying today will be meaningless by tomorrow. They have no idea what they’re talking about! Remember when everyone was saying reform was dead after a moderate Republican beat a terrible Democratic party hack in a special election by a few hundred thousand people in a state that already had universal health insurance? Yeah, exactly.

So let’s all do ourselves a favor, take a step back, and if like me you think health care reform was a moral and historical imperative, gloat softly, to ourselves. Of course it’s difficult not to enjoy the hilarity of the Right’s meltdown. Feel free to do that too. (I mean, come on. You can’t make this stuff up.) But there’s still plenty of work to be done — on jobs, on the environment, on gay rights, on any number of problems America faces today. But we can cross this one off the list, for now, and that’s something.

One last point: if for some weird reason you’re interested in what the reform package actually does (and when), check out here, here and here. You’ll be surprised how banal socialism is when you get down to the details.

This is bullshit, plain and simple. A few points:

First, it is, without question, not unprecedented. Even that dastardly Mainstream Media know this:

Second and more imporantly, the Democrats have already passed health care reform. All that’s left to do is find a way to reconcile (not exactly what “budget reconciliation” means, but we’ll get to that) the House and Senate bills. The difficulty is that since the Second Boston Massacre — WHICH CHANGED EVERYTHING DIDN’T YOU KNOW – the Democrats no longer have 60 votes in the Senate to pass an amended bill.

With the Senate GOP voting in lockstep against everything, the only way to get anything close to the (again, already-)passed bills to the President’s desk is for the House to pass the Senate’s bill. There are significant differences between the two, but the foundation is largely the same. What matters now is whether Pelosi and co. can get enough “no” votes to switch to “yes.” (And at least fewer “yes” votes to switch to “no.”) That is literally all that matters for health care to pass. Reconciliation is only a small part of the bargain between the House and the Senate to get that done.

If you watch CNN, however, you’ll see Mary Matalin, who is about as pleasant as bedbugs, drone on about how reconciliation is a travesty of democracy and will destroy the Democrats’ majority come November. Every other cable news network will carry another loathesome version of the same drivel. You’ll read more of this in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and in a thousand witless posts on the Corner.

It’s all a big red herring.

Budget reconciliation, as I understand it, is just a patch for legislation that has already been approved. Because budget-related legislation is so complicated, involving so many committees, the budget reconciliation process allows policy changes to entitlements (such as MEDICARE) and tax laws to be passed in a streamlined, unfilibusterable way, to avoid total gridlock. After all, the federal government’s gotta have a budget, one way or another. If you’re really interested in the procedure, the House Rules Committee has a nicely dense summary.

In the case of health care reform, reconciliation will allow the Senate to appease House members’ concerns about things like affordability and the Medicare Part D “donut hole,” but not, since it’s not budget-related, things like the Stupak abortion language and the structure of the insurance exchanges. Still, still, still: all that matters is that the House pass the Senate bill.

The point is that reconciliation is the icing, not the cake. It doesn’t even actually have to happen for reform to pass. The worst fears of conservatives arrive earlier – health care reform is a few House votes away from becoming law. (I suspect the rumors of a smaller compromise bill are a political feint. Obama said as much yesterday.) The furor over reconciliation is merely a last-ditch effort on the part of Republicans to squeeze a little more political blood from the fight. They aim to tar Obama as a partisan, so they can run against him and his “socialized medicine” in the fall. Let them. Health care reform is too important, and too close, to be sacrificed on the altar of politics. The ineptitude of the Democrats over the past year has already guaranteed a bloody midterms. And the hubristic failure of Rove’s “permanent majority” should have Democrats realizing that huge majorities are unsustainable anyway.

Besides, if they don’t get health care reform passed, the Democrats are really screwed in November. They couldn’t be that stupid, could they?

Evan Bayh announced his retirement from the Senate today. Good riddance. Even though, per Nate Silver, Bayh is a relatively valuable vote when he bothers to vote with his party (rather than undermine it), he’s actually the worst kind of entitled “centrist” whose principles change with the political winds; the worst kind of legacy politician whose celebrity gave him near-perfect electoral security while accomplishing absolutely nothing; and — wouldn’t you know it? — the worst kind of turncoat, who waits until the day before the filing deadline to announce his retirement. Screwing over the Democratic Party: the only legacy Bayh can be proud of.

Josh Marshall sums up Bayh’s oh-so-high degree of integrity nicely:

[L]et’s not paper over the fact that he says our national government is broken. And his decision is to walk away.

[T]he odds of streamlining the Senate anytime soon are low, thanks to a central paradox: Changing the rules surrounding the supermajority (60 votes) requires an even greater supermajority (67 votes). As of now, the political will simply isn’t there.

