“I bet they can hear this cheering all the way in Washington, D.C.!”

“The independent voters of Massachusetts have spoken!”

In November 2008, Republican John McCain won 1,108,854 votes in Massachusetts, capturing 36% of the vote against Democrat Barack Obama who won 1,904,097 or 62% of the vote. With 97.6% of precincts voting, Scott Brown has 1,145,367 or 52% of the vote, Martha Coakley has 1,023,917 or 47% of the vote.

Ok, I’m calling it for Brown. 70% of precincts in, Brown still at 53%.   Everyone is calling it for Brown.  He’s winning by the same margin in Mass that Obama won in the nation just 14 months ago.

There’s just a few more hours.
That’s all the time you’ve got. A few more hours
Until they kill this rot.
Obamacare’s getting buried in the morning! Ding dong!
The bells are gonna chime. Pull out the stopper!
Let’s have a whopper! But get Brown to the Senate on time!

UPDATE:  It’s official: Democratic Senator Jim Webb of Virginia: Suspend Further Votes On Health Care Until Brown Is Seated

It is over. Scott Brown (R) is the next Senator from Massachusetts.

UPDATE: To paraphrase Michelle Obama: “For the first time in my adult life i’m proud of Massachusetts.”

With over half the precincts reporting, Scott Brown leads 653,782 (53%) to 575,357 (46%) for Coakley and Wrentham, Scott’s home town hasn’t reported yet.

UPDATE:  Brown now at 715,962 (53%).

UP-UPDATE: With 65% reporting, Brown 745,361 (53%), Coakley 654,070 (46%). Wrentham still not in, can we call it yet?

They want him to quit; they say
Scott, give up the fight
Still to Obamacare he said
Good night, forever, good night!
For he has fought won this Senate race
Let the pundits be baffled and blinded
Come Scott Brown, come Scott Brown

Republican!

The pundits all say he’d lose this race
There’ll be hell to pay in lefty Massachusetts
Through all the gloom, through all the gloom
I see the signs of Democrats really losing it!

Is anybody there? Does anybody care?
Does anybody feel what I feel?

I see fireworks! I see the pagaent and
Pomp and parade
I hear the bells ringing out
I hear the cannons roar
I see Americans – all Americans
Free forever more

How quiet, how quiet the Democrats are
How bitter, how bitter the leftists are

Is anybody there? Does anybody care?
Does anybody see what I see?

Our reporter finally hears from the extremely well-educated Democrat seeking to replace Teddy Kennedy in Daniel Webster’s Senate seat:

4:00PM, recorded call with Martha’s voice. It’s the first I have taken of that type, though my wife is just hanging up on all of them now without listening. (I gently harangued her, a straight-line Dem voter, towards Brown. That debate ended in a draw; after an hour of research, she expressed distaste for both candidates and isn’t voting. I suspect there may be more out there like her, particularly given the weather, which is utterly foul. It’s not a great way to win, but it’s better than losing.)

Martha’s tone on the call was school-marmish — like one would talk to a ten-year-old, or an old person hard of hearing that one didn’t particularly like. Reminds me of my fifth grade teacher who would lecture me about things like “keeping an open mind” and listening better. Said she would vote to protect Social Security and Medicare (as if she could single-handedly stuff paper towels into the long fatal tear in the hull and keep the Titanic and keep it from sinking.)

She also made an odd, cryptic reference to women “taking their daughters to the polls”, then talked about how she would protect “our” interests in Washington. Click. That unlocked what the call was really about — the single, gender-base-galvanizing issue when all else fails: abortion. She has no idea what kind of dark forces she is bargaining with. This may not be a hot one with this audience, but it has become one with me. My views on this have reversed 180 degrees in five years. In short: right to choose WHAT, exactly? (more…)

On Election Day in the Bay State, our intrepid reporter on the ground is receiving more phone calls than a bookie on payday.

I noticed the Kennedy name this morning on the ballot. (“Liberty” party). I suspect a few (perhaps only a few, but surely some) will vote “Kennedy” just because they always have. And virtually all of them will be Democrats.

LATE-BREAKING NEWS!!!:

10:37AM — Recorded all just came in from the Coakley campaign. Talker was a woman, speaking in a down-beat monotone. Said Martha was “aunt and godmother” to *her* girls. (I was mixed up within the first ten seconds; who on earth *is* this, then?) And why couldn’t Martha get anyone closer in her family to make such a call?

