After the hangover

(Picture from here.)

Interactive maps and analysis of the special election: Here. Here.
Scott Brown's victory speech here. Fairly interesting opinion analysis here. Jon Stewart here. And no commentary would be complete without something from Adolph Hitler.

Scott Brown won. As I write this, the wounds are fresh. Bill Morrissey once said that he recorded all of the 1986 Red Sox World Series debacle and afterwards taped over them with reruns of Love Boat. "Some wounds don't heal easily."

By now, if you read Brown's victory speech, you will see it has become national in importance. The Republicans have claimed it as a mandate.

Sigh.

As if all of the efforts of Obama, Biden and Clinton could ever have gottenCoakley elected.

If you read Brown's acceptance speech you will see that Brown is ready to be a "worthy successor" to Ted Kennedy at the same time he's going to be the "41st Republican". One could think this an impossible presumption but facts do no sway him in the pursuit of his higher truth.

Brown claims to have beaten the "machine". That's sort of like watching a great and wounded elephant stumbling to its knees and dying in front of him, then declaring victory.

What has really happened is that Massachusetts has traded their local politics for national politics. They've traded local democratic rule with national Republican rule. Republicans operate in lockstep and punish severely those to step out of line. This has been shown all through their machinations. If Brown does not represent a Massachusetts "machine", he is owned body and soul by a much nastier and malevolent one.

Enjoy the illusion of autonomy, those of you who voted for Brown. It will be short lived.