Senate race in Ma.

no news media will call it yet BUT 67% of the polls are in for Ma. State Senator
Brown 52%
COAKLEY 47%

YES!

BROWN is turning BLUE to RED

 

Boo!! Sounds like the Dems picked a very poor candidate.

 

outch! and interesting that Martha Coakley Massachusetts Attorney General = poor candidate

 

results are in, not happy. Massachusetts will forever be known as "the state that killed healthcare reform"

 

YES!

Martha Coakley is expected to speak any moment

 

His message is what won him the seat. He kept things simple and direct. He did not act like he was better than anyone and did not assume a win.

We need a sensible health care bill not one that can only be passed with bribes and behind closed door deals.

replace "health care bill" with "car". It may look good on the outside and seem to get you where you want to go but you don't get to see what's under the hood. It's being held together with duct tape and there are leaks in more places than you can count. Oh and the tires are new but there is a bit of metal that is scraping on one of the tires. Paint looks nice, frame is strong but to many things that are just not going to allow you to get very far on the road. I agree we need a car well now I can go back to reform We need reform but we don't need this kind of reform.

 

Well Cheryl, I'm with you! I think it's fantastic!

 

I agree with Buttercup.

I can't believe that the people of Massachusetts have turned their backs on their late Senator's long struggle for healthcare reform.

 

I heard we even get to see what's under his hood--since he posed nude for a women's magazine. :laughing:

I honestly, think it was less about him and more about her being a bad candidate. She was bumbling over some basic questions, but I'm sure they have exit polls on this.

 

Well said, Cheryl! I could not be happier!

 

Yes we do kind of. In June 1982 (28 years ago), Brown, then a 22-year-old law student at Boston College, posed without clothes in a Cosmopolitan centerfold as the winner of the magazine's "America’s Sexiest Man" contest.

You can see the image on his facebook page

 

What a sad day! I was without healthcare my entire University life (nearly 5 years) and it was the toughest time of my life (when it's supposed to be one of the happiest).

Now I live overseas with my husband and have national healthcare. I can go to any state/prefecture and get the same healthcare for the same price. Ambulance rides here are free, and you can get an MRI for under 80 dollars. I really am in awe sometimes. I can actually go to a doctor whenever I feel like it, unlike before when I had to get 100 dollars somehow just to be told "probably a cold". Anyways, I don't want to open up a can of worms, just speaking from experience.

 

Let me just start by saying that although I consider myself more R than D, I am NOT an Obama hater. I do think everyone agrees that health care is 'broken' and needs to be fixed but I believe the message tonight was clear:
We do NOT like the health care bill as it is right now. If it wasn't the health care bill on the line, I think there could have likely been a very different outcome. Independents came out in droves to take away the Senate's chance to push this monstrosity of a bill through.
Makes me wish I still lived in MA!!!

 

Independents only took <1% of the vote.

I am with ya Cheryl...I was very happy to see it!!!

 

What she is talking about is "Independent" voters or un-enrolled. Massachusetts is made up of mostly "I" or "U" voters followed by Dems. Brown got what I would have to say is ALL the Republican's vote, ALL the Independent's vote and yes some of the Democrat's vote.

To those who say she ran a bad race. And yes I will give you that. She did run a bad one. She just proved she is out of touch with the majority of the people but was able to hold strong to those who are/were Kennedy supporters. I have to ask how bad of a race could she have run. She did not lose by a landslide. She lost by 5% She did get 47% of the peoples (who came out) vote.

So I joke and say that I now live in a Brown state but I am being a little serious also. We are no longer Blue (D) but we are also not quite Red (R) mix the two together and you get Brown. I do not expect Brown to do everything he might promise. He is a politician. But I also do not expect that everything he does do I am going to agree with. While he is a Republican I have to agree with what is written about him on his Wikipedia page

The people spoke and this description shows why he was elected. He is as he describes himself "For the people"

 

I actually wasn't following the race at all, but I'm happy with the results! I think one thing a lot of people don't realize is that Kennedy wasn't really all that popular. It's just stinking hard to get rid of an incumbent... we know the same feeling down here in PA with Arlen Spector. Lots of people can't stand him...and couldn't stand him even before he switched parties... the problem is that it's really hard to get a good candidate with enough name recognition to replace the one that's been there for decades! But everyone thinks Kennedy was worshipped up there, and it's really not true. May he rest in peace, but the guy was no saint.

