Boston Globe Endorses Coakley - Nice Discussion Of The Issues

Republican State Senator Scott Brown, who drives an old truck, channels voter skepticism more directly. Ignoring signs of improvement in the economy, he casts President Obama as the source of today's problems, and would give the Republicans enough votes to block, under Senate rules, anything Obama wants to do. Affable in person, Brown nonetheless seeks to be a terminator, stopping the Democratic domestic agenda in its tracks.

In Massachusetts, the expected result of a Senate election is a Democratic victory, so Brown wins points for being different. He even entices voters to give him a try, noting that they can toss him out after three years.

Rarely has a pitch been more misleading. A vote for Brown is hardly a symbolic protest against congressional gridlock and the ways of Washington. It's a vote for gridlock, in the form of endless Republican filibusters, and for the status quo in health care, climate change, and financial regulation. That's what will happen if Brown gives the Republicans the additional vote they need to tie up the Senate.

Those are the real stakes in this campaign. It's easy to find a provision in any major bill that gives one pause, and to brandish it as a reason to scuttle the whole thing. Blocking bills is easy; finding a politically acceptable response to complicated problems is hard.

Voters who want to cast a critical eye on Washington without destroying the Democratic coalition should go for Coakley. Her quiet diligence in pursuing some of the most thankless, but deeply important, tasks in prosecuting child abusers, scouring the fine print of Big Dig contracts to bring back hundreds of millions of dollars, and securing $60 million from Goldman Sachs for its subprime mortgage abuses, contrasts sharply with Brown's five-year record of voting no in a state Senate run by the opposite party.