Senate Primary Notes
--My line I kept using all night: Massachusetts just took a huge step toward electing a babealicious US Senator... but he still has to beat Martha Coakley in January.
--This line is stolen from my brother: Pennsylvania is the largest state that has never had a female Senator... however, I heard that Arlen Specter is willing to considering switching.
--Yeah, that would be Celinda Lake 1, Tom Kiley 0 I'm afraid. (With Coakley & Cap splitting the undecideds.)
--You've got to give Coakley a lot of credit. She's risen quickly by virtue of hard work, good results, and strong ambition. That's a pretty potent political combination.
--Strange to think: the last election Coakley lost was to Dorchester's own Marty Walsh for state rep -- and he's still state rep, while in two months (barring some rip in the fabric of the space-time continuum) she'll be US Senator.
--Moment of the night: senate president Therese Murray, in the middle of her intro speech, stopping to admonish the celebratory Coakley crowd and tell them to stop talking, be quiet and listen to her.
--The Tsongas-Murray-Kerry intros were not only painfully uninspiring, they almost screwed up the schedule. The intros started at 9:55 so that Coakley's speech could be carried live on the 10:00 news shows. She didn't get to the mic until 10:16, and finished at 10:29.
--Coakley began with a story that involved a guy in a wheelchair and the Lewis Carroll bit about doing impossible things; she later told of Ted Kennedy inspiring her to dream the impossible dream; and then she said that "the skeptics" didn't believe an attorney general could win. Did I miss something? Because I could have sworn she's been treated as the presumptive next Senator for about the last two years now, and that the only political figure in the state who even dared to get in the primary against her was a guy with single-digit name recognition, and that she started the race polling at close to 50% with about a 40-point lead. No offense, and taking nothing away from the hard work of Coakley and her team, but this win was closer to inevitable than impossible.