Last night, we went to Sidetracks, Roscoe’s, Scarlet, and Lucky Horseshoe here in Boystown and ran a little experiment.  It’s totally unscientific, of course, and is reported here because it’s interesting — not something you can extrapolate to Massachusetts or draw conclusions from.  But, it’s INTERESTING.

Here’s what inspired us:  our friend Joaquin has been busy with a few work projects and was not paying attention at all to the Massachusetts Senate race, even though he had lived in Boston a few years ago.  He didn’t even realize January 19th was a special election to fill deceased murderer and womanizer Ted Kennedy’s seat.  “I thought the governor already did that, and they changed the law so a Democrat would have that seat,” Joaquin said, partly correct.  Democrats in Massachusetts DID change the law allowing Governor Deval Patrick to appoint an interim replacement for Kennedy, but only until the January 19th special election to fill that seat until 2012 when Kennedy’s Senate class is up for re-election again.  Joaquin checked with his friends in Boston via Facebook, and discovered almost none of them knew about the special election — not a single one of them is planning to vote.

Now, we were all talking about this last night while making the rounds here in Boystown, and our friend Panda happened to have his iPhone with him, where we could get to a picture of Hottie McAwesome (aka Scott Brown, the Republican nominee for Senate).  Just for fun, here’s what we decided to do to anyone who came up and talked to us in the bars last night:

We asked them if they knew about the special election in Massachusetts January 19th, and none of them did.  We didn’t really expect them to.  Boystown is a low-information part of town, and the extent of political knowledge here is the “Democrats are good and Republicans are evil” remedial drills the LGBTQ community forces on all of us constantly.

We decided to show these guys pictures of Hottie McAwesome and then tell them a little about him, including the fact that he’s served in the Army for 30 years, runs triathlons, is a state senator, is married to a local news reporter, has a daughter who sings like an angel and was on American Idol, and is generally nine shades of McAwesome.

“Is that really a Republican?”, many of them asked. “Hell, if they all looked like that, maybe I’d start voting for them!”.

Some guys said, at the very least, if Hottie McAwesome was on the ballot here in Illinois for something, if they couldn’t bear the thought of pulling the lever for a Republican, they might just sit home and let Brown win, getting a centerfold into the Senate without doing anything to stop him.

“That dude’s a total babe.  I might not vote for him, but I sure as s*** wouldn’t vote against him.  Wow.  Are there more pics online?”

What’s interesting in all of this is that we think if Brown was running here in Illinois, he’d win because:

(1) Democrats would not be motivated to come out and defeat him

(2) He’s hot and awesome, simultaneously

(3) The more people know about him, the more people like him

(4) If Republicans get off their butts and vote for him, there will not be a considerable drive on the other side of the aisle, in equal measure, for Martha Coakley

Now, Joaquin insists Bostonians are a lot like Chicagoans, but there are just fewer of them.  In using the iPhone and googling the race, Joaquin also discovered that someone named “Kennedy” is in the running, too. That confused the heck out of him, and he’s someone who follows politics.

“Joe Kennedy” will be on the ballot on January 19th, as a Libertarian candidate. Joaquin insists if he still lived in Boston, and he bothered to vote in a special election, would probably have just voted “Kennedy” out of muscle memory.

As an experiment, Joaquin sent a little Facebook message out to his Massachusetts friends and asked them who they would vote for in the Senate race:  Coakley, Kennedy, or Brown?

About 25 people responded by the end of the night, with the results:  15 Kennedy, 6 Coakley, 4 Brown.

“I always vote Kennedy for Senate”, one of Joaquin’s old co-workers wrote.  “I think Joe Kennedy is Ted Kennedy’s son,” she insisted.

The four votes from Brown were PUMAs who don’t want the Democrats in Massachusetts to win, after the turned on Hillary Clinton in 2008.  “Screw them, I’m voting Republican to teach those fools a lesson,” they more or less said.

The six Coakley votes were all Hillary Dems, though, who are rewarding Coakley for standing with Clinton in Massachusetts.  As we’ve told you before, this is why we were so torn on this race, because we feel a loyalty to Coakley, and would be helping her today if not for the fact that she promised to be a rubber stamp for the White House and the 60th vote for Healthcare Rationing and the Destruction of Our Economy As We Know It.

Otherwise, we’d be voting for Coakley too…but this election is the only chance we have of stopping while the Healthcare Rationing while we still can.