Today in Washington D. C. - Jan 20, 2010 -

The Senate reconvened and began consideration of the nomination of Beverly Baldwin Martin to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. A vote on the nomination is expected this morning. The Senate will begin consideration of H.J. Res. 45, the resolution to raise the debt limit. Up to 12 amendments may be considered to the bill. All amendments and final passage of the bill will require 60 votes. Sen. John Thune (R-SD) is expected to offer an amendment that would end the TARP program.

In an historic upset last night, Massachusetts state Senator Scott Brown won a special election to the U.S. Senate, the first Republican elected to the Senate from the Bay State in over three decades. Many are calling for Brown to be seated before another vote is taken on healthcare.   The Washington Post notes, “Brown . . . won the special election by running directly against the health-care legislation that [Sen. Ted] Kennedy trumpeted before his August death and that [President] Obama considers his most important legislative priority.”

Appearing on Fox and Friends this morning, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “[T]he message delivered last night is very, very clear, and Scott Brown made this point last night. We had a referendum in Massachusetts yesterday, the most liberal state in America, on the health care bill that the majority and the president are trying to jam through down here in spite of the wishes of the American people who are saying, ‘Please don't pass this bill.’ I hope they get the message.”

It remains to be seen whether Democrat leaders in Congress have gotten the message, but a number of their rank-and-file members seem to have understood what voters were saying yesterday. Politico writes, “[M]oderate Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) . . . call[ed] the Brown victory a ‘referendum’ on health reform and [took] a swipe at his party's leadership by calling for more transparency in the process. ‘To that end, I believe it would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated,’ Webb said in a statement.”

ABC News reported last night, “Even before the votes [were] counted, Senator Evan Bayh [D-IN] [warned] fellow Democrats that ignoring the lessons of the Massachusetts Senate race will ‘lead to even further catastrophe’ for their party. ‘There’s going to be a tendency on the part of our people to be in denial about all this,’ Bayh told ABC News, but ‘if you lose Massachusetts and that’s not a wake-up call, there’s no hope of waking up.’”

And this morning, Politico reports, “Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has joined Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) in warning leaders not to try to push a revised health care reform bill through the Senate before newly elected Republican Scott Brown arrives. McCaskill said Wednesday morning that the agenda is moving ‘going too far, too fast’ and that it would be a ‘huge mistake’ for Democrats to force a vote on a new bill in the Senate before the new senator from Massachusetts is seated.”

But the frustration of ordinary Americans with Democrats goes beyond health care. The Washington Post editors point out, “The hard truth for Democrats is that the Massachusetts election resonates with national polling results. Voters, not just in Massachusetts and certainly not just in the Republican Party, are worried about government spending. Budget deficits and the national debt alarm many Americans, and rightly so. Voters also are disappointed that President Obama's promises of pragmatic, bipartisan cooperation have not been fulfilled.”  And The New York Times’ Adam Nagourney adds, “Most ominously, independent voters — who embraced Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign and are an increasingly critical constituency — seemed to have fled to Mr. Brown in Massachusetts, as they did to Republicans in races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey last November. It is hard not to view that as a repudiation of the way Mr. Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have run things.”

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