Hitler finds out that Scott Brown won Massachusetts...

Yes, you've probably seen the clip elsewhere. Hitler finds out that USC beat Ohio State, or finds out the ending of Harry Potter, or finds out that Sarah Palin resigned. But is can be amusing, and here, he finds out that Scott Brown won in Massachusetts. [Mild language warning]



Best line: "Now we know why Obama won't release his school records. Bush got C's. Obama probably failed lunch."


(H/T: The Right Coast)

How Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Massachusetts Democrats elected Scott Brown

There are so many items on the agenda today that I don't have time to get to all of them. Let's start with a little Law of Unintended Consequences consideration.

So let me start with this statement: Democrats, both in Massachusetts and in the Federal Government, are responsible for the election of Scott Brown.

Here's why:

Q: Why is Scott Brown the Senator-elect from Massachusetts today?
A: He won the special election to fill the seat left vacant when Ted Kennedy died.

Q: He won in Massachusetts? How did that happen?
A: It was the only election in the country, and drew national attention, as well as millions of dollars of donations from all over.

Q: That's it? It was the only election?
A: Well, that's not the only thing. A significant majority has been offended by the actions of the Senate Democrats and the President over the past two months as they've attempted to force through a health care "reform" bill that the electorate has clearly decided it doesn't want. That energized people so that everyone who wanted that bill stopped saw Scott Brown as a way to do it.

Q: Why was the election held in January when Federal elections generally take place in November?
A: Senator Kennedy died in August, and the law required that they hold a special election within 145 days of a vacancy.

Q: Doesn't the governor normally appoint an interim Senator until the next Federal election?
A: In most states, that is the case. It was the case in Massachusetts, as well, until 2004.

Q: What happened in 2004?
A: The Democrats in the state house, thinking that John Kerry might win the White House and fearing that Governor Mitt Romney would appoint a Republican who would hold that Senate seat for two years, changed the law¹, and overrode a gubernatorial veto, to require a special election.

Q: Wait a minute - if the Democrats changed the law to remove appointment power, what has Paul Kirk been doing in Washington?
A: Well, when Ted Kennedy got sick, the Democrats feared that a vote may come up on health care reform between the time of his death and the holding of the special election, so they changed the law again², allowing for the appointment of an interim Senator.


There are several alternate scenarios under which the Democrats would still hold that Senate seat. But the Law of Unintended Consequences is relentless and remorseless.

Alternate scenario 1: The Democrats don't play politics and change the law in 2004. Upon Kennedy's death, Deval Patrick appoints an interim Senator who will be up for re-election in November of 2010, along with 33 other Senators and every member of the House of Representatives.

Alternate scenario 2: Senator Kennedy resigns upon being diagnosed in May of 2008. The seat is filled during the November 2008 election that saw Barack Obama win the White House. The Democratic candidate, whether Martha Coakley or someone else, wins handily in a race that draws little attention inside the state and no national coverage.

Alternate scenario 3: The Democrats don't play politics and change the law in 2009. The seat remains empty from the time of Senator Kennedy's death until the special election. Without 60 votes, the Senate Democrats have to make an effort to convince at least one Republican to come on board. They don't bribe Ben Nelson or ram through the bill on strictly partisan lines on Christmas eve, and the national groundswell of support for Brown doesn't develop.

Alternate scenario 4: The Democrats don't convince Arlen Specter to change parties. Without 60 votes, the Senate Democrats have to make an effort to convince at least one Republican to come on board. They don't bribe Ben Nelson or ram through the bill on strictly partisan lines on Christmas eve, and the national groundswell of support for Brown doesn't develop.

Alternate scenario 5: The Democrats don't steal the Minnesota Senate seat from Norm Coleman. Without 60 votes, the Senate Democrats have to make an effort to convince at least one Republican to come on board. They don't bribe Ben Nelson or ram through the bill on strictly partisan lines on Christmas eve, and the national groundswell of support for Brown doesn't develop.

Alternate scenario 6: Barack Obama governs as he campaigned. The Federal Government doesn't pass a $700 billion stimulus, doesn't take over GM and Chrysler and banks, doesn't try to nationalize one-sixth of the US economy, and, therefore, doesn't turn an economic downturn into a deep recession. The anger around the country doesn't materialize to the extent that it has now, and Coakley, despite a lackluster campaign, wins fairly easily.

But they did those things, and now the seat is gone. Scott Brown will be a United States Senator for the next two years.


