A morning dawns grey and cold in Massachusetts, with a mantle of snow that clasps the spindles that are branches. Their arthritic gripping of the air is a tangle of shapes, as if there are bodies buried beneath that are clawing to reach the surface. The ghosts of liberal lions past are, as in Dante's grove of suicides, whispering in the wind, and what they are saying is I told you so. Just as a rag tag militia shocked the British on Breeds Hill shocked the British, so too has the "tea bag" movement gone from joke, to juggernaut. In the aftermath key members of the House, such as Barney Frank have conceded that the election result must be heeded.

A body was buried after this battle. What is buried is Obama's dream of a center-right America, with a political coalition based on fear of Bush. Obama campaigned as the candidate of Hope, but he has governed as the President of Fear. Obama promised change, but instead his political theory is one of corruption. The Onited States of Omerica are to be ruled, not governed, but ruled, by a collection of contractors who see the government as a source of money, which they take, and then, in turn, use to terrorize their employees. Fear of unemployment, arrogance, and ego are their hallmarks, in both political and private spheres.

The glaring visage of the leader stared back at us. His supporters took on his middle name, and changed their pictures to subservient versions of his own. The cult of personality which has been clear from the beginning in his political theory, flowered in his first year in office, and failed in the most signature test of his power. Everything in Omerica is about Obama. Last night's election was a stinging defeat for Obama and everything he stands for: a center right America, where corporations are bailed out regardless of the cost and consequences.

And he has learned nothing. On the very day that Coakley was being drubbed at the polls - she melted down 19% from her highest polling mark - Obama laid plans to ram the TARP for Health Insurance - through without the vote that was being taken away, and shafting another Democratic constituency, the teachers, with a plan requiring charter schools.

Battle of Obama Hill

The wreckage of yesterday is as complete a repudiation of Obama as can be had as a politician. Massachusetts last sent a Republican to the Senate in 1972. It does not have a Republican member of its House Delegation, and has not since 1997. Scott Brown was a State Senator, one of 5 the Republican Party has.

Martha Coakley, Attorney General of the State, handily won the primary, which was, at that point, as close to the general election as anything could be. She had won statewide office before, had no personal scandals, and a large war chest. Her widest lead, when Brown was unknown, was 55% to 25%, 30 points. She melted down at the end. The more she embraced Obama, and ran negative ads against Brown as Bush, the faster she fell. These ads, featuring dark colors and superpositions of Bush and Brown did exactly one thing: drive up Coakley's own negatives. The fear of a Bush planet no longer moves voters towards the Democratic Party.

Obama should see Brown in the mirror, an obscure state senator, vaulted on lofty rhetoric to the Senate. By 2012, should he retain the seat, he will have a resume for the highest office no worse than Obama's own. Brown ran against the Health Care Reform bill, and for tax cuts. One of Obama's mantras has been tax cuts, including his often repeated claim of a "tax cut for 95% of Americans." The unemployed have no need of tax cuts, and the unemployed turned away from Obama. The reality was enunciated by Harry Truman: give the American people a choice of two Republicans, and they will vote for the real thing every time.

Much is made of Coakley's sports gaffes, but this is not 30 points worth of sports gaffes, even in sports obsessed Boston. Much is made of her not campaigning, but she lost little ground during the time her campaign was in Rose Garden mode. Coakley's meltdown came from her panic, and her embrace of Obama. The more she drew closer to him, the more she fell. Obama's popularity in Massachusetts is only 48%, so it is no surprise that running as "Obama's 60th vote" was a loser.

The two dominant issues were economy and the health care reform efforts. Suffolk University commissioned a poll which had the economy as the issue for 44%, but health care was number two, listed by 38%. A majority oppose the national health care plan as they understand it, and even more think the US cannot afford it. Obama's approval nationally on health care is below 40%. He has managed to blunder his signature issue faster than Bush managed to blunder anything politically.

The voters of Massachusetts did not vote against Coakley because the bill has not been passed, but because they fear it might be. The Senate bill is to the right of even Kent Conrad's proposals. It is worse than nothing, because it is designed to preclude almost anything. Obama's attempt to stop a single payer or comprehensive system is not an incremental step towards universality, but a anchor around American's necks. It is a bad bill, and the public knows this by a simple measure: they have heard nothing that makes them want it. Republican lies about the bill worked, because the truth is not worth talking about. It contains an odious mandate to buy private insurance. FDR once defined fascism as the control of government by a private power.

Face with these facts, that Obama's center-right policies are unpopular, and it is only fear of Republicans, identity politics, and payola that bouys his support at all, the enforces of Obama's political will went into full lock down. They attacked, high and low, liberals and progressives for not being sufficiently lock step, they derided the idea that the health care bill was unpopular, because the public could not have passed a graduate level exam on its contents. They slashed and slandered publicly and privately, purged where they could, the very people who were warning clearly that bad policy will, in the end, be bad politics.

