Americans owe a debt of gratitude to Richard Shelby, the senior Republican senator from Alabama, and the rest of the Senate should be furious at him.

The reason is simple. Shelby has overstepped the usual bounds of caution and produced an act of senatorial arrogance so breathtaking that the country just might notice. And if the country actually knew that such shenanigans were possible, the country would be amazed and, one would hope, perturbed.

That is why 99 other senators should be short of breath, too. Because if Shelby gets noticed with this extreme version of business as usual, other senators conducting smaller-scale hostage operations on similarly selfish impulses may get noticed, too.

Shelby has placed a blanket "hold" on 70 nominations pending before the Senate, nominations for federal agency jobs and seats on the federal bench. Does he have a case against each and every one of the 70? No, he isn't really talking about any of them.

His problem has to do with a couple of government contracts he wants to see benefit his home state of Alabama. To date, these Shelby "earmarks" have not come to pass, and the senator wants to change that. He is tired of being stiffed. He wants to force the Senate and the Obama administration to cede to his preferences for the granting of these contracts.

The tactic works by inducing pain. It slows or disrupts the work of literally dozens of federal agencies and courts. It interferes with the normal execution of the functions we all pay taxes to support. But this is not the goal; it is merely pressure, a means to an end.

Placing a hold on a bill or appointment has another purpose. It gives any senator leverage over the White House and the rest of the Senate.

In this case, it serves notice that until Richard Shelby has been satisfied, nothing on the Senate agenda will be more important than satisfying Richard Shelby.

What is this mysterious power to place a hold on appointments and bills? How is it that one senator can delay or even cancel the filling of these jobs? The hold is simply a senator's way of notifying the majority leader that he or she intends to use the right to extended debate against that name or bill. It is an implicit threat to filibuster, in a time when such threats are as effective as filibusters themselves ever were.

The holding senator may have an issue pertaining to the nominee or the bill at hand. Or there may be something else on the senator's mind.

In this case, Shelby's communications director tells us, the issue is the coddling of terrorists. The Obama administration has not yet granted a certain contract for the building of tanker planes to refuel U.S. warplanes in midflight. And the Obama administration has not let a contract for a lab that will analyze forensic evidence from bomb-making materials found in Iraq and Afghanistan. The communication from the senator's office suggests this shows a lack of commitment to anti-terrorism.

It neglects to mention that both these contracts involve, or might involve, large business interests in the state of Alabama.

This is what some call constituent service. Others call it earmarking, the practice of steering specific outlays in spending bills to benefit preselected parties. Still others call this plain and simple pork barrel politics, the pursuit of government largesse benefiting one's friends and constituents and campaign supporters.

Shelby is, in simple terms, holding up every pending nomination before the Senate because he did not get what he wanted in the most recent round of appropriations for the Department of Defense.

So why should Americans be grateful?

They should be grateful to the senator for being so bold as to be blatant, so outspoken as to be outrageous. Most of his colleagues would be more subtle about manipulating Senate rules, so as to keep this ability down below the radar of the media and the voting public.

A blanket hold on 70 nominees becomes embarrassing to senators such as John McCain, senior Republican from Arizona, who ran for president twice emphasizing his detestation of earmarks. Now McCain, and others like him, find themselves called upon to defend the Shelby-style brandishing of the hold-filibuster to protect earmarking.

That's a debate the Republican minority ought to be having in its conference meetings, where they contemplate how to use their filibuster power now that they have 41 votes to make it stick.

But Democrats need to look in the mirror. One big reason the majority party has not been able to act like one in the Senate is its unwillingness to tackle the customs and traditions that make every senator a king or queen. Every senator has an interest in preserving that kind of individual power.

But what about the public interest, or the national interest? Do these privileges serve the rest of us?

If one senator can hold sway over so much of the nation's business simply by declaring himself willing to be unreasonable, then reasonable people have cause to re-examine the institution of the Senate itself.

President Obama met with Senate Democrats Wednesday to map strategy. But with cameras in the room, the working session quickly deteriorated into a series of individual senatorial commentaries in the guise of questions -- bids for TV news time back in their home states.

What was to have been a meaningful exchange began to look like a typical Senate day on C-SPAN. And, no surprise, the first in line for the mike were the incumbents facing the iffiest re-election prospects this year.

With the world of work Senate Democrats still have to tackle this year, nothing seems more important to Majority Leader Harry Reid and his cohort than their campaigns. The priorities, privileges and political survival of the individual senator remain the principal focus of the United States Senate. Nothing competes with the needs of the senators themselves.

This is not just a matter of vanity; it goes to the basic problem that makes the Senate a dam in the governing stream. The primacy of the individual senator is what hobbles Congress on a regular basis. And that primacy's most effective tool is the threat of a filibuster.

The real filibuster was once the nuclear weapon of Senate procedure. Senators had the right, but regarded it as an extreme form of behavior (see Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). It was reserved for big issues that at least a substantial portion of the Senate regarded as existential.

Nowadays, the nuclear weapon has become a kind of sidearm. Every senator wears it on one hip, like a cowboy's six-gun in a Western saloon.

So what changed?

Going Nuclear

Let's step back a bit. From the Constitution forward, the Senate has been a highly privileged organ that made its own rules and tended to operate independently of the few it made. Custom and courtesy, member to member, have been the essence of the process.

That broke down in 1917, when isolationist senators filibustered a bill to arm merchant ships crossing the Atlantic in the months before the U.S. entered World War I. Incensed, President Woodrow Wilson demanded that the Senate find some way to limit debate. The Senate adopted Rule 22, providing for a cutoff of debate when two-thirds of the Senate agreed to it (the same vote needed to change the rules).

For half a century thereafter, the filibuster was primarily the last resort of Southern senators fighting bills they saw as hostile to their region, especially anti-segregation bills. In these times, the filibustering minority would talk round the clock, while members on both sides kept watch and slept on cots. But such dramas came to an end in 1964, when a months-long filibuster was broken by a coalition of Republicans and non-Southern Democrats to enact the landmark Civil Rights Act.

