Still, Obama grimly faced a need to both regroup and recoup losses on Wednesday, the anniversary of his inauguration, in a White House shaken by the realization of what a difference a year made. The most likely starting place was finding a way to save the much-criticized health care overhaul he’s been trying to push through Congress.

In one of the country’s most traditionally liberal states, Brown rode a wave of voter anger to defeat Coakley, the attorney general who had been considered a surefire winner until just days ago. Her loss signaled big political problems for Obama and the Democratic Party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide.

Brown, however, maintained in an interview Wednesday morning that claiming the election was a referendum on Obama would be oversimplifying what had happened there. Nor, he said, was it merely a matter of voters rejecting Coakley.

Asked on NBC’s “Today” show if the election was a referendum on Obama, he replied, “No, it’s bigger than that.”

“I just focused on what I did, which is to talk about the issues – terror, taxes and the health care plan,” he said. “I don’t think it was anything that she did.” Brown noted that he was able to establish himself as a strong candidate, traveling across the state “while they were in the middle of their primary. … People enjoyed the message.”

He called the Obama-backed health care system “not good for our state,” and said he didn’t think the voters would stand for any effort by Democrats to delay seating him in the Senate. Brown said Democrats would pay at the polls in November for any “political chicanery.” He also said he believes he offered voters the vision of a public servant who would vote in Washington for whatever is best, “whether it’s a good Democratic idea or a Republican idea.”

Brown will become the 41st Republican in the 100-member Senate, which could allow the GOP to block the health care bill. Democrats needed Coakley to win for a 60th vote to thwart Republican filibusters.

Brown became the first Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from supposedly true-blue Democratic Massachusetts since 1972.

“I have no interest in sugarcoating what happened in Massachusetts,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, the head of the Senate Democrats’ campaign committee. “There is a lot of anxiety in the country right now. Americans are understandably impatient.”

Brown will finish Kennedy’s unexpired term, facing re-election in 2012. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pledged to seat Brown immediately, a hasty retreat from pre-election Democratic threats to delay his inauguration until after the health bill passed.

Brown led by 52 percent to 47 percent with 100 percent of precincts counted. The third candidate in the race, independent Joseph L. Kennedy, who is no relation to Edward Kennedy, had less than 1 percent.

The local election played out against a national backdrop of animosity and resentment from voters over persistently high unemployment, Wall Street bailouts, exploding federal budget deficits and partisan wrangling over health care.

On Wednesday, Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele said Americans were breathing “a sigh of relief” over the potential derailing of the health care bill.

“People across the country are saying, ‘Slow it down,’ ” Steele said Wednesday.

But David Plouffe, who directed Obama’s presidential campaign, rejected calls to scrap the bill. “We have a good health care plan,” he said. “We need to pass that. We have to lead.”

Brown’s victory was so sweeping, he even won in the Cape Cod community where Kennedy, the longtime liberal icon, died of brain cancer last August.

“While the honor is mine, this Senate seat belongs to no one person, no one political party,” Brown told his supporters Tuesday night. “This is the people’s seat,” he added to chants of “People’s seat!”

For weeks considered a long shot, the 50-year-old Brown seized on voter discontent to overtake Coakley in the campaign’s final stretch. His candidacy energized Republicans, including backers of the “tea party” protest movement, while attracting disappointed Democrats and independents uneasy with where they felt the nation was heading.

“I voted for Obama because I wanted change,” said John Triolo, 38, a registered independent who voted in Fitchburg. “I thought he’d bring it to us, but I just don’t like the direction that he’s heading.”

Even before the first results were announced, administration officials were privately accusing Coakley of a poorly run campaign and playing down the notion that Obama or a toxic political landscape had much to do with the outcome.

Coakley’s supporters, in turn, blamed that very environment, saying her lead dropped significantly after the Senate passed health care reform shortly before Christmas and after the attempted Christmas Day airliner bombing, which Obama himself said showed a failure of his administration.

Although she shares Kennedy’s position on key issues and is appealing to the same liberal Democratic voters who returned him to office during his 47 years in the Senate, Coakley is helping usher in a post-Kennedy Massachusetts – a state whose politics have been inextricably linked to the family for generations.

