Is Massachusetts not that liberal/progressive?

[tpfkaw]

Their partisanship is much weaker than the rest of the state and so they are likely to swing to Republicans whenever they run a reasonably competitive race.

Essentially, Republicans have a "base" of perhaps 30% or so, and have 2-3 ways of getting that extra 20%.

1. Appeal to socially liberal but fiscally conservative wealthy/suburban voters.

2. Appeal to socially conservative (for MA) working-class voters ("Reagan Democrats"). - This one is probably the most promising for the MAGOP in the future.

3. Appeal to "ancestral" WASP voters with identity politics.  (This one may no longer be possible).

Edit:  This is the 300,000th post in this forum!  How cool is that!

[tpfkaw]

A little more subtle than that, but sort of, yeah.

Cellucci won Berkshire County? Yeah, I really don't see that sort of thing happening again.

Maybe having Swift on the ticket helped.

Swift on the ticket helped a lot, as did being Weld's lieutenant gov.