Barone on Brown

Michael Barone on the Brown victory......

The cold hard numbers in the Massachusetts special Senate election this week tell you something important about the appeal of Barack Obama and his policies on his 365th day in office. Democrat Martha Coakley did fine among the voters that would be impressed by your knowledge of Edmund Burke. But she got a thumbs down and Republican Scott Brown got a thumbs up from the children and grandchildren of the people Jimmy Burke represented 40 or 50 years ago.

What Brooks has described as "the educated class" -- shorthand for the elite, university-educated, often secular professionals who probably make up a larger share of the electorate in Massachusetts than in any other state -- turned out in standard numbers and cast unenthusiastic votes for the Democrat.

You can see them on the map: the gentrified wards of Boston through Cambridge and Newton and northwest out Route 2 to Lexington and Concord all voted Democratic. You can also find them in the mountains of western Massachusetts, where trust funders and the college dropouts who wait on them in kicky restaurants form an even more left-wing constituency than neighboring Vermont.

Members of "the educated class" are pleased by Obama's decision to close Guantanamo and congressional Democrats' bills addressing supposed global warming. They are puzzled by his reticence to advance gay rights but assume that in his heart he is on their side.

They support more tepidly the Democrats' big government spending, higher taxes and health care bills as necessary to attract the votes of the less enlightened and well-off. For "the educated class," such programs are, in the words of the late Sen. Pat Moynihan, "boob bait for the bubbas."

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