Bay State Bungle

The Boston Globe (impossible to reach right now) is reporting that Martha Coakley has conceded the Massachusetts senate race to Scott Brown and a Republican will now serve as the junior senator from Massachusetts, one of the most Democratic states in the union:

BOSTON — Scott Brown, a little-known Republican state senator, rode an old pickup truck and a growing sense of unease among independent voters to an extraordinary upset Tuesday night when he was elected to fill the Senate seat that was long held by Edward M. Kennedy in the overwhelmingly Democratic state of Massachusetts.

By a decisive margin, Mr. Brown defeated Martha Coakley, the state’s Democratic attorney general, who had been considered a prohibitive favorite to win just over a month ago after she easily won the Democratic primary. With 93 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Brown had 52 percent of the vote to Ms. Coakley’s 47 percent.

Let the finger pointing begin! Coakley is apparently blaming the DNC for the loss while the national Democratic Party is pointing right back at Coakley:

Before the DNC and DSCC got involved there was barely a single piece of paper on what the narrative is on Brown. The candidate in this race and the campaign have been involved in the worst case of political malpractice in memory and they aren’t going to be able to spin themselves out of this with a memo full of lies.

My advice to all and sundry is that this loss isn’t a referendum on Obama or on healthcare reform although both of those concerns may have had some effect at the margins. Democrats should a) run good candidates and b) take the voters seriously.

It wouldn’t hurt to at least give the impression that the primary concern of those serving in the Democratic Congress is the same as the primary concern of the voters. It’s the economy, stupid.

3 comments… add one
  • First, the race in Massachusetts isn’t a referendum on President Obama or on the healthcare legislation making its way through the Congress. That’s true regardless of what the polls say and regardless of what individual voters in Massachusetts might say.

    In other words, empirical evidence to the contrary I’ll stick to my position. You’re hypothesis doesn’t become even a little bit less likely with such evidence? Not at all? I think someone has a dogmatic prior.

  • Not dogmatic, Steve. Pragmatic. You can find one or twenty voters to support any explanation whatever. Anecdotal evidence of that sort is problematic.

    The polls have been so scattershot in Massachusetts for this race they’re hard to credit as well. Rasmussen’s robocalls suffer from selection bias.

    As I’ve written repeatedly, I think that President Obama and healthcare reform legislation might have been important at the margins but they’re not the most important reason for the results.

    I think the most important reason is the simplest: given the choice between the two candidates the voters chose the better candidate.

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