Scott Brown And The Massachusetts Resistance

Assuming the dead don’t vote in Massachusetts, it is very likely that Republican Scott Brown will win the election.

Just prior to the Massachusetts election, featuring heir apparent to the Kennedy legacy state Attorney General Martha Coakley and upstart Brown, The Hill reported that Dodd, “a longtime friend and ally of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), blasted the Republican candidate to permanently fill Kennedy's seat over Brown's stance against the health bill before Congress.

"’Health care was the cause of my friend Ted Kennedy's life,’ Dodd said in a fundraising letter for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC).

"’So it sickens me that the Republican running to take Ted's place is vowing to be the 41st vote to kill health care reform,’ Dodd added.”

Commentators and reporters who will in the short run determine the meaning of Brown’s successful capture of a seat that had been owned by Democrats for half a century will be chewing over the returns in the next few weeks - and spin already is in the air.

Would Brown’s win be a repudiation of universal health care, "the cause of Ted Kennedy’s life?"

That dread supposition has been bandied about in recent stories. An Associated Press lede on a front page story three days before the election read: “His health care plan in peril, President Barack Obama scheduled a last minute campaign trip to Massachusetts for Democrat Martha Coakley…”

Trips to Connecticut by Vice President Joe Biden and other Democratic Big Guns were not enough to salvage Dodd’s tanking career.

In a hasty e-mail to Massachusetts Democrats, the President sought to change the subject from health care to Brown’s opposition to the president’s attempt to tax large Wall Street firms, in this the era of recession and bloated business bonuses, always a ripe political scapegoat. (MORE) Last February the Boston Globe reported that Massachusetts’ state health care program, Commonwealth Care, similar to plans floated by Democrats in Congress, would unexpectedly double in size and cost during the next three years. The president obligingly recorded pre-election robo calls for Coakley, and pro-Coakley negative ads that flooded the radio air waves days before the election were laced with toxic exaggerations.

Has Obama lost his Big Mo? The president’s dip in the polls does not bend the arc in the right direction. At this point in his presidency, Obama’s disapproval rating is higher than any recorded by Gallup at the beginning of an elected president’s second term. And it would be foolhardy for Democrats to suppose that preceding President George Bush’s policies were the efficient cause of Obama’s plunge in the polls. Both in his foreign policy and his response to the recession, Obama has followed in Bush’s wake, the chief difference being that Obama’s response is considerably more intense – and much more expensive. At this late point in his presidency, any finger-pointing in Bush’s direction by Obama and his subalterns looks remarkably like scapegoating.

The political backdrop in Massachusetts is not propitious. Politics in the state long has been showing the strains of a one party hegemon. Unchallenged effectively at the ballot box by an anemic Republican Party –now re-energized -- not only do the state’s incumbent Democrats feel free to say anything; they feel free to do anything, the essence of a suppurating corruption.

Asked whether Coakley’s defeat was related to sentiments about President Obama, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, quipped, “President Obama is not Martha Coakley in drag.” Coming from anyone whose boyfriend did not turn his appartment into a bordello, without serious repercusions to his electibility, the remark might have been amusing.

Ex-speaker of the House Thomas Finneran was disbarred a week before the election, having been found unfit to practice law after he pleaded guilty three years earlier to obstruction of justice charges. Former state Senator James Marzilli is up for trial on charges he accosted several women. And another ex-senator, Anthony Galluccio, was recently jailed for having violated the terms of his probation after fleeing the scene of a car accident.

During the last day before voting, Coakley rolled out the Democrats’ big gun: “"I wish there were easy answers to the tough problems we have. Do not forget that they are problems that were not created by, but inherited by, our president, Barack Obama."

It hasn't worked.

In a last ditch effort to pull the faggot from the fire, Obama poked fun at this Brown ad:



It didn’t work. Massachusetts voters like Brown’s truck – and the driver too.



Massachussetts don't like the Democratic product.

The automated phone calls were ineffective. The presidential appearance didn’t work. A poll taken before the election showed voters opposing the Democrat’s health care plans 48 to 40 percent. The enthusiasm meter for Coakley read “anemic.” A poll taken before voting showed 89 percent of self identified Republicans were “very excited” to vote on Tuesday; 68 percent of independents were similarly pumped up. Only 63 percent of Democrats were “very excited” to vote. On election day, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program put up a graphic showing Independents preferring Brown to Coakley by a 69% to 28% margin.

And it snowed.