¹ - Boston Globe, 2/19/2004

Massachusetts Democrats are devising a plan to keep John F. Kerry's US Senate seat in their party's hands by blocking Governor Mitt Romney from naming an interim replacement if Kerry wins the White House.

Frank Phillips, Globe Staff. (2004, February 19). DEMOCRATS EYE PLAN TO PROTECT KERRY SENATE SEAT :[THIRD Edition]. Boston Globe,p. A.1. Retrieved January 20, 2010, from Business Dateline. (Document ID: 547183041).


² - Boston Globe, 9/23/2009

The state Senate approved a bill yesterday that would let Governor Deval Patrick appoint an interim successor to Edward M. Kennedy, paving the way for the appointment of a new US senator as early as tomorrow and providing Democrats in Washington the potential 60th vote they have been seeking to pass a health care overhaul.

Matt Viser. (2009, September 23). Senate OK's Kennedy successor bill :Governor could name interim pick tomorrow. Boston Globe,p. A.1. Retrieved January 20, 2010, from Business Dateline. (Document ID: 1864237401).

"He's done everything wrong..."

The one person most responsible for Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts isn't Scott Brown. And it isn't Martha Coakley.

It's Barack Obama.

Mort Zuckerman:

He’s misjudged the character of the country in his whole approach. There’s the saying, “It’s the economy, stupid.” He didn’t get it. He was determined somehow or other to adopt a whole new agenda. He didn’t address the main issue.

This health-care plan is going to be a fiscal disaster for the country. Most of the country wanted to deal with costs, not expansion of coverage. This is going to raise costs dramatically.

In the campaign, he said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was. I’ve now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I’ve never seen before. It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top. It’s revolting.

Every word is both true and self-evident.

I'll have more on Obama's responsibility, and the rest of the Democrats', later on...

And it's official...

Martha Coakley has conceded. Scott Brown, a REPUBLICAN will take the US Senate seat held for the past 47 years by Edward Kennedy. The REPUBLICAN gives the REPUBLICANS in the Senate 41 votes, sufficient to sustain a filibuster. Furthermore, the victory for the REPUBLICAN Scott Brown not only makes it virtually impossible for the Democrats to get their modified health care reform bill through the Senate, it makes it exceedingly unlikely that the House of Representatives would be able to pass the bill that the Senate has already passed. This means that the Obamacare health care takeover is very nearly dead.

More analysis tomorrow...

First numbers analysis...

In 2006, Massachusetts had a Gubernatorial election which put Deval Patrick into office with ~55% of the vote. The Republican candidate (Kerry Healey) was hurt by the presence of a Republican-leaning Independent (Christy Mihos) on the ballot. There was also a Green Party candidate (? Ross) who took less than two percent of the vote.

The first 39 communities to fully report tonight represented 132 precincts. In 2006, Deval Patrick took 51.39% of the vote in those precincts to Kerry Healey's 39.89%. The "left" candidates took those precincts with ~53% of the vote to 47% for the "right" candidates.

Tonight (as of about 20 minutes ago), Scott Brown has taken those precincts with 57% of the vote to Martha Coakley's 42%.

If those relationships hold across the rest of the state, Scott Brown would end up taking about 53% of the vote tonight.

UPDATE: (9:10 PM) 438 precincts, 130 communites.

Patrick/Ross 2006 - 285691 (52.7%)
Coakley 2010 - 234463 (41.4%)

Healey/Mihos 2006 - 256235 (47.3%)
Brown 2010 - 326043 (57.6%)

The vote is up 4.3% over 2006 in those precincts, and Brown is overperforming both the "right" candidates from four years ago and the "left" candidates from four years ago.

Brown remains on a pace to win 53% of the vote.

Election returns

The Secretary of State's office does not seem to have a link to election returns. But WRKO does.

The polls have closed

The polls have closed here in Massachusetts. I'm not going to call the race now (though Michael Graham did a couple of hours ago), but I've followed pretty much all of the available information about this race over the past week. That includes today, with all of the turnout stories, body language stories, memos and what-not. I'm not going to call it now.

But I no longer think it's going to be a late night...

Circumstantial evidence, piling up...

I've said that everything that's happened since the middle of last week has boded well for Scott Brown and ill for Martha Coakley. There haven't been any contrary indicators - everything's pointed to a Brown win. Everything.

Just about every election night, Republican pollster Frank Luntz assembles a focus group of likely voters to help predict election results. Tonight you can see Luntz interview an assembly of Massachusetts voters on Fox at 9:10 p.m. EST.

