[Note: Friends of Justice is a personal blog. I speak only for myself.]
Dear Friend of Justice,
A great many good friends urged me to hold my nose and vote for Martha Coakley because it was vital to save health-care reform. But I could not bring myself to do this.
Ironically, the defeat of Coakley turned out to help Obama pass HCR.
His prior strategy was to preserve 60 votes in the Senate. This gave conservatives (from insurance-industry states) Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson veto power over the content of the bill. And they used their power in December to get what they wanted.
Once Coakley was defeated, however, Obama had to go with Plan B. He switched to a reconciliation strategy, which only required preserving a majority in the Senate. Lieberman and Nelson lost their veto power.
Would they have used it? Lieberman did vote for the bill. But Nelson did not.
So if Coakley had won, Obama would probably have gotten a bill less to his liking. And Martha Coakley would be Senator-for-life in Massachusetts.
-Bob Chatelle
Another way to put it is to say that Coakley’s defeat–being the defeat of a Democrat running for Ted Kennedy’s supposedly safe historic seat–was such a wake-up call for the administration that Obama shifted into high gear, gave up the futile business of winning the support of at least some Republicans, used his persuasive powers to get the Democrats in line, and therefore achieved the greatest social change in America in the last half century while giving himself the aura of a true leader who can now go on to other accomplishments.
I could not, of course, have voted for the Dragon Lady but now I realize how wise my decision was. DON CONNERY