Gay Marriage and Individual Rights

In my Introduction to this blog, I wrote:

“[T]he only real guide to understanding human events, their relationships to one another, and where they may lead us, is to discover the fundamental philosophical and moral principles that drive them: hence, the title of my blog. Discovering them is not always an easy task, but with Objectivism as my frame of reference, that is what I aim to do as I analyze and opine on today's events.”

Ayn Rand wrote: “Abstractions as such do not exist: they are merely man’s epistemological method of perceiving that which exists—and that which exists is concrete.” Since abstractions as such do not exist but are merely mental tools for understanding reality, they must be logically relative to concrete events and facts. Otherwise, they are merely “floating” … disconnected from reality and thus useless. Since my blog is based on the premise that abstract ideas drive human events, my task is to validate my principles with reference to today’s issues.

Put another way, my blog is about the concretization of abstractions. The number one abstract principle that is my driving passion is the concept of individual rights. That abstract reference point is the focus of this post’s analysis of a very controversial subject. It is also a good demonstration of why we need to make full use of our uniquely human conceptual faculty (i.e., our powers of abstraction), and why without abstractions we are essentially “flying blind”.

On January 6, 2010, the Same-Sex Marriage bill went down to a resounding defeat in my rather liberal state of New Jersey. This result should not have happened, and is a case study on the wrong way to advocate for anyone’s rights. On the same day, the New Jersey Star-Ledger foresaw the defeat, pinning the blame on “political missteps”.

For a change, I agree with the Star-Ledger. The gay marriage ban should have been lifted in New Jersey. I agree with the Editors’ stand, but not their murky logic … the source of the cause of the defeat.

The failure was not political, but philosophical. A look at the Editors’ logic exposes the cause of the inability of so many politicians to take a firm stand – the “soft supporters [who] may run for cover”. The Editors lament this spectacle and ask: “How did this bill become such a long-shot in a state where most polls show solid support, and where the Democratic governor and leaders of both houses supported it?” It was indeed a long shot. The bill was defeated by a heavily Democratic State senate by a decisive 20-14 margin (with three abstentions). Why? We need to take a look at the Star-Ledger’s own reasoning.

I am sometimes asked a question such as: “Do you support or oppose gay marriage?” This question misses the point. The question is, does anyone have the right to employ the government’s power of legalized physical force to prohibit two people of the same sex to forge a marriage contract? I firmly and unequivocally believe the answer is no. My personal opinions are irrelevant here. Upholding the right to same-sex marriage no more indicates my support for gay marriage than my defense of a woman’s right to her own body indicates support for abortion; or my defense of the First Amendment indicates support for pornography among consenting adults; or my opposition to Affirmative Action indicates support for racial discrimination.

The basic issue is individual rights, the inalienable sanction to take the actions necessary to achieve one’s long-term goals, well-being, and happiness – so long as those actions don’t involve the violation of the same rights of others. Since rights are held equally and at all times by all people, the state’s legal sanction of a marriage contract between any two consenting adults must necessarily include same-sex couples, if the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause means anything. Of course, a private institution like the Catholic Church has every right to refuse to sanction gay marriage. But it has no right to trample the rights of others who disagree.

My opinions aside, it’s hard to see how a marriage between two gay people violates or presents a threat to the rights of anyone else, as would be the case between, say, the parties in a Mafia hit “contract” or the perpetrators of a fraudulent Ponzi scheme. Since the freedom of contract is derived from the right to life and liberty, the burden of proof is on the anti-gay marriage side to validate its stand. It hasn’t and, in fact, cannot do so.

Yet, it won the day in New Jersey.

When the issue is defined properly, there are no “soft supporters”. Broad abstract principles leave out personal judgements on how one feels about the concrete issue involved. When one declares his allegiance or opposition to an abstract principle, he offers a yardstick by which others can judge his stand on a virtually unlimited number of concrete issues. The principle of individual rights, properly understood, leaves no room for “flirting with both sides”, “winks and nods”, or “hiding”. The Editors demand to “learn where each senator stands on gay marriage”. The proper question is: “Where do you stand on the principle of individual rights?” Each legislator’s answer to that question leads logically to a specific vote on the gay marriage bill, since it is essentially a vote on individual rights. But modern politicians on both sides of the ideological divide recoil against principled stands on any issue.

