Without having read all of the posts in this thread, my analysis is as follows...
First, Coakley and the Democratic party had a brain fart when it came to what was at stake in this election. They assumed (wrongly) that election victory was de facto theirs.
Instead, their mindset (given that a filibuster-proof Senate majority was at stake) should have been to take a no prisoners approach to destroy their opposition.
So what happened? Coakley took a vacation and let her upstart opponent take the first media shot, by portraying himself as an independent JFK Republican (whatever that is).
Instead of pointing out that Brown voted the Republican party line over 90% of the time (hardly an Independent), Coakley returned from her vacation and waged a timid campaign.
Brown painted himself as a populist that "drives a truck" (as if what kind of vehicle one drives is in any way a qualification to hold office)...Coakley never pointed out the several other vehicles that Brown and his family own and drive.
Coakley should have blasted that demagogy out of the water (which Brown got a lot of political mileage out of), by pointing out that Brown is hardly a truck driving everyman, but is instead a multi-millionaire, with multiple houses, married to a high-paid television personality, with two daughters attending schools at which the tuition alone is way out of proportion to the annual salary of the Joe-average working class truck driving guys he tried to portray himself as.
With regards to the Healthcare reform bill, Brown campaigned against it, even though he voted in favor of universal healthcare for his own state. The sheer hypocrisy in his campaigning against much needed healthcare reform is shameful.
The whole idea of the Senate seat at stake being the "Ted Kennedy seat" was not suggested by Coakley, but instead by debate moderator David Gergen, a former advisor to Republican President's Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush. Basically, this was a slowball pitch down the middle of the plate, for Brown to knock out of Fenway Park, by sanctimoniously declaring it the "People's" seat, in yet another sheerly PR populist proclamation (the right-wing media falsely twisted this to suggest that the Democrat's had declared that it was the "Kennedy seat", when it was actually a Republican operative who did so).
Had Ted Kennedy lived to serve out his term, he surely would have championed and supported a Healthcare reform bill, since that was one of his lifelong goals (as he expressed on his death bed), yet Scott Brown has totally disrespected the person whom he is replacing, by declaring his opposition to a Bill which his predecessor would have surely guaranteed, had he survived.
Remember, LBJ was not as staunchly in support of Civil Rights as JFK was, but he saw it as a moral imperative to carry out JFK's legacy, by overseeing the enactment of the Civil Rights Amendment.
Scott Brown has no such moral fortitude, even though in a tawdry display of political opportunism he tried to invoke imagery of JFK in one of his campaign commercials.
Granted, Brown won the election, and is thus entitled to vote his conscious, however, I seriously doubt that he has a conscious (and basically won the election because of a badly run campaign by his Democratic opponent), since he demonstrated as much when during his acceptance speech, he pimped out his daughters as "available":
What a cheeseball...
I would like to pay $600+ a month to get healthcare, but I am unable to do so because of my non-life threatening, hereditary, pre-existing skin condition, of psoriasis.
Oh yes, and I went to an Emergency Room for only the first time in my life to have a minor puncture wound on my hand checked and cleaned, which was also a reason for my denial to pay and receive any healthcare coverage whatsoever.
There is something seriously wrong with the healthcare system, when self-employed people such as myself are denied any form of coverage for such ridiculous reasons, while people with much more serious conditions than mine can qualify simply because they work for the government or a large corporation.
Few will deny that Medicare and Medicaid for the elderly in our society are good government-run healthcare programs. Likewise, most people understand many of the shortcomings of the privately run healthcare system, especially if they, or any of their loved ones, have ever needed to utilize it.
The US ranks among the lowest of the industrialized nations in healthcare coverage. Indeed, practically all industrialized countries have some form of national healthcare system.
Both of the major political parties in the US are beholden way too much to the private healthcare companies, pharmaceutical companies, and the hospital industry. It's time for the politicians to stand up for the people and help ensure that our basic needs are covered.
In my case, I am not asking for a handout. I want to purchase health insurance, but I am being denied for totally ridiculous reasons, by a private healthcare system that puts profits before people...
I hope for the sake of the Democratic Party (which I am often at odds with), and for the sake of the nation, that some form of healthcare reform gets passed this year, as well as a good jobs package, so that we can move forward as a nation, and not get mired in more right wing Republican double-talk, which only enriches the richest of the country (while manipulating the activist, but seriously delusional, Tea Party kooks and others, to do their bidding).
ADG