Angry in the Great White North

Republican Scott Brown defeats Democrat Martha Coakley for the Senate seat formerly held by the late Ted Kennedy.

Wow, that felt good to write.  I encourage you to open up Notepad and type it out yourself. 

Consider what has happened.  A Republican ran on a platform dominated by his promise to kill the health care reform package sitting in the US Senate.  And as the Senator who would tip the balance from 60-40 in favour of the Democrats to 59-41, his election would actually give him the power to do that.  Falling short of 60 votes, the Democrats could not invoke cloture to shut down a Republican filibuster. 

So in the most liberal of liberal states, in a race for the Senate seat held for two generations by a Kennedy, the voters were asked if they wanted to kill President Barack Obama's cherished health care reform package.  This election was not a referendum whose result would be interesting to consider, but would not affect the final outcome for the legislation being debated.  The result of this election, in all likelihood, would well and truly decide whether the package would live or die.

And they voted to kill it!  Brown even won the polling in Kennedy's home town!

Democrats are blaming Coakley for a miserable campaign, trying to decouple, as much as possible, the connection between this special election and Barack Obama's agenda:

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.

Some Democrats are giving credit to Brown for a great campaign, but only as a way of highlighting the poor execution of Coakley's campaign:

To exacerbate the nightmare for Democrats hoping to retain Ted Kennedy's seat, [White House senior adviser David Axelrod] even offered praise for Republican Scott Brown, saying he had run "a very clever campaign."

"As a practitioner in politics, my hat's off to him," he added.

Coakley's campaign was miserable, marked by arrogance and a sense of entitlement that would turn off most people.

Brown's campaign was brilliant, conducted on the ground, close to the voters, and with careful messaging that focused on the power of the voter to decide the future, and not be beholden to the past.

But to claim that these factors were overwhelmingly dominant in deciding the campaign is insulting to Massachusetts voters.  Yes, the voters could see that Coakley was an arrogant woman with a tin ear for politics, and that Brown was a likeable populist with a real connection to the voters.

So what.

The voters knew what was at stake.  They knew the Barack Obama's health reform package was on the line.  They knew that his entire presidency could one day be deemed a failure if his agenda is derailed as a result of the decision they took.

And they took that decision...knowing full well what was at stake.

Democrats (and liberal observers here in Canada) ought not to dismiss the vote in Massachusetts as an expression of disappointment in the Democrat candidate.   Voters in Massachusetts didn't merely send a message.   They pushed a button that launched a missile, and nothing will be the same.

If I was a Massachusetts voter, regardless of who I voted for last night, I'd be furious at Democrats and their apologists for characterizing the election in which I just participated, one in which I agonized over my vote, as a mere popularity contest disconnected somehow from the implications my vote would have for the nation.

Give the Massachusetts voters the credit and respect they deserve.  But then respect was never a strong point for liberals.

Read this Brown-Coakley roundup by Michelle Malkin.