This new senator seems like a decent enough guy; he’s no doubt going to be one of the most liberal members of the Republican senate caucus and certainly we need more moderates like that if our politics are ever to be functional again. But this is still a really big problem, because it emboldens the tea party factions to continue with their nihilistic, loud, rude, and ultimately pointless protests against anything that feels scary to them. It’s a victory for fear and divisiveness.
So our politics are going to get even more shrill, Fox News will ride this wave even more, and people (to wit: 40 million people with no healthcare insurance) will continue to suffer. Ultimately the system, because it is on an unsustainable trend, will either get fixed, or collapse and then get fixed.
Whatever.