the Massachusetts election tomorrow for US Senator -- a plague on both their houses

Hiya C*****, my thoughts on Tuesday as threatened ...

Clearly you'll vote ... and maybe more ... so you'll have fully participated in an important civic moment, and good on ya for urging all to do the same.

Well, I'll vote too ... but I can't remember when I voted with less enthusiasm or more disgust.

Obviously Scott Brown should not be our Senator. That part is screamingly obvious and simple.

But Martha Coakley is a candidate of spectacularly low and unworthy character and anti-achievements, a toxin in the body politic.

I don't mind getting e-mails that scream that we must retain a Democratic majority for Obama at all costs.

But I mind when they hallucinate that Martha Coakley is a fine and worthy successor to Ted Kennedy's senatorial record. She simply is nothing of the sort, and no amount of campaign screaming and deception can begin to make her resemble Kennedy's vision or record.

In general, I don't believe criminal prosecutors should rise higher in elected office. They inevitably bring a philosophy of governing far too heavy and reliant on punishment, cruelty, suffering.

But I've seen Coakley at work close-up. She is all those things: punitive, cruel, and worse. She is a happy cog in the machine that keeps Massachusetts near the top of the national list in racially disproportionate felony imprisonment. She promises voters she's tough on crime. It's always been easy-to-decode code: She promises white voters she'll imprison blacks and Hispanics.

And boy, did she deliver, term after term.

I suppose criminal prosecutors are a necessary evil of civilization. But Coakley is the worst of the old-time racist and lynch-mob-style DAs -- well, in perfect lockstep with Northwestern DA Scheibel ... who at least finally showed the grace of bowing out and ceasing her toxic activities.

But Coakley now threatens to represent and reflect my state, and that will be a minimum of six very unpleasant and unhappy years for me. I shall take little comfort that her vote assists Obama's initiatives.

But I am most dismayed at the vile stench of this campaign. I am deeply tempted not to reward the two-party system with a vote for either of these two degenerate, visionless candidates.

The United States, by percentage of adults and by raw numbers, is the world's largest prison. Martha Coakley has been a willing and enthusiastic reason why. I don't want to vote for either of these bums.

I shall vote for one of them -- or against one of them -- but it will be the most unhappy election day of my voting life. Both parties should have done so much better; at least one party should have given us someone distinguished, classy. A plague on both these candidates and the parties that have thought so little of us to have put them before us and subjected us to their vile, desparate attack ads.

Bob