Last Tuesday, Republican Scott Brown pulled off a monumental upset, defeating Democrat Martha Coakley to win a Senate seat in the bluest of blue states, Massachusetts.
The election was to fill the void left by the death of Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate.
That’s right, the Massachusetts Democratic Party was so inept that they failed in what should have been one of the easiest cakewalks of the century: replacing a legend in the most liberal state.
All of a sudden, Republicans are confident again. I couldn’t get on Facebook this past week without seeing excited Republican statuses about how even Massachusetts is rejecting Obama’s “failed socialist policies.” I even overheard people out in public proclaiming the Republicans will take back Congress this November.
Well, that’s unlikely. Extremely unlikely.
First off, remember the saying “All politics is local” (ironically said by another Massachusetts liberal legend, Tip O’Neill). Coakley failed in this arena. In fact, by the time the election occurred, it couldn’t really even be called an upset anymore. Coakley was such a horrible, out-of-touch candidate that Brown had taken a clear lead in the polls.
Sure, her politics were well in line with liberal Massachusetts, but she couldn’t connect with the actual people of the state. She seemed to have a sense of entitlement, that the Democratic candidate had the “right” to hold that Senate seat. She let Brown walk all over her in the debate, and waited until she was behind before going negative. She made an “honest mistake” when she claimed to have no personal assets to her name, conveniently forgetting about her husband’s $200,000 account.
Her campaign was rocked by unfortunate gaffes: She couldn’t spell Massachusetts in her campaign ads. She responded from to criticism from Curt Schilling by laughing him off as a “Yankees fan.” (How wrong could she possibly be? Who can forget Schilling’s bloody-sock heroism in the 2004 ALCS?)
Coakley supporters can sit around and blame the national party for not supporting her enough all they want, but it doesn’t matter. Obama didn’t lose. Liberalism didn’t lose. Coakley lost, because she was a terrible candidate and deserved to lose.
On the other hand, Brown simply connected with the people. Politics aside, his JFK ad was phenomenal. All he had to do was talk smoothly and not make any big gaffes.
And looking at Brown’s political views, it won’t be all bad. He’s pro-choice, pro-environment and a supporter of clean energy. He even supported the health care reform Massachusetts passed in 2006, which guaranteed that every resident of the state would have health care.
So I think it’s safe to say that last Tuesday’s debacle was an anomalous case of a horrible candidate losing, and nothing more. That’s not to say Republicans won’t make gains this November, since the party in power almost always loses seats in midterm elections. But to take back the US Senate, Republicans will have to pick up nine seats (one of those “pickups” could be convincing that trashy turncoat Joe Lieberman to make his betrayal official).
Nine seats isn’t going to happen. Republicans would have to pick up open seats in North Dakota, Connecticut, Delaware and Illinois, knock five incumbents, and not lose any seats. Even in 1994, Republicans only gained eight seats, and there simply is not the necessary political environment to match that, much less surpass it.
The main consequence of the Massachusetts is the Democrats’ phantom supermajority is now gone. Not that it ever mattered anyway. To get the number of Democratic senators to 60, they had to count Lieberman, Republican-turned-Democrat turncoat Arlen Specter and people like Ben Nelson who barely count as Democrats anyway. It might be better to have the imaginary “supermajority” specter off Democrats’ backs anyway.
That said, this election may put significant health care reform on the back burner for now, anyway. Perhaps the House will just pass the watered-down bill the Senate passed, to not give the Republicans a shot at a filibuster. Perhaps something even less meaningful will end up passing.
However, the fact remains that if Republicans continue to fight tooth-and-nail against any kind of meaningful health care reform, it’s going to haunt them at the polls. Surveys consistently show Americans support universal health care, and no special election in Massachusetts is going to change that.
So liberals, don’t fret too much. Sure, it’s inexcusable to lose the Massachusetts special election, but the sky is not falling.
Harry Nelson is the opinion editor of The Reflector. He can be contacted at [email protected].