Martha Martha Martha!!!

I’m generally a cynical voter. When I do drag my butt to the polls, I do it out of a sense of duty not out of any fantasy that my vote might actually matter. Last night was different. I happened to be living in a solidly Democratic state holding a special election to replace Ed Kennedy, perhaps the most storied Democratic senator, and it looked like the Republican candidate was poised to stage a stunning upset. Massive health care reform, the first of its kind, hung in the balance.

Polls were close and, as someone whose beliefs and values more closely track with the Democratic agenda, I felt compelled to cast my vote. Driving home from the polling place, I heard a BBC World story on my small state’s election. In that moment, I felt at the center of not only history but the world. Turns out, my vote was not decisive.

So, we all know that Brown did, in the end, stage that promised stunning upset. Today brings the inevitable Monday morning quarterbacking. His election was the result of disapproval of health care reform, Coakley’s lackluster campaign, a general dissatisfaction with the “direction of the country” or the economy that often pushes in an outsider challenger.

I personally think Mass voters also kind of resent being taken for granted. Once the initial aura of inevitability around a Democrat taking the seat was punctured, I’m guessing voters felt a long awaited sense of empowerment. We all want to feel that our voice “counts,” and at the last minute Mass voters got a real race.

In reality, this race was about more than the state. Health care reform, some say, died with this election. If so, I want to mourn it. I believe in reform and it seemed the nation did too. Just a year ago, that people were dying and losing their homes due to lack of health coverage was a national outrage that cut across party lines.

Then, so much happened. Unlike Clinton era reform efforts, this time we tamed the then most effective opposition to reform – the insurance companies - by including them in the process. But conservative talk radio picked up where the insurance companies of the 1990s left off with fear campaigns featuring death panels and socialism that bore little resemblance to reality but gained impressive traction. Then, our Byzantine political process of deal making and horse trading got us a cumbersome 2000 page document that was difficult to explain much less defend and left lots of room for over simplistic criticism to flourish.

So, if it is dead, I’d like to mourn it, but I’m not even sure what I’m mourning any more. Even its supporters, acknowledging the bills’ shortcomings, launched defenses like, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.” And I do think that it could have done (might still do?) some good by insuring millions more, providing more choice and forcing insurance companies to take on those with pre-existing conditions. But is it too expensive to justify those improvements? Who knows anymore.

I think I’ll mourn it more for what it will probably do to a president I deeply respect and believe it. Obama has surely made some missteps his first year. But, he’s had a greater number and greater scale of problems to tackle than any president in recent memory, and I admire the way he’s tackled them – by attempting to make non-ideological and reasoned decisions. He's taken decisions knowing he would suffer a political hit because he thought they were the right course based best information available, and that shows a kind of integrity and courage you don’t often see in today’s politics. I’d hate to see a mess of a process at reform tipped over the edge by a special election upset help undo someone who I believe is doing an admirable job in a near impossible position.