The WSW probably has the best analysis of the MA election out there

inthebrain

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Wed Jan-20-10 04:35 AM
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The WSW probably has the best analysis of the MA election out there

It's pretty spot on. Note the decline in voter turnout from the presidential to this sentorial election. Rather significant. And the Media said the turnout was good.

Republican wins Massachusetts Senate race
By Patrick Martin
20 January 2010
Republican Scott Brown won the special election Tuesday to fill the US Senate seat from Massachusetts left vacant by the death of Edward Kennedy, who held the seat for the Democrats for 47 years. Democrat Martha Coakley conceded shortly before 9:30 p.m., as vote-counting in 80 percent of precincts showed her trailing by a margin of 52 percent to 47 percent.

The defeat in Massachusetts is a major blow to the Democratic Party and the outcome of growing popular disillusionment with the Obama administration. Brown won by 5 percentage points over Coakley in a state which Obama carried in the presidential election by 26 points just over one year ago.

In the 2008 election, Obama received 1,891,083 votes in Massachusetts compared to 1,104,284 for his Republican opponent, John McCain. Brown appears likely, when all votes are counted, to match or actually exceed McCain�s total, while Coakley�s vote represents a dropoff of about 50 percent from Obama�s total 14 months ago.

It must be said that this is a defeat the Democratic Party made possible and richly deserved. Obama�s right-wing policies on the bank bailout, his cost-cutting healthcare overhaul and his continuation and expansion of the wars of the Bush administration have antagonized millions who supported him in 2008 and alienated Democratic Party base voters.

Anecdotal reports indicated light turnout in African-American and other minority districts in Boston, Springfield and other cities, and a comparatively heavy turnout in more upscale middle-class suburbs, particularly around Boston, where Brown rolled up large margins. Brown was leading among union members in pre-election polls, in part because of the Obama administration�s support for a tax on higher-cost employer-sponsored healthcare plans.

The Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress have been indifferent to the economic distress of broad masses of workers and middle-class people, while doling out trillions in federal resources to prop up the banks and enable them to return to profitability and dispense gargantuan bonuses to executives and traders.

The unemployment rate in Massachusetts was more than 9 percent last summer, and it remains above 8.5 percent, double the level in 2007. That figure does not include the tens of thousands of workers no longer actively seeking jobs or working only part-time.

It is hard to top the cynicism of Obama�s visit to Massachusetts Sunday, when he campaigned with Coakley at a rally at Northeastern University in Boston, hailing her as a fighter against Wall Street and denouncing Brown as �another vote for the banks.� Given the administration�s record over the past year, Obama has zero credibility posturing as a populist opponent of the big financial interests, and that was reflected at the polls on Tuesday.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/mass-j20.shtml