Shades of Brown

When I first moved to Boston, I wondered if would ever understand the area: How these people thought, where their convictions lay, and why they supported what they did.

Sixteen months later, I think I can say I do understand quite a bit, and that's why I want to comment on the Scott Brown election.

The election of a Republican to "the seat of Ted Kennedy," in "the bluest of blue states," has jolted the nation, and many are saying it's the end of the Democrat's upswing and a new surge of support for Republicans.

But, as with most political issue, this is not red or blue. There are shades of purple, or in this case, Brown, here.

A proper understanding of the state will help with realizing what really happened when Brown won, and it will aid anyone looking to make definition assertions for elections in the future.

First of all, understand that Massachusetts is still as Democratic as ever, and this vote does not mean that Bay Staters don't want health care or don't support Democratic ideals. That's the last thing you can draw from this election. Instead, consider this: Democrats outnumber Republicans in Massachusetts three to one, meaning that you can count on a 75% blue vote to 25% red. So, in order to even that up, all you need is one-third of Democrats to jump ship (not the entire state) to even up an election...and that's not even counting independents.

Furthermore, Democrats and Republicans in New England run in varying stripes. Yes, Massachusetts has been electing Republican governors like crazy in the last half-century (as duly noted by all the fast-breathing media voices). But those are extremely moderate Republicans, and it's because even Massholes know that they need some kind of balance in government (or so my Democratic friends tell me).

So, it's not like this attention was once-in-a-lifetime. Statistically, it could happen. And the main reasons it did, and the ones that should be scrutinized going into future elections where Republicans hope to pull upsets, are two-fold:

1. Bay Staters are liberal, but they're not blind.

Massachusetts-dwellers have seen the mess that's been happening in Washington as the Democrats try to push health care through, and they're not happy. The senator from Nebraska got free Medicare for his state, and the Maine senators have been courted more in a week in Washington than they were in all of high school (reference Google images). It's corruption, and although Boston love corruption as much as the next sin city, this corruption hasn't resulted in much good for anyone. The bill that has been produced is a mess; it's not very likely to help people; most people oppose it; it's super-expensive.

Forget Ted Kennedy's legacy; I think most Bay Staters were happy they had a chance to shoot
down this albatross. This isn't what Ted wanted, some think.

On top of that, NEWS FLASH: Massachusetts already has universal health care. So, this is not a vote against liberal ideology; it's a message that this form of liberal ideology isn't sufficient.

If the current health bill passes, Massachusetts residents would see their health care costs increase, and, worse yet, they'd have to start shelling out money to welfare-ize the tobacco-chewing, french fry-eating other (read: Southern) states whose governments are so conservative that it's going to take serious money to get health care plans going.

It's simple math, and Massachusetts voters didn't see why they should have to pay for having the foresight to do this idea a few years ago.

[Side note: The Massachusetts plan has yet to be financially profitable, much less balance out. That's a bit of a harbinger.]

[Another side note for red-staters: You know who the governor of Massachusetts was when his administration pushed health care through? Mitt Romney. That's right, as in I'm-running-in-2012-and-likely-speaking-against-ObamaCare-as-the-crux-of-my-campaign Mitt Romney. I'm telling you, Massachusetts politics isn't as clear-cut as you think.]

2. Martha Coakley blew it.

Now, my red-state friends have been saying, "It doesn't matter if Massachusetts was voting against Coakley; they were still voting for someone!"

Well, yeah, but let me explain the concept of "the lesser of two evils" here.

Martha Coakley led by 30 points in the polls one month before the election. Martha Coakley blew three other decent senatorial candidates away in the Democratic primary months before the special election and had the majority of observers wondering why she was still campaigning at all. Martha Coakley was to Ted Kennedy what Cape Cod is to...well, cod. Martha Coakley was endorsed by Ted Kennedy's widow, a blemishless figure in the Massachusetts lexicon whose last public appearances before the endorsement included her standing outside all day thanking the thousands who came to Ted's wake.

They're not calling her "Chokely" around here for nothing.

How could she blow it so bad? Just think of the worst possible things you could do in a campaign, and she probably did them.

