The Message of Massachusetts

For what it's worth, I grew up in New Hampshire and some of my earliest political education was the '88 election. All that being said, I think that Nate Silver nails it when it comes to what Democrats should be understanding from the past week.

There's more than one way for democracy to become dysfunctional. One way is if the Congress consistently adopts policies that the American people don't support. Another is if one of the major political parties routinely misleads the public to manipulate public opinion, and the other party aids and abets them by behaving like a bunch of gutless wonders who can't see farther than the next midterm. Neither outcome is desirable -- but Iraq ought to be a reminder that the latter is every bit as much a threat to our democracy as the former. - FiveThirtyEight

In this manner, "you lie" was the most hypocritical moment of political projection in the history of the Republic.

It is long past time for good Democrats to stand up and say "no more." We are on the right side of history, and the right side of informed public opinion. The time to do health care reform is now. And damn the teaparty-pedos.

Nate gets the last word.

Well, you know what, what Massachusetts tells us is that we haven't done a very good job of explaining our values to them. Maybe we need to take a step back and have that conversation with them. And some of our opponents have been made that job more difficult by telling them things that just aren't true. But we believe that, when people learn what's really in the health care bill, they're going to realize how much good it does for our country. And that's what we were elected to do -- to get our country back on track after eight years of a government that misled the American people and produced the worst crises since the Second World War. We understand that people are scared and upset about the tumultuous times that we face and they have every right to be. But we have to continue pressing forward.

Yes.