Boston
There’s little reason to wonder why Scott Brown, the Republican senator running for reelection in deeply Democratic Massachusetts, is still competitive. In his first debate Thursday night with his opponent, Democrat and Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, Brown was funny, scrappy, and on message, displaying his natural political gift that first won over independent voters in 2010.

Consider how he responded to one of Warren’s best lines of attack: that Brown, a Republican, has voted to protect tax cuts for “millionaires and billionaires” at the expense of the rest of us.