Polls Are Closed -- "GOP's Brown Wins In Epic Upset"

Boston author/talk radio host Michael Graham writes, “I‘m posting this at 6:45pm today, so let me be the first person in the Boston media to call this election: Scott Brown is the next US Senator from Massachusetts!”

Note though, Graham’s escape clause.

At Real Clear Politics, “Brown Beats Coakley”; James Joyner writes:

I have it on reliable authority that Scott Brown will beat Martha Coakley by a comfortable margin when the counting’s done tonight.

I intentionally echoed an infamous newspaper headline (”Dewey Beats Truman”) in my post title because, as my source tells me, if Coakley wins, “then polling as we know it is dead.”

And Jim Geraghty files his early report from the plush offices of the Weyland-Yatani corporation:

Rasmussen reports a bit of bad news for Scott Brown — among those who decided how they would vote in the past few days, Coakley has a slight edge, 47 percent to 41 percent — but then offers this: 22 percent of Democrats voted for Brown.

(Language warning for link) Private Hudson, that’s your cue.

Geraghty adds:

In 2008, Ashland, Massachusetts went for Obama over McCain, 5,039 votes to 3,181.

Tonight Brown won Ashland 54 percent to 45 percent – 3,467 for Brown while Coakley carried 2,897.

You can call it, folks.

Which is why, as Jennifer Rubin writes, there’s no joy in Olbermanville tonight.

At least for now. More as it comes in.

Update (5:40 PM PST): Doug Ross adds, “InTrade servers appear to be down, but last trades before 8PM ET show Brown leaping 10 points to 90.”

Update (5:43 PST): “Marc Ambinder on Twitter: ‘[White House] official to my query about the election: ‘You know what’s going to happen.'”

Meanwhile, with the Boston Globe Website overloaded at times, the New York Times (the owner of the paper) has an election results tracker on their own Website.

Update (6:08 PST): Larry Sabato tweets, “It is already obvious that Scott Brown will win the Senate seat in MA.”

Update: (6:43 PST): AP calls it: “GOP’s Brown wins Mass. Senate seat in epic upset:”

BOSTON – In an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in a U.S. Senate election Tuesday that left President Barack Obama‘s health care overhaul in doubt and marred the end of his first year in office.

The loss by the once-favored Coakley for the seat that the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy held for nearly half a century signaled big political problems for the president’s party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide.

More immediately, Brown will become the 41st Republican in the 100-member Senate, which could allow the GOP to block the president’s health care legislation and the rest of Obama’s agenda. Democrats needed Coakley to win for a 60th vote to thwart Republican filibusters.

Democratic fingerpointing began more than a week ago as polls started showing a tight race, with the White House accusing Coakley of a poor campaign and the Coakley camp laying at some of the blame on the administration. Obama flew to Boston for last-ditch personal campaigning on Sunday.

With 87 percent of precincts counted, Brown led Coakley, 52 percent to 47 percent.

Meanwhile the Boston Globe is reporting at 9:13 PM eastern, “Coakley has conceded in a call to Scott Brown, according to a Brown aide.” — via Glenn Reynolds, who adds, “Last year, when I was at CPAC for PJTV, a leading pundit told me (politely) that he thought my interest in the Tea Party movement was silly. I demurred. All I can say is I told you so.

Update: Legendary film critic turned wannabe-political pundit Roger Ebert basks in the joys of democracy:

Update: “As Coakley Sank in the Sunrise, NY Times Whistled Past Graveyard.”

The cocoon descends again!

Update: Now it’s official, as humptastic cybernetic joy descends upon the starboard half of the Blogosphere.

Update (8:01 PM PST): From Mary Katharine Ham, video of Coakley’s concession speech.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, Senatus writes, “AP reporting that Massachusetts Secy of State will notify the Senate tomorrow that Brown has won.”

Update (8:16 PM): WBZ, CBS’s Boston affiliate reporting that Brown won Ted Kennedy’s old precinct — which is only fitting, as Ted helped make this possible, Jonah Goldberg tweets:

If Teddy Kennedy had resigned when he got sick, none of this would have happened. Ditto if they hadn’t change law to protect seat.