The Sellouts

But in the wake of this, the sellouts unite. Desperate to leave behind symbolic victories, so that they can claim credit for work that other people will be forced to do, they pander shamelessly to push through a bill which has just been slapped down by the voters in the most Democratic state in the country. An example of the pathetic unreality of the sellout class comes from sellout in chief, Jakob Hacker, who has become so drunk on securing his personal legacy, that he blasts a tissue of lies and speculations so badly reasoned, that if some student were to write it in his class, he would tear it apart:

Those disenchanted liberals are not going to vote for Republicans. They might stay home if Democrats do not remind them that they want to do more on health care down the road. But they are much more likely to stay home if a bill doesn't pass. And by 2010, most of them will probably come around to support the legislation -- as will, we expect, a sizable chunk of those who are now opposed.

This is wrong, Democrats didn't just stay home, the voted to send a message that it is time to end the bailouts, create jobs, and stop a health care plan that is a bail out for health insurance companies. This populist reject of the elitist position is not new, it was visible in the opposition to TARP, and to the pushes for Hacker's own public option. Hacker, like all sell outs, built an impressive wall of credibility with his scholarship, only now to hawk it on the Post for a moment of punditry. The pervasive dishonesty among liberal public intellectuals is in no small part of the disintegration of the vigor and fervor which drove Obama to office. The "young Obama" voters collapsed in this special election, their activity and energy invisible. Take a look at the pictures of the Coakley rally, they are grey old people, with grey old ideas.

Hacker is high and mighty, but he is lying. This bill is worse than nothing, because it is designed to make sure that nothing is done in its wake. It is a bill designed to end single payer in America. Instead of admitting this, and standing on principle and policy, Hacker pretends that the "10%" who want a more liberal bill are really supporters of the bill. Instead, we are more determined opponents, and what is more, represent the leading edge of opinion. We are fully aware that this bill does nothing but shift some of the costs of health care from Medicare to the general public, and offers a sop of a few people being given Medicaid, which is a far worse standard of care. The people who oppose this bill from the right know that there is nothing in it for them, and the people on the left know that it is a death trap, into which they will be tossed to die in suffering.

Consider only one of the evils: a "mandated" insurance which has enormous out of pocket limits that amount to no insurance at all. Compare this with European mandate systems and two points stand out glaringly. The first is that Health care companies are allowed to make a profit off of basic insurance under this bill, and the second is that the mandated minimum in Europe is a fairly broad range of services. But one does not need to wonk through the thicket of the bill, one only needs to look at one salient political fact: if it were any good, there would be a talking point for it, and there would be an immediate implementation. Instead, it is kicked off to 2013.

The talking point, from sellout Hacker's own lips: "better than nothing." But that's Obamism: better than nothing at enormous expense. And that is lethal, because to think like an economist, is to look at trade offs. Almost nothing at high cost is exactly the same unlogic that Bush used to sell Iraq: the world is better without Saddam. But the question is not whether a few incremental regulations are better than none, or whether the downfall of a dictator is better than leaving him in place, but the difference between taking an action, and taking some other action. Hcaker, again dishonestly, says the Republicans will only repeal some of the bill. Given that much of the bill is protection for high drug prices and Pharma profits, why should they repeal concessions? That's like saying that Reagan didn't gut all of big government, he kept the defense budget and corporate welfare.

Hacker's analysis of the politics is wrong: the map clearly shows Democratic strong holds with Democratic turnout voting for Brown. Hacker's assertion that it is all optics over the debate is wrong. Instead liberals have seen one capitulation after another. There has not been a health care debate, there has been a death march to a broken end.

And this returns the question to where it belongs, to Obama, and the slap in the face that the voters of Massachusetts delivered.

I Pledge Ollegiance, to the slag, of the Onited States of Omerica, and to the Opublic, for which he commands.

The reality of Obama's political apparatus has always been to whip liberals to voting for policies which are against their best interests. The Center Right has called the game, not a single important liberal policy has been passed, and the Center Left has taken the blame. Of the three important political casualties of the off year elections, two, Corzine and Coakely, are center left.

Sellouts like Hacker are far from the worst of the sins against democracy, instead, it is a pervasive hierarchy of fear and bullying, down to the corners of politics, often out of sight and out of public reach, that are the hallmark of his rhetoric. "Better than Nothing." "Better than Nothing." "Better than Nothing."

However, this entire structure rests on the very failure of Obama's economic policies. Had he actually engaged in fiscal stimulus, we would be seeing a hiring resurgence, instead, we are now scraping along a dead bottom. This is the deepest jobs collapse in Post-War history, and, like the First Bush Depression of the early part of the decade, a lack of fiscal stimulus has meant that there is no hiring. The reality is that the US job market is exactly where the IMF predicted it would be a year ago if nothing was done. All Obama did was bailout the banks, and borrow some money to ameliorate the worst effects of his own bail out. His policies cancel themselves out, and leave us in a pit which has no easy end.

