The eyes of the nation today will focus on Massachusetts, where something once thought unimaginable just might happen.

Ted Kennedy’s seat in the U.S. Senate could fall into Republican hands.

A special election will be held today to fill the remainder of the “Liberal Lion” of the Senate’s term. Democratic State Attorney General Martha Coakler, who once looked like a lock to fill Kennedy’s seat, is now in the fight of her life with Republican Scott Brown, a state senator. Recent polls have shown Brown pulling ahead.

There is much at stake in this race, and no shortage of irony as well.
It was one of Kennedy’s lifetime goals to reform the health care system in this country. How ironic would it be if the key vote against that proposal would come from the seat he held for decades?

If elected, Brown would negate the Democrats’ 60-seat supermajority in Washington and prove a huge problem for President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda, including health care reform.

Brown has not shied away from running against the history of the state, and this Senate seat in particular.

His rallying cry has been that it’s “not the Kennedy’s seat, it’s the people’s seat.”

“It’s us against the machine,” he told a rally this week. “Make sure that we send a message to Washington that business as usual is not how we like to do business.”

For the Kennedy family, business as usual has meant holding that Senate seat since Jack Kennedy went to the Senate in the 1950s.

That reign just might end today.