I don’t often talk politics in this space, but I have to give props to Scott Brown for winning the open senate seat in Massachusetts, effectively bringing the healthcare reform bill to a screeching halt and loosening the Democrats’ grip on Washington.  In doing so, Scott is now in the very early running for the 2010 Golden Troll Award.

Brown would only comment by saying, Cool story, bro.

Brown would only comment by saying, "Cool story, bro."

For me, this is like winning the World Series all over again.  I’m a registered Republican and a Yankees fan living in Massachusetts, so the last few months have felt pretty sweet.

Here are some things that I can say that I’ve learned from this election:

  • The Democrats have been rebuked only a year (nearly to the day) after Barack Obama took office.  The evidence of this is that this happened right here in Massachusetts.  I’m sure that the election would have been decided by a slightly wider margin in any of the traditional “battleground” states, so this was pretty much a Republican landslide in terms of MA elections.
  • We need more term limits.  I’ve always thought this, but for Christ’s sake, if you have to literally wait for your senator to die before you can get him out of office, there’s something wrong with the system.  Sure, you can make the argument that anyone can come along and challenge the incumbent, but the point that I am trying to make is that once someone has been in power for a long time, voters tend to just let them stay there.  Eventually, would-be opponents don’t even bother challenging, and that’s where you can run into very serious trouble.  Inaction is the deadliest mistake a population can make and this sort of apathy is the cause.
  • Negative ad campaigns are a surefire way of pissing voters off.  Martha Coakley just assumed that trying to make her opponent look bad was the best way to get ahead when Brown stared to pick up steam.  But when all you do is remind people he’ll vote against the healthcare bill (albeit with scary music), that only furthers the likelihood that people will vote for him.  Maybe she should have looked at some poll numbers before hammering that note home.
  • On that note, Coakley’s ineptitude about current events and local lore was appalling.  For one, she seems to not know who Curt Schilling is (the now-infamous “He’s a Yankee fan” remark), and also seems to think that the war in Afghanistan isn’t worth fighting anymore (thanks to a soundbite I recently heard of her saying that “the Taliban are gone” in the region).  Do your homework, lady.
  • On Wednesday, no matter what happens, the ads stop playing on TV and the radio.  Thankfully.  Which makes me wonder why the winner doesn’t take out ads that simply gloat about their winning.  “I’m the Wiz!  Nobody beats me!”

What will the rest of the year hold for politics?  Will this be a harbinger of things to come this November?  Will the president finally start working from the center, as he said he would when he was running?  We’ll have to see.  I don’t get paid to think about this sort of thing and as I said, I don’t usually write about it, either.  I just saw the efforts of a good guy who managed to troll the bluest of the Blue States this week and had to write about it before it wasn’t news anymore.