GUBU, Massachusetts and the end of an era

"All politics is local" - Thomas P. 'Tip' O'Neill (1912-1994), Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts (1953-1987) and former Speaker of the House of Representatives (1977-1987)

As I write I am very, very frustrated. The final results are just in from the special election being held today (January 19th) to fill the United States Senate seat left vacant after the death of Edward M. Kennedy last August. In a result nobody would have predicted in the immediate aftermath of Teddy's death, or even as recently as New Year's Day, a relatively unknown Republican state senator named Scott Brown has defeated the Massachusetts Attorney General, Democrat Martha Coakley for the open seat. To put this in some kind of historical context, the last Republican to be elected to the United States Senate from Massachusetts was Edward W. Brooke in 1972, and he was a black man, in the fact the first black man to be elected to the Senate, nationwide, since Reconstruction in the 1860's. In fact, technically, he was the first Republican to be elected to the Senate for Massachusetts since 1966, because he holds the same record, 1966 and 1972, if you catch my meaning.

It is hard to find words words to adequately describe the enormity of this result and the potential political impact it may have. Mirroring a similarly far fetched political snafu from Ireland in the early 1980's, I am reminded of those timeless words, "grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, unprecedented", uttered by then Taoiseach, Charles J. Haughey (and later eased into the lexicon by journalist Conor Cruise O'Brien as "GUBU", as CJ tried to explain how it could happen that a double murderer was apprehended in the house of the former Attorney General, Patrick Connolly. These examples are on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of criminality but in terms of shock factor and utter bizarreness, to my mind, not so much.

We will get to the reasons how and why Coakley managed to lose this seemingly unloseable seat a little later, but the most obvious immediate impact of this result is that Brown now becomes the 41st Republican in the United States Senate, which means Democracts no longer have a (required) 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the 100 seat chamber. Legitimate questions are being asked about what this means for the future of the health care reform bill, a piece of legislation that the Democrats, not to mention the President, have invested so much political capital in during the first year of Obama's first term.

All I know is that Ted Kennedy must be rolling over in his grave, and his brother Jack, and his other brother Bobby. Modern day Kennedy politicans Patrick J. Kennedy (Ted's son) and Joseph P. Kennedy II (Bobby's son), veterans of political campaigns themselves, must be wondering what went wrong, so quickly, that a seat that was quite probably the safest Democratic seat in the country could have been lost so badly. Counting their various careers, these men include 3 congressmen, 3 senators, a president and an attorney general. They understood that in an election cycle you campaign constantly, shake every possible hand, work all hours, pound the pavements and never, ever take votes for granted. These are the reasons Martha Coakley lost an election she never should have lost.

The cards were not only stacked in her favor, she started out the race last fall with the political equivalent of three kings, whereas her opponent had a lowly, insignificant pair of seven's. Coakley was running to replace the legendary Ted Kennedy in the Senate - the nostalgia associated with this fact alone should have given her a shoo-in. Secondly, she was a reasonably popular Democrat in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, in terms of both voter turnout and the make-up of the state and congressional delegations. Thirdly, she has already won statewide office when she became the Attorney General of Massachusetts in January 2007, so she was a known quantity. Yet she blew it. Two weeks before Christmas Coakley led Brown by 20 points in the polls. Then she decided to literally go on vacation to the Caribbean for a week, apparently of the mind that he election to the Senate was merely a formality. It will probably be the costliest political blunder of her career. Even if you are far ahead in the polls, you don't go on vacation, even if for nothing else but appearances sake.

While Martha was lounging, Scott Brown was campaigning like a maniac across the state, capitalizing on the public's anger and frustration with official Washington, to remarkably draw even in the polls a week before the election. The problem for Coakley was that the momentum was now in Brown's favor and before she realized it, it was too late. Even a last minute day of campaigning by the President on January 17th couldn't save her. Coakley eventually lost by 5 percentage points, 52% to 47%. In the aftermath of the result, one long time cable news commentator surmised that notwithstanding the fact that the voters of Massachusetts were angry about a whole series of issues, if Martha Coakley had ran even a mediocre campaign and stayed focused on her message and record, she would have handliy beaten Brown. I agree.

For the first time since 1946 a Kennedy will not represent the state of Massachusetts in the United States Congress. The Democrats (and that includes the President) badly need to sharpen up their act, and quickly. The midterm elections loom on the horizon in November and the President has a broad body of legislation he wants to move through Congress this year. It remains to be seen what the impact of the loss of this safe Senate seat will have on Obama's agenda in 2010.