Headline (the Boston Herald): Republicans feeling blue as Scott Brown win backfires.
Reaction: this is a mis-characterization. The election of Brown to the Senate didn’t “backfire”—indeed, it changed the game substantially. Had Brown lost and the Democrats had retained 60 votes in the Senate, the path to HCR would have been substantially different. There would not have been, for example, a need for the House to vote on the Senate bill sans changes. There also would never have been the reconciliation route, and so forth.
To properly say that the Brown election “backfired” it would have to be the case that Brown’s victory directly led to HCR passing, which it did not.
Really, because the Democrats were able to get the needed votes in the House (and because they had already passed a bill in the pre-Brown Senate), Brown simply became irrelevant. A fact, by the way, that’s not his fault (despite what some quoted in the article seem to think).
I must confess, every time we go through a major legislative process I am left wondering how many people in the press (and in politics, writ large) really have any clue as to how the process works.
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March 25th, 2024 at 5:55 am
I am convinced the majority have no clue
March 26th, 2024 at 2:06 pm
Here’s a piece echoing your statements:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/03/strategies-of-unintended-precommitment.html