It was clearly a lame, late, last-ditch attempt to mimic the engaging calls from Scott Brown’s daughters the last few days and do damage control with stay-at-home moms. Her main push was “equal pay for equal work”. Not that that’s a bad thing if that’s what it really means, but it doesn’t. Forgive me if I’m not up on my left-speak, but I thought the myriad factors behind that simplistic gender-warfare koan (e.g., time in workforce, training risk, different job parameters, etc.) had been explained away long ago by responsible mainstream economists. What decade do they think they’re in, exactly? I’m waiting for Betty Friedan to call next

Not long thereafter, he filed this report: (more…)

Just now posting our correspondent’s report filed from the frozen hinterlands the interior East. He’s experiencing something that he has rarely experienced, the chance that his vote might make a difference. If you live in the Bay State, make sure to follow his example and vote for Scott Brown:

It’s 10AM and I just returned from trudging through an inch of new snow to vote for Scott Brown. You must understand: my entire life, I’ve known, when I cast my vote in this state, that it did not matter one whit. Now it does — in spades. I feel euphoric. To outward appearances, it was a routine transaction, though a few details were telling. (more…)

Welcome Instapundit Readers!!  While you’re here, check out our latest dispatches from our reporter embedded behind enemy lines in a liberal enclave of the Bay State.

Barbara Boxer hasn’t been polling nearly as badly as has her colleague from the Nutmeg State, but in a campaign that’s just getting underway, in a state that went for Obama by 24 points (just a shade smaller than the Democrat’s margin in the Bay State), she’s only six points ahead of her weakest challenger.   Her strongest challenger, my gal Carly, has made it a real race, trailing Boxer by only three points.  When the Massachusetts campaign got underway, the Democrat, though not an incumbent had won a statewide election, led her Republican challenger by thirty points.  Most polls have him up right now.

And while Democrats have a 3-to-1 registration edge over Republicans in Massachusetts, here in the Golden State it’s only 3 to 2.

Now, California Democrats are beginning to worry that a Brown victory in the Bay State could rev up Republicans out here:

For Boxer, a favorite Republican target, a GOP win in Massachusetts would be a particularly dark sign representing “not just the canary in the coal mine,” said Wade Randlett, a leading Silicon Valley fundraiser for Obama. “It’s the flock of dead ravens landing on the lawn.”

Even the Mayor of the state’s most liberal big city can read the tea leaves:

“We better get our act together – and quickly,” [San Francisco Mayor Gavin] Newsom said. Voters “are so angry. They don’t feel that we’re paying attention to their needs, in terms of their jobs, and what’s going on at the grassroots, in their neighborhoods.

Mrs. Boxer doesn’t spent much time in the jurisdiction she represents, having held no town halls on health care last fall.  When I contacted her office to ask if she had ever held any, they told me she does hold them.  In Washington.  Yup, that’s right, you gotta to make a cross country journey to talk to our Senator about the issues facing our country and our state.

So, given how poorly Ma’am’s been polling, you think maybe she’ll pull a Chris Dodd, opening the race for a Democrat who takes the time to listen to the citizens of the once-Golden State?

(San Francisco Chronicle article via Instapundit.)

No matter what happens in the Bay State today, we are witnessing what may be a milestone in American politics. A Republican candidate for federal office may well turn Massachusetts red by doing what the Gipper once did, getting the groups, which sixty years ago helped transform Massachusetts into one of the most reliably Democratic states in the union, to vote Republican.

Even as Massachusetts Democrats embraced the cultural left in the 1960s and 1970s, the working class voters remained within the fold.  While those voters opted for the Gipper in the 1980s and helped the Democrats nominate a (brainy) social conservative as their gubernatorial standard bearer in 1990 (who lost to a libertarian Republican), the state GOP never developed a strategy to wean them away from the party of George McGovern and John Kerry.

Now they seem to be rallying to Scott Brown:

In fact most of Massachusetts comes from ‘hearty stock’, or in other words a Catholic, blue-collar background. And while perhaps not as conservative as other places in the country, as a voting block it is certainly more mainstream than the liberal crowd pulled in and retained by the magnet of Harvard/Radcliffe/Brandeis/Tufts.

