Train Wreck

By Baxter

Now that the unthinkable has happened and Massachusetts has filled Ted Kennedy's Senate seat with a naked guy who thinks a curling iron should be shoved up Martha Coakley's butt, we cats have a few things on our minds.

First, as the paw-pointing has begun (in fact, it began yesterday), we don't really care to add to it, because that's never productive. However, we'd be remiss if we didn't say to our fellow Democrats that when it comes to Massachusetts, everyone's at fault: the White House, the DNC, the DSCC, and Martha Coakley, who ran an inexcusably bad campaign.

(Oh, and let's not forget Organizing for America, the Obama campaign machine that, to our utter bafflement, folded into silence once the 2008 election was won. Last night we received the first proactive e-mail from OFA in a year: an invitation for a "conference call" to debrief on the Bay State disaster. Too late, guys. Way, way too late.)

But while we're on the subject, can anyone convince Howard Dean to come back and run the DNC? We miss him.

Okay, enough of the self-flagellation. We'd also not be doing our jobs if we didn't exhort Democrats to get over ourselves and resolve to take back this frickin' Kennedy seat in a couple of years. In the meantime, expect this naked guy, Brown, to end up with Marco Rubio on the Republicans' vice-presidential short list in 2012.

And a couple of other notes...

One: We feel sorry for Harry Reid. This is amazing, because Harry's never been our favorite person. But here he went through all this hard work to hammer out a health care bill, and now look.

Two: That homemade GOP rally sign that said "It OUR turn for a 'change'" was so depressing — not just because of yesterday's results but because it perfectly captured how polarized our country continues to be. We cats don't know how to fix that. We also don't know how to make people understand that the only reason the 60th Senate vote matters is because the Republicans have decided to march in mindless lockstep against the change that Americans voted for so decisively in 2008.

Three: In the end, though, we know we have a smart guy sitting in the Oval Office — a guy who may be going through a trial by fire like the one Bill Clinton found himself in back in 1994. The good news is that Clinton rebounded from that debacle when the Republicans overreached. The even better news is that unless we've completely misjudged Barack and Michelle, there is no Monica Lewinsky in Obama's future.

Finally, the President is also a guy who, one year ago today, said this:

"[I]n this winter of our hardship... With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said... that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back, nor did we falter."

In short, Democrats, let's suck it up, and move forward.