Dear Lord in Heaven, watching the smoking crater of Massachusetts politics tonight makes me thankful, once more, that I don't live in a jurisdiction bound by US law.
In recent Canadian history, we've had governments hang on the importance of one MP. Canada's had five straight years of minority parliaments, and during the last two Liberal governments there were at least two votes I can remember where the handful of independents (who'd kept their voting intentions a secret) held the fate of Parliament in their hands. Governments have survived because single MPs crossed the floor. So I can understand how the loss or gain or one seat can matter.
But this. This is ridiculous. The Democrats are going to go from having a crushing majority in the House and Senate to... having a crushing majority in the House and Senate. Except that it won't matter, because American politics is so broken as to not be described by that noun anymore. The Democratic Party, never the best organized institution in the country, is going to bolt to the right like a lopsided deer in hunting season. The Republicans -- still a laughable minority in both houses of Congress -- will dominate the discourse even more than they already do. And even if the President understood the anger that both his base and opposition feel at the way his first year has gone [1], he doesn't share it, and so can't really help address it.
[1] We're all officially passed the "give him time" point, right?
