So I take a weekend away from blogging, and the national political landscape quaked with a Democrat-sponsored poll showing Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown in a statistical dead heat with Democrat Martha Coakley. Yes: in Massachusetts! Now let’s be honest: odds are still against a GOP win in the Bay State, but the fact that victory is in the sights a week before the special election to replace Ted Kennedy sends a loud message in itself.

Now word leaks that the Democrats actually are considering delay of seating Brown, should he win, to take another step toward cramming Obama Care down our collective throats. Redstate blogger Dan Perrin aptly describes the political consequences of such a tactic as “lighting a torch while standing is [sic] in a field of gasoline”. After noting Scott Brown’s tremendous momentum, political guru Michael Barone echoes Perrin and predicts such Democrat obstructionism would create a “national firestorm.”

Would Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi really have the nerve to do it? I’m sure they would much rather drag Martha Coakley — “who is running as an assumption,” Hugh Hewitt writes — across the finish line than have to choose between stonewalling the clear will of Massachusetts and the American people on one hand and giving up on Obama Care on the other.

If you’re Michael Bennett, there would be no positive spin for a “Massachusetts miracle” electoral outcome. His pledge to commit political seppuku on the altar of Obamacare, if necessary, would look even more like it’s coming to fruition. Even an uncomfortably close Coakley win in the Bay State’s liberal bastion would portend an extremely difficult slog for the appointed Senator Who.

I’ll be paying close attention to Massachusetts to see if it’s time to start the countdown on Bennet’s short Senate tenure.