Other than the fact that Martha Coakley ran perhaps one of the most inept campaigns we've seen since.... John McCain? You'd think someone over there would know how to spell Massachusetts, insist to their candidate that, yes, it is a good idea to stand outside Fenway Park and press the flesh, and perhaps make her read a newspaper so that she wouldn't be laboring under the misapprehension that Afghanistan has suddenly been turned into a terrorist-free Disneyland.
People this clueless don't deserve to win, whatever their individual merits. Coakley wasn't helped by the democratic party much, either, who undercut whatever feeble boilerplate liberal message she was sending with a reality that was far from unicorns and rainbow ponies: Harry Reid cutting deals with unions and bribing fellow Senators for votes. She also wasn't helped by a democratic party establishment that reads and takes it's own press far too seriously; these people believe they've been given a mandate to give us the Full Karl Marx...at any cost. The kiss of death came when both John Kerry and the Anonited One himself parachuted in to her "rescue"; all they could do was mangle some jokes about pick-up trucks, and blame George Bush for everything, and manage to come off as elitist snobs. The New York Times, The Boston Globe and (P)MSNBC may regard Obama as the Savior of the Universe, but the rest of the country outside of the elitist bubble doesn't. The shine is off the apple for us, the mere peasants who don't have punditry or political strategists' jobs.
For us, it doesn't matter if the government pays for our psoriasis medication or a truss when we don't have homes. Or jobs. We're not particularly interested in the vagueries of carbon dioxide emissions when our dollars buy less, and when giving a shit threatens to make everything else cost more. We wish to live in a country where people don't try to kill us with underwear bombs, and then get taxpayer-funded lawyers and the full panoply of legal rights. We want our enemies defeated; not reconciled. We want a President who's first instinct is not to apologize to the world for us being who we are. We don't want to pay exorbitant taxes to support the lazy, halt and crippled while others who are capable of making the same sacrifice are exempted because of their political connections. Martha Coakley lost because her counterparts in Democratcland, everywhere, misread the tea leaves of the 2008 Presidential election; Barack Obama isn't God. He wasn't elected because we wanted Hope and Change (only liberals and blacks fell for that scam); he was elected because he was someone who hadn't been connected to the politics of the last 30 years.
Why do you think people were willing to overlook Reverend Wright, and Pay-for-Play Scandals, and Bill Ayers? They were in a panic; their portfolios were destroyed, their hoomes went from asset to liability overnight. They started losing their jobs. The government had to hand out $700 billion to keep the banks solvent. The best John McCain could do was to engage in a little drama of 'suspending' his campaign to put a stop to something he wound up voting for anyway, and Sarah Palin (more on her in another post...).
Compared to all of that, the complete mystery and inexperience of Barack Obama seemed like either a breath of fresh air, or the lesser of two evils, depending on how desperate you were in November of 2008.
A year later, there's buyer's remorse. The Obama magic has faded. There is no excitement, only a growing discontent at a government who's priorities are deeply divorced from that of the general public it's supposed to serve.
Creigh Deeds, Jon Corzine and Martha Coakley have been the first victims of a new terror for democrats; an angry and energized electorate. There's no amount of charm, no level of Obama worship that can solve the basic problem for the democrats; they went too fucking far. They got arrogant and overextended, and did what they accused GWB of for eight years; being unable to recognize, and then admit, mistakes.
Buckle your seatbelts: we're in for a wild ride until November.
This post will be updated as more analysis comes in.
Update: Mark Steyn has the money-line this morning: "As a woman who managed to hold at least a couple of Kennedy seats once sang: Happy Birthday, Mister President!"
Bawney Fwank runs up the white flag.
Brown Victory Signals Rejection of Obama's Redistributionist policies. Roger Kimball makes an awful lot of horse sense.
Someone is VERY Displeased. It's almost like Stalingrad! (H/T Instapundit)
Politico: Obama Hoist Upon his Own Petard.
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