Enough about the “Snowmaggedon” already:

• At the Atlantic, Michael Kinsley makes a great point about the difference between condescension and simply, you know, believing you’re right. Marc Aminder, meanwhile, breaks down Sarah Palin’s paradigm, which is basically appearing as a victim of condescendsion. Imagine that.
• At ThinkProgress, Matt Yglesias throws some cold water on the popularity of the Tea Party movement and tears to pieces Marc Thiessen’s gross dissembling on torture. Thiessen’s angry response is laughable.
• Nate Silver, writing at FiveThirtyEight, proves a point that can’t be made often enough: Obama’s policies have, on the whole, been more popular that not. “[T]he votes taken by the Republican Congress have far more often been out of step with those of the median voter.”
• In New York politics, uncertainty abounds. Governor David Paterson will resign very soon, or he won’t. Hiram Monserrate, who probably slashed his girlfriend’s face with broken glass, may finally be expelled from the State Senate, or not.
• Hipster puppies!

A reader named Karl Keller has been commenting, quite passionately, on a few recent posts. I don’t know who Karl Keller is or anything about him, but since I want to take my readers’ dissents seriously, I thought his comments deserve a detailed response, which I try to make after the jump.

On Saturday, Mr. Keller commented on my post “Can the Party of ‘No’ Keep It Up?” with the following:

The Republicans as a “party of no” is a misleading and,indeed, mendacious caricature and you, and everyone else on your side of the political spectrum, knows it.

Although perhaps because you repeat it often enough in your own heads, maybe you really DO believe it.

How about some facts instead? Paul Ryan, Republican Congressman from Wisconsin, has introduce a detailed plan called A Road Map for American. See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703808904575025080017959478.html

It may be negation of YOUR ideas, but it is not, in any way, an absence of ideas.

Even the President acknowledged Ryan’s ideas in his recent Q&A at the Republican Retreat. Of course, he HAD to…because Obama got virtually nothing done in his first year with just his Democrat allies, and now needs Republicans to get stuff through.

So really, do us all a favor. Give up this “party of no” myth. It’s wrong. It’s idiotic. It’s misleading. It’s disingenuous. It’s intellectually bankrupt.

This is rich.

First, I think it’s clear from my post that the term “Party of ‘No’” in this case refers to the Republicans’ rejectionist strategy of voting, in lockstep, against every piece of major legislation President Obama has offered. This has nothing to do with “ideas”—which are mentioned exactly zero times in my post—and to argue that I’m making any argument about the merits of GOP plans is, to use a term of Mr. Keller’s correctly (more on that later), a straw man.  Calling the GOP the “Party of ‘No’” is, rather, a fact that is literally true in this case. For clarity’s sake, I even included an internal quotation mark. I don’t think there’s anything “misleading” and certainly not “mendacious,” ”wrong,” “idiotic,” “disingenuous” or ”intellectually bankrupt” about labeling a political party that votes “no” time and time again the “Party of ‘No.’”

As for the substance of the comment, such as it is: yes, Paul Ryan’s op-ed in the GOP-friendly Wall Street Journal is full of ideas. Those ideas are aimed at reducing the deficit—a major concern, to be sure, but not what I was writing about, so it’s a bit of a non sequitur to bring up.  To Ryan’s credit, the Congressional Budget Office agrees that his plan would eliminate the long-term deficit. But means matter, and Ryan’s are extreme. Mr. Keller may find Ryan’s methods to be compelling; I do not. (See Ezra Klein for much more on this.)

Regardless of our political views, Paul Ryan’s proposal is not a “negation” of my (unexpressed) ideas any more than the President’s plans are a “negation” of Ryan’s. They are simply competing plans. At the House Republican retreat, the President acknowledged the mere existence of Ryan’s plan—and this was considered a victory by Republicans. Talk about a low bar of success! The difference between Ryan’s plan and that of the Democrats, of course, is that Ryan’s has no chance. While they no longer have a supermajority in the Senate, the Democrats still have huge majorities in both houses of Congress. Which means, pace Mr. Keller, that they don’t always “need Republicans to get stuff through.” They need one Republican Senator to achieve cloture, but for health care reform to pass through reconciliation, where it seems to be headed, Obama is grappling with the internal politics of his own party. The Republicans are effectively irrelevant, which I’d guess is what bothers my commenter so.

Unlike God, however, grievances don’t rest on the seventh day, and so on Sunday Mr. Keller returned, to an earlier post, to vent further frustrations regarding my alleged “intellectual bankruptcy.” Writing about the fallout from Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts, I argued that the Senate GOP had offered no good-faith compromises on HCR. Mr. Keller began:

Wow.

