Chris Cillizza, political blogger from “The Fix” for the Washington Post, joined students participating from the George Mason University Video Studio along with Steve Scully, the political editor for the C-SPAN networks, and students from the University of Denver and Pace University to talk about the 2010 midterm elections.

The race in Massachusetts between Democratic candidate Martha Coakly and Republican candidate Scott Brown proved to be one of the biggest upsets in our recent political history.  Cillizza considers the election “one for the ages, one that we will be going back sifting through for quite some time.”

Brown, as a Republican, won out with a majority vote in arguably one of the most Democratic states in the country.  “In a race like this it takes lots and lots of things to go right for a Republican and wrong for a Democrat, and pretty much everything went wrong for Martha Coakly and the Democrats,” explains Cillizza.

Steve Klein, Communications Professor of Journalism at Mason and professional blogger asked, “Is our government really working for the people, is it a government by the people for the people to the degree that it needs to be here in the 21^st century?” Cillizza commented by saying, “The Massachusetts senate race is a perfect example of democracy in action. This is a state that President Barrack Obama won 62% to 36% in 2008, there were 3 million votes cast in the state and he won by 800,00 votes, so the fact that  10 months later this state could elect a Republican is an example the Democracy IS working.

The distance learning course, which is produced by C-SPAN, is a unique opportunity for students to interview guests via video conference. The course airs on C-SPAN3 on Fridays at 5 p.m. and also streams online (http://www.c-span.org/Distance_Learning/).