It was an "I Hate the Staus Quo I Am Upsetting the Applecart" Vote

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

That explains:

The 22% of Dems who voted for Brown

The independents movement towards Brown

The repudiation of an entrenched Dem seat in general

A possible Extremely Angry Dem vote - if I'm going to get Repub policies anyway, why not vote Repub instead of the fake Repub

A symbollic anti-incumbent vote (live Ted would have won, dead Ted didn't)

********

I'm gonna go with this in conjunction with someone who ran the worse campaign in history due to complacency.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. when did the move go towards Brown?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. From what I have heard/read it happened almost simultaneously

with Coakley supporting the HCR.

I didn't address that, it could be another huge factor.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. did voters want a public option?

I hope that they realize that the GOP want to privatize all health including medicare/medicaid?

[cali]

4. it happened simultaneously with her vacation too.

Correlation is not causation.

This was largely a race rooted in local factors such as the corruption of prominent MA dems. High taxes were evidently a huge issue.

[quiller4]

11. Nope. It happened when she took a vacation and snubbed

the voters. That is when independents really turned to the candidate who stayed to talk with and to them.

HCR wasn't a big factor in the polling by outside groups or by the candidates. Bail out, Stimulus (opposed) and debt were bigger issues.

[girl gone mad]

5. A backlash to entrenched politics..

is exactly the right interpretation.

Lots of Dems were asking themselves "what exactly did we win by winning?"

[ibegurpard]

6. I agree with you

the average voter is not seeing tangible results of the change they voted for.
I'm not sure exactly what would need to be done but I think that using stimulus money to actually EMPLOY out-of-work people(and other things like that) would help.

[WillyT]

7. Yep... It Was Burn Down The Mission...

:shrug:

[treestar]

8. Kind of insults those voters

Makes them sound very childish, like I'm going to hold my breath until I turn blue.

[TexasObserver]

9. Recommend. Yep, it was that.

Sometimes folks don't realize how fragile the body politic is. It's a canoe, and it only takes a little leaning one way or the other to dramatically shift the vessel. Many of those "sick of the GOP" voters in 2008 are already sick of our party being in charge.

Writing this off as one bad campaigner is missing the larger picture. Yes, she was terrible, but if the public had been happy with Democratic rule the past year, I don't think this race would have been in jeopardy. You don't lose to a guy like this in heavy voting unless they really want to send a message, and that message is "I'm voting for the other party this time!"

[TxRider]

13. There was a huge shift

In the independent's priorities, it's the economy stupid.

Most Americans are happy with their current health care, polls show this. The deficit, jobs, foreclosures, that's the mandate we have. That is the priority the people want.

Jobs, economy, everything else is a distant third to voters.

Blaming it on Bush doesn't cut it with them any more, a year bickering about HCR doesn't cut it with them either.

As the jobless rate and foreclosure rates have risen, the HCR battle is seen as Nero fiddling while Rome burns to them.

[Cartoonist]

10. Back to the old applecart

After watching the repubs destroy this country for eight years, the voters gave Obama one year to fix things. When he didn't, they decided to go back to watching the repubs destroy the country. I don't get it.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

12. I think people are starting to realize it's the SAME applecart

Things will start to get more interesting soon.

Not too many people just want to keep trading "here's the new boss, same as the old boss" indefinitley.

I think we've all wised up.

I think we are all looking for a REAL new boss, NOT AT ALL like the old boss.