Too much irony to ignore

 As most people have heard, there was an election in Massachusetts this past Tuesday, January 19, to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Edward Kennedy. Massachusetts is a very Democratic-leaning state that hasn't had a Republican senator since 1972 although there were three Republican governors in a row before the current Democratic governor. But, it surprised everyone when the Republican won the election. Most people considered that the winner of the Democratic primary would be the easy winner of the special election. There are a number of differing ideas on why he won:

1) The Republican winner ran a very good campaign
2) The Democratic candidate ran a very poor campaign
3) It was a referendum on the Health Care legislation being debated in Congress right now
4) It was backlash at the poor state of the economy (but the candidate who lost had nothing to do with it)

It could be any of those, something I forgot to list or a combination of any of these things. But what strikes me as the most interesting is that a couple of years ago, Massachusetts passed a huge overhaul of its health care system that many feel was the model for the legislation now being considered in Washington. The Massachusetts system was developed and passed by a Republican governor working with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. They managed to cooperate to hammer things out. One of the complaints of the health care legislation being debated in Washington is that it is too partisan. I will not be assessing blame here because it is too complicated, it would take too much time to write up and because both sides are to blame for it.

The irony is that this election in Massachusetts may well derail the national legislation that was, in part, inspired by the health care overhaul in Massachusetts. And to add to the irony, this election was to replace the man, Edward Kennedy, who more than almost anyone was responsible for getting the overhaul of the national health care system started. He continually pointed to the Massachusetts health care overhaul as a model for the way it should be done at the national level.

Themes that come from real life are much more interesting than fiction. If someone had written a story like this a year ago, I'll bet no publisher would have bought it.