Coakley ran a terrible, terrible campaign, it was poorly setup, poorly funded and poorly executed, combined with a healthy dose of public misstatements and foot-in-mouth disease.
However, the national Democratic party did her no favors also. The liberals and the independents that voted for Obama because they wanted change are not happy. Where Obama is changing Bush policy he is going slow, and on far too many issues he is keeping the Bush track. The people across the spectrum who are focused on the economy and jobs see an administration that is more concerned with propping up the big banks and huge companies then helping the poor and middle class.
Plus, as usual, the Democrats have lost the media war. The Democrats have failed to hammer the Republicans on the issue of being obstructionist or any of the other issue they could have.
Jay