Vast Variety

I’ve been fairly preoccupied by the goings on in the Prop 8 trial and haven’t paid all that much attention to the special election going on in Massachusetts to fill the senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Democrats took for granted that they were going to win the seat and didn’t pay hardly any attention to it either, until just a few days ago when it became utterly obvious that Martha Coakley had run probably the worst campaign in Massachusetts history.

So now it looks like the seat that the Democrats thought that they should have been able to sleep through is going to be taken by a Republican, Scott Brown, thus ending the filibuster proof 60 seat majority the Democrats have in the Senate. Nate Silver of 538.com only gives Coakley a 25% chance of winning.

This will certainly compound the disaster that has been the health care debate. Brown has campaigned on the fact that he will vote against the health care reform bill which has rallied the Tea Partiers to his side and has generated huge amounts of voter enthusiasm. Democrats have struggled to keep up in what is one of the Bluest states in the country. The outgoing question here is, what does this foretell of the races come November. Pundits across the board are saying it’s an anti-incumbent election year and I tend to agree with them. While Coakley isn’t technically an incumbent she represents the incumbent party.

One of the more interesting things to note about Scott Brown’s campaign, he hasn’t really advertised the fact that he is a Republican. Even his website looks more like one you would expect to see for a Democrat as opposed to a Republican.

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• November 4, 2008 -- Election Day (0)