Unlike her three Democratic rivals in the recent primary, Coakley refrained from invoking Kennedy’s name or image in her television ads, instead focusing on her personal history, record as attorney general and legislative priorities.

Coakley, who faces a Republican and Libertarian challenger in a Jan. 19 special election, said playing down Kennedy’s persona during the campaign was a simple acknowledgment of the titanic role he played in the politics of Massachusetts and the nation.

“We just felt that no one could replace Sen. Kennedy, that he was such a larger-than-life character and so down to earth,” Coakley said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Someone was going to fill that seat, but it wasn’t going to be anybody even close to his legacy and his talent and his experience.”

Coakley said she’s acknowledging another fact – that Kennedy’s death necessarily opens “a new day” in Massachusetts’ politics.

“It was daunting and humbling to even be running for this seat, so I thought I can’t really pretend to be Sen. Kennedy,” she said. “I can certainly aspire to follow in his footsteps.”

While she’s avoided using his image in ads, Coakley has mentioned Kennedy at some public appearances. She referenced his battles against discrimination to frame her opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal benefits to married gay couples in Massachusetts.

But Coakley’s efforts to avoid direct comparisons with Kennedy is also helping focus attention on her own story – one that includes breaking political gender barriers in a state that considers itself one of the most liberal.

The 56-year-old was the first woman elected to the state’s highest law enforcement office. If she succeeds Jan. 19, she’ll be the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts.

Coakley’s attempt to move past the Kennedy legacy was evident early on.

She was the first to declare her candidacy after his death and had quietly begun exploring a run well before he died, at the risk of alienating the Kennedy family. She also declared she would run even if another member of the family, including former U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy, opted into the race. Kennedy decided against running.

In February, Coakley divulged to the AP the existence of a previously undisclosed bank account that she had used to conduct polls to test her U.S. Senate prospects for more than four years.

After her primary win, the Kennedy family issued a statement congratulating her and saying they had “every confidence” she will win in January. Kennedy’s widow, Vicki, and the late senator’s sons hadn’t endorsed anyone during the primary.

In the four-way Democratic primary, Coakley, the only candidate with a statewide organization, garnered nearly half the vote.

That organization, and the fact the Coakley is the Democratic nominee in an state that overwhelmingly elects Democrats to state and federal office, makes Coakley the presumed frontrunner.

Her Republican challenger, state Sen. Scott Brown, has described himself as the underdog in the race and said that while he differed with Kennedy on many issues, he also found areas of agreement, including Kennedy’s opposition to Cape Wind, a proposal to build 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound. Coakley supports the plan.

“I had great respect for the senator as many people did. He was my senator, too,” said Brown, a 50-year-old lawmaker and lawyer.

Brown is also critical, saying the Democratic Party has drifted too far left from the party of Kennedy’s brother, President John F. Kennedy.

“When I go around the state, people are saying, ‘You know what? This isn’t JFK’s party anymore,’” he said.

A third candidate in the race, Joseph L. Kennedy, is a Libertarian running as an independent.

Although he’s no relation to the late senator, having a Joe Kennedy on the ballot could confuse some voters who might mistake him for Edward Kennedy’s nephew, the former U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy.

But Coakley is convinced he poses more of a problem for Brown and has insisted he be included in debates. Brown initially pushed for one-on-one debates with Coakley.

Coakley’s steady focus on higher office served her well in the campaign and in her long public career, according to political observers.

“Martha Coakley has been clear about promoting Martha Coakley as an effective public official,” said Paul Watanabe, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. “She has run principally as the centerpiece of what she is offering the electorate. She is not running on picking up the baton after Sen. Kennedy’s death.”

As a woman, Coakley would have had a hard time matching Kennedy’s more gregarious, backslapping political nature, according to Carol Hardy-Fanta, director of the nonpartisan Center for Women in Politics & Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Instead, Coakley has been wise to play to her strengths as a seasoned prosecutor who has spent her life building up her own political resume, she said.

