Some observations on the Bay State Shocker:
Candidates matter, don’t they?
Yes they surely do. Martha Coakley’s campaign was so staggeringly inept, complacent, arrrogant and stupid that she threw away a Senate seat in a state Barack Obama won by 26 points a year ago. Yes, Republicans have won statewide before in MA but this was rather different, was’t it?
Have voters become disillusioned with the administration, even in Massachusetts?
To some extent they have. But not by 26 points-worth of anger and frustration. A better candidate and a more rigorous campaign almost certainly holds this seat for the Democrats. By contrast, Scott Brown ran an almost perfectly-pitched campaign.
So, er, this result doesn’t really count?
Oh yes it does. What’s done is done and you don’t get a Mulligan. This is a real, undeniable, victory for the GOP and hypotheticals advancing the case that if the Democrats had done things differently aren’t worth much now that the damage has been done.
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