A decade later, the Senate mustered another two-thirds majority to change the rule itself, lowering the vote required for cloture from 67 to 60. It was meant to be a progressive reform but had unintended consequences.

Now Everyone Is Armed

When filibustering was nearly impossible to stop, its use for small matters was all but unthinkable. When it became easier to invoke cloture, the filibuster itself became more commonplace. In the mid-'80s, Sen. Al D'Amato (R-NY) held the floor for hours one night in defense of one military contractor with plants in his state.

Such petty filibusters were a way to get attention or to leverage a better deal from a committee chairman. If enough senators were willing to join in, even temporarily, party leaders might decide against bringing a particular bill to the floor.

It became standard operating procedure for majority leaders to seek cloture before taking up any bill of importance or any business involving controversy. If there were not 60 votes for cloture, consideration of that item would simply stop.

This evolved into the predicament of the Senate today. The mere threat of a filibuster is now as effective as a real one.

So Why Not Force A Filibuster?

Why won't Reid and other leaders force the minority to get out the cots and do it for real?

They consider the time to be lost; the loss of dignity, the ceding of control for weeks at a time the ultimate political risk. Which side will the public be on? Who will come out ahead after the ordeal is over? And even if the majority eventually breaks one filibuster, won't it have to go through it all again on the next big issue?

These hazards have weighed heavily on risk-averse majority leaders in both parties. Beyond these concerns, there is the sheer habit of the Senate and its leaders: obeisance to the needs of individual members. Given the uncertainties and ugliness of a endless filibuster, no one wants to go there.

But ultimately, the legislative history of the first two years of the Obama presidency will be determined not by the House, which has already passed the essentials of the Obama program, but by the Senate. And the Senate has done only the economic stimulus package, which it accomplished with Republican crossovers.

Once the Democrats picked up two more seats in mid-2009, they shifted to seeking 60 votes without any Republicans. That hardened the Republican bloc to perfection, leaving Reid at the mercy of each individual freelancer in his own ranks. The cult of the individual senator had a field day, and the deal-making that followed made the bill toxic to much of the public and unacceptable to the House.

The 60-vote strategy proved not only unproductive, but counterproductive. It proved to be a mirage. And with the loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat to Republican Scott Brown, it is now a memory.

That leaves the Democrats two choices: Convert at least one Republican (or at least one on each issue) or call the Republicans' bluff on the threat of a filibuster. Make them do it for real, and you will see where the public stands on the question of majority rule.

If you tuned in at certain points in President Obama's State of the Union address last night, you might have seen and heard a chastened chief executive sounding downbeat.

It was clearly an impression the president wanted to convey, within limits.

Nearing the end of his 70-minute address, the president spoke of "so much cynicism out there ... so much disappointment."

A moment later he added: "I campaigned on the promise of change -- change we can believe in, the slogan went. Right now, I know, there are many Americans who aren't sure if they still believe we can change -- or at least that I can deliver it."

That's pretty much telling it like it is. Independents have begun to wonder what they saw in the slender freshman senator from Illinois. Hard-core liberals, union activists and Democratic partisans have questioned whether their champion had the stomach for the fight.

Addressing the misgivings of the former group was sure to add to those of the latter.

One year into his improbable presidency, Obama seemed to acknowledge all that as he stood, cool and loose, before a House chamber filled with politicians who seemed far less relaxed. The Democrats looked sour much of the time, even while applauding. The Republicans seemed to be attending under duress, their Senate leader, Mitch McConnell so impassive as to appear embalmed.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff sat in uniform, following their usual code of stony passivity. They did not applaud even when the commander in chief was praising the military. Nearby, most of the Supreme Court sat enrobed in their own uniform, implacable in their own way (except for Samuel Alito, who could be seen shaking his head and mouthing "That's not right" when the president criticized their decision to allow direct corporate spending on campaigns).

The president himself was by turns defiant and self-deprecating. And as he neared his conclusion, he seemed almost to be reaching for a kind of bottom, a low point from which he his party might rebound after three months of almost unbroken bad news.

"I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I can do it alone," the president said.

No, but much of the nation seemed to believe a year ago that change was coming -- big change -- and the new president was going to be able to make it happen. It was change that some embraced and others feared and loathed. But things were going to be different. More different than they have turned out to be.

But moments after bringing the room down, the president was building to a conclusion with an entirely different tone.

"We have finished a difficult year," he said, sliding into the cadence of the pulpit. "We have come through a difficult decade. But a new year has come. A new decade stretches before us. We don't quit. I don't quit. Let's seize this moment to start anew, to carry the dream forward and to strengthen our union once more."

It was another of his signature finishes, emotional and full of confidence. And it allowed the president to leave the joint session on a high note, clutching the hands of well-wishers and smiling on his way out the door.

The president gave a long speech, most of which had clearly been amassed well before the recent reversal of fortune in Massachusetts that cost the Democrats their 60-vote majority in the Senate. Historians will debate whether the months of 60 votes, a majority big enough to defeat a filibuster, were a blessing for the Democrats or a curse.

One thing is clear: It was when the majority reached 60 that the minority stopped negotiating, hunkered down and began opposing everything of significance, forcing the majority to assemble its full 60 on a routine basis. It proved more than the party could do without making ugly and highly visible deals. The very strength of the majority became a perfect foil for Republicans everywhere, including candidates for Congress in 2010.

When running for president in 2008, Obama could run against the presidency of George W. Bush, the prospect of Hillary Clinton, the Republican Party, the war in Iraq, the recession and the Wall Street meltdown. But after a year in office, he and his own party have become the party of power and therefore the party of the nation's problems. They own the wars and the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the recession and the unemployed. They own the deficit, even if most of it was in the pipeline before Obama took the oath of office.

That is the way perception works in politics, and it has nothing to do with fairness.

