Don’t blame us; we’re from Massachusetts!

I Googled in vain for an image of the famous bumper sticker from 1974, when Mass. residents crowed over the fact that theirs had been the only state in the nation not to line up behind Richard Nixon’s second term, then going down the drain: Don’t blame me; I’m from Massachusetts. The closest I could come was this tee-shirt.

As it happens, the 1970s were also the last time Massachusetts had a Republican representing them in the US Senate. In Harry Reid’s infamous formulation, Ed Brooke was a light-skinned African-American who spoke without a ‘Negro’ dialect. (Indeed, at the time, I heard some grumbling that Mr Brooke was actually a white man passing as black.)

I would prefer to regard Scott Brown’s electoral triumph—in a snowstorm, at that, traditionally Democratic weather—as a referendum on Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and not on the president they have so badly served. Mr Obama is, after all, the only president we’ve got, and it’s bitter to see him fail, just one year after he took the oath of office with universal acclaim. The people of Massachusetts, that bluest of blue states, have sent him a wake-up call. Let’s see what he does with it. Blue skies! – Dan Ford