Off The Milk Carton, Into The Fire

There are United States senators that everybody knows.  The ones that get all the face time and interview time and microphone time.  That are always all over the Sunday shows making infernal nuisances and aggravations of themselves.  "Dirty Harry" Reid, of course.  Chucky Schumer, who'd run over his own mother in an Abrams battle tank to get to the nearest mic.  Babs Boxer.  The late Teddy Kennedy.  Diane Feinstein, I suppose, and Fussy Russy Feingold, at least when riding shotgun with Sailor McCain.

And then there are the United States senators that occupy the second tier.  The backbenchers that don't write the big-time legislation, that don't get their names on "controversial" bills, that either aren't allowed co-sponsor even non-binding resolutions celebrating Kansas's rejected designation as "first of the rectangle states" or are simply too lazy to bother.  That are basically told to sit down, shut up, and vote as they're told, in exchange for a mighty inexhaustible river of pork.  John Kerry was, until very recently, the prototype of this breed of senator.  Both my state's lamentable senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, exemplify it.

Then there's Kay Hagan.

I know, I know - "Who?"  I don't blame you.  You figure she must be the OTHER senator from Alaska, or Wyoming, or some non-coastal outpost with a Native American tribal designation.  But in actuality, Kay Hagan is the junior senator from North Carolina.  She is almost a senatorial breed unto herself.  The third tier.  Call 'em "the flukes".  Basically like the second tier except that these poor souls were tomato cans put up against thought-to-be-safe Republican incumbents who got swept into office by out-of-nowhere coattails or incumbent collapses.  In Kay Hagan's case, she was the ultimate "in the right place at the right time" candidate, running in the 2008 "mass voter psychotic hypnosis" cycle.  Her polling matched that of Barack Obama at the presidential level to an uncanny degree.  She trailed Liddy Dole badly from day one until a few days after the Democrat Financial Logic Bomb went off in mid-September and then, otherwise inexplicably, surged into a mid-single-digit lead that she never lost.

I don't recall any Liddy Dole gaffes or scandals from that election.  No Jack Abramoff connections or PMS meltdowns or stories involving words like "coke bottle" and "contortionism" or going on The View and singing a rousing chorus of We Love Our Va-Jay-Jays.  North Carolina voters, like their counterparts across the country, simply lost their minds at the worst possible time, and Kay "Jabrone" Hagan was the hapless beneficiary.

Over the past nineteen months, she has been the perfect tier three senator.  Totally invisible, totally quiet, totally unambitious, and voting dociley and obediently as Dirty Harry commands.  (And when I say totally invisible, I'm talking "phased out of the space-time continuum" invisible.  A search of "Hagan" at Hot Air yields precisely one mention in the past year since an Ed Morrissey post on....milk carton politicians.).

So imagine my astonishment when the PR luck of the senator that successfully clung to her obscurity even in the most high-profile battles of the ObamaCare war finally ran out:

"Conversations with Kay" quickly turned into "Confrontation With Kay" when Senator Kay Hagan visited the Kernersville Senior Enrichment Center.

Hagan has been hosting "Conversations with Kay" across the state of North Carolina, meeting with constituents about their concerns and having her staff on hand to assist people who need help with federal agencies such as the IRS or Veterans Affairs.

Health care became the hot topic during Wednesday morning's event when one mother sounded off about her children's health care needs.

"My children will suffer because of this health care bill," the concerned woman loudly told Hagan . The woman said she's raising two chronically ill children who have been under anesthesia fifty times in the last fourteen years.

Watch Raw Video Of Confrontation

"We live in the hospital. We don't want this," she said.

"I am glad your that children live in our country," Hagan calmly responded.

"I don't want free health care. Because I will sell everything I own to pay for my children because this is America." the concerned parent said.

Be sure to watch the vid to get the full flavor of this mama grizzly's anger. (I'd post it directly, but WXII chinced on embeddability, which is why I helped myself to most of their story text).  This woman is facing the very real probability of her two chronically ill kids suffering and dying prematurely and horribly because this vacantly smiling drone provided the sixtieth vote to ram through ObamaCare.  And notice what, for me, is the money quote: "I don't want 'free' health care....This is America." 

Hagan's not up this time, but her time is coming, oh, yes.  In the interim, she will discover that the only thing worse than being a drone in the majority is being a drone in the minority.  And trying to remain calm and pleasantly smile with mama grizzly bites and claw slash wound scars covering sixty percent of her body.