Another important principle of the Onited States of Omerica, is that the right wing was so destroyed, that it could not serious puncture the power of the President or his hold on power. Instead, after only a year, the Right Wing has reinvented itself. This too should have been obvious from afar, and it was obvious to anyone not getting a paycheck or a promise of fame to shill for Obama.

The right, to govern, must get independents to vote for the right wing. However, the right wing burns through credibility at a fantastic rate, because its policies are, indeed, disastrous. Thus there must be a constant supply of fresh faces, each one presenting as being different, and the right wing must shift between two logically incompatible faces. The first is the theocon face, which is all about danger and terror and corruption. It lives on the fear of crime, drugs, that is to say African-Americans, and other foreign invaders. When the true believers have failed, then the right presents its libertarian face, against taxes and government interference, despite the fact that the Republicans are responsible for the explosion of debt, both public and private, in American. Just a year after a collapse driven by free market fundamentalism, the Republicans have sold the same snake oil to the public.

They have done so precisely because Obama and the Teabaggers are not, in fact, very far apart on the matter of fundamental economics. Obama is a freshwater economic thinker. That is, he believes that competition in a private market solves all problems better than government. Obama is incapable of destroying the tea bag movement, because he is a closet case teabagger, and not even that much of a closet case. The difference is that he believes, as most third way closet case Republican believe, in managed competition to prevent some few excesses. His economic theory is that the government runs psuedo-markets: cap and trade, health care exchanges, and "tax cuts" are the center pieces of his three major economic initiatives. All of them are psuedo-competition, as is charter schools from his "Race to the Top."

The result, however, is corruption based on a simple reality of economics. If the market is managed so that the large players cannot be allowed to fail, those players have every incentive to inflict the losses on the regulator of the market, and take the profits. Since Obama has not raised marginal tax rates substantially, they can then monetize those fake profits. Thus bailed out banks turn around and lend at 30% interest.

The abject capitulation of liberal and left lawmakers to Obama, they have not stopped a single step in the march to the right, meant that the liberal voters had no reason to support them in office. One of the realities of the Battle of Obama Hill is that lawmakers now have every incentive to run away from Obama, both left and right. Lawmakers to the right of Obama have every reason to vote for hand outs for their states, and nothing more, and lawmakers to the left risk being defeated at the polls outright for having sold out themselves. If "The Kennedy Seat" is not safe, then nothing is.

Obama is a top down President. All top down ideology, in the end, is anti-progressive. He has held almost total power over message and policy for a year, and the result is a stunning series of defeats that culminated last night in losing a seat that was, until a month ago, out of reach for the Republicans. Scott Brown ran a smooth campaign, backed by big money, Coakley ran a dull campaign, backed by big money. Obama, however, lost the election. And to show how little loyalty he has, he began floating a ping pong to get his preferred bill passed even as Coakley was losing. After having demanded she run on the urgency of being the 60th vote, he then stepped on his own message and threw Coakley under the bus. Which, by now, has gotten very crowded.

The Reality

The way forward is bleak and black. Three times we have had presidential elections where repudiation of Reaganism was possible. Three times the Democratic establishment has tried to have Reagan with a human face, taking money and delivering only enough benefit to say "better than nothing." Gore, Kerry, and Obama, represent three different failures of this attempt. The Democratic Party really believes in the status quo, with some minor protections. It is thus unable to access its own ideological base for long, and it must constantly kick that base. The calculus of the center-right Democratic Party was that it could trade base voters, in places like Massachusetts, for swing voters in other places.

The reality is the reverse, there are not enough base voters to do this, and there isn't a trade. Obama lost both swing independents, who would rather have a tax cut than a tax increase, and liberal activists who stayed home, or even directly voted against his cut out candidate.

The reality is also that the left is cluttered with ideological sellouts, people who ought, and do, know better, but who have traded their integrity for a false celebrity, for a chance at having the glory of legacy, without the work of it.

It is always dangerous to topple your own party from power, it goes badly as often as it goes well. The Whigs toppled Tyler, and were tossed from power. The Republicans toppled Grant in his bid for a third term, and nearly lost an election. Kennedy ran against Carter, and helped usher in Reagan. However, the Republican revolt against weak Whigs led to the most successful presidential run in American history, the Progressive revolt against the Republican Party led to the FDR coalition, the conservative revolt against Rockefeller Republicanism led to the modern neo-conservative era. There are, in the end, no successful revolts, because, as the wisdom goes, they become revolutions.

Last night was mutiny against an arrogant, incompetent, and out of touch President, who thought he had an unlimited bank account to draw from of political capital. This morning, revolt flowers. Revolution? It is coming, because the message heard in the beltway was not to change course, but to put the whips to the horses and ram through an odious and unpopular program.