“She is clearly someone who went into the race very well prepared to take control of the race and to say ‘I’m running, I planned to run, I’m ready to run and I can win this,’” Hardy-Fanta said.

Kennedy died Aug. 25 of a brain tumor.

From Change.org:

In July 2009, Coakley filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  In the lawsuit, Coakley said that DOMA undermined states’ efforts to recognize marriages between same-sex couples, and “codified an animus towards gay and lesbian people.”

“Our familes, our communities, and even our economy have seen the many important benefits that have come from recognizing equal marriage rights and, frankly, no downside,” Coakley said when filing the lawsuit.  “However, we have also seen how many of our married residents and their families are being hurt by a discriminatory, unprecedented, and, we believe, unconstitutional law.”

 The primary election for Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat will be held on December 8, with a general election scheduled for January 19, 2010.

“Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) says the Senate is swamped and has little time on the schedule for this fight. The Pentagon brass is reticent and wants a go-slow strategy, while a majority of the rank and file in the military opposes changing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law. With no Republican co-sponsors for a repeal, key moderate Democrats such as Sens. Jim Webb of Virginia and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas remain uncommitted.

And the Senate’s patron saint of this cause, Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), died before being able to introduce long-promised bipartisan legislation to overturn “don’t ask, don’t tell”.

And absent a big push from the Pentagon and Obama, key Senate Democrats are signaling that there is little appetite to anger some of their more socially conservative voters at a time when election forecasters are signaling a tough 2010 election cycle for the party.”

Still, the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold hearings on the ban this fall – the first since 1993, thanks to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the NY Senator who has become one of our most stalwart supporters after taking over Hillary Clinton’s seat.

1. Anyone NOT going to the October 10-11 DC march? Reasons? I’m 85 percent sure I’ll be there. The 15 of doubt is purely budget issues.

2. Reason 519 why I’m smitten with the day job: on Fridays the office refrigerator is cleaned out by the office manager. Last week he started the throwing out process at 2:30 PM, approximately 30 minutes before I wanted to eat. My lunch ended up in the garbage bin.

3. Anyone else spend Saturday watching the Ted Kennedy funeral and burial?

4. Are you football fans ready for the upcoming season? No fan of the sport. Give me teams to root for, college and pros.

5. Hopefully the killer of Tyli’a “NaNa Boo” Mack is found. If you are of the praying kind, send your thoughts to her family.

6. Finally saw the episode of “American Dad” called Lincoln Lover. What a hoot!

7. For some reason I’m on a Nat King Cole kick.

8. Reason 912 why I have a soft spot for conservatives: they moan and groan when liberal celebrities yap about politics, but reach heights of sexual delight when a conservative actor takes the bus to crazy town. And yeah,  anyone who pushes Obama is making the country “socialist” and  he is “causing civil unrest” memos is loonier than a nutty loon.

9. Finished The Brothers Karamazov. Wish I had something profound to say.

10. Does Dick Cheney understand the role of the Attorney General?

There’s not much to add about the life of Edward M. Kennedy. Youngest in a family of wealth and power, lion of the legislature, flawed father and man, Irish politician who knew the art of the deal, patriarch, weaver of tales. All of those parts were touched upon today at his funeral.

As his body heads to its final resting place—Arlington National Cemetery–its worth remarking that the younger brother of John and Robert had the enduring affection of two communities that squabble too many times in the “oppression Olympics”: blacks and gays.

Considering all the heat generated since the Proposition 8 vote, this is  remarkable and should serve as a lesson. Yes Kennedy was a partisan who could swing with the best of them, but he  understood progress comes about when people reached across the aisle and made deals based on common ground. Look at the number of Republicans who came to honor this man; not because they agreed with him but because they understood he was willing to talk and offer fellowship.

This should be our lesson as his body is returned to the earth. This happy warrior’s memory will be honored if we take his lead.

The son of the country’s most famous Catholic family defied church teachings when he divorced his first wife, then was granted an annulment only after he admitted he wasn’t being honest when he promised her he’d be faithful. His most significant and public break with the church came with his support for abortion rights.

