Impossible.
The special election in Massachusetts scheduled for January 19 is a donnybrook now after two contrasting likely voter polls in the last hours show the Republican State Senator Scott Brown leading the Democrat State Attorney General Martha Coakley by one point or trailing by fifteen points. Special elections are unpredictable turnouts; the winner takes all. Emily Cadei, CQ, reports that there are Republican and conservative PACs that are now pushing cash into Massachusetts for TV buys in support of Brown by attacking Coakley as a machine pol who will rubber stamp Harry Reid and the healthcare bill, cap and trade bill, other gargantuan spending bills in Congress. This is the 60th vote in the US Senate that is critical to the Reid offensive. John Fund, WSJ, tells me that there is a Democratic fallback plan, in the unlikely event that Brown wins, to delay the swearing in until after the military overseas votes are count, which will buy ten extra days -- in which Harry Reid would push through healthcare in DC with the rent a senate vote of the appointed placeholder Paul Kirk. Impossible to imagine that Brown can beat the Boston machine. Impossible like the 1969 Mets? John Avlon, DealyBeast.com, remind that independents outnumber both Democrats and Republicans combined in the state, and they will have their say on healthcare, tea parties, stimulus package, unemployment. The protest vote will be a reckoning for the Hill.
Looks like the Dems got it covered eight ways to Sunday. What all this rigmarole ultimately accomplishes is to demean representative governance in general and the electoral process in particular. Take my word for it: By the time Obama’s second term rolls around, the process of holding an election anywhere in the world will no longer be worth spit.
Way back, when the Left first began its final assault with the “Bush is evil” gambit, I heard serious but left-leaning drones sneer at America’s so-called wrongheaded insistence on exporting Democracy to the rest of the world. At the time, it did not occur to me that these same people also sneered at American exceptionalism. It makes sense now; by extension, these same folks, who now run our country, do not hold democratic principles in very high esteem.
Impossible like the USA-USSR Hockey teams in Lake Placid? Do you believe in Miracles?
I can't believe that even the Democrats in their current circle-the-wagons mode would be dumb enough to deliberately delay the swearing in of a Senator duly and freshly elected by the people of the state of Massachusetts, in order to specifically and intentionally thwart the will of those same voters. If they do that, it will make the Gore Hanging Chad debacle seem like a Girl Scout marshmallow roast by comparison. I just don't see that happening.
I think that at least some of the 60 Senators that Reid needs would be relieved to have an easy out from having to cast the deciding vote on the health care turkey. It's decidedly unpopular, and any Senators who vote for it are going to have 20 points shaved off their polling numbers for the next reelection, at least. If I was a Blanche Lincoln or a Ben Nelson I'd be (privately) celebrating a win by Brown. Then Reid comes around and says "Let's vote" and I say, sorry, we need to wait for the swearing in ceremony - it wouldn't be right to rush it through. And 70% of the voting public would agree with me and consider me a hero.