Ted Kennedy Reaches Out From the Grave to Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Ed Morrissey has an interesting take on the Massachusetts race and how the Democrats may have outsmarted themselves in their effort to ensure an ideological liberal held onto the "Kennedy seat".

Twice the legislature changed the election laws to satisfy a request from Kennedy, including just a few days before his passing. This latest change set the table for the debacle that appears to be unfolding in the special Senate election. Ed adds this:

But did they outsmart themselves? The special election date was the earliest possible date, as I recall, but the continued focus on ObamaCare came directly from the Democrats’ insistence on changing the Massachusetts law so that Patrick could appoint Kirk to the seat. Without that, the seat would have remained vacant — and Reid and Obama would have been forced to put ObamaCare aside and start working on the economy, especially in November, after the House finally passed its version. It would have given Reid and Obama an excuse to suspend the effort, and make the special election a referendum on health-care reform as a concept, rather than the specifics of the proposal that came out of the Senate.

Most of all, it would have eliminated the back-room dealings and dishonesty that has become so apparent over the last four weeks — which could have saved Ben Nelson’s bacon, for one.

The decision to press the Massachusetts state legislature for that blatantly self-serving change may have ironically enabled the Democrats to badly overreach — creating the impulse that is lifting Scott Brown over Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, and Republicans over Democrats nationwide. And Democrats have no one but themselves for it.

Democrats made the mistake of assuming that whoever the Dem candidate was would be automatically ushered into the job. That could still happen but it's looking much less likely as more and more polling comes out.

Martha Coakley ran a lackluster campaign, full of tin-ear moments and devoid of any sort of charming personality, and thus gave Massachusetts a Democrat that they couldn't even love (and that's saying a lot when John Kerry has been your Senator for nearly 30 years).

We'll see what happens on Tuesday, but the age of "safe Democrat seats" may be temporarily over.