My LA Times column would normally appear here tomorrow, but the shelf-life is very short because of the election today. So I wrote a different one that will appear here tomorrow. Anyway, from my LAT column:

Even if Brown loses today, that it was even close should shake Democrats to their core. They outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 in a state Barack Obama won by 26 points. Massachusetts hasn’t sent a Republican to the Senate since 1972, when Edward Brooke (the first popularly elected black senator) was reelected, and haven’t sent even a nominal conservative since velociraptors roamed Beacon Hill. All this on the heels of stunning GOP gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia last fall.
It’s impossible to imagine a more direct, and democratic, repudiation of Democratic governance.
Will Democrats get the message? Doubtful. It seems the only way the Democratic leadership can catch a clue is if it is hammered into their pates with a ball-peen hammer.
Over the weekend, Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York told the Wall Street Journal that if Brown wins, Democrats will race to cram the healthcare bill through while fending off Brown. “We’re going to have to finish this bill and then stall the swearing-in as long as possible,” Weiner said. “That’s our strategy, a hurry-up-and-stall strategy.”
Perhaps even more telling, Democrats are obsessively blaming their problems on the Senate’s filibuster rule. Under the filibuster, it takes 60 senators to get controversial things done. As a result, many of the preferred policies of the left — the “public option,” soak-the-rich taxes, etc. — had to be pulled out of the bill in order to win support from moderates like Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). That’s how the Senate is supposed to work. It was designed to cool the passions of the more democratic House.
Nonetheless, it seems every prominent liberal pundit has come out in favor of interring this “undemocratic” impediment to unobstructed Democratic rule.