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Both major-party candidates for Senate reflect something of that mood. Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley, after more than two decades in law enforcement, is no pie-in-the-sky dreamer. Thoughtful and empirical, she views issues like a lawyer building a case. She promises hard work and no illusions. And in some cases, that means scaling back the ambition of government programs to carefully monitor what works and what doesn't. Like the consumer-protection lawyer she is, she looks for measurable results.

Republican State Senator Scott Brown, who drives an old truck, channels voter skepticism more directly. Ignoring signs of improvement in the economy, he casts President Obama as the source of today's problems, and would give the Republicans enough votes to block, under Senate rules, anything Obama wants to do. Affable in person, Brown nonetheless seeks to be a terminator, stopping the Democratic domestic agenda in its tracks.
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In Massachusetts, the expected result of a Senate election is a Democratic victory, so Brown wins points for being different. He even entices voters to give him a try, noting that they can toss him out after three years.

Rarely has a pitch been more misleading. A vote for Brown is hardly a symbolic protest against congressional gridlock and the ways of Washington. It's a vote for gridlock, in the form of endless Republican filibusters, and for the status quo in health care, climate change, and financial regulation. That's what will happen if Brown gives the Republicans the additional vote they need to tie up the Senate.
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Coakley is a common-sense progressive focused on the host of issues posed by the ongoing economic crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the challenges of the future.

Brown is a know-nothing reactionary, a cookie-cutter conservative with the political imagination of a George W. Bush. He is committed to an array of positions that would return the nation to the dismal days of the Bush-Cheney years. He's wedded to a failed past and hides from the perils of the future.

The choice is clear. The Phoenix urges citizens to vote for Coakley. She is the best choice for Massachusetts and the smartest choice for the nation.