Epic election upset in US Senate
Democrat Martha Coakley loses the race to occupy the Senate seat long held by liberal icon Edward Kennedy.
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At 9.20pm today, in Massachusetts, or 1.20pm on the Australian east coast, the era of Obamamania abruptly ended. The euphoria surrounding the elevation of Barack Obama to the American presidency was brought to a crashing end.
It didn't even last a year.
Tomorrow is the first anniversary of Obama's inauguration as President of the United States.
U.S. Senate Democratic nominee Martha Coakley gives a concession speech January 19, 2010 at the Sheraton Boston
On the eve of that anniversary, the people of Massachusetts, the bluest of blue Democratic states, delivered a thunderous rejection of the Democratic Party and, by implication, the President.
In a special election to fill the seat vacated by the late Senator Ted Kennedy, the people of Massachusetts did something they had not done for more than 40 years: they elected a Republican to represent them in the Senate.
This was unimaginable one year ago, as Washington was gripped by euphoria over the charismatic Obama.
Shockingly, today's election wasn't even close.
With 2 million votes counted, a previously obscure Republican state Senator, Scott Brown, 50, defeated the Massachusetts Attorney-General, Martha Coakley, 56.
The margin was 52 per cent to 47 per cent, a resounding turnaround, given Massachusetts' voting record.
The result is a political earthquake.
Not only does it follow the double-digit swings against the Democrats in governors' races in New Jersey and Virginia two months ago, it confirms and cements the mood of anger in the electorate toward the Obama-led Congress.
On Sunday, the President rushed to campaign in Massachusetts after it emerged that his candidate was in serious trouble. His attempt to mobilise the party base failed.
A sweeping majority of independent voters went for Brown and an estimated 20 per cent of registered Democrats who voted today switched sides.
This was a protest vote heard around the nation, from the state famous for the Boston tea party in December 1773, an act of civil disobedience that foreshadowed the American revolt against British rule.
Now the Democrats must face mid-term elections in November knowing that, unless the economy turns around, they will lose control of Congress.
More immediately, the Massachusetts revolt deprives the Democrats of the super majority they need in the United States Senate to pass the sweeping health-care reform bill the Obama Administration is trying to push through.
The Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate, which, under the constitution, allows the majority party to override any delaying tactics by the opposition, including the filibuster, which enables legislation to be delayed indefinitely.
Brown has pledged to be the 41st senator to vote against the health-care bill.
It was his biggest issue.
The special election served as a virtual referendum on the health-care reform bill, or "Obamacare" as it has been dubbed.
That referendum has just voted "no".
The election was also a de facto referendum on the enormity of federal spending that has marked the Obama Administration, which is in the process of doubling the national debt in just four years, largely in response to the global financial crisis.
"There is an almost primal sense of fear about debt," a former Governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, said on the eve of the election.
In this context, with high unemployment and even higher job insecurity, there has been a reaction around the nation against massive federal spending. Trying to ram through a historic social welfare program in this context has proved to be a political miscalculation.
It is half a century since John F. Kennedy, America's first Catholic President, and his elegant first lady, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, created a glamorous era in Washington that came to be known as "Camelot".
Nothing so glittering was seen again in Washington until the mania that accompanied the rise of Obama.
Camelot lasted barely three years. Obamamania lasted less than a year.
Obama inherited a global financial crisis, a recession, high unemployment, two wars, global warming and an impossible burden of expectations created by his charismatic speeches.
Since then, a grassroots protest has burgeoned around the nation, known as the "tea party" movement, protesting against the health-care bill, Government bail-outs of Wall Street and huge Government debt. A second Boston tea party is now resonating around America.
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