The idea of individual rights is much broader than any single concrete issue, and it is sometimes not readily apparent how to apply it to some particular concrete issue. Disagreements concerning practical application can and do arise among people who hold, and understand, a given principle. But first, the principle must be clearly identified. By evading it, the debate was focussed narrowly on homosexual marriage. This forced the politicians to declare whether they are for or against “gay marriage” and, by implication, homosexuality as such. But as I stated above, that is not the issue. It should never have come down to that. The senators should have been obliged to take a firm, either/or stand on the paramount question – Do you support or oppose the number one Founding principle of America, unalienable individual rights?

The debate wasn’t properly framed, so it went down to resounding defeat. The supporters such as the “gay rights” group Garden State Equality are partly to blame here. By basing their argument on the premise that they are fighting for “gay rights” rather than the broader principle of individual rights, they undercut their own case by, in effect, fighting for what one correspondent called “SPECIAL rights”. Fromexperience wrote:

“Marriage is not a right -- civil or otherwise.
In five state and DC, homosexuals have been legislatively "awarded" SPECIAL rights through SSM. Those civil unions and domestic partnerships available ONLY to ss couples are ALSO special rights.”

Marriage is a right, but it’s true that marriage is not a fundamental right. It is a derivative of the foundation of all rights – the right to life. As long as the issue is gay rights, the supporters are vulnerable to this line of attack. Fromexperience is correct that rights are not “special” or “legislatively awarded” or applicable only to gays. But he evades the fact that they are unalienable … i.e., based upon the provable metaphysical facts of reality and, thus, inseparable from man qua man, and possessed equally by each and every individual. That includes the right of free association, which includes contractual freedom, including marriage contracts. The government’s role is to enforce those contracts, equally. Defending the SSM bill on this proper basis explodes fromexperience’s argument, because to deny an unalienable right to anyone is to deny the same right to everyone … including the contractual right to heterosexual marriage.

It’s obvious why not only liberals but also conservatives ignore, evade, and refuse to explicitly endorse the principle of unalienable individual rights. The implications for both would expose each side to a withering critique of their entire agenda. Adherence to principle cuts through the fog of pragmatism, and obliterates any chance of having one’s cake and eating it too.

For the liberal, it becomes necessary to explain why gays should have the right to freely contract with each other in marriage but not with their health insurance company. If abortion is a medical procedure that should be decided solely between a woman and her doctor, the basic logic behind Roe v. Wade, then why shouldn’t that same line of reasoning (non-interference by government) apply to all issues regarding healthcare? If the government has no right to force a woman to bear a child or deny gays the right to marry, then why should that woman or that gay person be forced into any government-run “insurance” scheme like Medicare, or forced to buy a policy full of state-mandated coverages or submit to an “individual mandate”, or be denied the right to refuse to pay for emergency room visits by uninsured people?

Likewise, for conservatives, it becomes necessary to explain why international free trade is good with regard to material goods, but not to people (immigration). Why is it wrong to force people to fund the latest liberal welfare scheme, but OK to force them to fund Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives? And why is it wrong to restrict freedom of speech, except to demand that the FCC crack down on “obscene” material in the media?

The inconsistencies are manifest on both sides, if the principle of individual rights is the yardstick to measure the validity of one’s stand on concrete issues. But the Star-Ledger wants to have it both ways. Thus, the Editors defend the gay marriage bill with vague references to “civil” rights or “gay rights”, as if rights are privileges bestowed by society or possessions specific to some group. By evading the exact nature of rights, the advocates of this bill can uphold gay rights but not medical rights. I offer into evidence the Star-Ledger’s support for the totalitarian "Affordable Health Care for America Act", or HR3962 (and the Senate’s incarnation of ObamaCare), a massive rights-violating monstrosity that makes a mockery of its support for NJ’s SSM bill. If the Editors were to base their call for passage of the Gay Marriage Act on the proper grounds, they would logically have to oppose those healthcare “reform” bills. Both issues are tethered to the principle of individual rights. But, since the Editors don’t really support the actual rights of gays (just “gay rights”), there is no need to reconcile those contradictory positions.