So last night, Obama tried to recover some of the foils he ran against two years ago. He pointed again to all the ills he inherited. He may be right, but this argument loses force with every passing month. Once again, that is how perception works.

And so the president tried to establish a new benchmark as of this State of the Union speech. If he can fix this point in the national imagination as a low point, he might be able to portray it later as a turning point.

If so, the tough talk and soul-searching of last night could be a backdrop for better days ahead. Realism could be for Obama's next act what hope was for his last.

Only one president will stand before the joint session of Congress in the House chamber tonight, and his teleprompters will all carry the same text. But in a real sense the orator in chief will be giving two speeches rather than one.

That's because elements of his audience, both in the chamber and beyond, are listening to hear two different and even contradictory messages. Each element is waiting with some anxiety and even anger, and neither will be easily mollified if the president disappoints.

Consider these two distinct sets of ears and expectations. The first and probably larger group consists of independent voters who took Candidate Obama seriously in 2008 when he said he wanted to change the way Washington works. He convinced these voters, who partly convinced themselves, that he would be immersed in the mainstream. His administration would be bipartisan, cooperative and oriented toward the pragmatic.

This was meant to contrast with the politics of the previous administration, which had thrived in its heyday by stressing divisive issues such as war, abortion and gay marriage.

Having signed on for change, polls show, such voters are now unhappy to find the two parties more estranged and at cross purposes than at any time since World War II (with the possible exception of the year the Republican House impeached President Bill Clinton).

Many of these voters may find fault with the minority Republicans, too. Still, their objection to the Obama presidency to date has to do with method and process. These independents are disillusioned that the new president would allow the Democratic leaders in Congress to write bills with little or no Republican input. They are further dispirited by the sight of individual Democrats (especially in the Senate) cutting separate deals to deliver their votes for the president's program -- on health care and elsewhere.

Let's face it. People know more about what Sen. Ben Nelson got into the health care bill for Nebraska than they know about the guts of the bill itself and its potential benefits for the country as a whole.

One can readily imagine drafting a speech that would appeal to this group. It would mention Republican presidents with respect and even admiration. It would resonate with national themes that oblige those in the chamber to rise and applaud, on either side of the aisle. It would offer the president's hand in cooperation for the sake of the common good.

Specifically, President Obama might reach out to the coalition of private interests that once backed the comprehensive health legislation: health insurers and care providers, hospitals and medical professionals, champions of business and seniors. Now is the time to enlist these inside players to help in recruiting Republicans. And yes, Republicans will be needed, at least in the Senate, if the legislation is to survive the loss of the Democrats' 60th vote in last week's Massachusetts special election.

Such a gesture will not move many committed conservatives. But that is not the goal. The idea is to bring back some of those independents who backed the Obama bid in 2008 and whose defection is costing the president and his party so dearly in the polls and at the polls (see Massachusetts above, and the gubernatorial contests last November in New Jersey and Virginia).

Easy as it is to imagine such a rhetorical thrust, the president cannot afford to give this speech and leave it at that. He must remember the importance of that other audience that is waiting to hear something completely different.

For if independents feel let down by Obama's partisan tilt there are millions of liberals feeling betrayed by his apparent capitulation to centrism. For these listeners, many of them seething with resentment, there must be a countermessage of confrontation.

Here again, it is not hard to sketch the outlines of such a message. It could be built around a barn-burning and roof-raising bid to the populists of the left who want Wall Street in the pillory and higher taxes on the rich. The president has been handed a ready-made issue in this regard by the investment banks' insistence on restoring the hyperbolic bonus culture and returning to risk-taking to restore profitability. The president can talk about these excesses, talk about clawing back the bailout billions and demand greater lending to small business and the little guy.

The president has already acknowledged that the populist energy he rode into office has shifted to those who would ride him out of office tomorrow if they could. Tonight he has a chance to speak to that energy and throw the switch back the other way. He cannot afford to lose that chance, as he might not get another as good before November.

By some measures, President Obama has had a higher success score in Congress than any president since World War II. But any metric of success seems meaningless when the biggest of the big-ticket items remain mired in the process: the overhauling of health care and health insurance, the tightening of regulation on the financial industry, and the climate change and energy bill often summarized by one feature, the "cap and trade" method of incentivizing the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Much might be forgiven if the recession and unemployment had been brought to heel. Bottom line, the average American is either worried about losing a job or knows someone who is. When that kind of fear is abroad in the land, many other kinds of ills and unease radiate from it.

After one year in office, President Obama and his congressional majorities stand accused of failing their own most active partisans and also of failing those who had hoped for an end to partisanship. It has been possible to disappoint both camps at once, and now the president must aspire to rapprochement with both at once. If only he could give two speeches at once.

Many people will hear about Thursday's landmark Supreme Court decision freeing corporations to mount political campaigns and say the court has blown up politics as we know it.

By bringing corporations (and by extension, labor unions) back into the electioneering fray, the court has restarted a spending war Congress had tried to restrain over the past generation -- most recently with the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, best known for its co-sponsoring senators, John McCain (R-AZ) and Russell Feingold (D-WI).

So long as they do not give to candidates directly, corporations can spend whatever they wish to support or oppose candidates for president or Congress. They are free to exercise their rights of free speech under the First Amendment. Just like citizens. Their rights cannot be suppressed on the basis of their "corporate identity," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy.

The ramifications for this year's congressional elections and the 2012 presidential contest are sure to be profound. What does it mean, for example, for an investment bank such as Goldman Sachs, which had the cash to pay $16 billion in compensation to its employees for 2009, when a major issue before Congress this year is a tax on those bonuses?

Can the court step in and overturn a law passed with bipartisan majorities of Congress and backed by the last three presidents, Republican and Democratic?

You bet. And it's no more a shock to the system than the court has delivered before. Nor for that matter, than the court has delivered to other aspects of American life at least as important.

From time to time, the quiet partner in the triangle of federal power speaks in a voice no one can fail to hear. And in recent years, some of the biggest Supreme Court blockbusters have involved the electoral system itself.