Falsely accuse your opponent of not helping rape victims? Check. Suggest that Curt Schilling, the man who bled through his sock to lead the Red Sox back from a 3-0 deficit against the New York Yankees and break an 86-year curse, was a Yankees fan? Check. Go Beacon Street on everyone, looking down your nose at your hard-campaigning opponent and ask, "What am I supposed to do? Stand outside Fenway Park? Shake hands? In the cold?"

Yes, Martha, that's what you were supposed to do.

Completely out of touch. She also suggested that there are no terrorists left in Afghanistan.

I don't care if you hate George W. Bush, if you think the wars over there are a mistake, if you're anti-Cheney, anti-Palin, anti-involvement. You're still scared about America being threatened by terrorists, especially after somebody tries to bomb the country on Christmas and the woman who's running for your Senate seat is taking the day off (and assuming Afghanistan is full of poor, lovely, peaceful poppie farmers).

In summary: Massachusetts is more purple than you think; Bay Staters are still liberal but want sane liberalism; and Martha's campaign is now the biggest choke job in New England's history, supplanting even that game against the Giants in 2007 (I won't utter the words).

The lesson I take from all this, though, is that as much as I want to explain this race and say what effect it will have on future voting, we can't really know until those races come up. There's a lot of time until then. Sure, the Democrats have ticked off enough people to get a backswing.

But isn't that what always happens?

Here's my point: Instead of Karl Rove saying there's going to be a Republican majority forever (2000ish) or pundits saying the Democrats are in charge for a while (uh, 12 months ago?), why aren't people focusing on what the people are actually saying?

The election of Scott Brown was not a mandate for right-wing Republican policies. The guy is an environmentalist and supports Roe v. Wade. Yeah, that's right.

(Although his quickness to shout about the availability of his young daughters does make me think of several Christian college campuses where I have lived.)

The election of Scott Brown was a message from a liberal state that the Democrats had gone too far, overplayed their hands a little bit.

I think it was the same with the 2008 election: People were sick of the Republicans doing whatever they wanted and forcing their way on people.

What do people really want? It's in the middle, of course...a shade of purple. And instead of declaring Republican mandates and Democratic mandates, let's back away from swinging from one side to the other and let the balance stick sit for a minute, waiting to see where the bubble slides to. On some issues, the American people may prefer a more liberal approach. On others, it will be conservative issues.

(It's safe to say most Americans are not happy about health care, but many Americans also want a liberal-like equality when it comes to controlling the financial sector. Purple.)

Finally, I want to take a shot at the national psychos who have been trying to pigeonhole the Massachusetts election: Get your facts straight.

I think the Boston Globe did a great job of covering its home turf well, and much of what it reported lined up with what I was hearing from my friends (a mix of conservatives, Republicans, and "I vote for whomever has the less annoying adds").

But the national media (here's pointing at you, Fox News and MSNBC) once again played partisan and blew it out of proportion. And unfortunately, many people I consider level-headed took the bait.

It's not red state versus blue. There are layers here, and it's worth the time to look at the layers.

[I will note the Time magazine article especially, which was mostly correct and had a great headline ("Mass Mutiny") but incorrectly reported that Brown's daughter was a four-year starter on the Boston College basketball team (she still is, not was) and engaged in hyperbole when talking about some voters drawing Brown's nickname in a snowbank in a photo caption. Oh, and they acted as if Brown's early advertisements comparing himself to John F. Kennedy were a good idea when anyone within a 200-mile radius of Boston will tell you they most certainly were not taken well, and were stopped a month before election day.]

Scott Brown's win was a big one, and it had big implications. But in a world of Roves, Palins, Pelosis, and Reids, the sane people cannot lose sight of the other 300 million people who don't necessarily want to dump their lives into the farce that is politics, of all its manipulation and bargaining and half-accomplishments. They just want their actual concerns to be heard among those with the power and the money.

Brown kept saying it was the "people's seat," not Kennedy's. What I'm interested in is how this new senator will help the Bay Stater I have recently become.

We're a state, and a nation, not of red and blue. What will Brown do for the purple?