“Unprincipled inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, to paraphrase Emerson, who got it exactly backwards. Of course, one must be consistent based on the right principles … i.e., ideas consistent with objective, concrete reality. And it’s not always easy and sometimes hard. Loyalty to principles often means defending or advocating that which runs contrary to one’s personal convictions. Think of Voltaire, who once said in defense of free speech: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.” The preservation of freedom demands nothing less than that kind of conviction. That’s what’s been in play in my mind, as I grappled with this issue in recent years. I have always thought of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. That hasn’t really changed. But, over the years, I’ve had to rethink my stand on certain political issues in order to bring them into line with my passionate belief in the rights of the individual. Gay marriage is one. I was against its legalization, but eventually came to support NJ’s 2002 domestic partnership law and 2006 civil union legalization.

But as fromexperience notes, those laws represent “special rights” and are thus untenable. This has led me to full support of the legalization of same-sex marriage. It is the only stand consistent with the principle of individual rights and of our constitution.

Regardless of what one personally believes about it, the overriding principle relating to gay marriage points unequivocally to only one conclusion – same-sex couples have the same unalienable rights to contractual freedom as heterosexual couples. The law should recognize that fact.

It’s not always easy acting on principle. It often puts one’s political opinions at odds with one’s personal values and morals. Announcing one’s fundamental beliefs … wearing one’s moral principles on one’s sleeves, so to speak, as I do on this blog … exposes one to the judgement of others by one’s own standards. This is as it should be. One way to avoid that personal responsibility as well as the inevitable (and proper) judgements of others is to simply run from abstract principles, and declare that anything goes on the whim of any moment or issue. That’s the tactic employed by both sides in this debate, including the Star-Ledger Editors. This “pragmatic” approach enables political factions and pressure groups to battle in a domestic civil war, each vowing to grab some political or economic advantage at the expense of others based upon some newly minted group “right.”

But it should be remembered that we owe the very existence of our United States of America to a revolutionary group of intellectual activists who pledged “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” on a radical set of political principles to forge history’s greatest and most moral country ever. Principles are crucial. That is why the principle of individual rights must be placed at the political center stage. It is the means of stemming the aggression of rights violators who seek to impose their own moral judgements on others. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. Put another way, the abstraction “individual rights” is the means of stopping anyone from taking the concrete actions of physically preventing a survivor from inheriting the pension benefits of his same-sex deceased partner or another from visiting his same-sex partner in a hospital … i.e., from signing a concrete marriage contract.

Thomas Jefferson, my favorite Founding Father, the author of our Declaration of Independence, and one of history's leading voices for individual rights, had a gift for condensing a complex issue into a few powerful words. As he explained: 

Of liberty then I would say, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will: but rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. 

My emphasis. Can anyone explain to me how two gays getting married exceeds the limits drawn around them by the equal rights of others? I can't. And so I declare my unequivocal support for legal gay marriage. But, sadly, Thomas Jefferson was missing from the NJ Legislature. And so the gay marriage bill went down to defeat.

The ObamaCare Nightmare - Finally Over?

The New York Times is reporting that:

"With no clear path forward on major health care legislation, Democratic leaders in Congress effectively slammed the brakes on President Obama’s top domestic priority on Tuesday, saying that they no longer felt pressure to move quickly on a health bill after eight months of setting deadlines and missing them."

The Democrats' last-ditch effort to save ObamaCare by ramming it through using parliamentary gimmicks has collapsed, prompting Harry Reid to say "“We’re not on health care now... There is no rush".

I'm no political pundit, but I read the Dems' sudden go-slow approach as meaning there will be no health care legislation until after the election ... if at all.

This is an incredible turn of events.

The danger now is the Republicans. Will they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Despite being vastly outnumbered in congress, they are in the driver's seat. This is more by accident than by design. The defeat of ObamaCare was entirely a grassroots, Tea Party affair. Still, they have the incredibly powerful tailwind of overwhelming public opposition to the Democrats and their attempted hostile government takeover of American medicine behind them. What will they do with it?

The danger is that they will compromise with the Democrats in the "spirit of bipartisonship", giving us ObamaCare light. This is the failed approach that will continue the decades-long trend of incremental socialism. If this happens, the Democrats will have won.

My hope is that somewhere within the GOP, leadership will emerge with the guts to lead the party into the 2010 midterm elections not by catering to the so-called "middle", but by laying out a true pro-capitalist, pro-individual alternative to ObamaCare. Most Americans have no real idea what that means. But the Tea Party Movement, though fractured philosophically, has the undercurrent suited to that approach. That undercurrent can best be summed up with the phrase: "Don't tread on me!"