What this really means is that a mildly conservative, blue-collar candidate has a lot of unrecognized and untapped reserve to draw upon when running to tweak the nose of Massachusetts’ limousine-liberal elite. Call them the ‘Will Hunting’ voters.

Unlike the past when a liberal who lives in Beacon Hill, and the plumber who fixes his sinks and lives in Somerville could generally be relied upon to both vote for Ted Kennedy, this year the plumber from Somerville has a choice that easily appeals to *him* and will stick it to all those Ha-vahd snobs who have always looked down at him.

Via Instapundit. Perhaps, it was Ted Kennedy’s last name which kept them within the Democratic fold for so long.  Union leadership may be ginning up the turnout machine for Martha Coakely, but many of the union rank and file are breaking for Scott Brown.

Democrats would be wise to witness what is going on in the Bay State  and instead of doubling down on their own left-wing agenda, might try and figure out why people who once regularly voted Democrat are now pulling for the GOP.

From deep within his Bay State bunker, our intrepid reporter hears the bells ringing out, he hears the cannons roar, he hears all Americans free forever more. Oh, wait, it’s just bells he’s been hearing. Got a little carried away thinking of champions of liberty from Massachusetts who have five letters in their last name. Here’s the latest dispatch from the resistance, er, Sons and Daughters of Liberty:

I lost track of all the political calls today (my wife took several). I think we’re at five as of 6PM and the sheer volume is starting to get annoying.

One that I picked up was from Brown’s *other* (older) daughter. Like the one yesterday, it was very engaging, upbeat and forward-looking. I also heard an ad on the radio (local Christian AM station) with both girls. Scott came on at the end and said “thanks girls”, followed by a short trailer. You just
wanted to like them. Not sure the time on that station will do more than motivate the base, but it helps.

Driving around town, the thing that’s still conspicuous is a total lack of Coakley signs. I haven’t seen a single one since the primary. You’d think
her primary supporters would put them out again. The fact that they haven’t speaks to low awareness. Brown signs are easy to find but not common.
Despite the national coverage, this one is a sleeper.

I heard one Martha ad on a local FM oldies station. Anonymous announcer used a Brown clip to scare the base about him being the “41st Republican vote”. I doubt many know what that even means, much less why it matters to *them*. That plus the BHO call on Friday seem to point to an assumption, by the Coaklely camp that local folks care about big national strategy. I doubt many do. Everything I’ve heard out of her camp is defensive and
fear-oriented. Brown is still playing nice.

Weather is crappy, even by New England standards. Heavy wet snow and sleet, freezing to a dangerous black-ice glaze and the slop is expected to continue into tomorrow. Anyone not inclined to go out or make an extra stop tomorrow won’t. Put that together with the factors I noted above and closers advantage and I’m beginning to get optimistic that Mr. Brown just might take this one.

Decided to add emphasis to this dispatch.  Seems the Brown campaign has held to the high ground and perhaps that’s what helps him unite the “center-right-indie coalition” and keep his base energized.

UPDATE:   (more…)

I sometimes wonder if, in his spare time, Keith Olbermann opens up his laptop in a dark corner of his apartment and reads the conservative blogs, having become particularly of a certain gay blog on the right and under an assumed identity, comments on an occasional basis, saying horrible, no good and very bad things about Bruce and me.  Now, that unhappy correspondent on the house organ of the Democratic Party is calling Scott  Brown “Irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women.”

Not just that, Brown leaves the seat up after he pees and wears army boots.  Oh, and he doesn’t tip well either.  And he has bad breath.  And he blow dries his hair.  And he doesn’t inflate his tires.  And doesn’t recycle.  And he hates puppies.  And he doesn’t wash his hands as often as he should.  And he once forgot his wife’s birthday.  And he covered up his manhood in his nude picture.  And he was late for dinner forty-seven times when he was growing up, even on his father’s 37th birthday.  When he didn’t get him a present.  And he’s sexually attracted to women.

As Randy Haddock puts it:

MSNBC has completely lost it, not that they had it together to begin with. The stuff coming out of that network in regards to the senatorial election in Massachussets is downright disgusting and atrocious. . . . Their desperation has pushed them to a very dark, ugly place.

Well, not everyone at MSNBC has lost it.  Joe Scarborough called the bespectacled bozo “reckless” and “sad.”

Guess Olbermann realized the O’Reilly schtick was getting old and he needed someone else to kick around.