What does Massachusetts mean for Obama?
Setback or disaster for Barack Obama and the Democrats?
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By Matt Hallam. |  |
Wednesday, 20, Jan 2010 01:00
The implications of the Republican victory in Ted Kennedy's seat for Barack Obama, his healthcare reform, legislative programme and fellow Democrats
By Matthew Champion.
Barack Obama was greeted on the first day of the second year of his administration with grim news - the Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy for almost 47 years had been lost to the Republicans, and with it, the Democrats supermajority in the Senate.
The balance in the Senate now stands at 59 for the Democratic caucus and 41 for the Republican conference, while the lion of the Senate's lifelong campaign for healthcare reform is under threat.
Critics of the president have painted the result as a damning indictment of his first year in office, others claiming President Obama's health insurance bill is dead in the water.
But polls showed voters who elected Scott Brown, as stunning and shocking as his victory was, saw issues surrounding the economy and unemployment as the most important.
Much more significantly, the Democrats' supermajority in the Senate, which allows them to sidestep Republican delaying tactics and pass legislation or confirm presidential nominees without a single Republican vote, was a political rarity.
The supermajority enjoyed since Minnesota's Al Franken finally had his 2008 win over Republican incumbent Norm Coleman approved last July marked the first time either party had enjoyed such a majority since the Democrats had 61 senators in 1979.
So every president since Jimmy Carter has had to work without such a favourable Senate, and Obama's 59-strong Democratic caucus is one of the strongest senate bases in the postwar period.
In the past year legislation on children's health insurance and the $787 billion fiscal stimulus has been passed with Republican support.
The fact that Republicans can claim Obama's healthcare bill is dead in the water, however, is testament to the difficulties the president has found in getting the legislation approved.
Although the reform appears mild and sensible to those in the UK, rolling out insurance to millions of Americans and denying insurers the chance of restricting cover to those with pre-existing conditions, conservatives in the US have branded the move towards a public health service as a socialist evil.
Both houses of Congress have approved their own versions of the president's healthcare reform - the most significant to be proposed for a generation - and until last night's defeat for Martha Coakley a unifying bill was expected to be passed in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Obama plan in four minutes:
With Senator-elect Brown's triumph, however, that prospect has become infinitely more complex.
So what options does the White House have?
One would be to use the reconciliation process to deny Republicans the chance to delay the bill through filibustering, although that would create further delays to the legislative programme in dire need of moving on to job creation measures.
Alternatively the Senate could vote on the bill already approved in its current state, although that would represent a far from ideal scenario and lead to accusations of the White House pushing through legislation before Senator-elect Brown has even taken his seat, which could take two weeks.
The most feasible option, but one that nevertheless involves concessions, is to drop certain lines from the bill in order to tempt moderate Maine Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to cross the aisle.
Of course the loss of the Democrats' supermajority affects all matters before the Senate, although they will still decide what comes up for votes and chair committees, and makes the passage of impending climate change and financial regulation legislation more fraught.
A more subtle effect will be upon the president himself, who will be forced to reconsider his own legislative programme for the coming year, especially with a third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives up for re-election in the autumn midterms.
President Obama made healthcare reform his top domestic priority in his first year in office, but desperately needs to move on to tackling an unemployment rate of ten per cent which contributed to last night's loss in Massachusetts.
It remains to be seen whether he is willing to sacrifice Ted Kennedy's legacy in order to do so.