The Supreme Court's decision yesterday in Citizens United v. FEC will significantly change the legal landscape for campaign finance, allowing corporations, unions and other organizations to spend as much as they like for ads supporting a particular candidate or party.
This week in Washington has been all about the F word you can say on the air: 'Filibuster.'
First off, a personal note: Yes, I was wrong about Massachusetts. I predicted Martha Coakley would likely find a way to win in one of the bluest states in the nation. I also said I was fine with being wrong. So there you go, my crystal ball didn't account for a Democratic blunder this big.
Now then, onto the business at hand:
Republican Scott Brown has won the late Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat after a heated battle in Massachusetts. Brown handily defeated Democratic candidate Martha Coakley. The win for Brown is a major defeat for Democrats, who can no longer muster 60 votes to overcome frequent Republican filibusters in the Senate.
President Obama completes his first year in office today, and the excitement and euphoria that characterized his inauguration has turned to skepticism and doubt about his agenda.
Today, Massachusetts voters decide who will fill the Senate seat of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Voters in Massachusetts will vote for a new Senator tomorrow: The two candidates vying for the seat long-held by Democrat Ted Kennedy are now polling in a dead heat. The seat could be the key 60th vote needed for Democrats to pass a health care bill in the Senate... or the key to Republicans' efforts to stymie it.
We get quick Takeouts on the stories we're following this week: Detroit hosts the X-Prize Competition and listeners weigh in on Sen. Harry Reid's comments.
In "Game Change," a book about the 2008 presidential campaign being released today, the authors report that Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's
encouragement of Obama was unequivocal. He was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama – a "light-skinned" African American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," as he said privately. Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama's race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination.
Reid's words have drawn a flurry of criticism from RNC Chairman Michael Steele and other politicians who compare the statement to Sen. Trent Lott's 2002 assertion that if the country had voted for segregationist Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond in 1948, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years." Here to help unpack coded racial statements and point out those sitting in plain view are Omar Wasow, contributor to The Root, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, senior editor for The Atlantic, and author of “The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood.”
The New York Times' Marcus Mabry and the BBC's Rob Watson join us to look ahead to what's coming up this week: diplomatic developments with North Korea, a brouhaha over comments Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) made in 2008 about then-candidate Obama, and a federal court begins hearing a challenge to Proposition 8, which explicitly denies same-sex couples from marrying in California.
We talk this morning with Hilda Solis, the United States Secretary of Labor. Solis will announce later today that some states will be given federal grant money to help create more training for green jobs.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Senate, will announce today that he won't seek re-election for a sixth term. Colin McEnroe joined us from WNPR to talk about the decision.
Wendell Potter worked as an executive for over 15 years at health insurance giant CIGNA before becoming a whistle-blower and an advocate for health care reform. He is currently the Senior Fellow on Health Care at the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). He joins us to give his opinion on the current health care bill passed by the Senate last Thursday.
Trudy Lieberman, contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review, and Carrie Budoff Brown, health reporter for Politico, join us to talk about the next steps for the Democrats' top legislative priority: reconciliation with the House bill and keeping their fractious caucus together.