With the advent of cable television and a steady proliferation of channels  competition intensifies to fill time slots and garner higher ratings.

The tragedy of the heavy swing toward the high tech television era is that the kind of comprehensive analysis needed of issues becomes lost in a world of half minute sound bites.  The tragedy is all the graver when major federal, state, and local elections are decided on this pattern.

The arrival of Scott Brown on the Massachusetts scene, taking advantage of a political opponent devoid of new era campaign skills, harkens back to an image of a telegenic candidate whose political career reeked ultimate economic disaster from which America has never recovered.

Scott Brown is a telegenic candidate and so was Ronald Reagan.  The movie and television actor was 55 when he was elected governor of California in 1966.  Scott Brown was elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts at the age of 50.  

Remember that polls were out there before the voting began, both nationally and in Massachusetts, such as the Boston Globe poll indicating displeasure that Obama had not lived up to campaign promises.

For all too long the Democratic hierarchy has concluded that progressives will vote predictably on election day for the simple reason that they have no viable alternative to the Republican opposition.  

Increased warnings of displeasure drew no more than a few shrugs, but now that Republican Scott Brown has won the Senate seat long held by progressive icon Ted Kennedy perhaps the Democratic Party high command will awaken before more of the same occurs.  They should be well aware that if such a result can occur in liberal Massachusetts with its top heavy 3-1 Democratic registration that it can happen anywhere.

Remember what disgusted not only progressives but many mainstream moderates as well when Congress began considering a health care bill.  It was made emphatically clear that the single payer system which has served as the model of America's neighbor to the north, Canada, would not even be discussed in the wake of national polls indicating that a substantial majority of Americans favored such a proposal.