Not so long ago, in 2000, the court determined the outcome of a presidential election. The justices did that by short-circuiting a recount of the disputed vote in Florida (Bush v. Gore, 2000). The next day, Democrat Al Gore conceded the election to Republican George W. Bush, who went to the White House for the next eight years.

A generation earlier, the court declared that spending money to get elected to office should enjoy the same extraordinary protections the Constitution granted to free speech (Buckley v. Valeo, 1976).

The key finding of the latter case, often summarized simply as "money is speech," forced campaign finance laws to focus entirely on the raising of political money and ignore how much of it is spent (except where candidates for president "took the collar" by accepting public funds).

The lifting of limits on spending has forced reformers to focus on limiting the other side of the political equation: the raising of dollars. Needless to say, this means concentrating the burdens of law on all those candidates who lack a fortune of their own (or prefer not to spend their own money exclusively). This has spawned decades of tortured law and regulation and led to countless contortions, distortions and outright violations -- not to mention "compliance costs" that are a windfall for accountants and campaign lawyers everywhere.

But apart from counting votes and dollars, the court has been willing in recent decades to take on a variety of cases with strong overtones of partisan politics. From the early 1970s to the 1990s, the court has weighed in repeatedly on the question of race and redistricting. Initially, these cases sprang from the practice of carving out districts to dilute the power of minority voters, black or Hispanic, primarily in the Deep South. Such districts scattered the minority vote among several districts, minimizing the chance of it making a difference.

The court in the 1970s said a district could not be drawn so as to have this effect. Most agreed this was more just. But by the 1990s, a somewhat different Supreme Court had gone all the way to requiring districts to concentrate minority votes -- so as to maximize the chance of electing a member of the minority group. It worked. There was a huge upsurge in the number of black and Hispanic members elected in November 1992.

Under these rules, some Southern legislatures drew maps that by concentrating black or brown voters (and virtually guaranteeing minority candidates would be elected) also created a larger number of districts that were overwhelmingly white.

The latter proceeded to elect Republicans, in many cases, and in 1994 the GOP captured its first majority of Southern congressional districts since Reconstruction. It was a key element in the party's capture of the House majority for the first time in 40 years.

Going back a little further we have the 1962 Baker v. Carr ruling that said issues of apportionment (distributing seats in Congress and state legislatures) were fair game for the court. By rolling back its old "hands off" policy toward politics, the court opened a floodgate of legislation. Subsequent cases laid out the "one-person, one-vote" standard that now seems the natural order at all levels of American politics (except in the U.S. Senate).

After Baker v. Carr, legislatures had to be apportioned according to population, not geography. Until then, it had been common for states to divide their state Senate seats equally among counties, ignoring huge disparities in population. Baker broke the stranglehold of rural interests in state capitals nationwide, acknowledging the rise of cities and suburbs that had been reality since the turn of the century.

This is a rarefied group of legal landmarks that stand out over the past half century. Today, the high court has added a new entrant in the category.

Stand by for the consequences, both intended and unforeseen.

All year we have speculated that the fading out of the late Teddy Kennedy was weakening the chances for a robust health care bill in the Senate. But who would have thought the special election to select his successor would put even the compromised version of that bill in mortal danger?

Now we know that Kennedy's demise has produced the unthinkable: a Republican in the seat that the legendary political family had held for nearly six decades. Moreover, that means the Democrats no longer have the 60-vote majority that has enabled them to move a bill through a chamber where every Republican votes no on every bill of consequence.

The victory of State Sen. Scott Brown over State Attorney General Martha Coakley seems unreal in the light of the day after. Laughed at for his youthful foray into nude modeling, Brown persevered and became a telegenic challenger. Coakley's campaign, a juggernaut through the primary, blew all four tires and sat down in mid-December, creating the opportunity for this week's historic upset.

Having spent her career positioning herself to break through on just such a historic occasion, Coakley was exposed as an utterly hapless street campaigner. The only memorable moments from her brief public forays were gaffes, including a howler concerning Curt Schilling, hero of the 2004 World Series and a demigod in Red Sox Nation.

What an anniversary present for President Obama, marking one year from his magical Inauguration ceremony one year ago! On that day, Teddy Kennedy suffered a seizure at the Inauguration luncheon. The world already knew of his brain tumor, but the events of that day made clear the graveness of his condition.

But who then would have thought that the Democrats would ascend to 60 votes in the Senate, adding a razor-thin win in Minnesota and a party switch in Pennsylvania to the fitful loyalties of independent senators in Vermont and Connecticut? And who knew that this would prompt the utterly lock-step response of all 40 Republicans voting no on every issue of consequence?

Having those 60 votes has determined the strategy of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid through the past several months. Having those 60 votes has made it possible for Reid to prevail on sticky issues, but it has also forced him to make awful concessions to secure the votes of the last two or three lawmakers in that supermajority coalition. Some of those concessions have been ugly enough that they may have contributed to Brown's breakthrough in Massachusetts.

For at least two weeks, it has been clear that the Kennedy succession in the Bay State had gone awry. It has also been obvious that intraparty feuding among Democrats and the rise of a referendum spirit among voters were combining to drown out any message Martha Coakley may have wanted to convey.

But throughout those two harried weeks, many Democrats told themselves that Massachusetts would remain the bluest of states. They could not believe the voters would repudiate the Kennedy legend and legacy. They could not believe this was happening.

Now, they know the truth. And while the sun will still come out on Beacon Hill and Capitol Hill with Brown in the Senate, that sun will not shine as brightly, and the political globe will have a new tilt.

Let's consider six leading elements of the fallout.

1) The 60-vote working majority in the Senate: Partly truth and partly fiction, the 60-vote Democratic majority has enabled Majority Leader Harry Reid to move the Senate despite Republican filibusters that have become as routine as rain. Reid has needed this patchwork for everything from health care to the spending bill that supports the U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The minority has flung itself en masse across the tracks on every bill of substance since summer. Suddenly, that approach looks less futile.

