The election of Republican Scott Brown for the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for nearly 50 years is a devastating defeat for the Democratic Party and especially for the Obama Presidency. This special election to replace Ted Kennedy’s vacancy in the Senate is politically equivalent to the earthquake in Haiti. For this to happen in the Bluest of the Blue states and with so much at stake politically forebodes great political turbulence in America. Some deep plate tectonics are shifting and colliding and shaking the political ground in our country. Framing and analyzing these tremors will preoccupy now all the political consultants and spin masters. Different political interests will see this in ways that promote their agenda. And they will seek to convince the rest of us that their insight and analysis are right.

Republicans will paint this election result as a total repudiation of the Health Care Reform Bill and the “Obama Agenda” that is taking the country they claim in the wrong direction and people don’t like it and are angry. And Democrats will point to a flawed campaign by Martha Coakley and repeat Speaker Tip O’Neill’s dictum that “all politics is local”. It’s not the Democratic Party that failed, it’s the Democratic candidate. Just as Democratic candidates failed in New Jersey and Virginia last November. They will point to the ‘personal popularity’ of President Obama and make references to historical mid-term election loses by the Party in Power.

But it’s hard to sugar-coat this defeat. We are already seeing democrats scrambling for cover and the Democratic Party imploding. With the yet to be passed Health Care Bill, such disarray within the House and Senate Democrats is disheartening and defeatist. Passing the Bill is going to be a great political challenge for the Democrats. Senator Jim Webb, who I respect tremendously, already declared that all efforts to pass the Health Care Reform Bill should seize until Scott Brown is sworn in. Clearly Sen. Webb sees his own political fortunes affected by this election in a conservative state like Virginia and wants to get in front of this issue before the tide shift drowns him. And he is not the only one. We already have Democratic Senators Dodd and Dorgan not seeking re-election seeing their poll numbers drop.

Facing danger, the natural instinct is to ‘fight or flee’. Republicans after the election of Obama stood together and fought the political fight of their lives. It remains to be seen how the Democratic Party will react to this equally perilous election of Scott Brown. Will they ‘fight for’ or will they ‘flee from’ their convictions. If their recent track record is any indication, my fear is that they will ‘flee’ in the arms of Conservative Ideology. That will be a great mistake! History is shaped as much by great events as by our response to these cataclysmic events. How we respond depends on how we see the underlying causes to such events. Just a short year ago common people and the majority of independent voters came out in unprecedented numbers to vote for the ‘change we can believe’. Obama won Massachusetts by a margin of 27 points. In national elections Massachusetts consistently voted Democratic. The state has been a bastion of democratic values forever, it seems. How could these same people now don’t see the same need for change as they did just a year ago?

The election of Scott Brown can only be a reflection of the great anger and disappointment that the people feel with the Presidency of Obama and with the conditions and uncertainty they feel daily in their lives. To say that the people rejected “Obama’s Agenda” of change after voting for exactly that change just a year ago turns political logic on its head! Closer to the truth is that Obama has not lived up to the change that he promised as a candidate, and people are angry, disillusioned and confused. They see a continuation of the Bush years! And they had it with politicians and want to send a message.

People are angry about Washington’s bailout of Wall Street while they suffer through the worst economic times since the Great Depression. They are angry about the obscene bonuses and compensation that Bank CEOs get, even as the rest of the ‘real economy’ is in a ditch. They see Obama’s policies addressing these economic problems as nothing more than a continuation of the Bush years. The TARP bailout started with President Bush and picked up and continued now by President Obama. They see large corporations like GE and AIG being bailed out, adding hundreds of billions of federal debt that their children will have to carry for generations. And they see an unending military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan now perpetuated by no other than Obama himself. So, these good people of Massachusetts say to themselves, “what has changed?” With their vote yesterday they answer “Nothing has changed!”

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