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Brown's victory margin was 52% - 47%, and given the state's poor weather and fact that it was a special election, turnout was remarkably strong - the highest in any Massachusetts non-presidential general election in 20 years. The defeat stuns Democrats given the stakes for Obama's agenda, now that his Senate supermajority is lost.
Consider also that in the 2008 election, he carried the state by 26 points, and it's solidly Democrat. The party holds large majorities in both houses. The governor is a Democrat, and for the most part, Republicans are unloved in a state far less liberal than commonly believed. Not this time, so at issue is why.
At one point Democrat Martha Coakley (state Attorney General) held a 31 point lead, yet managed to lose it in weeks, an astonishing reversal any time, let alone one this short.
According to the Boston Globe, angry voters "sent Washington a ringing message....Enough." Perhaps so, yet unexplained is their overnight change of heart and the fact that Massachusetts elects so few Republicans. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. was its last senator, a seat he lost to John Kennedy in 1952, and the one brother Ted held from 1962 until his 2009 death.
Worse still is candidate Scott Brown, a man MSNBC's Keith Olbermann calls "an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women."
Perhaps so based on his voting record, overwhelmingly hard-right, including public support for waterboarding, other enhanced interrogation methods, and no constitutional rights for "enemy combatants."
According to Project Vote Smart and On the Issues.org, his positions are strongly pro-business, pro-war, and anti: civil and gay rights, affirmative action, state provided health care, other social services including welfare, abortion, progressive immigration reform, labor, stem cell research, and women's rights - an unlikely choice to succeed Ted Kennedy.
Brown's also for tax cuts for the rich, or in his own words:
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