Because...
While we had our less-than-best person up against a telegenic (and apparently formerly quite photogenic) person...
We and the Republicans (and the media, of course) "nationalized" a special election and all sides made it a referendum on one year of Democratic control of the Presidency AND Congress -- and in this referendum, the people of Massachusetts apparently did a pre-post comparison of where we were one year ago vs. today.
What the people of Massachusetts saw in that pre-post comparison wasn’t pretty:
One Year Ago: Inauguration of a new and exciting President filled people with hope after a historic election in which our candidate benefited from a historic economic crisis and was then expected to make everything alright with the economy AND end two wars (or least take a new approach to them).
Today: higher unemployment, now at 10%; a calmed but still present economic crisis that came at the cost of extraordinary debt (and debt service) on top of that already inflicted by the Republicans; with the expensive solutions perceived as benefiting financial power (the bonus boys) and not the people; dithering over financial reform to address the causes of the crisis; no clear change in plans re: the two wars; all while the President and Congress appear to obsess over health insurance legislation that the people do not want in the form the President and Congress seem suicidally hell-bent on achieving.
In addition to widespread disappointment in the first year of all-Democratic rule -- we are now minus 20 points in right-track/wrong-track via the NBC/WSJ poll from yesterday, what the people want has been fairly clear in recent polling and is probably best expressed in the priorities emerging from the NBC/WSJ poll yesterday:
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/...
The peoples' priorities in that poll were:
Job Creation & Economic Growth = 38%
National Security & Terrorism = 17%
The Deficit & Government Spending = 13%
Health Care = 12%
The Wars In Iraq & Afghanistan = 10%
Energy & Cost Of Gas = 4%
All Other Specific Issues = 3% or Less
For all we know, these may also be the same priorities as the President and Democratic leadership, but the people don't know that. They see dithering over reform and obsession with HCI. Hopefully, the Administration and Congress will take off the HCI blinders and study that poll (and others showing the same priorities) and recalibrate both their focus and their messages. We'll see in the SOTU whether they do that or not. If not, it's going a long and unhappy mid-term election year.