I totally agree that health care needs some addressing...but that obviously the people of MA don't think the current bill is the right choice. And I agree with them!

 

We're dealing with this same thing down here too. Chet Edwards has held his seat for decades, and while he's really gone to bat for veterans here in Texas and across the country, he's continued to go against his constituents wishes time and time again on just about everything else. I won't even get into the whole Town Hall meeting debacle. But, it's exactly the same. In 2008, the Republicans ran a guy who nobody had ever heard of (Rob Curnock). He ran a great campaign and had plenty of new and fresh ideas that lined up with what people really want and he wasn't "the same old song and dance." Edwards won on name recognition (oh, and having millions more than Curnock) with most voters, not on the issues.

I think Brown's victory is a little bit more delicious for me because of the sole fact that the Massachusetts legislature changed the law twice in order to keep a Republican from being appointed to that seat, and it still came back and bit them in the rear.

 

I'm very sad and distressed about the results. From many interviews I've seen on TV with citizens explaining their votes, I heard more comments about the way the candidates ran their campaigns than what they stood for. People thought that Martha Coakley felt entitled, and they didn't like that. Scott Brown can work a room, he really listens. People like that.

Yes, I like to be heard. I don't like people with a sense of entitlement.

But ultimately, I based my vote on the candidates views on ISSUES. I do not want to see access to abortion limited. I would like to see the death penalty ended. I would like to see some sort of health care reform (the plan may not be perfect, but there has been attempt after attempt, year after year, of drafting a reform bill, and the current plan is the best we've come up with. I anticipate congress dragging their feet for many more years now, saying "we shouldn't rush it")

I'm also distressed about the voter turnout. I know that "they" say, 54% turnout is very high, but that means Brown was elected with 28% of the registered voters' support. What happened to the 46% of registered voters who couldn't be bothered to show up?

And to the PP who said Brown got all of the independents' votes? Not true. DH and I are both registered as independents, and we both voted for Coakley!

-Rachel

 

Unfortunately, this is how ALL elections pretty much pan out. The past presidential election is a perfect example. I don't remember who did the interviews, but I do remember a news segment showing folks who were asked who they voted for, they'd often answer Obama, but when asked about the issues (and not who stood for what) they often answered that they were for the GOP's platforms. I know this is pessimisstic of me, but honestly, I think there is a HUGE percentage of voters that have NO CLUE what or who they're voting for. Politicians (both sides are guilty) just spill out all these empty promises to the public telling them what they want to hear, but when it comes down to it, they just stick with the party lines, whatever those may be. There's just so much garbage-- senators/congressmen being bought off with pork for their states, plus politicians are just too concerned about getting re-elected that they do what's popular, not necessarily what's best for the public.

Now as for this race-- honestly, as a republican, I'm glad it ended up the way it did, despite how it happened.

 

I have to agree with this. While I understand some people may have liked what Joseph L. Kennedy stood for on the issues and they voted for him for that reason I have to wonder how many voted for him out of name recognition. Joseph L. Kennedy has no known relationship to the politically prominent Kennedy family of Massachusetts.

And I am sorry if I said ALL independents voted for Brown. I knew after I typed it I should have typed most. But if ALL did not vote for Brown that has to mean that many Democrats had to vote for him along with many Republicans because of his WIN.

 

Or it could be that many democrats simply didn't go out and vote and many more republicans did.

 

Thats not what the exit polls said. But that would be an amazing turnout for Republicans and a sad disappointing turn out for Democrat's in a STRONG Democratic State. I have to say I doubt that was the case.

 

I think the evidence that she ran a bad race comes more from the fact that a month ago she was 30 points ahead. To lose 35 points in a month says far more than the fact that she only lost by 5.

 

There's been a lot of closed door meetings and vote buying regarding the healthcare bill in the last month. That could be how she lost 35 points, the people in Mass felt they had to do something to stop the nonsense.

