What to Expect from the MA Senate Special Election 2010

Madness, above all sheer inhuman madness.

Dear Massachusetts voters: where you NOT PAYING ATTENTION?  WHAT DID I JUST SAY?!

What had been viewed as an easy pick-up for the Democrats in filling recently deceased Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat has turned into a down-to-the-wire election nail-biter.

Problems abound regarding this election.  The Democratic candidate, Coakley, has turned out to be one of the worst campaigners ever, having spent the earlier parts of the election just coasting, all the while presenting a resume with a few embarrassments on it.  Meanwhile the Republican candidate, Brown, is turning out to be nowhere near the 'moderate' Republican that New Englanders tend to like, showing up with a history of sucking up to Teabaggers and Birthers and pushing a hard pro-life platform.

But the biggest problem is if Republican Brown wins.  If he does, this will happen:

• The Faux-News mob - the Becks and Limbaughs and O'Reillys and Coulters and Malkins and Hannitys and their proxies - will announce that it means EVERYONE HATES OBAMA AND OBAMA SHOULD RESIGN AND PUT CHENEY IN CHARGE AND CUT ALL TAXES AND END THE STIMULUS AND WORSHIP PAT ROBERTSON AND EVERYTHING F-CKING ELSE AT THIS VOLUME FOR THE NEXT TWENTY GODDAMN YEARS.  Or they die of heart attacks, heat strokes or poisoned air, whichever comes first.  The Republican Noise Machine will explode in celebration obviously, especially because the seat once belonged to the Liberal Lion Ted Kennedy, but they will overreact and claim it a great victory for the Far Right's ideology - Tax Cuts Always, No Health Care Reform Ever, Block All Appointments, Bomb Iran, Torture Everyone, and Deregulate Every Industry - even though the more direct evidence is that 1) Massachusetts voters are more underwhelmed with Coakley as a choice and 2) Republican voters are more motivated at the moment than Democratic ones.

That's pretty much how the Republican response will be.  The Democratic Response to a Brown victory goes two ways:

• The Democrats as a whole will panic.  Which is actually typical for them.  They will attempt to push the Senate form of the Health Care reform package so they can get it done and signed before Brown can be seated, but the more progressive left of their party might rebel against it and split their own party.  The possibility of no health care reform at all for the next 4-10 years becomes even more dire.  The more conservative and centrist of the Democrats - the Blue Dogs - might openly side with the GOP more often, and could well switch parties.  Nothing substantial gets passed for the next year as the Democratic Senate fails to find any way of breaking the Cloture/Filibuster firewall the Republicans will be sure to enact.  Considering the ongoing problems with unemployment, immigration reform, and climate change, the lack of action from Congress could actually exacerbate those problems, and people will turn against the Democrats rather than the Republicans who are the assholes blocking any fix and was the party in power that caused all these problems in the first place.
  
• The Democrats decide to man up and take on the obstructionist Republicans.  Given most of the Dem leadership, this is sheer wish fulfillment.  But in this scenario, the Democrats decide to scuttle the rule of Filibuster, or else take everything that can go into Reconciliation votes as much as possible.  In this scenario, the Dems go on the offensive with an immigration reform package similar to the one Bush the Lesser proposed back in 2006, the same one which sent the Far Right into a race-raged tailspin that pretty much drove half the Hispanic vote - the largest growing voting bloc - to the Democrats.  The Dems could also push very public attempts to reform the financial markets and force the large banks to cut back on their overtly greedy CEO superbonuses, which would kill any 'populist' image the Republicans are trying to sell themselves with for the midterms.  While the Far Right will riot, it's not going to be any different than the bad behavior they're pulling now anyways.

In the case Coakley pulls out a win, either because the Dem Political Machine wakes up or the voters sober up, this is what will happen:

• The Teabagger-driven GOP will continue to act like total bastards.  The Democrats will sigh a big sigh of relief and go back to avoiding their own shadows.  In short, nothing will change.  Ahh.

Yes, Coakley is not a good choice.  BUT BROWN IS A WORSE CHOICE.  For the LOVE OF GOD, Massachusetts, vote SANE.