Representatives of organized labor met in the White House last week and cut a deal exempting union members from paying higher taxes as part of health care reform. It was a tawdry affair in many ways. But the meeting seems to have had an unintended consequence: Massachusetts has just elected a Republican senator. 

Never mind the horse-trading wasn’t broadcast on C-SPAN, as candidate Obama promised in 2008, or that it contradicted the president’s pledges of a new kind of politics in Washington. For many Americans – particularly those who had the chance to cast a ballot on Tuesday – the labor deal was the latest tangible sign that the president didn’t really mean what he said during the 2008 campaign. As a result, it helped put Scott Brown over the top in the Massachusetts senate race.