Whatever the result, in the wake of today's election, there will be a lot of claims made about what it meant. Win or lose, Coakley should never have been in danger, and the fact that she has been is what people will try to be explaining.

It's going to be predictable: People who believe that Democrats should legislate more like Republicans will say that Coakley suffered because Democrats went too far. People who believe that Democrats should legislate in the best interest of working families and stand up to Wall Street and the insurance companies will say that Coakley suffered because Democrats compromised too much. Both are probably true to some extent -- people hostile to Democrats are motivated by Democrats having done anything, or even having talked about it, and the Democratic base is disappointed in the individual mandate and the loss of the public option -- but that's only a small part of the real story of this election.

No, for all the efforts to nationalize this election, it's time to go back to the maxim that "all politics is local."

In November, a Suffolk poll showed Coakley defeating Brown by 19 points. The week before the election, a Suffolk poll showed Brown up by four points. Now, ask yourself this. Did the national political environment swing 23 points away from Democrats in general in that time?

Not really. If this race was mostly about the national environment, we might well be talking about how Coakley's lead was a little narrower than expected, but Nate Silver wouldn't have Brown as a 3:1 favorite -- more likely the reverse, and then some.

Scott Brown was able to tap into national issues effectively, it's true, but the key word there is effectively. The fact is, he ran a great campaign. He worked his ass off. He downplayed being a Republican in his public campaigning while playing to the teabaggers below the radar. He defined himself strongly from the get-go. And then at the end, he shut his mouth and refused to say anything about his positions, only speaking publicly to pretend that exploration of those positions constituted negative campaigning. Dave Weigel, covering Brown's campaign from the ground, tweeted

Brown's answers to reporters, on anything: "We're working hard" or "No, no, no" (walks away)

The media was complicit in that evasion -- but in part because Brown had done such a good job setting up his image.

Martha Coakley, on the other hand, ran a truly terrible campaign. As Markos wrote last week,

Democrats, on the other hand, were saddled with a candidate who thought she could nap her way to the Senate. Not even Teddy disrespected his state's voters so brazenly. He worked his ass off for votes, no matter how secure he seemed. It was the reason he was able to overcome scandal and become politically invincible. Coakley's sloth will cost the party and allies money better spent for this fall (if not the seat).

Coakley was beyond complacent, she made little effort to connect with voters, she seems to have quit raising money after the primary, and her campaign took all of her complacency and magnified it with disorganization and incompetence. While Scott Brown campaigned, she disappeared, doing just 19 campaign stops to his 66 between the primary and Sunday. Her online team did virtually nothing -- less than you would expect from a second-tier House race.

At the end, with the alarm sounded not by her campaign but by public polling, actual professionals arrived. They attempted to do in a week what she should have spent six weeks doing, but rolling out an entire campaign's worth of opposition research in a week inadvertently played into Brown's "I'm a victim and she's a vicious harpy" strategy. (No latent appeals to misogyny there...) The bailout crew's only choices were to leave Brown's legislative record in the shadows, or be accused of negative campaigning. It's not a choice that would have been necessary given a moderately competent campaign in the preceding weeks.

So resist the temptation to proclaim this race a validator of all your dearest-held views on what Democrats should be doing. Unless, that is, your dearest-held view is that Democrats should be running marginally competent campaigns. In that case, you probably need some deeper beliefs, but today, you're correct.