2) The Obama agenda as we know it: Up to now, every step of the Senate's health care journey has required the Democrats to stretch to their 60-vote max. Without that last vote, the chances of a strong climate change bill, or a tough reorganization of Wall Street regulations, or a new tax on bankers' bonuses, or a comprehensive immigration bill, will be greatly diminished.

3) The all-Democratic-vote strategy: With about three-fifths of the seats on Capitol Hill and a monolith of Republican resistance arrayed against them, the Democrats did the obvious thing. They wrote their bills to appeal to themselves and to hold their various disparate parts together. Now, they will need another strategy. And it will be difficult to bring it off without real concessions, now that the GOP feels itself on the march again. Unpredictable consequences here include a lesser profile for the independents and the more centrist Democrats.

4) The myth of one-party Massachusetts: As the one state to vote against Richard Nixon in 1972 (the source of the original "Don't Blame Me, I'm from..." bumper sticker), the Bay State has claimed a certain distinction as the bluest in the union. But it did vote twice for Ronald Reagan. And while all its congressional seats have been held by Democrats since 1991, it has had Republican governors for most of that same period. Massachusetts may have a Democratic voting habit, enforced by years of GOP weakness, but there is a streak of anti-tax, anti-establishment, anti-Washington politics here that is as old as the commonwealth itself. What's more, the basic rules of politics apply here. Candidates and campaigns matter. Hot beats cold. Frustration beats old party ties.

5) The sense of Barack Obama as a game changer: The president had no option but to campaign alongside Coakley in the waning hours of this looming debacle. It was the same Hobson's choice he faced in New Jersey and Virginia as the Democratic candidates there took the pipe in November. Polls in both states (which he had carried) showed the voters there still liked the president; they just didn't like his party's gubernatorial candidates. Polls in Massachusetts this week said much the same. But the idea that his appearance and speechifying can change a basic dynamic is now three-strikes-and-out.

6) The momentum of the Tea Party: Dismissed as a fringe phenomenon in the spring of 2009, the anti-tax Tea movement gained great visibility in a series of marches against the stimulus, the health care bill and the Washington of Obama in general. The party claimed at least partial credit for overthrowing Democratic regimes in New Jersey and Virginia in the fall, then turned with renewed vigor to its crusade in the commonwealth, pumping money and energy into the late phase of Brown's campaign. The win in Massachusetts is the perfect setup for the Tea movement's planned convention in Nashville in early February. Think there's any chance that the newly minted Sen. Brown will be there?

Continue reading "Six Radioactive Elements From Coakley Collapse In Massachusetts" >

The more you look at the political questions for 2010 the more they all look like one question: Will President Obama and the Democrats continue to lose altitude from their 2006-08 highs and pay a price in the midterms?

History and current circumstances say yes. The president's party almost always loses ground in the midterms. Polls now point to big drops in the president's appeal and the effects of the recession look to be lingering -- especially in the politically potent measure of joblessness.

All of which leads to an equally obvious follow up question: How big will that price be?

Trying to answer that one mega-query for the year pretty much gives you the Top 10 Political Questions for 2010. Let's take them from least hard to hardest.

1. Will the Democrats fall back from their current 60 seat majority in the Senate?

Yes. The retirement announcement of three-term Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan in North Dakota this week all but guarantees a pick-up there for popular GOP Gov. John Hoeven. Also retiring is five-term veteran Chris Dodd, whose seat in Connecticut will be easier to defend.

But the Democrats also have three appointed placeholders stepping aside in 2010, and two more appointees struggling to win on their own. And three other established incumbents are surprisingly vulnerable. So their phenomenal record of losing no seats at all in 2006 or 2008 will not be repeated.

Yes, the Republicans have to defend six seats without incumbents, and four of those present real opportunities for Democrats. So Democrats' losses may be partially offset. But the net loss of even one seat means goodbye to the "filibuster-proof" majority, and less leverage for that squad of Democrats who've made hay by withholding "the 60th vote."

2. Will the Democrats lose their majority in the House?

No, but they could well lose about half of it. That would be 18 seats from the current 256-178 party breakdown. Historical norms indicate such a loss would be expected even under normal circumstances, and these are not normal times.

Economic and psychological damage from the recession are likely to weigh on the ruling party. And this particular majority is inflated by two cycles of remarkable Democratic gains across the regions.

The party now has all 22 seats in New England and 27 of 29 in New York state. Hard as that is to sustain, the Democrats have a bigger problem keeping recent gains in parts of the South and Midwest, especially where districts that voted for John McCain also elected a Democrat to Congress. There were 39 of these Democrats in 2008, and one, Parker Griffiths of Alabama, has already switched parties.

3. Will there be a Republican trend among the governors?

Yes, and it's likely to pull the parties even again.

A year ago the Democrats had a 30-20 edge in the statehouses. Recessions tend to be hard on governors, and even harder on the incumbent's party if the incumbent governor isn't running for re-election. We saw that in November 2009, with Jon Corzine's losing bid for re-election in New Jersey and the blowout defeat of non-incumbent Creigh Deeds in Virginia. But the 37 governors on the ballot in 2010 split almost evenly between the parties. So states where Republicans have the flag, including California, Florida and Nevada, could pose problems for them on defense.

Answering any of these first three questions depends largely on the next six, which get tougher.

4. How many incumbents will retire?

We already have 11 members of the current Senate leaving, and two dozen incumbents in the House have announced their intention to resign or retire or run for another office.

It's notable that for now, the retirements are almost evenly split in the Senate and 14-10 Republican in the House. Still, the GOP is not going to have trouble holding vacant seats in South Carolina or Georgia, while the Democrats will face a huge test in places like Tennessee, where it's losing House members John Tanner and Bart Gordon. These two cornerstones of the Blue Dog caucus would have held their districts (average vote for John McCain: 59%) again in 2010, but now they count as likely Republican pick-ups.

