Democrats Lose Ted Kennedy’s Seat

Well, the Democrats really made a donkey out of this one. The Commonwealth of Taxachusetts, as it’s known among tea-partiers, will now have a Republican senator. That means the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority — which only amounted to doing Joe Lieberman’s bidding, anyway — is over.

The race is on to define the contest and make sense of the loss. Predictably, Republicans, with a big assist from the national media, are saying that Democrats need to move to the right, where they’ve been headed ever since our community organizer in chief walked away from a public option, opened up the national checkbook for the banks and doubled our troop levels in Afghanistan. What a socialist.

Or it could be that voters are sick of electing Democrats who promise to do things and, well, don’t. The Democratic base has lost an awful lot of enthusiasm in the last 12 months. You can read all about it here and here.

How Democrats respond to this political crisis will ripple through the next two elections and beyond. Brace yourself. –PZS

Boston Globe:

Coakley, after cruising to an easy victory in the primary, began the general election race with seemingly every advantage — from name recognition and fund-raising ability, to a lopsided advantage in voter registration and the backing of the state’s Democratic establishment. What’s more, she had been plotting a race for US Senate for years.

But Brown marched ahead in the two weeks following the holidays, channeling populist anger at Democratic policies in Washington and capitalizing on Coakley’s relatively low-key campaigning. He also benefited from an influx of out-of-state activists and excitement among Massachusetts conservatives, who saw a rare chance at sending a Republican to higher office.

Read more