 

It could be. I don't think her calling Curt Schilling a Yankees fan helped (he's a pitcher that helped them win the World Series in 2004 that now stumps for the Republican party, and calling someone a Yankees fan around here is a pretty big insult), and virtually every ad she ran on television was pretty nasty, as compared with Scott Brown's. Also, just about every Martha Coakley ad that I saw said something to the effect of "if you don't vote for me, the health care bill will die." Clearly a lot of people in Massachusetts don't support the bill as it currently stands, and if she had either not run the ads or downplayed the issue she may not have had the fall from grace. Plus she really needed to work hard to counteract the charisma of Scott Brown's personality, and I'm not sure she was capable of that.

 

I am a democrat and completely for univeral heathcare. That said, the bill in congress currently, is NOT universal health care. If you read it, you would see it required every citizen to BUY, that's right BUY health insurance. It made no allowances to require insurance companies make insurance affordable or even for insurance companies to compete with one another from state to state to make prices competitive.Whoppee a tax credit to help pay for premiums!?? WTF is that going to solve when I can't afford to put out the cost up front? It's stupid. Making people buy insurance is crazy. How does that solve the problem this country is having. Okay so all that aside, they took out the public option. Isn't the entire point of reforming heathcare in America providing access to every citizen? Why does it offend for many republicans to provide OPTIONAL government run healh care? You don't have to sue it and insurnace companies still get to exist for your service (if you want to call what they do service). No one should have to go without heathcare, healthcare is so expensive in this country BECAUSE OF INSURANCE COMPANIES. If you want to create competition and make it fair,then insurance companies have to offer better coverage at a fairer price or we won't buy it, then great. But how it is now, insurance companies run our health care system. They tell doctors what drugs they can prescribe and what treatments they can or cannot use on their patients.I understand this whole work for it and you can have it mentality republicans seem to have, but healthcare? really? THE EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF mentality is not Christian and not what our forefathers intended.However that is what I keep hearing from my republican friends. Lets get back to what our forefathers wanted. What they wanted was freedom from oppression, freedom to preactice their beleifs without anyone telling them, what to believe an how to preactice. They wanted government to protect them. They did not want total anarchy or the if you don't earn it, F you we don't care about you.Do you really think if Jefferson were alive today we would want to make sure that only the wealthy and those lucky enough to have good-paying jobs to have health care? I mean I'm middle class, hard working, etc but we can't afford health insurance. Why? because we are self employed. Have you ever priced a policy NOT offered to a group by your company? Oh and let's not forget the exclusions and pre-existing conditions. THose of you paying 40% of your insurance premiums to a group plan have no idea what it's like to be told an insurance companie won't cover your children because they have autism. That's right- autism. Group policies don't have these restrictions. Aren't republicans supposed to be all for helping the entrepenuer? The small businesses that made this country? So why are we being punnished? I am so willing to pay more taxes as an individual and as a company to provide healthcare to my kids, to eeryone's kids, to everyone!

Okay rant over. I am glad Coakley didn't win because I simply hate the healthcare bill as it is now is a cop out, a total watered down peice of crap not worth the paper it's written on. And why is it so bad? because insurance companies bought this bill so they won't lose any money but in fact would increase their profits! Oh and the Gov't would make a bit on it too. It's all a bunch of crap.

Congrats to Brown. I hope he doesn't let Mass. down.

Kelly

 

Hi everyone! I’m embarrassed to post this since I work in the healthcare industry (albeit in clinical research, not policy), but where do you turn to find credible information on healthcare reform? I’m on antepartum maternity leave and I finally have some time to dig into the details - uh, but not enough time to read HR 3590, HR 3962, and HR3400 . Any suggestions for straightforward sources of accurate info summarizing the reforms and comparing the currently proposed options?

On a related note: I was surprised to read that the current Senate bill is largely based on the Baker/Daschle/Dole proposal and incorporates the key tenets Boehner shared on behalf of the GOP; is this true? If true, why is there so much public bickering between Democrats and Republicans over the existing bills?