A Lesson for Democrats

Scott Brown's upset in the Massachusetts Senate race is, all excuses and equivocations aside, a serious wake up call to Democrats across the nation. A year ago losing Ted Kennedy's Senate seat would have been seen as far-fetched. But a year of supporting disastrous policies has placed an anchor on their ambitious efforts to defy the electorate.

An unlikely victory? Maybe not...

Massachusetts voters had a decision: protect a Democrat super-majority, or destroy it. They destroyed it. Few Senatorial elections have such far-reaching implications in such a simple package.

If national trends didn't matter here, they don't matter anywhere. Ever.

There are, as always, a lot of factors - external and internal - that determine the results of elections. But the cycling series of excuses (one of them amusingly termed a 'circular firing squad') show that Democrats still haven't rationalized the election away.

In either case, the implications will be borne out by the 2010 elections. The boundaries of what makes a seat 'safe' are being redefined - and you can be sure that some Missouri politicians, like moderate-turned-liberal Ike Skelton, watched yesterday’s results come in very closely. Bowing in to Democrat leadership and voting for programs like cap-and-tax must, in retrospect, seem like a very bad idea.

Five days ago we posted this excerpt from The Cook Report:

If Democrats are just scraping by in Massachusetts, the thinking goes, how can congressional Democrats in legitimate swing states feel the least bit safe?

Good question. The kind that we think will be keeping some politicians up at night.