In short, the political raw material is there. Will the Republicans seize the moment?

Objectivist Review of "Goddess"

The Objective Standard has published a review of one of the two new Ayn Rand biographies by an Objectivist intellectual.

Robert Mayhew writes:

As [author Jennifer] Burns has no personal ax to grind, is a professor of history, and had nearly unprecedented access to the Ayn Rand Archives, those interested in Rand had reason to expect Burns’s book to tell much about the life and thought—especially the political thought—of the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

What readers might have expected—what such a book could have been—is a presentation of the development of Ayn Rand’s political thought and its basis in her more fundamental philosophy, a history of her political activities and interactions with others on the right explained largely in terms of her philosophy, and a discussion of how she compares to others on the right in terms of essentials. The successful execution of such a project would not require agreement with Rand’s philosophy or political views; but it would require at least a basic understanding of, and interest in, her philosophical fundamentals and her arguments for her political ideas. Burns, however, has no grasp of or interest in Rand’s philosophical ideas or arguments, and chose to write a different sort of biography.

For example, Mr. Mayhew writes, Burns presented Rand's thought as the result of deterministic influences, and discusses her political thought with virtually no reference to her extensive philosophical system. "Crucial aspects of Rand’s political theory—such as the evil of the initiation of force, the distinction between economic and political power, and the principles underlying such ideas—are given short shrift..."

While I have not read the book, I have no reason to believe that this reviewer does not accurately portray the content of the book. In fact, my review of another review of Burns' book (by someone hostile to Ayn Rand) confirms Mr. Mayhew's conclusions.

In addition, I have read many critiques of Rand, and posted on some, in recent months and have found a common thread running throughout - an out right failure, for one reason or another, to portray or confront Objectivism fairly and honestly. This is frustrating and sometimes infuriating. But it does speak well of the power and logic of Rand's thought.

"The Declaration of Independents"

Through his organization Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM), Dr. Paul Hsieh has worked tirelessly to defeat ObamaCare and promote the only viable alternative - a free market in medicine. Largely due to his efforts and the inspiration he has given to so many others (including yours truly), we defenders of Lady Liberty have blown a mammoth hole in the Democrats' seemingly unstoppable drive toward socialized medicine.

As I've said before, the Brown stunner was a Tea Party phenomenon, which is a movement by and for Independents. The Tea Party Movement is now firmly entrenched in the electoral process. Republican gubernatorial victors in Virginia and New Jersey carried the Independent vote by 2 - 1 margins, and Scott Brown grabbed an astounding 3/4 of the Independent vote in Massachusetts.

Investor's Business Daily's Terry Jones calls Independents a true third party, broadly defined by economic and social freedom. They are currently the largest and fastest growing voting bloc, as Americans increasingly abandon the bankrupt major parties.

In light of these developments, Dr. Hsieh has published his latest op-ed. Taking a break from the subject of healthcare, he offers his take on the recent elections in a cleverly, and aptly, titled piece, Brown’s Victory: The Declaration of Independents.

His concluding remarks offer advice and a warning to the Republicans, if they are to capitalize on the powerful grassroots forces now unleashed:

"From the tea party protests to the polling booths, independents have been declaring that they want a limited government that protects individual rights.

The Republicans have won an important victory in Massachusetts — one that will reverberate throughout the country as the 2010 election cycle heats up. But they shouldn’t get overconfident.

If Republicans choose to run on a platform of limited government, economic freedom, and individual rights, then they will retain the support of the independents and win. But if they take these recent election victories as a mandate to promote a divisive “social issues” agenda, then they’ll once again drive away the independents and lose.

The independents have spoken — and they want the Democrats out of their pockets and the Republicans out of their bedrooms.

Will our politicians listen?"

What Now?

It’s hard to overstate the significance of the Brown victory in Massachusetts. This is an incredible moment in American history. Obama statism has hit a wall, at least for now. The political and ideological vacuum I wrote about in my New Year’s commentary has widened significantly.

As I stated yesterday, this election was a win for the Tea Party Movement (TPM), not for the Republican Party. I believe that the Democrat electoral surge of 2006 and 2008, and the accompanying but brief surge of Leftwing legislative initiatives in Washington may well have signaled the last political gasp of socialism in America.

