Brown will repeatedly drone on that Warren is not running against Mitch McConnell or James Inohofe but against Scott Brown. Simplistic and effective as it is stupid and arrogant, I only hope the Massachusetts voter will see through this ruse. Of course Warren is running against those jerks. Brown is just a pawn, a waterboy. The only way out is to vote the Democrat ticket. Thank you Scot for the articulate explanation.

Scot has ignored the reality that Democratic control of the Senate has been an unmitigate disaster, and his election could help change that.  Harry Reid has not submitted a budget in 3 years.  He has refused to hold debates on the budgets passed by the house, as well as many other bills that the house has passed.  Brown's election could return the senate to the grown ups.

Scot seems to love to talk about Scott Brown's refusal to go against the filibuster,but seems to forget that kerry and Kennedy were fully complicit in the use of the filibuster in the years when the GOP held the majority.  The use of this tactic is NOT new, but is being used by the minority GOP because the Democrats used it shamelessly against Bush judicial nominations, with Kerry and Kennedy not lifting a finger to stop it.

Brown is more bipartisan than Kerry, and if the Senate goes to the GOP, Mass will be well served by having a GOP senator.

Not only would electing Scott Brown to the Senate for a six year term have the potential for giving control of the Senate to the Republicans, it would also reward Brown who has been two-faced about much of how he has voted in the Senate.  He votes with the Republicans whenever it really matters and then tries to appear to be non-partisan other times.

"the determined obstructionism of Brown’s fellow Republicans in the Senate makes this about more than his individual inclination toward bipartisanship." Dead on analysis, Scot. Well done.

My first thought, same as Richmond's: Brown's election might mean that the Senate, and therefore the government, might actually do its job and pass a budget! and I'll add, address the deficit! face instead of hiding from the national debt. Obstructionism wouldn't be a problem between McConnell and Romney -- they could work together to start solving problems -- which Reid clearly wouldn't if Romney becomes president. Scot writes about Kerry as if he's been doing something helpful in this regard.

So, Massachusetts voters should vote for a lesser candidate (some would acknowledge an embarrassingly bad candidate who at the very least attempted to take unfair advantage of purported minority status, who has offered nothing but platitudes, and who has misrepresented her record) in preference to a hard working, well-qualified, bipartisan senator who has served the state well because other states may elect candidates with whom they disagree? Great argument, vote for Warren because she will be a strident, uncompromising democrat who will blindly oppose anything offered by republicans and leave the country even more polarized. Sweet!

You really think Harry Reid is worthy of being the leader of the Senate? Yes, the filibuster was used, but Reid has also usexd procedural methods to push through what little legislation they actually chose to pursue. No budget in 3 years. Sorry, if anything, this shows WHY you should votee for Brown.

Brown is more Independent than one might think. Unlike Lizzee , who would vote straight party line-just like Kerry. There is NO bipartisanship when it comes to the Dems. The Bay State would be better served by Brown !!!

Yeah, I can see Romney and McConnell working well together but who wants to live in a country with no environmental protection laws, no healthcare, so social security, no medicare, a privatized military, political races controlled by the fatcats, etc & etc.???

Better to have Scott Brown return to private-citizen status the better to give him more time to conduct those meetings with kings, queens and prime ministers. That way he won't be so rushed for time and can take a closer look at the Bin Laden photos the next time they show up. Looks like Little Scotty's camouflage is starting to peel...not a particularly attractive individual under the veneer.

“filling the amendment tree”

It's called 'strategic voting':  Voting or not voting for someone because their party might have control of the senate or supreme court or you name it.  I used to believe in strategic voting too... back when I was a 19 year-old CHILD!!!  The reality is, it doesn't work and usually leaves you hanging.  In the end, it doesn't work, and you get stuck with unqualified people for six years!!  Time to grow-up, children...  Vote on the people you see before you or you are wasting your vote.  Not to mention you'll be spinning your wheels going absolutely nowhere for another four years if the senate isn't turned over to the GOP!!  Can we get some ADULTS in the room??!?

