Massachusetts
I guess I should mention that I jotted this down earlier today, when the tea leaves showed the outcome.
In a better world, I should not care one whitt that the electorate in the state of Massachusetts decided to vote in a Republican, even with the portence of a bad November for the Democratic Party.  A margin of victory came from a slice of Democrats who wanted to punt for a better Democratic candidate in four years, even with the general anger of the populace.  But to spell out the Senate as it now stands, and why in a better world I should not be much bothered by this election.:
57 Democrats
41 Republicans
1 Socialist
1 Lieberman
The problem may be in the fact that that 57 number contains a good deal of “LINO”s. Or it may be that the magic number of 60 is set in stone in part because the two parties are essentially Fund Raising Contraption Schemes, and thus at the root the number has to just remain.
So, he won because he drives a truck, posed shirtless in Cosmopolitan, and had the backing from the Mailman from Cheers. She lost because she can’t even be bothered to spell her state correctly, stated how much she hated the very idea of shaking people’s hands, and because she didn’t really know who Curt Schilling was.
In fairness to her on that last point, I thought Curt Schilling played for the Diamondbacks. (I am of the firm belief that the best thing that happened to professional sports is the rise of “Fantasy Sports”. It saves a whole slice of sports fans from the weird sports fan act of rooting for Laundary. Damned it, I’m an Elitist… except when I’m a populist.)
I am a believer that in Washington, a bad Democrat is better than a good Republican — and Coakley was one of three varieties of bad Democrat. In the Senate, certainly. At the state level, and in this case maybe in the House I would say “Screw it all” and suggest a Brown vote in order. The theory of the Bad Democrat / Good Republican is spelled out in the rationalizations for his voting for Romney’s Health Care in Massachussets while blunting pretty much the same thing on the national level with Obama. I would like to think some kind of Republican irreconcible might form to offset the dynamic that exists with Bayh and company in the Democrats. But such a thing isn’t in the forecast. So the political hack games commence. There is a reason I’ve shelved this race in my political musings — I’ll spit out another post in a day or two on the tedious reactions and analyses.