THAT IT MIGHT not be the Democrats’ night was evident at O’Brien headquarters at the Sheraton early on election night. O’Brien staffers were in the bunker. No one but activists and volunteers, munching on chips and salsa, were out at the party. Between 8 and 9 p.m., you couldn’t even find a state representative or senator to talk up O’Brien’s campaign. The absence of O’Brien operatives contributed to the somber mood in the darkened room. Those present walked around with faces as tense as O’Brien’s during much of the campaign. The event had the feel of a wake well before the race was called. A quick visit to the Romney party at the Park Plaza registered a starkly different atmosphere. Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s spokesman, chatted calmly with reporters. Attendees luxuriated in the well-lit hall and ate pasta and crab cakes. Dixieland jazz played in the background. An air of victory permeated the room.

Back at the Sheraton, shortly after 9 p.m., two elected officials were finally made available to the media: newly elected Cambridge state senator Jarrett Barrios and Congressman Barney Frank. Both Barrios and Frank had been key voices in fighting off the Stein challenge from the left. But while the presence of both was admirable, it also underscored the weakness of O’Brien’s candidacy. In the end, she had no credibility with independent voters, and it showed when the only elected representatives speaking for her were from the state Democratic Party’s progressive wing.

Barrios focused on one of the bright spots of the campaign. The placement on the ballot of Question Two had had the unintended consequence of spiking the Latino vote, which saw more Latinos voting in Massachusetts than ever before. Barrios likened Romney, who had made the question a centerpiece of his campaign, to former California governor Pete Wilson, who backed an anti-immigrant question in his home state. "He’s making Latinos come out and turning them into Democrats," said Barrios. "That’s got to be something the Democratic Party builds on in the future."

Latino votes may have led to O’Brien gains in Chelsea, Lawrence, and Worcester (where she won 4000 votes more than Cellucci did in 1998). Still, O’Brien’s margin of victory in heavily Latino Lynn was 1000 votes less than Harshbarger’s in 1998. Frank, meanwhile, maintained that O’Brien had not moved too far to the left. "The only time she went more to the left was when she blurted out the answer on gay marriage," he said, referring to her statement that she would sign a gay-marriage bill if one passed the House. (You can be sure it won’t now!) "She should have stuck with her answer on civil unions."

For all O’Brien’s attempts to appeal to independent voters during the primary and at the beginning, at least, of the general election, she did little to make it real. There was no Sister Souljah moment, no statement of any kind criticizing the teachers’ unions, the labor movement, or any other traditional Democratic constituency. No moment when she intoned: "I think my party is wrong here ..." At each key moment in the general campaign, O’Brien not only failed to criticize positions taken by any of the groups supporting her, but she went out of her way to toe their line more aggressively. Case in point: O’Brien not only came out in opposition to the English-immersion question, she vowed, just a week before the election, that if made governor she would not implement it. This, at a time when polls showed that at least two-thirds of the voters backed the question (it ended up garnering the support of more than 70 percent of the vote). All this cemented the idea that O’Brien, if elected, wouldn’t be able to confront problems on Beacon Hill. "I didn’t see anything she did in her campaign that appealed to independent voters," said GOP consultant Charley Manning, basking in Romney’s victory.

You can make the argument that given the fact that O’Brien ended up having to run to the left anyway, the Democrats would have been better off running with a true progressive — not a political insider married to a lobbyist. Someone like former US secretary of labor Robert Reich, for example, who argued Tuesday night at the O’Brien "party" that Democrats are stronger when they embrace progressive principles. "There is a large and growing progressive community in Massachusetts," said Reich, very early in the evening when it looked like urban votes might make up for O’Brien’s deficit in the suburbs. "Black and Latino voters are waiting to be talked to. There is an emerging Democratic majority, an emerging progressive majority, in Massachusetts."

Actually, there isn’t. The independent voters in Massachusetts might not want to join a parade on behalf of Republican senator Jesse Helms, but they’re no Democratic stalwarts, either. Reich wouldn’t have done any better than the combined 48 percent "progressive" vote won by O’Brien and Stein.

Going forward, the Democrats are clearly back to the drawing board. Maybe it’s time for somebody to figure out that they must nominate candidates who don’t come from the Beacon Hill farm system (state representative, state senator, statewide officeholder). Treasurer-elect Tim Cahill, the current treasurer of Norfolk County, for example, slipped into higher office without a great deal of scrutiny. Which brings up an interesting point. If you look at ideology rather than party label, you’ll see that Governor-elect Romney, Lieutenant Governor–elect Kerry Healey, Treasurer-elect Tim Cahill, Secretary of State William Galvin, Attorney General Tom Reilly, and House Speaker Tom Finneran are all conservative. None, not even incoming Senate president Robert Travaglini, can be considered liberal or progressive. Heck, William Weld, a leader in gay rights, looks loony-left compared to these people.

AS FOR ROMNEY, his problems are only beginning. Not for ideological reasons, but in terms of power considerations. Finneran may enjoy the political cover Romney gives him to cut the budget without regard for Birmingham-era "untouchables," such as education reform. Still, Romney’s going to have to win Finneran over. Despite a few nominal gains for Republicans in the House, he still becomes governor without enough Republican legislators to uphold his vetoes. That means no matter what he said in the general campaign — and what all those independents who voted for him expect — he’ll have to play ball with Finneran, who benefited from Republican support in his 1996 play for the Speakership, and Senate president–elect Robert Travaglini. "I think Mitt Romney and Tom Finneran agree on a lot of issues," said one member of the Romney camp on election night. "I think Mitt Romney’s going to find an ally in Tom Finneran." For his part, Manning said he briefed Romney on how former governor William Weld handled Senate president William Bulger in his first year as governor: Weld had run against Bulger, but converted him into an ally during budget negotiations later on. In his memoir, While the Music Lasts (Houghton Mifflin, 1996), Bulger calls his partnership with Weld "a symbiotic working relationship almost from the start."

That may be true, but the alliance with Bulger — like Finneran, a conservative Democrat — cost Weld his ability to combat Beacon Hill patronage, which he had promised to do during his campaign. It even saw Weld campaigning for Bulger in South Boston against a Republican. Manning countered that those things happened long after Weld’s first year, when Republicans and Democrats had to cooperate. "Everyone’s going to have to work together," Manning said.

Suburban voters who cast votes for Romney to clean up Beacon Hill may find rather quickly that their hopes are dashed. And Democrats have to realize once and for all that the Dukakis era in Massachusetts is dead.

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com