Martha Coakley was not some unknown, unproven Democrat candidate.  Massachusetts voters knew her, and knew her well.  She was elected attorney general in 2006 with a nearly 1,000,000 vote margin of victory.  In fact, she got more votes than Senator Ted Kennedy in his re-election contest on the same day.  Prior to that, she was the popularly elected District Attorney for Middlesex County in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  In short – she is a well known quantity in Massachusetts politics.  She was not a flawed candidate.

Is this the end of Martha Coakley – it all depends on how she handles herself as attorney general in the weeks and months ahead.  If she does her job well, and reminds folks why they liked her BEFORE she became a U.S. Senate candidate in a horrible year for Democrats, she’ll be fine and well positioned for re-election in the fall.

If she’s trying to figure out how she’ll do it – maybe she should talk Mr. Political Makeover himself, New York A.G. Andrew Cuomo – and see what it takes to pick yourself up and dust yourself off politically.