First you say

The GOP can claim to have offered alternative legislation, but look at Jim DeMint’s proposals and try to tell me with a straight face that they would solve any problems. You can’t.

Uh, this just in. Jim DeMint isn’t the ONLY Senator or Congressman who has provided alternatives. You, like the President, think erecting straw man arguments like this constitutes a sufficient response.

While I’m pretty sure Mr. Keller doesn’t know what the term “straw man” means, he has a small point here. I mentioned Jim DeMint’s health care proposal because it was the highest-profile plan offered by a Republican in the Senate, where HCR was halted in its tracks. Thus, DeMint’s ridiculous plan seemed the relevant example. But in a literal sense, “Jim DeMint isn’t the ONLY Senator or Congressman who has provided alternatives” is a true statement. Here, for example, is House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence’s word-for-word response, in its entirety, to Chris Matthews’ question “What compromise would you say ‘yes’ to on health care? What compromise? Tell me the package; give me the main details.”

“Well, look, you know, I was, uh, yeah, yeah, look, uh” Pence stammered, before finally saying that Republicans support allowing Americans to buy insurance across state lines (which is a GOP proposal in the first place).

Again, thank you, Republican, for proving my point. I don’t think this needs pointing out, but here goes: Pence’s is not a good-faith compromise. In fact, it’s not a compromise at all. It is a reiteration of the GOP’s proposed plan (which is a dumb plan, by the way) with no concessions to the other side. So I do think it “constitutes a sufficient response” to GOP recalcitrance to point out that they have yet to offer any workable compromises on health care. (This is, of course, exactly their strategy to kill it.) Do I need to explain what a compromise is? Here’s the dictionary definition: “a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; an agreement reached by adjustment of conflicting or opposing claims, principles, etc., by reciprocal modification of demands.” The Republican “position” on health care reform is the legislative equivalent of a whining child.

Speaking of compromise, Mr. Keller later tries to take me to task for half-seriously calling for the dissolution of the Senate. He begins by quoting me:

There are many people, myself included, who believe that America might be better off if the Senate were simply abolished. If wishes were horses…

Unbelievable. Have you ever actually studied our constitutional government and why a bi-cameral legislative structure was established in the first place? And why the Founders, particularly the brilliant John Adams, were so adamant about putting in place two legislative bodies?

To PREVENT crazy insane legislation from being passes without deliberative discussion and broad consensus. The Founders WANTED a creaky, inefficient government. Because an efficient and smooth functioning government is potentially a DESPOTIC government.

It never ceases to amaze me how little the left knows about how things are supposed to work.

Now I think I know what Karl Keller is: a sixth-grader. Because I learned in the seventh grade about the Connecticut Compromise that lead to a bicameral Congress. I also learned then, when I was 12 years old, that the Connecticut Compromise had little basis in political theory—it was a compromise between states of large and small populations to get the Constitution passed. That’s why it’s called a Compromise. The Founders who supported a bicameral plan designed the Senate not to prevent despotism, but rather, as Richard N. Rosenfeld writes, “to protect wealth and aristocracy from the demands of a democratic majority.”

James Madison, Father of the Constitution, may not have been, in Mr. Keller’s eyes, as “brilliant” as John Adams (who, it should be noted, wasn’t even a delegate to the Constitutional Convention), but here’s what he wrote of the Senate: “[I]t is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but ‘of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.’” That quote is from a little-read political tract called the Federalist Papers (No. 62 in this case), and for clarity here’s a translation to modern English: We don’t want to create a Senate, but we have to, as a political compromise.

Compromise. Something the Right hates, as I’ve tried to point out over and over in this space. Another thing the Right hates is change, because it is uncomfortable and foreign. In mentioning that maybe the Senate is a useless, indeed destructive, institution, I obviously struck a nerve with Mr. Keller’s political sensibilities: the nature of American government as it is now is to the Right inviolable. This is why conservatives believes our health care system is fine as it is, and why even the mention of getting rid of the Senate strikes Mr. Keller as blasphemy. (He makes no effort to engage my actual point, which was about abuse of the filibuster.) As a practical matter, I don’t think eliminating the Senate is possible, but discussing such a proposition is not “unbelievable,” as Mr. Keller would have it. There is nothing fixed about American democracy, which is what makes it great. Indeed, the Senate Mr. Keller so cherishes would seem awfully foreign to his straw men Founders. Until the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913, which is to say for more than half of America’s history, Senators were elected by state legislatures. In other words: things change.

