Massachusetts Senate race may make or break healthcare reform

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Sooo…this is terrifying:

Special elections are notoriously hard to poll because it’s hard to figure out just who is going to show up to vote. (That’s the reference to the ’screen’ — how the pollster figures out who is a likely voter.) But this is a helluva a spread. Public Policy Polling last night released it’s survey of the special election to fill the seat of Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts. And they have Republican Scott Brown actually one point ahead of Democrat Martha Coakley. That’s essentially a toss up. But still. The thought that the GOP might take Kennedy’s seat — is a huge deal not only in symbolic terms but also in very real practical ones: it might well put an end to Health Care Reform for good.

But here’s the thing, the Boston Globe also has a poll out this morning. And they have Coakley up by 15 points.

Tom Schaller explains the significance. (h/t DougJ)

If Coakley loses, health care reform may be gone.

This scares the living daylights out of me.

Not to mention this Brown character sounds like an absolute lunatic:

Brown, a guest at a King Philip Regional High School assembly to discuss legislative initiatives, opened by reading obscenity-laced facebook.com Web site comments directed against him for his anti-gay marriage stance and, by association, against his family.

He said some of the written comments attributed to KP students, whom he named aloud at the assembly, were directed at his daughter.

The lawmaker held captive to his outrage many KP students who were innocent of the name-calling and foul language, and did so in a manner unbecoming to his roles as caring parent and respected lawmaker. Who among us would not be prepared to do battle against anyone disparaging and dishonoring our loved ones?

So the entire healthcare reform movement (what’s left of it) rests upon the outcome of one Senate race where there’s a statistically favorable chance the winner will be someone who can’t keep his shit together long enough to not scream at a gym full of frightened high schoolers.

Yeah. I don’t want to be a fearmonger (it is hard to predict these things, and some sources say Coakley’s lead is solid,) but this is fairly worrisome. Perhaps this will be a good motivator for Coakley’s camp to push hard this last week, and get the word out to Dems to vote, vote, vote.