Senate election pushes Obama agenda to cliff edge

AFP on Yahoo ^ | 1/18/10 | Sebastian Smith

[NormsRevenge]

NEW YORK (AFP) – Voters in Massachusetts decide on a new senator Tuesday -- and possibly the fate of President Barack Obama's ambitious reform agenda.

The special election to fill the seat of the late Democratic veteran Edward Kennedy could see Republican Scott Brown score a stunning upset against Democrat Martha Coakley in what was believed to be one of her party's safest seats.

The latest Public Policy Polling survey conducted over the weekend gives Brown 51 percent to Coakley's 46 percent. One published by left-leaning website The Daily Kos showed them equal, but with Coakley sharply down from a week ago, when she led by eight points.

The stakes are huge, not so much for who will represent the northeastern state, but because a win by Brown would demolish the fragile supermajority Democrats use in the Senate to override opposition to health care reform and the rest of Obama's agenda.

With 60 Senate votes, Democrats are able to prevent Republican filibusters and push through legislation. With only 59, Democrats would need Republican support, which in today's increasingly rancorous partisan divide looks unlikely to happen.

The president showed his alarm Sunday when he took time off from the Haiti earthquake crisis and other pressing issues to campaign in Boston.

He told a noisy crowd of Coakley supporters that the big initiatives of his presidency -- the health care plan, clean energy initiatives, and attempts to repair the damage from last year's financial meltdown -- are on the line.

"A lot of these measures are going to rest on one vote in the United States Senate," Obama said. "That's why the opponents of change and progress have been pouring money in."

Obama faces this perilous situation exactly a year after his January 20 inauguration ..

[MIchaelTArchangel]

Tomorrow's headline today: Massachusetts voters push Obama agenda off the cliff.

Subhead: Voters ask, "Which of you politicians want to be pushed off with the agenda and Martha Coakley?"

[Da Coyote]

Intelligent us to Obama:

Jump, jump, jump.......and take your losers with you, idiot.

[Fester Chugabrew]

. . . The Daily Kos showed them equal . . .

Now *there's* a lily-white, objective source, to be sure.

[Nateman]

I wonder how long after Scotts victory we are going to see the "need to be bipartisan" template trotted out by the red-stream media again?

[parisa]

With 60 Senate votes, Democrats are able to prevent Republican filibusters and push through legislation. With only 59, Democrats would need Republican support, which in today's increasingly rancorous partisan divide looks unlikely to happen.

The precedence these fools have set up for themselves will come back so hard on their dense heads in the future.

Their charlatan leader who ran on uniting America and bringing the parties together once he took power did nothing of the sort. Instead he convinced the drunk-on-power congress to ram through destructive legislations by the bare, slimmest of the margins partisan votes just because "they won" and they can! Now when they loose congress and their power it will give every RIGHT to the other side to do the same back to them.

They set the precedence, these moron socialist robots, now they better be ready to live w/ it.