I’ve been remiss in updating the blog since just before Thanksgiving, except for a short “quote of the day” post back towards the end of December.  Rather than ease my way back into the swing of things, though, I thought I’d take a stab at discussing the implications of the special election in Massachusetts three days ago, to fill the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by the late Ted Kennedy, and won decisively by Scott Brown.

Others have tried their hand at analyzing, with varying degrees of objectivity and persuasiveness, why this occurred.  As a Bay State expat I suspect there are a number of factors: Martha Coakley had some difficult-to-shed baggage (the Amirault case, the Geoghan case, the Winfield case) from her career as a prosecutor; Coakley ran a weak, gaffe-prone campaign that veered from entitled indolence in the early days to frenzied negativity once Brown surged; Brown was an affable candidate who excelled at retail politics, and managed to tap into across-the-political-spectrum anxieties about what’s going on in Washington, particularly with the healthcare bill; Kennedy fatigue; increasing disgust with the corruption in the state-level Democratic Party; and so forth.  Naturally national Republicans are claiming this is a wholesale repudiation of the Obama agenda, while national Democrats are spinning it as the result of a poor candidate and an electorate focused exclusively on local issues.  Given that Brown ran explicitly as the “41st vote” that would enable a GOP filibuster against ObamaCare, I suspect reality, while undoubtedly short of Republicans’ “wholesale repudiation” scenario, is somewhat closer to that spin than the Democrats’.

What I think is telling, though, is the sackcloth-and-ashes angst from Democrats about the loss of the seat, and with it their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  One friend of mine characterized it as the triumph of witless populism, and the death of nuance.  Andrew Sullivan and his readers have gone off the deep end, as ably chronicled by Megan McArdle.  And we’re being told by the Very Smart People that this could mean the death of health care reform or even the entirity of President Obama’s domestic agenda.

Some perspective, here, is worthwhile.  Notwithstanding Mr. Brown’s victory, Democrats haven’t enjoyed Congressional majorities this large since the 1920s.  The hated George W. Bush, who managed to push several signature initiatives through Congress, never, at any point during his presidency, had a 59-seat majority in the Senate (Jon Stewart, while mocking Democrats for their incompetence, made a similar point the other night).

So here’s a thought: to the extent that the loss of a filibuster-proof majority operates as a repudiation of the Democrats’ governing agenda and renders them politically powerless, it’s evidence not of the death of thoughtful politics or that the United States is ungovernable, but rather that the Democrats’ governing agenda is so unpopular that only a supermajority could pass it.  Moreover, rather than moderate that agenda in the face of public opposition, they have instead doubled down, deluding themselves on the basis of cherrypicking polls and their own three-generations-long dream of socializing healthcare that the proles would eventually come around.  The result has been predictable: they’ve alienated independents and thus energized an opposition party that, a mere year ago, looked like a regional rump.

It’s unclear to me that Democrats possess the humility and capacity for self-reflection necessary for them to pull back from the precipice.  In light of their having spent the last year pursuing a maximalist liberal agenda, it’s going to cost them a great deal of embarassment and political capital to tack back to the center (and to implicitly concede that George W. Bush wasn’t, and the Tea Partiers aren’t, the radical far-right extremists of MSNBC spin).  The alternative, though — to continue pursuing maximalist liberalism after this — is likely to prove even more costly.

Dr. Zero tars with too broad a brush, here: collectivism is not by any stretch of the imagination a habit of mind that is confined to the port side of the political spectrum.  There are plenty of right-leaning collectivists, George W. Bush being a notable example of recent vintage.

But that said, in attacking the contemptible soullessness of leftists who treat Mary Jo Kopechne as a mere egg to be broken for the sake of fashioning the great omlette of Ted Kennedy’s legislative accomplishments, he is en fuego.

The meme floated by the Left over the past few days, that Kopechne’s death was a reasonable price to pay for Ted Kennedy’s wonderful political career, is a brutally candid expression of the principle that even an individual’s right to live is negotiable – a commodity to be measured against the “needs of the many,” which the Left believes were far better served by Kennedy’s politics than Kopechne’s insignificant little life. The striking thing about the two most infamous expressions of this opinion, by Melissa Lafsky and Joyce Carol Oates, is how breezy they are. They don’t caution the reader to brace himself for an outrageous, controversial assertion, which the author plans to defend. Both Lafsky and Oates are rather wistful in tone. They don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t think Kopechne’s life for Kennedy’s legislative agenda was a sweet trade, the deal of the century for America. As Mark Steyn puts it, the Left doesn’t see why we should dwell on the bit players in the epic saga of Ted Kennedy’s life.

And:

Collectivism always becomes ugly and brutal. Frankly, every collectivist society before ours became openly murderous. There is no gentle way to deal with the human remainder from every equation the State designs. Liberals criticize capitalism by saying it doesn’t make adequate provisions for taking care of everyone. Neither does liberalism – it only pretends otherwise. Collective politics requires compulsion, which in turn requires the death of compassion for the inconvenient individual.

A noble society owed Mary Jo Kopechne a measure of undying anger over her death, and should have denied any position of high honor to the man who never repented for his part in it. A truly wise society should work forward, from the inherent rights of the individual, to fair and just laws that respect those rights. Collectivism works backward, from a desired outcome to the elaborate political theories necessary to justify it… and like any other massive vehicle being driven in reverse, it sometimes runs people down.

As they say, read the whole thing.  Piling on is Matt Welch from Reason’s Hit & Run blog: “If you’re openly musing whether the unwilling, unjust sacrifice of an innocent is worth a broad set of alleged legislative improvements, you’re not asking a morally challenging question, you’re answering it.”

Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) wants to name the healthcare bill after his deceased friend Ted Kennedy.

Warning to Democrats: Like many people, I’m very deliberately holding my tongue about Kennedy out of decorum, a sense of respect for the Kennedy family in what is undoubtedly a difficult time.  If, however, you insist on politicizing the man’s death, the gloves come off.

My thoughts about the man are unprintable.  I will thus confine myself to offering condolences to the people who loved him.