So far, the departure of centrist Democrats from the House has been a trickle. If it becomes a stream, it's a signal Democrats see a rout coming in November.

5. Will Republican infighting rob the party of a chance at bigger midterm gains?

Probably, although it may be hard to agree on just how much -- even after the fact.

A narrow loss here and there may be difficult to pin on any one factor. If numerous challengers emerge to trouble GOP incumbents, or if third party or independent options arise on the right, the cost could be high.

More likely, the main restraint will be in states where the party loses a shot at a major office because of a divisive primary and its aftermath. Schism between establishment and populist elements could weaken the party's chances in Florida, Kentucky and New Hampshire, just to cite a few where the party ought to be able to hold a Senate seat, and in California, where Republicans would like to capture a Senate seat (and hold the governorship).

6. Are the Republicans really ready to mount a 1994-style push for big gains in the House?

Not yet. The National Republican Congressional Campaign is low on funds, in part because many GOP incumbents flush with re-election cash have been reluctant to share with needier colleagues or challenger candidates. This may reflect concern with potential primaries (see No. 5 above).

And neither House Republican Leader John Boehner nor his leadership team have yet developed a plan or media presence to rival that of Newt Gingrich and his cohort in 1994. In fairness, we did not see the "Contract with America" strategy emerge until the third quarter of 1994, either.

7. Will the Supreme Court overturn the current campaign finance regime?

We may know soon. The high court's next day for issuing decisions is Jan. 11, and the big case many expect to see come down is Citizens United v. FEC, a case involving an advocacy group's spending in opposition to Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy. It challenges a key feature of the 2003 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, and by extension, the longstanding ban on corporations contributing directly to campaigns.

If the court rules as many expect, campain finance law as we know it will be radically changed, and an influx of cash from businesses, unions and other interests could make the avalanche of ads we saw in 2008 seem like a campaign conducted in secret.

8. Will the grass-roots enthusiasm of the Tea Party movement in 2009 continue?

Who knows? There remains some mystery around the forces that coalesced in April to protest taxes and in August to protest the Democats' health care plans. Both organized and spontaneous, choreographed and chaotic, the outpouring of popular anger shook all who witnessed it. Subsequent gatherings in Washington and elsewhere have sounded similar themes but with less shock and awe. And it's not clear how the movement will manifest itself in the primaries and the campaign season, or whether it amounts to an influx of new voters in November 2010.

9. Will the grass-roots enthusiasm of the Obama forces in 2008 return?

Who knows? Impressed by the volunteer legions and prodigious fundraising of the Obama campagn in 2007 and 2008, some observers saw a post-Inauguration version of the apparatus moving public opinion and even the legislative process in the 111th Congress. It hasn't happened.

Maybe the Obama White House has been too conventional, too cozy with Wall Street and too slow to reverse the foreign policy of the Bush era. Or maybe the campaign phenomenon was just that -- a drive to elect one charismatic figure that ended when it succeeded. If it could be revived, Democrats could hold their losses to a minimum in 2010. Otherwise, the pendulum swing and the economy will tell the tale.

And before we quit, one question about the next presidential race, because we just have to:

10. Which hopeful for 2012 will swing the biggest bat helping GOP candidates in 2010?

It's easy to make a batting order before the game, but you never know who'll come through in the clutch.

Start with Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska who remains in the media glare. She will surely lead the way in red states and rural areas, and right now seems sure to raise the most money for people.

Look to see a lot of Tim Pawlenty, who passed up a third term as governor of Minnesota to focus on his future. Right now he is mostly looking for name recognition.

Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, has the name but needs a new style, a new pitch and a new connection to the militant wing. Can he get that stumping for the further right? And will they want him?

Mike Huckabee, yet another former governor, now has to explain his generous treatment of convicts in Arkansas along with his tax increases. Can he do that while appearing on behalf of other people?

And can Newt Gingrich hit the hustings rhapsodizing about 1994 without reminding people of what happened after that?

A friend of mine says he loves baseball because every time you go to the park you see something you've never seen before. That's the great thing about politics, too. Every year brings a new set of question marks and a fresh struggle to answer them.

Let's take the year that just passed. We knew it would be interesting because the momentous events of 2008 demanded a sequel. Everyone who watched the drama of the latest presidential and congressional cycles was entitled to expect a year in governing that was every bit as significant.

So what did we get? We got pushback from the right against the agenda of President Obama, much as we did against those of newly elected Democratic presidents in 1993, 1977 and 1961. Right along with it came equally predictable disappointment and disaffection from the left.

As for actual historic achievement, the jury is still out. Let's see what happens with health care, the climate bill and financial re-regulation first. Above all, the new Afghanistan policy needs to play out for at least a few months before we assess the new regime's biggest risk to date.

At the same time, actual events in 2009 did resolve some of the political questions that beguiled us just one year ago. Let's take them in Letterman order.

Question No. 10: What will Rudy Giuliani do in 2009 to re-establish relevance and rekindle his presidential fire? The answer: Nothing. As the year came to a close, he announced he would not run for governor or senator in 2010, even though polls show him a strong contender for either. So the man whose September 2001 performance as mayor of New York made him a national hero will remain the man whose hapless bid for president six years later made him a national joke.

Question No. 9: How long will it take for Republicans to find something to cheer about? Answer: Exactly one year, from Election Day 2008 until the corresponding Tuesday in November 2009. That's when Republicans recaptured the governorships in Virginia and New Jersey, two states Obama had carried a year earlier. Although different in many ways, New Jersey's Chris Christie and Virginia's Bob McDonnell both ran successfully against the recession, taxes, government in general and the change agenda that had been a key Obama asset.

Question No. 8: What next for the Kennedy clan? Answer: Retreat. The year began with the family's last lion, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, battling a brain tumor. For a time, it appeared his niece Caroline, daughter of JFK, might be appointed to the U.S. Senate in place of Hillary Clinton. He urged her to seize the opportunity. But the New York media swarmed around the famous heiress and she wilted. When Teddy succumbed in August, there was talk his widow, Vickie, might take his Senate seat, at least temporarily. She demurred. At the funeral, the best speeches were given by young Kennedys who have never run for office and show no interest in doing so. The senator's seat went temporarily to Paul Kirk, a former staffer and Democratic National Committee chairman. In January it will be claimed in a special election by state Attorney General Martha Coakley, who has no close ties to the family.

