An e-mail from a northern friend of Scott Brown:

I live in Portland, Maine, packed up my two kids, and drove to Worchester for Brown rally yesterday. For what it’s worth, no bumper stickers either way on my drive through Mass. Got to the rally a few minutes early and couldn’t get into either of the venues on Main Street. Probably could have gotten into the third venue they opened, but it was 1/2 mile away and too far to go with two kids in tow and my car parked fairly far away due to the crowds. So we opted to mill around the streets with other supporters hoping the candidate would come out after the rally (he didn’t). It was a bit disorganized due to the size of the crowd, but the people were very, very nice and pretty die hard. I would like to have seen Scott Brown, but I’m really not into the celebrity aspect of campaigns that end up of surrounding successful candidates. It’s the people’s seat — I wanted to be there for them and be with them. I was there to add my little part to the “electricity” and to show my kids that we still have a system worth fighting for. Hundreds of us could see and hear nothing, yet we stood on the street for over two hours hoping to express our support. I had a homemade sign saying “Mainers for Brown” and people seemed exceptionally grateful that we would make the 2.5 hour drive to express our support. More than a few I talked with said they had never attended a political rally, so that is worth something.
On the way home, I listened to the powerhouse WBZ AM news, weather and traffic radio station. Ten to one Coakley ads. Also very biased news coverage. Much coverage of Obama visit (which is understandable — POTUS does not come to Boston every Sunday), but completely inaccurate coverage of Brown rally. They said, “Brown met some campaign supporters at his office in Worchester.” That’s true, but this totally ignored the 4K to 5K people that showed up for the Brown rally.
My prediction: If Brown wins, it will be because the average person tuned out the liberal media and the negative ads and listened to Scott Brown himself. They liked what they heard — key messages on stopping health care, keeping us safe from terrorists, and not raising taxes. If this happens, it will be reminiscent of another politician who had the ability to talk directly to the people — Ronald Reagan. But Scott Brown, as good a guy as he seems to be, is no Ronald Reagan. He has some commonsense instincts, but if he wants to stay in power from super-blue MA, he will have to stick it to the Republican leadership more than once to “prove” himself. On what issues he will do this is anybody’s guess. Not unlike Obama, many people are making Scott Brown into what they want him to be, but he will be his own person no doubt. You know what you are getting with Rubio in FL — a solid conservative. That’s not Scott Brown which is perfectly fine, but I wonder if some people won’t be disappointed. There is a reason conservatives don’t win up here – people don’t support many conservative ideas. It’s as simple as that.
Shockingly, I disagree with Jonah. Brown needs to win to shake things up, preferably a big win to really make a difference. If he doesn’t win, Dems will privately be shaken up with the near miss, and this will impact the way they do things AFTER health care. But in the near term, it will make their bid to pass health care all the more urgent. They see the polls. They heard from their constituents this summer. They’ll see the near miss in MA. But they have signed a pact with O to get something — anything – passed. They will claim her win as a mandate for Obama’s agenda and go forward. The only chance of stopping it is a Brown win – a real, physical 41st vote in the Senate. And we Mainers keeping Olympia from defecting. The people in MA get that — there is no substitute for winning when the stakes are this high. If I can say one thing from being there yesterday, it’s that the Brown supporters absolutely know the stakes and know that a near win won’t do what they are hoping to do — stop the Democratic machine.