If you're an Obama spin doctor this morning, you're earning your pay. It will be interesting to see the explanations Democrats come up with for losing a Senate seat in Massachusetts! Martha Coakley has been widely criticized for her lackluster campaign, but this is Massachusetts, for God's sake. The Dems considered this seat their birthright, it was "Kennedy's seat" after all. (When you cultivate an entitlement state, it's hard not to embrace that mentality.) Granted, Coakley was as tone-deaf as a politician comes, but with Union bosses twisting arms, and a long and storied tradition of dead people and house pets voting Democrat, she should have been able to mail it in. The Democrat primary is the election there. Unless, of course you're saddled with Barack Obama at the head of the party, presiding over policies too far left for even the most of blue of states. This, I believe, was not so much a referendum on where we are as country, but more where we are headed. More precisely, where the President wants to head us. Liberals almost always over-reach when they gain power, and Democrats (and the media) badly misread the results of 2008 as meaning this country wants to turn left. Hard left. Since then, the Dems have lost elections in New Jersey, Virginia and now, Massachusetts. Two of these (New Jersey and Massachusetts) are Democrat strongholds, and the third (Virginia) we were told, was turning that way. What do they all have in common? President Obama campaigned in all three.
Amazingly, the early word from most Democrats is that they are losing because government health care is not moving fast enough! They believe that they aren't implementing the rest of their agenda as quickly as Americans would like as well. With any luck at all, they will continue this self-delusion.