Question No. 7: Will Sarah Palin go back to Alaska and tackle its thorny problems as governor or pursue a career as a national media figure? Answer: All too obvious. Palin resigned as governor in midsummer and mounted a national tour as co-author of a tell-and-tease autobiography trashing the campaign staff of her ticketmate John McCain. We expect to see a lot of her on TV and in the blogosphere in months to come. And she will campaign for other Republicans around the country in 2010. But don't bank on her being in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2011. She will flirt with another national campaign, but the downside of a poor showing would be too steep. She will opt for the spotlight but not the hot seat.

Question No. 6: So who will emerge as an early favorite for the GOP in 2012? Answer: No one so far. Mitt Romney, the venture capitalist and former governor of Massachusetts who ran a pretty good campaign in 2008, remains the class of the field but kept a low profile in 2009. Mike Huckabee led in some polls of Republicans that also found Sarah Palin popular. But Huckabee ended the year uncertain about running (and damaged by a clemency scandal from his days as Arkansas governor). Romney remains too much a general election candidate, a problem for the Democrats to be sure but far from the average Republican activist's cup of tea. His past positions on social issues were too styled to Massachusetts, and his Mormonism still leaves the party's religious base lukewarm at best.

Question No. 5: Whither John McCain? Will he wrap up his career in public service by retiring after four Senate terms and offer a bridge between the parties in the interim? Or will he go to the barricades? Answer: All in for Option 2. Some thought McCain would reprise the spirit of his concession speech on Election Night 2008, urging America to embrace its new president and its emerging multicultural future. McCain has been shoring up his right, hewing to the party line and all but denouncing his own history as a maverick.

Question No. 4: Who will be the first member of the Cabinet to crash and burn? Answer: None so far. As of this writing, all Cabinet and Cab-level appointees are operative. The White House has lost its green jobs czar, Van Jones, who was pilloried for political remarks and actions years before he took the White House job. The president has also accepted the resignation of his counsel, Greg Craig, who some blamed for the backlog in judicial appointments and the difficulties in closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Question No. 3: How will the outsized egos of former rivals Hillary Clinton and Joseph Biden deal with their new roles as subordinates to President Obama? Answer: Remarkably well, so far. Hillary Clinton has been getting high marks around the world as secretary of state, while her husband, the former president, has managed to stay out of the news as well. Vice President Biden, who patronized his future boss in some of the early primary states, has adapted to his subordination with humor and at least a modicum of grace.

Question No. 2: Will President Obama turn out to be a liberal or a centrist? Answer: Yes. But which of his personas predominates depends on the issue of the day. He's been a bigger spender than most expected, but he backed the Senate's less radical approach to overhauling health care insurance. And his Afghanistan buildup could have come from President McCain.

Question No. 1: How will the United States adjust to having a black president? Answer: So far, at least, it's been a lot like the way the country adjusted to other new presidents. The overriding issue is the shift in White House agenda and priorities. Some protests have had racial overtones, but these have been far from dominant. The organized right and all its institutions reject the new president pretty much out of hand, but his race is arguably beside the point even for his fiercest opponents.

It's hard to imagine anything further from the spirit of Christmas than what's going on this holiday week in the U.S. Senate.

Not much peace on this scorched Earth. And don't even think about goodwill toward men.

"We'll be here until Christmas" was once a threat used by party leaders to compel colleagues to business when a year's session ran past Thanksgiving. Those leaders knew the prospect of disrupted family plans would focus senatorial minds. As the holiday approached, deals got done and differences mended. Once the outcome of an issue was clear, someone gave in and everyone went home.

Not so in the Senate of 2009, where no threat seems idle anymore.

That is why the Kabuki theater of filibusters, cloture petitions, 30-hour waiting periods and post-midnight cloture votes has been going on for three weeks without a day off. And it is why that dance is likely to continue late on Christmas Eve.

The chamber's famous quality of comity has been in dwindling supply for some time, but each round of voting on the health care bill seems to bring new causes of ill feeling. The latest low point came on Sunday, when Sen. Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, said, "What the American people ought to pray is that someone can't make the vote tonight."

Democrats took umbrage at that. Anyone might have problems making a 1 a.m. vote on snowbound Capitol Hill. But Democrats sensed a reference to their senior-most member, 92-year-old Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, who has been in fragile health.

So far, Byrd has answered the bell every time. But he and other loyalists have been upstaged by a few holdout Democrats whose vote must be begged for and bought. Each wants to be the courted keeper of the 60th vote when his party needs a three-fifths majority to forestall a filibuster. And their party needs that 60th vote every day, because the Republicans have gone to the barricades, threatening a filibuster on every bill and procedural step.

In order to finish health care before Christmas, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has lined up the must-do bills and procedural steps like cars on a freight train. Republicans know that if they knock one off in the line, the whole train can be sent off the rails.

The most remarkable case of this came late last week, when the GOP minority threatened a filibuster on the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Defense. Using the same tactic that it has applied to each stage of the health care debate, the minority forced the Democrats to round up 60 votes to proceed to the military spending required for Iraq, Afghanistan and the full range of department commitments.

One Democratic senator, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, had made clear weeks earlier he would not support money for the expanded war in Afghanistan. That meant Reid had to find at least one Republican to supply the 60th vote to get the DOD bill to the floor. He thought he had found one, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, the senior Republican on Appropriations and on its Subcommittee for Defense.

But then Cochran told Reid he had not decided and would decide when the vote began. The Republicans knew that by holding up the DOD bill they could upset Reid's timetable and push the health care bill into 2010 and a more uncertain future.