The Democrat senate hasn't produced a budget in three years!! During 'the biggest recession since the depression'!  That alone is reason enough to take the senate away from the Democrats.  Do you REALLY want to waste another four years going ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE??!?!?!

Never mind she's a horrible quarterback,  doesn't know the game and is willing to win at any cost including fixing the game officials.  It's the team that counts.  A lousy metaphorical allusion to everything wrong and dirty about electing a puppet senator with a voting handle waiting to be pulled by any political hack with a policy to grind.   Face it, please!  Professor Warren is an optical illusion that appears in the haze on the horizon that isn't real.  She is the burger without the beef.  Still, the stakes are so high in Washington that neither the fact she lacks character, real stand up decision making on her own, nor that undefinable quality that made JFK  the American we would all have liked to be matter to believing Democrats.  Being a believer, after all, means you simply do not want to ask questions thay may endanger your faith.  Elizabeth Warren's election to the senate would be like removing Lincoln's statue and replacing it with some meaningless, formless efigy.

the Real Warren: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/092512-627038-warren-like-soulmate-obama-is-con-artist.htm

She's also written scholarly papers on health care and bankruptcy without showing her data, and crafted federal health and banking regulations without a brain. Warren is the intellectual architect of the massively unpopular Dodd-Frank Act and ObamaCare, both of which are dragging down the U.S. recovery.

She's been accused by several law professors of "repeated instances of scientific misconduct" in authoring papers that have provided the academic underpinnings for financial and health reforms. Peer reviews have dismissed her research as "deeply flawed."

The Atlantic magazine, moreover, found a disturbing "pattern" of using bogus metrics to inflate the case for her leftist nostrums. Despite repeated requests, Warren has refused to provide the data she has used in her shabby research.

Excellent article. There are 2 major reasons to vote for Warren1)her strength as a candidate and2)we cannot let the Senate be Repub-majority. Scot Lehigh has clearly made the case.

What has the democrat senate under Harry Reid done? NO budget in 3.5 yrs and the democrats had control of congress from 2007 to 2010. Time for a change and not have a rubber stamp such as Elizabeth Warren would be. If the democrats were not so corrupt in changing the rules to allow Paul Kirk to take Ted Kennedy's place to vote for the expensive Obamacare bill maybe something would have gotten done. Pres. Obama has divided this nation with his class warfare instead of producing jobs (only unions public sector to apply & fund raisers like Solyndra) something has to be done. It is the job of the opposite party each election either to keep their person as president in office, remember Pres. Bush senior was only a one term office holder...what makes them think you must make a failure like Pres. Obama should stay in office. $16 trillion in debt...he couldn't stay in the white house 9/11 with security advisors when our ambassador & others are murdered & consulates burning...his first priority was a Las Vegas fund raiser....and those bodies killed are not bumps in the road, but american citizens.

Beantown: You are saying Massachusetts didn't deserve to have two votes in that debate? Why not? If Kennedy hadn't died, we would have. And what is the class warfare? I think those sensitive to that issue would be condemning Romney's 47 percent comments. Scot

"You can judge a man by the company he keeps."

I did not convince Mr. Brown to be a Republican when he grew up. I doubt seriously that the likes of Ed Brooke, Leverett Saltonstall, Eliot Richardson, etc. would wrap their arms around the likes of today's Republican party. Even Olympia Snowe found it too much to take. Alas, Mr. Romney had to run hard right to survive the primary Republican season. As a result of pandering to the extremes of his party he can not now show himself to be the kind of Republican it took to get elected in Massachusetts only a decade ago. As much as he will avoid saying it, Scott Brown is a  R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N... a 2012 REPUBLICAN, in the company of the most extreme in our society. Anyone care for a inter-vaginal ultrasound or to be legitimately raped. Keep those images in mind..vote for Mr. Brown and if the Republican party gains control of the Senate and retains control of the House, a year from now pause to wonder how you, all of us, got screwed. If Mr. Romney cannot become President without pandering to the extremes how could Mr. Brown be expected to survive the next 6 years doing so. Don't think for a minute he would not have to fold...or find himself the lone member, and therefore chairperson, of some totally meaningless and obscure Senate Committee. The ego of a man who meets with kings, queens and various heads of state could not possibly endure that kind of humiliation. 