Yet Kennedy also advocated for signature Catholic causes, such as help for the poor, health care and immigration reform, and opposition to the Iraq war. His faith remained a regular part of his life until it ended this week with a priest at his bedside.

The apparently conflicting portrait of a man loyal to the church despite widening disagreement on key issues “almost perfectly represents” the views of most American Catholics, said Boston College professor Alan Wolfe.

“He’s an effect of a process that’s been going on for a very long time that started long before Teddy Kennedy was born and will continue long after Teddy Kennedy is dead,” Wolfe said.

Kennedy’s mother, Rose Kennedy, set the roots of his faith, emphasizing Christ’s teaching in the Gospels that “to whom much is given, much will be required.” When her kids were teens, she made sure they went to a weekend religious camp every year, even if they’d rather be sailing, said Adam Clymer, who worked with Kennedy on his biography. She took them to church during the week, so they knew church wasn’t just for Sundays.

In his eulogy during her 1995 funeral, Kennedy called his mother’s faith “the greatest gift she gave us.”

A commitment to Catholicism was not always evident in Kennedy’s personal life, which was marred by problems with alcohol and philandering. In 1983, he was forbidden from receiving communion after his divorce – which the church forbids – from his first wife, Joan.

The public learned more than a decade later that he’d been granted an annulment after he was seen accepting Communion at his mother’s funeral. Joan later said that Kennedy requested the annulment, which she did not oppose, on grounds that his marriage vow to be faithful had not been honestly made, Clymer said.

Kennedy never discussed his annulment and also rarely spoke publicly of his Catholicism.

“I think faith oftentimes is deeply felt in the marrow of your bones, it’s a matter of the heart,” said Kennedy’s friend, the Rev. Gerry Creedon, a Washington-area priest. “He had trouble articulating his inner feelings, his deepest conviction and matters of emotion, the heart.”

One of Kennedy’s longest discussions of his faith came in 1983 in an unlikely place – political foe Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University:

“I am an American and a Catholic; I love my country and treasure my faith,” Kennedy said. “But I do not assume that my conception of patriotism or policy is invariably correct, or that my convictions about religion should command any greater respect than any other faith in this pluralistic society. I believe there surely is such a thing as truth, but who among us can claim a monopoly on it?”

In the same speech, Kennedy referred to abortion, criticizing some religious people for wanting government to “tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their lives.” His pro-abortion rights stance was a flip from early in his career and tough for many Catholics to accept, even those who admire his other work in other areas they consider “pro-life” – such as anti-war, anti-poverty and anti-death penalty causes.

“There’s this big, ‘What if?’” said Catholic author Michael Sean Winters. “If Ted Kennedy had stuck to his pro-life position, would both the (Democratic) party and the country have embraced the abortion on demand policies that we have now? And I don’t think so.”

Russell Shaw, former spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said when Kennedy defied the church on issues such as abortion and later, gay marriage, he reinforced a corrosive belief among Catholics that they can simply ignore teachings they don’t agree with.

Kennedy’s differences with the church never kept him from Mass. When he was in Washington, Kennedy would attend Blessed Sacrament Church in Chevy Chase, Md., and sometimes stop in at St. Joseph’s on Capitol Hill, said Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the Washington Archdiocese. In his last days, Kennedy leaned hard on his faith. Creedon said he visited with Kennedy last Friday, offering him a blessing and praying the Lord’s Prayer with him.

“He just was a man of deep piety and devotion, as well as public commitments in the area of the Gospel,” Creedon said.

Kennedy’s relationship with the Catholic church was rocky, Shaw said, but there’s no doubt it was enduring. Judging the quality of Kennedy’s faith isn’t for him, he said.

“Now it’s up to God,” he said.

Rachel, still bravely battling a touch of the flu, started us off with RNC chairman Michael Steele’s adjective-defying interview on National Public Radio Thursday morning. Does he not know that you can practice before the interview, and that it might be a good idea to practice with someone who pretends to disagree with you?

In his own special way, Steele is a national treasure. Or at least a national clearinghouse of demonstrably false statements.

