Boston
To the Boston left, “anger” and “Washington” explain Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts senate race, but the win was also a shaft of common sense hitting Bay State’s echo chamber of liberal self-righteousness. “Voter anger caught fire in final days,” said Wednesday’s Boston Globe. “Massachusetts voters sent Washington a ringing message.” Yet it wasn’t anger, the final days, or just Washington, as the Globe suggested.
None of my friends who voted for Brown seem angry. For them politics is important, but not the summation of life. They see public policy as the result of outcomes, not good intentions alone. It is Martha Coakley’s crowd that sees moral certainties in politics: The truth is known and beyond argument. Layers of hysteria substitute for “debate” when a Massachusetts liberal talks with a conservative. Coakley described herself as “heart-broken” Tuesday night; one feels for this bright and decent person. But ”heart-broken” seems to join anger as a hallmark of the left’s morality-play view of politics.
As for “Washington,” yes. Obama is seen by many independents here as an eloquent speech maker who fails to deliver on policies he loftily tosses out. Insofar as the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate are all ruled by the left, and Brown is a conservative, last Tuesday’s result was about Washington.
