At 5:10 today, February 4 2010 Scott Brown was sworn in as Senator from Massachusetts by Vice President Joe Biden. This is the aftershock of an American political earthquake. Sen. Brown is the 41st Republican in the Senate, ending the Democratic 60-vote supermajority. This means that if Obama wants to get anything passed through the Senate, he will certainly have to get one or two Republicans to defect, which is a possibility that seems almost impossible.
This has been demonstrated recently, when the Senate voted to increase the debt ceiling by $1.9 TRILLION. Not even Ms. Moderate herself Olympia and her "twin" Susan Collins would vote for this. This is a signal that Republicans are not going to back down to Democrats in the Senate. And now they have just enough manpower to hold out. To invoke cloture in the Senate, a vote of 60+ is required. As of now, there are 59 Democrats and 41 Republicans. That means that on such a hot issue as health care or cap-and-trade, the Republicans can filibuster and the Democrats can't do a thing about it. Obama and the Democrats will now have to win over Republicans to get any major legislation passed, and with the 2010 Midterm elections looming, socialized medicine in the United States is pretty much dead. I will say though, this will make for some very interesting political news!
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