Michelle Malkin has the story in full, but essentially two things have happened in the race to succeed Ted Kennedy for the U.S. Senate seat out of Massachusetts.

First, a new poll is out from Public Policy Polling, and it has Republican Scott Brown now leading Democrat Martha Coakley by a 48-47 count. But while the race would appear to be a tossup from the headlining numbers, the internals tell a different story altogether…

• While Massachusetts went for Barack Obama over John McCain by a 26-point margin in the 2008 election, but the PPP respondents only showed a 16-point margin among those planning to vote in the Senate race Jan. 19. Those numbers indicate a shift in the electorate which was evident in the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races last fall.
• The poll asked Democrats and Republicans about their level of excitement in the race, and while 66 percent of Republicans said they were “very excited,” only 48 percent of Democrats voiced the same sentiment. Brown obviously has far more enthusiastic support than Coakley, which should translate into a good ground game on the 19th.
• Independents love Brown. He boasts a 70 percent favorability rating against only a 16 percent unfavorable rating. Brown also carries independents in a head-to-head matchup with Coakley by an impressive 63-31 number.
• Brown’s strategy of presenting himself as “the 41st vote against Obamacare” has struck a chord with independent voters. Fifty-nine percent of them say they oppose the president’s plan to alter the health-care system, while only 27 percent favor it.

Malkin then mentions a Boston Herald story indicating that even if Brown should win on Jan. 19 it won’t matter to the Democrats who run Massachusetts or the Senate.

The current occupant of the seat, the appointed Paul Kirk, told a business forum in Boston on Friday that regardless of what happens in the election he would vote for final passage of the bill. And the ruling clique on Beacon Hill is going to run interference for Kirk to do so; a spokesman for Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, who is in charge of running the election, said that it could take a month or so to certify the election.

“Because it’s a federal election,” spokesman Brian McNiff said. “We’d have to wait 10 days for absentee and military ballots to come in.”

Another source told the Herald that Galvin’s office has said the election won’t be certified until Feb. 20 – well after the president’s address.

Of course, when Niki Tsongas won a special election for a congressional seat, her election was certified in two days and she was in DC to vote on an override of President Bush’s veto on the SCHIP bill. No such lightning speed would exist this time.

Brown’s comment on the shenanigans in his state was right on…

“This is a stunning admission by Paul Kirk and the Beacon Hill political machine. Paul Kirk appears to be suggesting that he, Deval Patrick, and (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid intend to stall the election certification until the health care bill is rammed through Congress, even if that means defying the will of the people of Massachusetts.

“As we’ve already seen from the backroom deals and kickbacks cut by the Democrats in Washington, they intend to do anything and everything to pass their controversial health care plan. But threatening to ignore the results of a free election and steal this Senate vote from the people of Massachusetts takes their schemes to a whole new level. Martha Coakley should immediately disavow this threat from one of her campaign’s leading supporters.”

The comments under the Boston Herald piece are priceless. Tar and feathering are mentioned, as are copious references to Al Franken’s purloined victory in the Minnesota Senate race and the fact that Democrats in charge of the state legislature in Massachusetts changed state law in 2004 to stop the governor (Republican Mitt Romney at the time) from being able to appoint an interim U.S. Senator in the potential case that John Kerry would have been elected President and then changed it back to allow the governor (Democrat Deval Patrick, who even in Massachusetts is about as popular as the swine flu) to appoint Kirk.

This outrage can’t help Coakley, even in deep blue Massachusetts. But it does point out the lengths The Left will go to preserve power and achieve results they want.