The Coakley debacle, aside from being depressing, seems to me to have mainly been about the Democratic party acting like it owned the seat and could put any dumbass in the chair, and the voters of Massachusetts rolling their eyes. I'm sure a decent candidate will take the seat back in two years, assuming that Brown is as dumb as he looks.

In any event, the damage was done by Obama when he decided to take half the Senators he liked, and then the DNC thought it could just get seat warmers. Which was always fairly stupid.