Threat Level

If there is one bit of 80’s nostalgia I do not need, it’s Randall Terry screaming on the news again. And yet, there he is.

Rachel pointed out that Operation Rescue, the organization Terry helped found, is now sending out some pretty damned scary literature that specifically names women’s health care provider Dr. Leroy Carhart, who bravely went on the air to talk about the planned protest of his clinic this weekend.

I was heartened by the number of people who were offended enough by Tiller’s murder to ask for training in late-term procedures. While I respect the principles of the pro-life movement, these terrorist tactics have nothing to do with principles.

How does one rectify being so disingenuous about death when it’s your one big issue? Cherishing the sanctity of all human life except for people you really disagree with doesn’t cut it.

And are true spiritual warriors supposed to be that coy with the literature they’re passing out? Doesn’t that sort of thing make you more of a spiritual spinner? Do you get the same neato box seats in Heaven for that?

Ms. Information

Remember how we were supposed to let all of those inconvenient revelations about our country’s torture program slide because, hey, it was so very long ago?

And a bunch of conservative pundits who spent the six months leading up to the election screaming about Bill Ayers suddenly developed a Zen appreciation for letting go of the past and living entirely in the present moment?

Rachel reported on new revelations that the CIA was using extreme sleep deprivation – up to five or six days at a time – as late as November 2007. Is that recent enough for anyone to get concerned about? It’s certainly more recent than several measures the government took to make it very illegal.

Rachel also noted that the new, terribly grassroots organization FACES – the Federation for American Coal, Energy, and Security – seems to have put down most of its roots in the stock photo modeling industry.

And then the eight-year-old that lives inside her popped out and made her say that she hopes there’s not a European branch. Well played, ma’am. And ew.

Revisionist History

Rachel gave us an update on the tragically ironic news that some Republicans are now claiming that they totally would have voted for health care this time around if only Ted Kennedy were alive.

Wow. They were finally ready after only 40 years of resisting his efforts. What a cruel trick of fate!

But now they couldn’t possibly vote that way. They just couldn’t. We can all see the logic of that, right?

Oh, well. See you in another 40, everyone!

Rachel also took issue with the idea that Kennedy shouldn’t be called a liberal, and with the idea that being a liberal is at all a bad thing.

One More Thing:

U.S. News suggested that Mitt Romney might go up for Kennedy’s Senate seat.

Apparently someone’s flu meds should have “blunt assessment of questionable ideas” listed as a side effect.

American Liberal

Rachel drove a few choice nails into the attempts at creating a “Kennedy the Centrist Who Was Never Ever Ever a Librul” myth by running a recently rediscovered keynote speech on civil rights from 1968.

If you’re interested, you can download it from Alaska’s state archives. It’s pretty cool.

If I were to have a child I would name her Megan. That’s not really true. Any future girl child will be saddled with Billie and a boy Ulysses; however, today I’m all about Megan. Specifically Megan McArdle.

McArdle went after our love for the word fascism, especially when describing those on the opposite end of the political aisle. Whether it’s conservatives crying that everything President Barack Obama does has a fascistic bent (morning Glenn Beck), or liberals convinced that to be a Republican is to have an affection for black boots (hey there Keith Olbermann).

As Atlantic blogger McArdle points out using the term for politics you don’t approve of is silly, hyperbolic, and ahistorical.

“Fascism is a particular thing, not the amalgam of everything you happen not to like. ”

Ahh, but what better way to get our choirs all ginned up, nodding their heads in righteous indignation?

Wanting a moratorium on the f bomb does not mean political disagreements have gone the way of the do-do; however, persuasion does not come about by calling your opponent as a black boot thug.

Look at the long Senate career of Edward Kennedy. No one would question his liberal street cred; however, did he ever demean his Republican foes with the f epithet? Probably not because he understood you can’t insult an opponent on one day and work with her the following.

Please do me a favor? Don’t leave any comments about how you are a “student of history” and how the fascism charge sticks because of X,Y, or Z reason. Using the word without talking about the real ones, shows how you and history have never been close friends.

RIP Dominick Dunne.

Sen. Ted Kennedy’s video