Health-care reform: So Coakley isn’t even needed?
Hesitating to vote for Brown because of concerns about health-care reform? Hesitate no more. It doesn’t matter. The NYT confirms that the back-up strategy is to ram through the already passed Senate health-care plan if Coakley loses. So, go ahead, vote for Brown. Send a signal on other issues! … I’m not sure it was a smart move for the WH to leak this strategy. It frees up a lot of guilt-ridden voters to join the protest. … Speaking of other issues, here’s a good summary of the general mood out there among many voters:

Mr. Gasparoni, who has lived here all his life and works as a tax manager for a medical device company, said that he had never campaigned for anyone before, but that he was moved to act because he was upset about the state’s decision to raise its sales tax, was leery of the health bill in Congress and was fed up with the scandals involving several Democratic state lawmakers.

“I think people have had enough,” Mr. Gasparoni said.

The article rightly notes that Massachusetts isn’t living up to its liberal stereotrype – a stereotype that was never quite accurate. It’s a blue state. But sometimes the masses do revolt. … Ben writes in that he’s concerned a Brown victory could “threaten to prevent any action by the US for quite a long time” on … climate change. Well, there’s probably a backup plan for that too. So don’t worry. Ben adds: “On another other I would not have believed that anyone could run a campaign like Coakley if I had not seen it myself.”

Update -- From Reader B:

Enjoy the blog as always but do you really think there are really pro-health plan voters who would go for Brown if the health plan wasn’t at risk? It seems to me that Brown’s success is due almost exclusively to the anti-health plan wave.

And someone ought to tell the voter you quote that the US Senate doesn’t get involved in state sales tax rate setting. Be interested to hear what his plan to balance the budget included.

As I wrote back to B, there really are guilt-ridden voters (somewhat) out there who feel better about Brown's health-care-reform stance not mattering, i.e. me. My Herald colleague, Margery Eagan, is also all over the air talking about how we have to pass reform RIGHT NOW or SB will kill it. But it doesn't matter if Scott is elected. Right? He can block an even worse bill coming out of conference committee (see tax exemptions for yet another Dem special interest group, i.e. unions). But, if Dems want, they can pass reform right now, today, tomorrow, Wednesday etc. by passing the Senate plan.  ¶ 10:52 AM