WASHINGTON: Democrats scrambled Wednesday to save President Barack Obama’s health care reform plan after losing a key Senate seat in a largely Democrat state in an election widely viewed as reflecting a wave of dissatisfaction over Obama’s agenda.
Republican Scott Brown’s win in the special election Tuesday for the seat held for decades by liberal stalwart Edward Kennedy, who died in August, was an all-the-more stunning and bitter setback for the president on the first anniversary of his historic inauguration.
Brown, a state senator with a low profile, was initially seen as a sure loser. He became the first Republican elected to the US Senate from Massachusetts since 1972. The state’s registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 3-to-1.
Brown built his come-from-behind victory over Democratic state Attorney General Martha Coakley by, among other pledges, promising to vote against the Democrats’ sweeping bid to reform the American health care system and focusing on the bad economy and Obama’s decision to give a key Sept. 11 terrorist a hearing in the federal courts.
Democrats will keep their majority in the Senate, but not at the margin needed to avoid Republican tactics to stall legislation. Now the Republicans will be able to prevent the health care bill from coming to a vote once Senate and House of Representative negotiators finish work to blend separate bills already passed in both congressional chambers.
Polls show that the health care overhaul has the support of a diminishing minority of voters, a fact that — along with Brown’s upset win — could produce even more skittishness among moderate Democrats as they face an anti-incumbent mood ahead of congressional elections in November.
Even so, Brown said on Wednesday that he did not see his victory as a referendum on Obama’s first year in office.
“It’s bigger than that,” he said. “I just focused on what I did, which is to talk about the issues — terror, taxes and the health care plan.” But that may understate the disaffection with the Obama agenda among voters caught in one of the deepest economic downturns since the 1930s Great Depression.
And it turned politics in Massachusetts upside down. Just 14 months ago, Obama carried the state by 26 percentage points over Republican John McCain, and Brown will assume a seat Kennedy, who died of brain cancer in August, and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, held for over 50 years. “I have no interest in sugarcoating what happened in Massachusetts,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, the head of the Senate Democrats’ campaign committee. “There is a lot of anxiety in the country right now. Americans are understandably impatient.”
Brown will finish Kennedy’s term, facing re-election in 2012. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pledged to seat Brown immediately, retreating from pre-election Democratic threats to delay his inauguration until after the health bill passed. With all state precincts counted, Brown won by 52 percent to 47 percent.
Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele said Americans were breathing “a sigh of relief” over the potential derailing of the health care bill. “People across the country are saying, ‘Slow it down,’ “ Steele said Wednesday.
But David Plouffe, who directed Obama’s presidential campaign, rejected calls to scrap the bill. “We have a good health care plan,” he said. “We need to pass that. We have to lead.”
While Coakley ran a poor campaign, in which her double-digit lead over Brown evaporated over the holiday period, the White House will have to try to make sense of a message that was clearly aimed at the president and fellow Democrats.
Polls show Obama still is personally popular with voters even as support for his agenda and his handling of many issues has tumbled dramatically in his year in the White House.