But you probably won’t see all the work that went into it. As of late this afternoon, Luntz was still scrambling to balance his focus group with supporters of Democrat Martha Coakley. “I just lost another one,” Luntz growled over his cell phone from a hotel ballroom at Logan Airport. In the last 24 hours, six Coakley voters have dropped out. By contrast, Luntz hasn’t lost a single supporter of her opponent, Scott Brown.
...

Instead, says Luntz, they’re ashamed. “They don’t want to be on television defending Martha Coakley. It’s passé. It’s socially unacceptable. I never dreamed I’d see Democrats in Massachusetts embarrassed to admit they’re Democrats.”

In all his years of running focus groups, Luntz remembers only a single other experience like this one. It was January of 2004, in Iowa....“All my Dean people quit two days out,” he remembers...It all comes back to Luntz now as he works to find bodies willing to represent Martha Coakley. “This is definition of collapse,” he says.

Polls close in 1 hour and 22 minutes...

Step 1: Placing the blame

Politico:

[An] outside adviser to the [Coakley] campaign has provided to POLITICO a memo aimed at rebutting the charge that Coakley failed, and making the case that national Democrats failed her.

The adviser, who made the case to my colleague Jonathan Martin on the condition of anonymity in response, he said, to "the current leaking coming out of the White House and the DNC that is chalking all of this up to a “bad candidate”.

The adviser, who cited internal polling numbers to make the case, emails that, "There’s more to the story than that. If Martha is guilty of taking the race for granted, so is the White House, and the DNC."

If the Coakley campaign and the White House were looking forward to a victory party tonight, they'd probably not be forming the circular firing squad this afternoon...

But this gives me an opportunity, which so rarely happens, to agree with a Democrat.

• The White House says that Coakley ran a lousy, gaffe-filled campaign.
• The Coakley campaign says that many of their problems are a result of things happening on the national level, of dissatisfaction with the Obama administration and the Democrats' handling of health care.

I say, "Hey! They're both right!"


It's not over yet. It's not over yet. It's not over yet. Polls are open for four more hours. It's not over yet...

I like this

Howie Carr talking about "the Scott heard 'round the world..."

Turnout anecdotes

In Andover, where six of nine precincts vote at the high school, and where Republicans generally win contested races:

It took me 25 minutes to get into voter parking at AHS. I stood in the snow with the girls for about an hour after holding my Brown sign, and there was lots of support from those driving in. :fingerscrossed:

More turnout

Norah O'Donnell tweets:

Brown camp sources tells me: "Longer lines outside Boston than inside. Not good sign for Coakley. Scott's voters highly motivated"

Turnout anecdotes

Geraghty:

Winchester:

I live in Winchester, just north of the city. Long line this morning at 7:00 AM when the polls opened— approximately 40 people were waiting to vote. With the exception of the 2008 presidential election, where there were 100 or so people in line, I haven't seen early morning turnout approach this.

High turnout isn't necessarily uniform across the state. One of my co-workers (who prides himself on being one of the few conservative voices in Jamaica Plain) said that turnout was exceptionally low— much lower than the presidential election. Given Jamaica Plain's strong blue tilt, it will be interesting to see how turnout evolves over the course of today.

Boston:

.I live in arguably the most liberal neighborhood in downtown Boston (I'll never forget the look on the Obama canvasser's face when he came by my apartment last year and I told him I was voting for McCain). When I got to the polls this morning, my wife and I were the only two people there other than the poll workers. In November, the line was out the door and halfway down the block

Well, this is fun...

Robert Costa has been blogging the Massachusetts Senate race for National Review Online at Bay State Report. Some of you will understand why I particularly enjoyed this post with pictures from yesterday's North Andover rally...



(For those that don't know, that grinning redhead is my youngest son, Benjamin. And yes, I posted a couple of pictures from that rally yesterday, but it's kind of neat to see the picture on a big blog, not just mine...)

And the polls are...

...open. Thirteen hours to go.

Massachusetts Special Election - prediction

We're about an hour from polls opening in Massachusetts for the special election to fill the United States Senate seat left vacant by the death of Edward Kennedy. And despite the contention in some parts of the media, such as WBZ radio and the Boston Globe, we are not beginning election day with the candidates "neck and neck," or in a "dead heat." There have been numerous polls over the past week, and the Republican candidate Scott Brown has led by three to fifteen points in all of them. If the polling numbers were reversed, no Boston media outlets would call it a "dead heat."

