A PERFECT STORM IN MASSACHUSETTS?

It is rare in the history of our politics for an election for an office other than president to have profound consequences for the future of our nation.  But one such election is next Tuesday January 19^th, when voters in Massachusetts will select someone to fill the two remaining years of the U.S. Senate term of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Part of the reason why this election is more important than almost every other Senate race in history is arithmetical.  Democrats have 60 senators, including Paul Kirk, who was appointed to keep the seat warm after Sen. Kennedy died last August.  Democrats need 60 votes to end filibusters.  If the Republican candidate, state Sen. Scott Brown, defeats the Democrat candidate, state Attorney General Martha Coakley, Democrats will have only 59.

In a normal year, this arithmetic would be academic.  There are three times as many registered Democrats in Massachusetts as registered Republicans.  Sen. Kennedy won his last race by 38 percentage points.  In his last race, the state’s other Democrat senator, John Kerry — to whom no one has ever applied the world "charisma" — received more than twice as many votes as his GOP opponent.

A yellow dog running on the Democrat line ought to be able to defeat any Republican by at least 20 points. Democrats probably wish they’d nominated a yellow dog instead of Ms. Coakley, because most recent polls indicate the race is a statistical tie.

A perfect storm is required to elect a Republican statewide in Massachusetts.  But it may have formed.

First, this is a special election, where Democrat turnout traditionally has been lower.

Second, Mr. Brown, a handsome, affable man who speaks well and works hard, is a very good candidate.

Third, Ms. Coakley isn’t.  She coasted after the Democrat primary, thinking the general election was just a formality.  And when she has spoken, she’s taken positions unpopular even in liberal Massachusetts, displaying both arrogance and astonishing gaps in knowledge. 

Fourth and most important, independents — the largest voting bloc in Massachusetts —  really dislike both Obamacare and Democrat Gov. Deval Patrick, to whom Ms. Coakley is linked.

But independents do like Mr. Brown.  Public Policy Polling, a Democrat firm, noted his favorable to unfavorable ratio is higher than it was for Bob McDonnell, who was elected governor of Virginia in a landslide last November, and for Chris Christie, who unseated an incumbent Democrat governor in heavily Democrat New Jersey.

The sheer weight of numbers should still make Ms. Coakley the favorite.  But favorites don’t go negative in the final week of a campaign, as Ms. Coakley has, clumsily.  In one attack ad, she misspelled "Massachusetts."  In another, she linked Mr. Brown to "Washington Republicans" George W. Bush and Rush Limbaugh, neither of whom reside in Washington.

Panicked national Democrats poured more than a million dollars into the Coakley campaign in the last week.  Lobbyists for the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries — fearful that a critical vote for Obamacare may be slipping from their grasp — held a fund raiser for her in Washington last Tuesday.

The day before, Mr. Brown raised more than $1.3 million on line, nearly all of it in small contributions from individuals.

Mr. Brown’s online fund raising was boosted by a boffo performance in his debate with Ms. Coakley at the University of Massachusetts last Monday evening (01/11).  An incident outside the debate hall suggests the last minute bucks from special interest groups may not be enough to pull it out for the Democrat.

Standing in the cold before the debate began were two union members holding Coakley signs.  Ms. Coakley strode past them without comment.  Scott Brown went over to them and said hello.  The union members said they were only there holding the signs because they’d been paid $50 to do it, and that they both intended to vote for Mr. Brown.

Democrats in Massachusetts say that if Mr. Brown wins, they may delay his swearing in so he can’t be the 41st vote against Obamacare.  But this tactic may not work because of the shiver of fear a Republican win in Massachusetts would send down the spines of Democrats in Congress.

At her DC fundraiser with the lobbyists, Ms. Coakley said: "If I don’t win, 2010 is going to be hell for Democrats."  That’s the most true thing she’s said all campaign.

Note:  Here is the video of a Coakley thug violently shoving Weekly Standard reporter to the ground outside a Coakley fundraiser with Washington lobbyists last night (01/12).  This could be a "campaign killer" for Coakley, as National Review’s Michael Graham puts it, as so many voters are fed up with being pushed around by the governing class.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.