Coakley’s defeat may have a silver lining for those who view politics as a spectator sport as well as those who specialize in finding silver linings. If you thought the Senate before this special election was dysfunctional, wait until you see this one in inaction before you place your bet. I am reminded of the old football cheer: Lean to the left. Lean to the right. Stand up. Sit down. Fight, fight, fight. Of course, we have a scant few actually leaning to the left. For our Senate it’s more like lean to the center right, lean to the right …

I heard a variety of pundits during the days leading up to the election. Some saw the successful candidate’s rise in the polls as a strong indication that people were fed up with efforts to pull the nation to the left. This surprised me for a couple of reasons. I don’t think most people think in those terms. At least I hope not. And what pull to the left? Anyone who thinks the watered-down, milquetoast legislation that sits pending in Congress right now is a pull to the left needs help getting out of the make believe world. And I say make believe advisedly. Experiments in psychology teach that if you tell half of a group of students that the professor from whom they are about to take a course is good-humored and warm and the other half that the professor is cold and demanding, most in the first half will report at the end of the course that the professor was good-humored and warm and most in the other half that the professor was cold and demanding. If you tell people often enough that we are moving to the left, people will start saying that we are moving to the left. In short, you can make them believe it. Or, at least, say it.

Another pundit offered the view that we were seeing an expression of “inchoate anger.” “Inchoate” means just begun and not fully formed or developed. So maybe the pundit meant that we were seeing the early stages of volcanic activity. Maybe he meant that the ultimate direction of the final eruption had not yet taken shape. This election was a little letting-off of steam and not to be taken as any indication of where the big blast would be directed. I admit that I like the volcanic analogy and I confess that it is mine. The voting public is a mass of hot rock, lava and liquid moving in tune with mysterious and unknown forces as likely to erupt here as there and certain to erupt with some degree of unpredictability. This pundit explained that voter “inchoate anger” usually expressed itself in the form of throwing the ins out. Get rid of what’s there. And I think it is fair to say that volcanoes also express themselves by changing the existing landscape.

The last pundit I will consider pointed out that Coakley had said some really stupid things and that her opponent had pounced on them like a grinning hawk. And there is that game aspect to it. There are missteps from which a candidate cannot recover just as there are interceptions, fumbles and kickoff returns from which a team cannot recover. And while those bad moves may have little to do with overall quality, they can determine the day. So it may little matter that Coakley would have fostered movement forward, movement that may have helped assuage the inchoate anger if – as appears to be the case – she fumbled at the goal line. Elections can be more about the accidental than the purposeful and usually are more about the irrational than the rational. Rationalists may not be happy about that, but you can be as unhappy as you want about facts of nature without changing anything at all.

One thing at least appears to be sure: We have our gridlocked, intransigent, unproductive and filibusterable Senate back from the precipice. And if push comes to shove and the austere body appears like it might actually do something, we can count on our newest member to stand up and read pages from the phone book. This is our silver lining. Ah, America. You gotta love it.