Massachusetts Meltdown

Writing about stuff before it has even had a chance to become news has been a significant media trend this past decade. The internet accelerates this. So, even though voting in the election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts hasn’t even started yet, it’s important to speculate on the outcome of the contest and its likely consequences. These days even Breaking News is Old News…

Martha Coakley, the hapless Democratic candidate, seems set to lose one of the safest Democratic seats in the country to a Republican challenger no-one had even heard of a couple of months ago. This is ineptitude on such an impressive scale that you could be forgiven for thinking Gordon Brown must be running her campaign. Nate Silver gives Coakley just a 33% chance of winning. (Given her history in this appalling perversion of justice, Coakley deserves to lose too, regardless of her lack of campaign chops.