The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in Mass

Massachusetts will very likely fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat with Martha Coakley who won in Tuesday's Democratic primary. If she wins as expected in the general election against Republican State Senator Scott P. Brown she would be the first woman to ever serve as Senator from Massachusetts.

Now for the bad part:

Although this is the state’s first Senate race with no incumbent since 1984 — for a legendary seat that John F. Kennedy, Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams held before Edward Kennedy — polling places reported strikingly low turnout. Election officials said that may have been because voters were preoccupied with the holiday season.

Hello? Filling this seat with a progressive in an era when we desperately need it should be a top priority. But voters may have been "preoccupied with the holiday season?" On a TUESDAY? For fuck's sake!

If I lived there I would have been scrambling to get to the voting booth. As a Texas resident, it's not like I have an opportunity very often to vote for someone like her.

She secured an early endorsement from Emily’s List, the influential fund-raising network for candidates who support abortion rights. And she quickly came out against the amendment restricting abortion access in the House health care bill last month, saying, “It’s personal with me, and it’s personal with every woman.”

[...]

She billed herself as “a different kind of leader,” even though all four Democrats had nearly identical positions on most issues. All, like Mr. Kennedy, espoused liberal values, supporting abortion rights, same-sex marriage and universal health care and opposing the death penalty.

Wow, what's not to love? Now for the ugly...

Mr. Brown, 50, is a lawyer and a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts National Guard who has served in the state legislature since 1996. He opposes same-sex marriage and the health care legislation being debated in Congress, and supports President Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Winning unaffiliated voters, who make up half of the state’s electorate, will be crucial for Mr. Brown. He has emphasized his ability to work across party lines, while casting himself as the only candidate with conservative values.

Exactly what Massachusetts and the nation doesn't need: another Texas-style bullshit artist clinging to a "conservative" label. Let's hope in the general election that most voters aren't "preoccupied" with something trivial.