Thus, after over 40 years, it’s closure, in a minor way. Along the way, this ad from late December helped to remind voters that Brown has more in common with JFK’s worldview, than Ted’s:

[youtube iddquwGpXM0]

Update (8:27 PM): Ann Althouse writes:

Poor Obama! It’s the eve of the anniversary of his inauguration. The State of the Union was supposed to be very grand. And now what? He has been repudiated! He made this election a referendum on the Democrats agenda, and the people of Massachusetts, the most liberal state, gave him a resounding no.

Now, I think that could be good for Obama. He’s a man of change. Let him change. I hope he becomes the President I thought he could be when I voted for him. With the midterm elections looming in the fall, he can readjust, set himself apart from Congress. Take the people seriously.

Or as Steve Martin used to say in the earlier, funnier episodes of Saturday Night Live while contemplating redemption…Nahhhh.

The Anchoress adds, “Starting tomorrow, you’re going to hear Democrats talking less about healthcare and more about ‘jobs, jobs, jobs.'”

In the meantime, “No, Mr. President. Scott Brown’s election does not count as a ‘job created.'”

Update: Brent Bozell notes, “Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby was right to joke that perhaps New York Times book editor Sam Tanenhaus may want to rush some updates to his book ‘The Death of Conservatism'”, (And yes, I think we can safely answer in the negative the title of this edition of Silicon Graffiti.) However, Bozell also writes what is being ignored by many (on both sides of the aisle) during the immediate post mortems of the race — “the sheer meanness of Martha Coakley and her campaign character assassins”:

Here’s what’s being ignored, but should not be forgotten about this race: the sheer meanness of Martha Coakley and her campaign character assassins. TV reporters largely sanitized the race in the final days, refusing to cover the Coakley campaign’s vicious direct-mail droppings against Republican Scott Brown. The cover-up was as shameless as the slander.

The Massachusetts Democratic Party mailed a package that announced: “1,736 Women Were Raped In Massachusetts in 2008; Scott Brown Wants Hospitals To Turn Them All Away.” A TV commercial by Coakley flashed the words, “Deny rape victims care,” with a voiceover that announces, “Brown even favors letting hospitals deny emergency contraception to rape victims.”

Team Coakley wanted the state’s voters to think of Brown not as pro-life, but as an anti-abortion radical, a man so extreme that he had no compassion for female victims of a violent sexual crime. Brown’s actual record was nothing like that. It was like turning Clark Kent into Jack the Ripper.

The amendment Brown proposed was a conscience clause for Catholic health facilities, which have objected that “emergency contraception” can lead to an early abortion. Brown proposed that health providers who don’t want to administer contraception must have a referral policy to a hospital that would provide it. That’s hardly “turning away” a rape victim. The “turning away” line is not a stretch. It is a lie.

This inflammatory and flagrantly false charge comes straight from the Bay State liberals who twenty years later are still complaining about the unfairness of GOP ads against Michael Dukakis about the truth of his get-out-of-jail weekend pass for that rapist and murderer named Willie Horton.

On the Internet two days before the vote, Time’s Michael Scherer offered a note of journalistic independence and integrity by calling out the Coakley camp with a blog post headlined “On Contraception, Democrats Roll Towards Gutter In Massachusetts.”

Martha Coakley also demonstrated the secular liberal’s intense desire to crush religious liberty in a radio interview on the same subject. When host Ken Pittman suggested there’s still religious freedom in emergency rooms, Coakley said Catholics should avoid work in the field of health care: “You can have religious freedom, but you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.”

Doesn’t that sound like the pro-abortion movement’s version of “Irish Need Not Apply?”

On the same weekend that liberal reporters went on the Sunday shows and railed against the Republicans for refusing to repudiate Rush Limbaugh for suggesting Obama would milk the earthquake in Haiti for political gain, there was silence on whether the Democrats should repudiate Coakley’s attacks, or whether Obama would be willing to endorse them.