While I try to keep tabs on as many Montana blogs as I can, I probably visit Left in the West and Electric City Weblog most often. And I was interested to read reactions on each site to Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts’ Senate race earlier this week. As would be expected, they varied widely,
Matt Singer: A lot of Scott Brown’s voters probably disagreed with him on a bunch of policy issues. He will, soon, be among the most unpopular members of the U.S. Senate or a deep disappointment to the Tea Party crowd that elected him. But for at least a while, he was the only candidate in the game who appeared to give a damn what voters thought.
Separately, I have absolutely no patience for the Democrats in Washington, DC, who are now ready to throw in the towel on health care reform in the name of the Massachusetts results. This is a serious mistake for a number of reasons, both policy-wise and politically. Policy-wise because even the Senate bill is a significant improvement over the status quo. Politically because the last thing Democrats need to indicate to the country is that they, once again, have no substantive principles for which they’ll risk their careers.
Rob Natelson: Two things are particularly significant about the Massachusetts upset: First, along with GOP victories in New Jersey and Virginia, it represents a blunting of the United States’ counter-trend — we had been moving toward statism while most of the world moved the other way.
Second, even in very liberal Massachusetts, the biggest cause of Brown’s election was revulsion against the Democrats’ signature issues of national health care and heavy social spending. It is a safe bet that most Bay Staters were not aware that their feelings were part of a megatrend. Rather, like most voters these days they felt a vague sense of uneasiness about centralized “solutions” – a feeling that programs like national health care just don’t make economic and social sense for them in today’s world.