This does not mean, however, that the trend toward socialism will now end. Socialism has been dead as an ideal since the end of World War II, and especially since the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Yet it keeps reappearing, like a vampire in the night. Why? It has been advancing by default of a committed pro-capitalist political alternative.

Remember that the most recent lurch toward statism that triggered the TPM began with Bush. The Obama Administration accelerated an established trend and, more importantly, gave it intellectual clarity. The result of that clarity was the TPM. But the TPM is not just anti-Democrat, but anti-statism. As such, it is also largely anti-Republican, as well.

I foresaw the rebellion that I believed Obama would trigger, but the strength and startling rapidity of its success was well beyond my most optimistic expectations. This is a testament to the residual strength of the individualist American spirit that gave birth to this country. John David Lewis, in an Objective Standard piece entitled Obama’s Atomic Bomb: The Ideological Clarity of the Democratic Agenda, very presciently wrote last September:

Obama’s image as a radical leftist is accurate. Obama’s great vulnerability is that a silent majority of American voters will see this, and will recognize that he does not share either their values or their vision of what America was and should be. Although only a minority of Americans has joined in the [Tea Party] protests, many more are silently stewing over Obama’s agenda. As one writer put it, “It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town hall meetings or the agitation of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him.”13

This is the clarity that Obama has brought to the American political scene. To see a president’s clear and principled commitment to an ideology—any ideology—is precisely what America has needed for decades. This sight has helped many people understand the issues at a more fundamental level than they ever have. Obama and his congressional allies have unwittingly launched a grass-roots movement that is actively questioning the role of government in our lives. Although a large portion of the protesters remains confused about the principles at stake, an increasing number are gaining clarity. They are coming to see the Democratic proposals for health-care “reform,” for instance, not as a matter of new programs backed by good intentions, but as an attack on individual rights and an effort to impose a dictatorship—as signs at tea parties attest. And many are beginning to see that the Republicans as well have been guilty of such attacks.

Clarity is the first step toward understanding, and understanding is the prerequisite to rational evaluation. For three generations now, America has needed a blunt confrontation with the policies that have been leading the nation toward dictatorship and into bankruptcy. Such confrontations were stillborn in 1940, 1964, and 1980 because in each case Republicans failed to stand up, on principle, for capitalism, liberty, and individual rights. Republicans repeatedly collapsed into the quicksand of compromise and accepted the welfare state principles of their opponents while arguing about the “proper” amount of government coercion they would enact. The trend toward statism continued, because the incremental steps accepted by Republicans obscured the stark difference between America’s founding vision and its statist future.

Obama has given active-minded Americans a close-up view of this future. His vision—a government bureaucracy to administer medicine, an environmental agency to shackle industry, and the institutional mechanisms for bringing the government into the most intimate details of our lives—is where we have been headed for decades. But until now this destination has been hidden by the smoke and mirrors of rhetorical obfuscation. Obama’s strident efforts to impose this agenda are enabling people to see that future with clarity.

The lesson of the recent elections is that the “silent majority of American voters” now see it clearly. They are “silently stewing” no longer. The socialist/statist Obama agenda has been dealt a severe, if not a mortal, blow. The only thing that can save it now are the Republicans, if they repeat the mistakes of 1940, 1964, and 1980 – the three ultimately failed 20th century conservative waves.

The Tea Party Movement has the potential to fill the ideological vacuum, and kill the vampire of American collectivism once and for all. What it needs is a coherent political voice. In that regard, the TPM is tailor made for the Republican Party, if it has the courage to seize the opportunity. That will take nothing less than a Philosophical Contract with America, coupled with a comprehensive political platform of concrete proposals to implement those Contract principles.

The time is now. The GOP is riding the Tea Party wave and the Obama collapse toward big wins in November 2010. But the victories will be hollow and ultimately counter-productive without the kind of mandate only an ideologically clear pro-individual rights/pro-capitalist/pro-limited government agenda can give them.

It’s time for the Republican Party to match Obama’s radical-Left “Atomic Bomb” clarity with a radical-Right clarity of its own. It's time for the GOP to finally fulfill Barry Goldwater's pledge. It’s time the American people were given “A Choice, not an Echo”.

America desperately needs it.

Comrade Kennedy, Rest in Peace

What a difference a year makes!

On inauguration day, January 20th, 2009, Barack Obama and his congressional super-majority roared into power vowing to set the nation on a new course.

