Has there ever been a more important special congressional election than the Senate race in Massachusetts on Tuesday? I honestly can't think of one.
Hub Blog has a great roundup of coverage, including a lot of agonized comments about how they want their votes to be interpreted by the political punditry. One reader: "Let me say emphatically that my vote for [Republican Scott] Brown isn't a vote against Obama." Good luck with that. The Globe's Jeff Jacoby has already written the national spin:
A year ago, Americans were enchanted with their new president. Today
they are suffering from severe buyer’s remorse. Massachusetts may be
the bluest state, but voters here are fed up too.
The Globe's Joan Vennochi dissents by saying that voters may punish Democratic nominee Martha Coakley because they're dissatisfied with local Democratic pols like Deval Patrick and Sal DiMasi. (Maybe so, but Jacoby's spin is what will play in Washington.)
If I had to predict, I'd say Coakley will pull out a win, but only because a Brown victory would be such a jolt -- like NASCAR eclipsing the Boston Red Sox in this state, or chitterlings becoming more popular than clam chowder.
Andrew Sullivan calls the surge for Brown the manifestation of a "nihilist, populist, primal scream." I think of it as another example of a "nuclear option" (a term first coined here) in its extreme political effects. What could they be?