Deval Patrick won the primary with about 50% of the vote, setting up what the Boston Herald calls a historic battle which will lead to either "the first black or the first woman elected to lead Massachusetts as governor."

Why did Deval Patrick win last night, and why by so wide a margin? With the relatively low turnout, it is expected that the mainly party devotees made it to the polls, and we all know that it is the hard core activists that make up the lunatic fringe of the Democratic Party...the hard core liberals, like Deval Patrick.

It's seems clear that the Healey campaign wanted Patrick to win, and they got what they asked for. If there is some truth to that assumption, and there likely is some, than why didn't Democrats come out a bit stronger for Chris Gabrieli and give Healey the fight she didn't want?

Patrick's views on a lot of issues don't align with the majority of Massachusetts voters, particularly on taxes. When over 70% of 2002 voters demanded the tax rollback, statistically, a good number of those who want the rollback voted for Patrick yesterday. Obviously, if they really wanted the rollback, they could have supported Gabrieli (or Reilly, maybe), but in the end, the man who will raise taxes won them over.

Something else must have driven the voters to Patrick, something that--in the hearts and minds of the voters--was more compelling a reason to support Patrick; so much so they were willing to risk Dukakis-era tax rates. Could the anti-Gabrieli ad by the Healey campaign have done the trick? It might have had some effect, but not enough to give Patrick half of the all votes cast. Something more significant had to have been on the minds of the voters.

Could white man's burden have been the ultimate decisive factor in Patrick's victory? Considering that the Democratic primary voters are mostly left of center to fringe left wing, and we know how these guilty bleeding heart liberals think, white man's burden likely made these feel good liberals froth at the mouth at helping to potentially elect the first black governor of Massachusetts. Boy, would that ease their guilty consciences.

In the arena of ideas and issues, most people want the tax rollback, most people don't want to give illegal immigrants in-state tuition, and most people want to be hard on criminals--that should have made the primary no contest. With those issues in mind, Kerry Healey will trounce over Patrick in the general election, but in regards to the Democratic Primary, Gabrieli's moderate positions relative to Patrick's should have made him the more ideal candidate, but instead he sports only a handful more votes than the embarrassing showing by Tom Reilly.

For Democrats, where doing what "feels good" outweighs doing the right thing, it seems obvious that on some level, whether subconscious or deliberate, white man's burden overwhelmed the voters into a call to (affirmative) action, giving Patrick the party's nomination to challenge Kerry Healey and that convenience store guy in November.