Everyone has opinions about Scott Brown's upset in yesterday's special US Senate election in Massachusetts. I expect it to be the No. 1 topic even on the sports talk shows today. I'll have more to say about the political geography as we get closer to another statewide election (yes, just 10 months away!), but the Electoral Map has already beaten me to the punch by putting yesterday's results into the context of the "10 Regions of Massachusetts Politics," noting that Brown appears to have won six of them. Biggest surprise may be that Martha Coakley seems to have won affluent, suburban Shopper's World (west of Boston), but it didn't come close to saving her, thanks to Brown's overwhelming strength in middle-class suburbs farther out from the state's urban core.
As for the policy implications, I've already likened the selection of Brown to voters using the "nuclear option," but that imagery may not be correct, given that Brown is essentially being sent to Washington to vote "no" on big, dramatic plans. The consensus is that voters are frustrated with the state of the economy, but Brown and the GOP are counseling us to sit tight and ride things out without another stimulus plan or any kind of sweeping regulatory reform. (There is talk of tax cuts, but that seems unrealistic, given that the Republicans have shown no appetite to significantly cut government spending.)
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