If It Can Happen in Massachusetts . . .

Yesterday, the unthinkable (from the Democrat point of view) happened in Massachusetts. A previously little-known Republican named Scott Brown won what the Democrats called "Ted Kennedy's" Senate seat, defeating the state's Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley, 52% to 47%. He ran promising to be "the 41st vote" against Obamacare. The Democrats lost their 60 vote super majority in the Senate.

But don't bet that Washington Democrats will acknowledge the message sent by the people of Massachusetts, or for that matter the message sent by cratering poll numbers across the nation. An editorial in this morning's Wall Street Journal explores what the reaction might be:

The question now is how Democrats will respond to this historic election rebuke. Only a fleeting supermajority and corrupt logrolling has allowed ObamaCare to advance as far as it has, but many liberals will be tempted to keep telling voters to shut up and learn to like what Democrats give them. "Let's remove all doubt," Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters this week. "We will have health care one way or another."

Sometimes politicians really are as obtuse as they seem.

Also in this morning's WSJ, Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, is asking a similar question. Will Democrats use their heads, or try to cram their agenda down the voters throats, whether they like it or not?

Following their emotions would mean going full speed ahead and attempting to force final passage of a health care overhaul that is so tantalizingly close to enactment.

Listening to their heads might make some Democrats, especially those who don’t come from the more-liberal coasts, think about the message sent by voters in one of the nation’s most Democratic and liberal states: voters don’t like the health care plan and the political status quo.

No amount of spinning can change that fact.

Oh, but that doesn't mean that the liberal-media complex won't spin. According to Politico, sexism -- not voter disenchantment -- caused Coakley's defeat. Boston Globe's Brian McGrory: the voters of Massachusetts were drunk with power and seduced. Ace is reporting evidence that the Dems missed the message altogether (color me shocked) claiming that a) the defeat wasn't about "health care", and b):

"Massachusetts has health care. ... The rest of the country would like to have that too," said Pelosi. "So we don't say a state that already has health care should determine whether the rest of the country should."

In other words, the good citizens of Massachusetts should just bugger off. (Actually, they may know more about the consequences of government fiddling with health insurance than most of us do. Maybe it isn't going so well.)

While you're digesting these fresh displays of elitist arrogance, consider this:

On Tuesday night, inside the Park Plaza hotel in Boston, thousands of Brown supporters packed the second-floor ballroom chanting, "John Kerry's next, John Kerry's next." Later the chant went up, "Yes we did, Yes we did," a tweak at Mr. Obama's 2008 signature line.

"Let them take a look at what happened in Massachusetts," Mr. Brown said in his victory speech, referring to the coming midterm elections. "What happened here in Massachusetts can happen all over the country."

Even in Illinois? Maybe so . . .