As a seperate matter, I cannot for the life of me figure out how working class-middle class voters can be convinced to vote against their own self interest...the millionaire wing of the Republican party would not do that...but writing about that is to launch into a whole other comment(ary)...some other time perhaps. 

I thought per the Constitution - the House produces the budget. The Senate amends it and approves it. So of course the Senate produces no budget.

Scot: I don't think dividing people into those who pay taxes and those who don't is class warfare; we don't even really have the traditional classes in America. People move in and out of economic spheres. I probably won't pay taxes when I retire but will still be middle-class, which doesn't have anything to do with warfare. Of course liberals try to CREATE an un-American class warfare when they attack the rich, but that's just desperation, when they have no other solution to all the country's problems.

The budget process used by Congress today was set forth in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Both the Senate and the House are supposed to pass resolutions in the spring that outline the framework for future bills that address spending, taxation and other fiscal policy items. This budget represents a plan for allocating revenues and expenditures for the coming fiscal year, as well as for the next four fiscal years in more general terms. Each chamber is supposed to pass a version of the resolution, and if the two versions differ, then the chambers jointly hammer out a compromise and pass it.

But Barbara, can you cite anything comparable that Obama has said, in terms of critical words toward one section of the population?

Darn those pesky Republicans...how dare they be disagreeable. BTW..Jim Inhofe is a "man made" global warming denier as are many others. The world has gone through periods of warming and cooling long before man and since the beginning of time. Let's not let the facts get in the way of a good partisan arguement and some good partisan name calling.

Mike: No doubt you are aware of Richard Muller's change of mind: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

Scot: you're kidding, right? Or maybe, coming from common folk out in western PA, I took the disdainful "clinging to their guns and religion" comment too personally on behalf of my family and childhood friends. Those clingers are as close as we come to a "lower middle class" in this country. His ongoing attacks on the rich? That's not meant to be class-based? You should be smart enough to know what Romney meant: he awkwardly combined two talking points, 1. that 47% of people don't pay federal income taxes, which we use only in self-defense when some politician wants to raise taxes on the rest of us and 2. that the Democrats support ongoing poverty in order to keep a high dependent voting base.

Scot are we seriously having this debate.  Two politicians appealing to their own bases and only one is a divider.  This idea that Mitt was merely speaking in self defense that 47% of the people didn't pay taxes is nonsense.  it is not even that statement that offended people.  It was the, "they refuse to take responsbility".  As a disabled vet "I refuse to take responsibility", grandma refuses to take responsbility.  Mitt's problem is that Mitt is clueless.  I knew what he was trying to say but if you are so inept so clueless that you can'ts say it why are you running for President.

Obama and the Democrats hold that they represent a certain segment of society and seek to protect them from a more avarice class.  Mitt and the Republicans say they represent producers and that 47% of the country is holding back those producers.  Is that divisive politics.  Sure it is.  It is called politics.  This constant whining from the right is pathetic. For MItt to imply that the well to do are being unjustly picked upon while he says the poor, the disabled vet, the social security recipient is a leech upon society is purely outrageous. 

To imply that the Democratic Party supports dependency in order to retain votes is like saying the Republican's offer big tax breaks in order to retain plutocrats.  The fact is the represent two different economic models and rightly so.  Where it has broken down is that the far right is a bunch of poor losers.  They lose so they pick up their ball and go home and then have the nerve to say.  See you forfeit. It's nonsense and the Republican Party will get smaller and smaller until it regains some sanity. 

Were those recent comments, Barbara? Didn't he apologize for them?

http://bit.ly/PIBttY  Warren in trouble