The question is, have the pollsters correctly identified the electorate that is going to turn out? It remains a predominantly Democratic state, and there's always the risk (or, depending on your point of view, hope) that the average Democrat-on-the-street will a) make the effort to go to the polls for this one race and b) actually support the Democratic candidate.

My belief, as we wait for the polls to open, is that there won't be enough of either for Martha Coakley to win the race. I predict that Scott Brown wins the seat, outside the margin of fraud. The final result will be something on the order of 52-45-3.

I further predict that, over the next 24-48 hours, there will be a lot of chatter from White House types and lefty pundits and "reality-based" bloggers about this being a local election, Coakley being a lousy candidate, the election results being unrelated to Obama or Obamacare, etc. It'll all be hogwash. An enormous part of the reason that Scott Brown, if he wins, will have done so was because the election was nationalized. Everyone on both sides knows the stakes. Everyone on both sides understands that this election is a referendum on Obamacare, and the way that the Democrats are trying to force a huge expansion of government through on partisan grounds. Money has poured in to both sides from all over the country. So, while Coakley has made some mistakes in her campaign and Brown has run a great campaign, that's not enough for him to win here. It's the nationalized nature of the election that's going to do it, if he does.

Anecdotal

Scott Brown is currently shaking hands (including my wife and kids) with a big and very enthusiastic group of people in North Andover, MA. "The biggest group of Republicans together in North Andover since 1990" according to one who would know.

Hopefully, they got some good pictures - if so, I'll post some tonight.

UPDATE:

A couple of pictures:

North Andover, MA. A short-notice campaign spot in the middle of a Monday.



My wife and kids met him. Here's the oldest (red-hair, back-to)



Here's the youngest (the top of Scott's head is visible)



There was a lot of enthusiasm...

More "where we stand" the day before the special election

Stu Rothenberg:

While special elections often come down to turnout – and they therefore are more difficult to predict than normal elections – the combination of public and private survey research and anecdotal information now strongly suggests that Republican Scott Brown will defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in tomorrow’s race to fill the remainder of the late-Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat.

Brown is running extremely well with Independents in the Bay State, and unless Democratic turnout exceeds everyone’s expectations, Brown is headed for a comfortable win. Move from Toss-Up to Lean Takeover.

Geraghty:

We're reaching the surreal point where if Coakley wins, it might be a huge upset. Rothenberg nudges his assessment one more notch over, to "Lean Takeover" (a Brown win) and apparently this morning, a pollster from Suffolk University appeared on MSNBC, saying he had surveyed three bellwether communities across Massachusetts last night. All three showed a double-digit lead for Scott Brown.

It's not over until it's over. It's not over until it's over. It's not over until it's over.

But there's nothing - NOTHING - visible right now to suggest that Brown doesn't win tomorrow, outside the margin of fraud.

PPP: Brown 51, Coakley 46

Public Policy Polling:

Scott Brown leads Martha Coakley 51-46 in our final Massachusetts Senate poll, an advantage that is within the margin of error for the poll.

Over the last week Brown has continued his dominance with independents and increased his ability to win over Obama voters as Coakley's favorability numbers have declined into negative territory.

Not over. Not over until tomorrow night. Still 36 hours for this to be won or stolen.

Well, that plan apparently won't work...

About a week ago, there was talk that even if Scott Brown won the special election tomorrow, the Democrats would delay seating him until after they could get a final vote on the Health Care bill from interim Senator Paul Kirk. According to this Fred Barnes piece in the Weekly Standard says it doesn't matter when Brown is seated, because Kirk cannot vote after the election has taken place.

in the days after the election, it is Kirk’s status that matters, not Brown’s. Massachusetts law says that an appointed senator remains in office “until election and qualification of the person duly elected to fill the vacancy.” The vacancy occurred when Senator Edward Kennedy died in August. Kirk was picked as interim senator by Governor Deval Patrick.

Democrats in Massachusetts have talked about delaying Brown’s “certification,” should he defeat Democrat Martha Coakley on Tuesday. Their aim would be to allow Kirk to remain in the Senate and vote the health care bill.

But based on Massachusetts law, Senate precedent, and the U.S. Constitution, Republican attorneys said Kirk will no longer be a senator after election day, period. Brown meets the age, citizenship, and residency requirements in the Constitution to qualify for the Senate. “Qualification” does not require state “certification,” the lawyers said.

The key number isn't 41 - it's 60. As long as Kirk can't vote, the Democrats cannot get to 60 without Republican help...