But according to Mr. Keller, I know little about “how things are supposed to work.” There we have it. One of the fundamental animating impulses of modern American conservatism is its certainty in the way things are and ought to be. Certainty betrays entitlement, which may be why conservatism appeals to old white men. It seems pedantic to note that among the practices “supposed to work” in the 18th century were slavery and the subjugation of women; dealing with the dogmatic often requires a retreat to simple terms. But I digress.

What happened to conservatism to curdle it so? I don’t have a good answer to that question. The bitter pill of 2006 and 2008 seems to have had little effect on the GOP’s bluster. Republicans continue to act as if they never lost. But here’s what I wish: I wish for an intelligent conservatism that can argue policy on its merits, that understands its history and the contradictions therein, that does not retreat to sloganeering to make cheap points—a conservatism that knows and does not fear subtlety. The cynical tautologies of Mr. Keller serve nothing but the basest of our politics.

The State of the Union is so overhyped. The speech rarely has any substantive political effect, and it’s important to remember that Obama’s first-year problem has not, depite the past month, been one of narrative. Matt Yglesias makes a great point today:

[W]hat we’ve learned time and again over the past year is that there’s only so far that great speeches get you. [...] Obama seized the mantle of responsibility, pragmatism, and seriousness while challenging the GOP to show some good faith and willingness to be a constructive partner in government. But what he’s never been able to do is to generate the kind of specific, concrete political pressure on incumbent Republican senators that inspires them to vote “yes” on his bills or confirm his nominees. And nothing in his speech changes that dynamic.

It wasn’t a great speech, but it didn’t need to be. No speech is every going to change Olympia Snowe’s vote, or make Lieberman less of an asshole. But what I saw, and what I think the American people saw, was a pissed-off President not afraid to call out his enemies. He’s angry, and so are we! It was a brilliant piece of performance art. Watching Boehner and Cantor smirk through Obama’s rousing defense of the stimulus and bailouts and tax cuts served as a reminder of the fact that the Republicans are simply refusing to legislate. They’re not doing their jobs, and they’re incredibly unpopular because of it! There’s a reason Obama is far more popular than anyone in Congress, and, pace Scott Brown, it’s decidedly not because Americans are against health care reform. The triumph of last night was the return of 2008 Obama, just when we need him.

My first stop after the speech was, of course, The Corner, and boy did those crazies hate it. Which I’ll take as a sign of success, because they are all loony tunes in that silly little bend of the internet. Peter Robinson, Reagan’s speechwriter and hagiographer, asked “What’s the Takeaway?” His answer:

The tone.

Defensive, hectoring, self-righteous, self-referential, and angry. An astonishing performance.

He later added “petulant.” All of these descriptions are true! But what Robinson, who is literally in love with the GOP, doesn’t notice is that this is exactly the point. Everyone is angry. Everyone is defensive and hectoring and self-righteous and petulant when they talk about politics these days. And by showing that he, too, is sick of it all, Obama renewed that remarkable connection with the American people he had established during the campaign. Anger is a powerful emotion, doubly so when it feels righteous. And who better to validate one’s anger than the President of the United States?

As for the policy proposals: meh. Mostly weak sauce. I doubt we’ll hear about nuclear power or offshore drilling or free trade with Colombia from this President again in a long time, if ever. I’m still on the fence about the spending freeze, but a deficit commission by executive order at least signals that he’s serious about it. The health care section was troublingly vague, and buried nearly an hour into the speech (which was too long to begin with). The call to end DADT was a nice touch, as was Bob Gates’ applause for it. But my favorite moment was when the President called out the Supreme Court for its Citizens United decision, and the  justices awkwardly sat still while the Democrats stood and applauded. Awkwaaaaaaaard!

So here’s my takeaway: no speech is going to push health care reform through, or guarantee strong financial regulation, or create jobs. But when even the unaccountable, “politically insulated” Supreme Court feels the heat of America’s anger, you know you’ve done something right.

What’s the cost to Republicans?  First, on policy, they lose the ability to negotiate on behalf of their important constituency groups; as we’ve seen, this can have the effect of actually driving some of these groups (the doctors, for example) right out of the party.  Second, embracing the crazy yields, well, the crazy in charge of your party.  Republicans stand to gain in the 2010 cycle because the economy is lousy, because Democrats have a lot of exposure after two terrific cycles, and because the party of the president almost always does badly in midterms.  If, however, Republicans nominate candidates who have embraced the crazy, they will be far more vulnerable to counterattacks than if they nominate good, solid candidates (and not every Democratic candidate will emulate Martha Coakley and not get around to attacking crazy things that their opponents say until the last 48 hours).

However, no one is going to listen to advice like that.  Republicans are invested in a particular interpretation of 1994, and yesterday’s election is only going to reinforce that interpretation, whether it’s correct or not.