Liberal bastions lament as the blue fades
AMHERST - They filed in and out of coffeehouses, all but crying in their cappuccinos, barely touching their carrot cake muffins, still in shock that Scott Brown - a Republican! - had been elected to the US Senate in the state that pioneered universal health care, legalized same-sex marriage, and normally sends 12 Democrats to Congress.
In the days since the unthinkable happened, diehard Democrats have been forced to confront results that suggest Massachusetts votes much the way rest of the country does - blue on the edges with a big red swath in the middle. They have grappled with the possibility that the Commonwealth, until this week viewed by the much of the country as an outpost of extreme liberalism, may not be all that. And that has left them blue - in the other meaning of the word - over Martha Coakley’s defeat.
There is no better place to sense that mood than Amherst and Cambridge, two outposts of extreme liberalism in Massachusetts. They share a self-effacing nickname - “The People’s Republic.’’ They share (along with Provincetown) the distinction of being the most pro-Coakley communities, having handed her 84 percent of the vote. And they share the shock.
“I’m upset. I’m heartbroken. I just hate the idea that the Republicans have just won,’’ said Nick Seamon, owner of The Black Sheep, a bakery/bastion of liberalism on Main Street in Amherst. Yesterday, Seamon served up one of his best-selling Republican Party cookies (“because they are full of fruits and nuts’’), and summed up the jolt delivered by the vote.
“We tend to be a little insulated here. We don’t spend a lot of time in Central Massachusetts, or wherever they voted for whatever his name was,’’ Seamon said.
Across the Commonwealth, the Democrats’ dejection was no less palpable at the 1369 Coffee House in Inman Square.
“In Cambridge I’m surrounded by disappointed and upset people now so I’m not feeling that isolated,’’ Annabel Gill, shift manager at 1369, said Wednesday as she fashioned an elegant leaf design in the foam of a skim milk latte. “But it is a little unsettling to realize that more people in this state want to vote [Republican] than I would have suspected, so that does make me feel a little isolated.’’
This week, Coakley supporters in Cambridge gazed at the electoral aftermath beyond the Republic’s blue horizon and saw a political landscape they barely recognized...
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...Brown drew upon this revolutionary spirit throughout the campaign. The “Scott heard ’round the world’’ never hesitated to play the patriot card in a state where the very word evokes Massachusetts icons from Brady to Revere. Evidently, that played well on Main Street.
And for some, on Cambridge Street.
At the 1369 Coffee House, John English sipped an espresso, leafed through a National Rifle Association newsletter, and cackled with palpable glee at what he saw as the larger meaning of Brown’s victory.
“I’m thrilled to death. The country’s watching us,’’ said English, a helicopter pilot who proudly sported a Gitmo T-shirt and a brown leather jacket “for Brown.’’ The rest of the country, he said, is going to say that Massachusetts finally woke up...
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