NAFTA was passed with 50 votes. And yes, since 1923 the Republicans have not had a super majority. And look at how much of the world has become like them.

Tom Harkin...to re introduce a bill to kill the fillibuster?

As long as we continue to expect real change from the President, we will continue to be disappointed. Presidents are politicians and therefore lag behind public sentiment. The only way to effect real change, just like it was with the labor movement and the civil rights movement, is to assemble and demand and not concede. True social change comes from the bottom up, never from the top down.

Obama needs to either promote and defend the progressive ideals that gave him his office and majority or go the way of Mass. I won't vote for a Republican ever but I won't be voting for a Republican lite Dem like our Patty Murray in WA either. If someone has held office longer than two years, then vote 'em out!

The Democrats always seem to have some excuse as to why they cannot get things done. Perhaps the problem is that they seem to not know what they are supposed to be doing. How simple would it have been to have simply extended medicare, instead it has been an absolute Clown show all year. And Obama keeps dissing the progressives. He will not recognize us. He used our agenda points while campaigning and then kept in Larry Summers, Tim G, all the justices.

That said, there are only two ways to pull. And the prissy progressives need to understand that by putting in another big banker playboy, we are even further from our camps direction.

And then they wonder why nothing gets done.

Plenty of blame to go around for everyone.

Remember when Rahm Emanuel uttered the words, Obama doesn't have to worry about the left, well the left (progressives and liberals) just sent Obama, Emanuel, and the Democratic leadership a strong message; YES YOU DO! If Obama and the Democratic leadership fails to heed this warning, they deserve the drubbing they will get in November. They need to know that no matter how much money they get from K Street, wall street, and the health insurance companies, they still need the people's votes to put them in office. They would do well to heed the shot across the bow sent to them last night; but I fear they won't.

Thom, remember who was the fiercest proponent of Lieberman when he was under attack in Conn. Lanny Davis was on tv everyday defending this traitor. Unfortunately because Davis calls himself a liberal, he is what the public expects from liberals and Democrats.

Omission was rampant throughout the election coverage, I flipped through quite a few channels last night and never heard even one pundit mention 600 MILLION was spent to influence Healthcare last year. Most of that spending was of course was negative.

The Teabagger's received countless hours of every media format. Palin & Cheney rants were reported endlessly.

So I'm not surprised that Obama or any Democrat would take it on the chin in 2010. Omission certainly ruled the night.

Be careful for what you wish for, Thom. This invite to “Democrats” to this teabagger convention can only have the ulterior motive of weaning away the weak-willed to either apathy and cynicism, or perhaps potential party switching. Obama has been so far under siege from the “progressive” side of the party that progressives often sound like Republicans in tone if not philosophy. If Obama is “hated” so much on the left (to the ear of the casual listener or “conservative”), there is obviously much confusion to be had from the “independent” voter. Such “confusion” rarely takes into account the campaign rhetoric of some of Scott Brown’s supporters in Massachusetts, where one wrote on Brown’s Facebook page that that Brown should “rape” Martha Coakley, while another looked forward to Coakley being “shot.” This is the “face” of the so-called “tea party” movement;

But bigoted nut-jobs aside, why would Massachusetts voters vote for someone who clearly is only against things rather than for them? The corporate media is saying that it is a vote against “big government” and health care reform, as if we expect it say anything else. Where is the media when change is needed? All we get are untruths or sound-bites from the right. Where are the Edward R. Murrows who would expose the nation’s ills in front of millions of viewers? All we ever get from network “news magazines” that should be exposing the evils of unfettered capitalism are tabloid-style crime stories designed to excite the lowest common denominator. But “big government” stepping in to bring in some kind of sense to the financial and economic chaos that “little government” has wrought is what is clearly what is required. That we need health care reform also seems obvious. But these so-called “independent” voters who form the greater portion of the state’s voting block apparently have decided that life’s a crapshoot or a coin flip, and instead of thinking “independently” they abandoned what little “principal” they possess and voted for the other guy, this time. Some “message” they are sending.

