Teddy Kennedy

In the new movie The Young Victoria, the mother of Victoria and her chief overseer meet with the prime minister, Lord Melbourne, to discuss what role they’ll play now that Victoria has become queen of England.  They’ve waged a fierce struggle to retain control over Victoria.  Suddenly Melbourne cuts off the chatter and bluntly explains the situation.  “You lost,” he says.

That’s the situation that faces President Obama and his White House advisers.  Months of polls on the president and his policies, the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s elections, then last week’s momentous Massachusetts Senate race – all have sent the blunt message to Obama that, for now, he’s lost.  But Obama and his team insist on pretending it’s not true.

Boston 
 
To the Boston left, "anger" and "Washington" explain Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts senate race, but the win was also a shaft of common sense hitting Bay State's echo chamber of liberal self-righteousness. "Voter anger caught fire in final days," said Wednesday's Boston Globe. "Massachusetts voters sent Washington a ringing message." Yet it wasn't anger, the final days, or just Washington, as the Globe suggested.

So the Massachusetts Democratic Party is alleging, in a mailer, that "1,736 women were raped in Massachusetts in 2008. Scott Brown wants hospitals to turn them all away."

This is as ridiculous as it is offensive. And it is, of course, a lie. In fact, according to the Boston Globe:

Well, it's no Rape Mail (the closer from the politically gifted minds at Camp Coakley), but Scott Brown's counting on his calmer argument being more effective: "There's only one tax cutter in this race, and it's not Martha Coakley."

Another report from a friend on the bus:

A report from a friend in Massachusetts:

"Holy smokes."

Pithy and appropriate: "I've been called a lot of things, but never, and I mean never, could anyone ever make the mistake of calling me a Yankee fan. Well, check that, if you didn’t know what the hell is going on in your own state maybe you could…."

I spoke with two pros, each of whom has seen tracking polls from last night. The data are similar. There’s a stable Brown lead at around the Suffolk/7 News public poll level (+4). Brown lost some Democrats and saw some increase in his negatives (what you’d expect, given a massive, late partisan assault), and there was some increase in Democratic intensity.

It's still undecided whether Obama will actually go to the Bay State to campaign on behalf of Martha Coakley, but he has cut a robocall for her, funded by the DNC. I kind of like the intro, here, but let's hope it has more spirit than yesterday's web ad if they want it to do any good:

The Massachusetts Senate special election is shaping up as a referendum on the health-care debate in Washington. And its outcome may well determine whether Massachusetts seniors get to keep the Medicare benefits they currently enjoy.  
 
Alone among the American people, Massachusetts voters will have the chance to register their formal views on the proposed health-care overhaul before Congress votes on its final version.  
 

Just in case you had any doubt about whether Brown's line, "It's the people's seat" went over well with the people, the Coakley campaign has Kennedy's widow repeating it in the ad she cut for the lackluster Democrat:

Another Brown ad hits Coakley on her 11th-hour fundraising event with health-care lobbyists in Washington, D.C.:

I'm told that this is a secondary ad, and that "Momentum" is the primary closing ad.