This is not the hour of the good loser in Democratic circles.


by Gail Collins



On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann called Scott Brown, the senator-elect from Massachusetts, “an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.”

Yipes. It was a Senate race, not the Battle of Hastings.

“In the personal scheme of things, I went too far. In the broad scheme of things, this was a blip on the radar,” said Olbermann, in a telephone interview, citing the multitudinous cases when right-wing talk-show hosts have said much worse. Given the fact that Glenn Beck has already claimed that Brown could wind up “with a dead intern,” I believe he may have a point.

Meanwhile, on a radio show in Pennsylvania, Senator Arlen Specter lost it completely and told Representative Michele Bachmann, the irrepressible heroine of the Tea Party movement, to “act like a lady.”

Specter, you will remember, switched parties last year. Democrats must be asking themselves why they wanted him. Oh, yes, the 60th vote. Well, that’s all over. The good news is that Joseph Lieberman is only about one-tenth as important as he was on Monday. The bad news is the remaining 59 includes a self-important 79-year-old who makes wildly patronizing remarks about his female opponent during a radio debate.

To be fair, Bachmann does have a terrific talent for driving people nuts. When you ask a person what legislation she’s supported and the answer is “prosperity,” you can assume this is not going to be a day for meaningful dialogue.

“Prosperity wasn’t a bill,” snapped Specter.

“Then why don’t we make it one?” Bachmann responded, in a tone of extreme reason.

Sputtering, Specter said: “I’ll treat you like a lady. So act like one.” Not once, but twice.

This is about as inept as you can get. When Bachmann started lecturing him about how Americans want less government, the correct response was: “Yeah, unless it’s $250,000 in subsidies for the Bachmann family farm.” Instead, Specter kept complaining and calling for ladylike deportment until the host mercifully intervened and ended the show.

He has to run for re-election this year. If the Democrats are looking for a wake-up call from Massachusetts, the big rooster in the room is the plethora of underwhelming candidates they are fielding.

In Illinois, where Barack Obama’s former Senate seat is on the line, the leading Democratic contender is a 33-year-old who spent almost all of his adult life working for the bank that his family owns. Perhaps the president forgot that last week when he told Massachusetts voters that “bankers don’t need another vote in the Senate.”

Maybe John Edwards was sniffing desperation in the air when, in the same week that he admitted that the campaign love child was indeed his daughter, he called the White House and said he was going to Haiti to help in the relief efforts.

The White House pretended it was a wrong number.

A spokeswoman said Edwards also had been doing charitable work in El Salvador. If this was the plan of his wife, Elizabeth, to get him out of the house, it seems reasonable. But is it a road to rehabilitation?

Sure — as long as he stays in disaster zones. It would be great if all our disgraced politicians decided to devote themselves to helping the poor, providing they understand that this is not a second act but the thing they get to do after the curtain has dropped and the audience has gone home.

Eliot Spitzer was going to devote himself to good works, too. But now, every time you turn around, there he is talking on TV or blogging about current events. He’s trying to warn the country about evil robber barons. But I was thinking more along the line of distributing mosquito nets in Chad.

Meanwhile, a lot of Democrats who ought to be preparing to take the field in November seem to be running for shelter. In Illinois and Connecticut, the best candidates available have announced that they’re running to be the state attorney general. These days, everybody wants to be an attorney general and cuddle up and sue dairies that sell curdled milk until the political weather improves. It is very hard to be unpopular when you’re an attorney general. Even Martha Coakley was a popular attorney general.

This would not have happened if Senator Charles Schumer of New York was still in charge of recruiting candidates. Schumer was completely manic. Promising Democrats would open the door to get the newspaper in the morning and they’d find him curled up on the front porch with a dead squirrel he had brought them as a token of love.

Bring back Schumer. Maybe he could get Conan O’Brien to run in North Dakota.