Well it's been a while again, but life happens sometimes and the political world has been, well, dull lately. Okay, maybe not to some of you who care about things like "Health Care" or "Haiti" but for me, they just aren't the same as a good Energy Policy debate or a really interesting election.
For those of you who don't remember, I wrote a bit back in 2008 about why Democrats lose in Massachusetts. If you don't, well, I gave you a link, go read, I'll wait.
Done? Good. (Spoiler alert, that isn't what happened this time.)
So there was a special election to fill the empty seat of Ted Kennedy in the Senate. You've probably heard about it in the vast amounts of news. I was home a week or so before the election, just when the national news started to pay attention and asked around a bit to see what was going on. There was a general lack of concern. Everyone was generally dismissive of Scott Brown's chances, regardless of what the polls said.
Now that he's won the media is scrambling all over itself to explain why this happened and are grasping at reasons. I haven't heard anyone get it right yet. They call it a "national referendum" and a "judgment on Obama" and other high and mighty things.
The truth is (as I've mentioned briefly in the past) Massachusetts is a contrarian state. It was bad enough when Coakley acted like she was a sure thing and didn't even need to bother convincing anyone. That, probably, could've been forgiven. But when the national media started paying attention because it could change the "critical vote" on Health Care and wrote Brown off as a convincing, but likely unelectable underdog... that was when Coakley lost.
To the rest of the country this was an election about health care reform and partisan politics. In Massachusetts, this was a big ol' middle finger to the rest of the country. It's not that we from the Bay State don't like the rest of you or want you to have health care reform, we just hate being told what to do and REALLY hate being told why to do it.
Massachusetts already has progressive health care. They didn't need to elect someone to the senate for that. The rest of the country decided that was the issue Massachusetts was voting on, but the reality is that it wouldn't have really affected them. Massachusetts was voting on all of the other issues they disagree with Scott Brown on, but mostly they were voting to prove that they don't have to do what everyone else thinks they'll do.