Reid had to scramble. He had to find another Republican. No dice. Although several would eventually join in the vote for cloture -- and all would vote for the bill itself -- none would commit in advance.

So Reid had to go back to Feingold. In a dramatic, closed-door session late Thursday, Feingold relented in an emotional speech to his colleagues about how much the health care bill mattered -- and how important it was not to give way to the Republican filibuster tactics.

How much does this have to do with the health care and insurance systems? Some, to be sure. Trillions of dollars are at stake in the economy, not to mention millions in campaign contributions (past, present and future). Not too long ago, a health care bill might have emerged with ideas from both parties, especially in the Senate, where several Republicans were interested in being part of the conversation.

But then came the town halls of August and the polls showing Americans believing some of the worst things they had heard about the bill. Republicans became convinced any bill would be a political loser, especially among their constituents and primary voters. The lines hardened while the bill was still in committee and got harder still as it was revised for floor debate.

That's why at this point, a great deal of this struggle is not about health or insurance but about dominance in the strictly political arena of votes, elections and offices.

When Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, said the manner of this health bill's handling represented everything Americans dislike about Congress, he was right. He was leveling the charge at the Democratic leaders, of course, but responsibility for the Senate as we know it is broadly shared. It may be the single most bipartisan element of our government.

You can blame the Founding Fathers if you like, as they made no provision of any kind in the Constitution for cutting off debate in the Senate. It was a battle to introduce cloture with two-thirds majority and another battle to lower the threshold to three-fifths. But the fault here is not in the imperfections of the past; it is in the failure of our current lawmakers to shoulder the constitutional burdens of negotiation and compromise.

Driven more by fears of intraparty unrest, today's senators retreat to their campaign talking points, even when conversing with their colleagues. Reaching out for a shared solution has given way to playing hardball around the clock and through the weekend.

This week, that brackish mood prevails as the spirit of the season.

All analogies between children and adults are inadvisable, but some are just irresistible.

If you have been watching the Senate Democrats lately, you cannot help thinking of them in terms of toddlers. Whether insisting on being the center of attention, threatening to hold their breath or wailing on long after bedtime, a handful of holdouts on the health care bill have made us all recall our personal adventures in baby-sitting.

This week, one whine has risen above the others, a solo rising from amid the choir. The familiar tones were those of Joseph Lieberman, an independent former Democrat from Connecticut, who chose to scuttle a historic compromise on health care insurance reached by other moderates and more liberal colleagues.

When he ran as the vice presidential candidate of his party (chosen by presidential nominee Al Gore) in 2000, Lieberman was very much an advocate of health care reform, as he was when he ran for president himself in 2004 and sought re-election in 2006 (losing the primary and winning in November as an independent).

But in the waning days of 2009, with the bill at a fragile moment, Lieberman emerged vowing to kill it over a provision that would allow people to buy into Medicare at age 55 rather than go without insurance. One advocate described the idea this way in proposing it in September: "By allowing citizens who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid to buy in for a rate below the private market, the government can extend coverage to more of those who are currently uninsured."

That advocate was, remarkably enough, Joe Lieberman, who this week had little to say by way of explanation for his switch.

Didn't matter. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid once again played the hapless hostage of the 60-vote rule. He knuckled under and agreed to take the provision out, prompting Lieberman to say that, with a few more adjustments, he could vote for the bill. The anger among his colleagues was palpable.

But all suggestions that the senator was doing the bidding of the insurance industry in his home state (and beyond) were dismissed by the man who made his name as the lecturing, hectoring, self-willed conscience of the Senate in the 1990s.

There has been a lot of water over the Democratic dam since then. Many more now recall Lieberman's outspoken support for GOP presidential nominee John McCain in 2008 and his full-throated backing for the Iraq war under President George W. Bush.

Bitter as these episodes have been for Lieberman's relations with Democrats, he may still be smarting as much from the rejection of his own presidential ambitions in 2004. As the No. 2 man on the ticket that won the popular vote in 2000, Lieberman expected to be a major contender when Gore opted not to run four years later. Lieberman took Gore's place with great expectations, and his failure to gain traction was a shock to him. He bailed out of Iowa, where his prospects were bleak, to concentrate on New Hampshire, where he finished fifth with less than 9 percent.

Lieberman's isolation from his lifelong party reached a climax in 2006, when he lost his primary to businessman Ned Lamont and had to scramble back and win re-election as an independent. But in the Senate he has continued to caucus with the Democrats, who have allowed him to chair the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

And Lieberman is far from alone in playing the 60-minus-1 game. This week, when LIeberman said he was back in the fold, Roland Burris, the Democratic appointee of the dishonored, impeached and indicted Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, declared: "Until this bill addresses cost, competition, and accountability in a meaningful way, it will not win my vote."

It's tempting to provide a translation, such as: "This is my chance to hold out for something I want."

And why not? In weeks past we have seen one Democrat after another claim his or her hour of special pleading. We heard plenty from two in close-fought Southern states, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, the latter trailing in polls entering her re-election year. And we have been favored with endless videotape of Ben Nelson, the Democrat whose state of Nebraska is home to Mutual of Omaha.

Nelson has fixed on the issue of abortion and the possibility someone might have one using money provided (or freed up) under a provision -- any provision -- of the new legislation. Nelson is channeling his House-side colleagues who pushed a similar ban in the House, endangering the bill there.

The abortion funding issue is even more threatening to the fragile process in the Senate, of course, where Democrats need every vote they have to pass anything significant. That is because the Republicans, reduced to their smallest minority in the chamber in 30 years, have seized on their last weapon: the filibuster. They are willing to filibuster anything of note, forcing Democrats to gather 60 votes to stop the filibuster continually.

That is why the majority needed all 60 votes and a weekend session even to pass the omnibus appropriations bill. Not one Republican would vote for the basic measure that keeps the federal government functioning.

Given that degree of discipline on one side of the aisle, the inability of the Democrats to discipline their own offers stark contrast -- and casts a dire shadow on prospects for the Obama program.