Today, January 20th, 2010, the stunned Democrats are nursing their wounds after having lost the senate seat once held for 47 years by the number one liberal icon of the past half century, Ted Kennedy. Their statist healthcare agenda is crumbling, salvageable now only through possible political dirty tricks. A catastrophic mid-term election is looming in just 9+ months, signaled by a monumental electoral upset in the most liberal state in the nation.

The Left is reeling.

In so short a time, the tide has turned. And it turned with no help from a me-too Republican Party still floundering for lack of any coherent philosophical/political message.

This was a seismic defeat for the Democrats. This was the end of the Kennedy myth. This was real change.

But, it was no victory for the GOP.

Welcome to the grassroots Tea Party rebellion!

Independents: "On the Move"

“The sweeping countrywide victories of 2006 and 2008 that gave Democrats their congressional majorities were built largely on new-found support among independents, the fastest-growing segment of the electorate.

“No matter who wins Tuesday, the Coakley-Brown race suggests independents are on the move again, this time toward the GOP. In the process, they’ve transformed what should have been a purely local election into a national test.”

So wrote long-time political observer John Farmer of the NJ Star-Ledger (Massachusetts Senate race scares the Democrats, win or lose). Remember that the Tea Party Movement is driven by and for Independents and independent-minded Republicans and even Democrats. The traditional Republican sector, including its leadership, is largely behind the historical curve here – seeming utterly clueless as to the meaning of the Tea Party phenomenon or how to exploit it. Tellingly, “Brown has tried to distance himself from the national GOP on issues…” reports Mr. Farmer.

Meanwhile, President Obama has exposed the desperation of the Democrats by travelling to Massachusetts at the eleventh hour to pull Coakley across a finish line thought to be out of reach of any Republican just a few weeks ago. Charles Hurt, writing in the NY Post, said:

“They just don't get that inside is out here. President Obama's emergency rescue mission to save Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley could prove to be the final nail in her already-closing political coffin as this race -- Coakley's ongoing circus of gaffes aside -- is shaping up to be a bitter fight between the blessed insiders and scorned outsiders.

“[The outsider tag] worked for [Obama] two years ago, but not today. Not now that he and his fellow Democrats control every conceivable lever of power in Washington.

And certainly not for Coakley, who has built her entire campaign around being the chosen successor to the ‘Kennedy seat.’ ”

“Be careful what you wish for” etc., goes the old saying. On 10/31/08, the eve of the presidential election, I wrote:

“Obama is an unabashed socialist. He is a clear target.

“With Obama in the White House and a Democratic congress, the Left’s agenda will take explicit center stage. This will open the door to a full exposure of the true authoritarian nature of their designs on America. Rather than sneaking their freedom-eroding agenda into law piecemeal under stealth cover of a Republican administration, the Dems will have nowhere to hide.”

Nowhere to hide, indeed! They swept to a dominant majority in the House, and a filibuster-proof 60-40 super-majority in the Senate. But far from riding a popular mandate to easy enactment of their openly statist agenda, the authoritarian fishbowl they now find themselves in has them trapped with nowhere to hide. Americans, the Dems are finding out, elected the empty suit, Barack Obama. They did not elect Left Wing statism.

Now, as Michael Barone argues in another NY Post column, that lopsided congressional power has become a curse as the Democrats attempt to ram their healthcare bills through. The old Obama magic is working in reverse as his popularity shrivels. Mr. Barone writes:

“Obama was supposed to be a great persuader. It turns out that's only half true. He did persuade most of us that he should be president. But in Year One, he has failed to get most of us to support his major proposals. He's even moved us in the other direction. That's clear, whatever happens in Massachusetts.”

By some accounts, the national Democrats are already writing off the senate seat, and turning their focus to trickery to sneak their healthcare bill across. Michael Barone writes:

“But their bill isn't going to pass if Brown is elected. Some Democrats are talking about delaying his swearing in and passing a bill in the meantime. Doing that in open defiance of the clearly expressed views of (Massachusetts!) voters would touch off a political firestorm unlike any we've seen since Richard Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox.”

Meanwhile, on the ground as we head into tomorrow’s election, Brown’s momentum still seems intact. The latest poll (and final by this organization) has Brown up 51-46%, and Fox News reported tonight that Brown continues to pull huge, enthusiastic crowds compared to Coakley’s anemic gatherings – a good harbinger.

Get ready for an interesting Tuesday night.