Brown (who looks like Mitt Romney’s twin brother) clearly stands for nothing but the status quo that created that disorder to begin with; but the state’s voters, if they really had any sense of their personal stake in the nation’s wellbeing, should have realized that it is conservatives—both Republican and Democrat—who are stalling genuine “change” and simply voting for another Republican only further insures that nothing will change. This vote for another do-nothing Republican can do one of two things: force Democrats to realize the danger of seeming to be hopelessly divided and incompetent (which abandoning health care reform will only bring more sharply into focus) and show some semblance of unity on the vital problems of the day, or (as Mike Malloy implied in his own imitable sarcastic way) that the Democrats are what some people say they are—spineless cowards.

If we say that “teabaggers” controlled the “message” in Massachusetts, we can also be honest and say that they are not demanding “change,” either. They are too self-interested with greedy little minds for that. They didn’t care when the Bush administration set the table for fiscal irresponsibility with his initial $1.5 trillion tax cut, most if it for the wealthiest Americans (some of whom are leaders of the “movement”), conducted much of public policy in secret (most infamously energy policy, out of which came the Enron scandal), and some say deliberately allowed predatory lending to disrupt the homeowners market for their own nefarious purposes, leading to the current financial meltdown. What is fascinating to note is that after the disputed 2000 election, Bush initially stated that he had “heard” the electorate that backed his opponent by over 500,000 votes, and that he would reduce the amount of the tax cut and curb some of his other “initiatives” meant to further enrich his millionaire and billionaire friends. But Bush was weak, and the right of right wing of the Republicans demanded all, and Bush “caved” before he was sworn in.

On the other hand, most Democrats—particularly in the Senate—apparently felt no wind of change after the 2008 election, or even a mild breeze. What did senators think the voters wanted when they essentially gave them a 60 vote majority? Even the Blue Dogs should have known the sense of the country, and put away their petty complaints or the petty minds of some their right-wing constitutents. But they didn’t. Obama can be blamed for not making specific demands or putting forward a coherent framework for what he wanted for health care reform, but he may have thought that it would be too easy to attack, just as the Clinton’s 1993 proposal was. He put the onus on Congress to pass something they could vote for, and this was a recipe for a public relations disaster. Only a few congresspersons and senators really have a grasp on the complex nature of the health care industry; if Obama was serious about reform as something substantive and not window dressing, he would already have had a team of experts on the issue to formulate a coherent plan easy for Congress to digest; instead we have a smorgasbord of sometimes conflicting ideas (how is taxing “Cadillac plans” supposed to reduce costs rather than raise them?) and special deals and pork which makes mock of uniformity and certainty.

Yet does it make sense to penalize the Democrats at the voting booth because they “disappointed” us? What message are Massachusetts voters giving us when they vote for an irresponsible Republican whose core supporters are apparently far-right psychos who would condone the “rape” and “assassination” of the Democratic candidate to replace the Kennedy seat? Is it perhaps they never really were in support of “change” after all. Perhaps they considered electing a black guy as president sufficient “change.” If they were serious about reform, they would have been out their demanding it of both Republican and Democrat. But they did not. Yes, we hear the progressive left sounding off on left-wing radio, but as far as the “mainstream” media is concerned, “we” don’t exist. Hell, most Americans don’t know that “we” exist, let alone members of Congress. Progressives exist in a world that seems alien to most Americans; I was listening to the Ed Schultz show the other day when he engaged—or rather tried to—a “teabagger.” This guy only confirmed my belief that teabaggers are far-right lunatics expectorating the nonsense they get from the Becks and Hannitys of the world. Yet given the choice, the mainstream media gives these people all the rope they want, while the left is given a piece of twine to bicker with and tangle themselves up in.

Its been said that there is a fine line between genius and insanity.

I used to think Obama was a genius.

To keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

The definition of INSANITY

In the meantime, here's what I keep thinking about. Someone asked Will Rogers once "Do you belong to an organized political party?" To which he said "No Ma'am, I am a Democrat." Truer words never spoken, but he continued: "You've got to be an optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a humourist to stay one." So look at it like this: Scott Brown, as a resident of Massachusetts, is still legally allowed to marry another man.

It still seems to me that the republican and democratic parties are pretty much two sides of the same coin. Their actual polices are not all that much different. I would say that they have more in common, than they are different. As Clay Jenkins of "The Thomas Jefferson Hour" says; we have the big Hamiltonian party, and we have the smaller Hamiltonian party.