If you live in Chicago and your only source of news is the venerable Chicago Tribune, it would take you a while to figure out that something happened in Massachusetts Tuesday night. One would think that an editor might place a story with the following lead – oh, I don’t know – front page, top of the fold, maybe?
In a stunning blow to Democrats, Republican Scott Brown ended the party’s half-century grip on the Senate seat once held by Edward M. Kennedy, coming from nowhere to give the GOP the crucial 41st vote needed to thwart President Obama and his agenda, possibly starting with healthcare.
It ended up on page fourteen.
Allow me to repeat: page fourteen. An election that stunned both parties, sent a thundering message to the President and his party, threatens the very existence of the signature piece of legislation that this administration – and the Chicago Tribune – believe is vital to the health and welfare of Americans is a story that, in the judgment of what used to be the beacon of Midwestern values, less important than finding Asian carp DNA in Lake Michigan yet again.
But, you may ask, what about the opinion section? Surely the Trib could find a columnist or two eager to explain what the Massachusetts Miracle means for the nation, right? Apparently not. The closest the Trib’s featured columnists came to talking about last night’s stunner was a petulant piece penned by an increasingly cranky Garrison Keillor, who managed to avoid mentioning Scott Brown – or directly referring to what happened in Massachusetts at all – in the course of a 700 word diatribe that both condemned the tea-party movement and beatified Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV).
For Keillor:
Reid is the gentlest and most patient soul in the U.S. Senate and his presence there in a colony of bull walruses is a tribute to Nevada. He’s a soft-spoken man from hardscrabble roots in the mining town of Searchlight who possesses Western honesty and openness and a degree of modesty startling for a senator, and if he goes down to defeat to some big bass drum, the Republic will be the poorer for it.
Is this the same Harry Reid who called George W. Bush a liar, a loser and the worst President ever? That gentle, patient Harry Reid?
No matter. Mulling over the future following the results of an election that he just can’t bring himself to actually talk about, Keillor at least got something partially right:
The problem for Democrats right now is that nobody can explain health care reform in plain English, 50 words or less. It’s all too murky. The price of constructing this intricate web of compromises for the benefit of Republican senators (who then decided to quit the game and sit on their thumbs) is a bill with strange hair and ill-fitting clothes that you hesitate to bring home to Mother. Like all murky stuff, it is liable to strike people as dangerous or unreliable.
Here’s a point that Mr. Keillor may wish to consider next time he is gravely considering the future of the nation over a hot cup of joe: this murky, unexplainable, intricate web of compromises is not a Democratic problem, it’s America’s problem, and Americans have a big, big problem with it. Health care reform strikes people as dangerous and unreliable because, well, it is dangerous and unreliable, and Americans have figured that out. That is the biggest lesson one should take away from last night’s election, assuming of course that one isn’t counting on the Chicago Tribune to tell one that said election even happened.
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