With respect to the Senate race, the state Republican party is getting desperate. And, really, in light of yet another poll showing Warren with a solid lead and time running short, who can blame them? Today’s version of your state GOP’s desperation is on the flip: a mailer, sent to us by an alert reader, chock-full of misleading and debunked assertions about the heritage issue. Honestly, you would think that an incumbent Senator would have something else to talk about. How telling that neither he nor his surrogates have come up with anything.
The mailer was sent to me in four pieces; click any quadrant for a larger view of that quadrant.
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Discuss
20 Comments . Leave a comment below.But, Brown’s people are also crafty politicians. They know what they are doing. They would not be sending out attack mailers if they hadn’t first used focus groups to determine their impact.
These attacks are working. They are hurting Warren. The best response is our grass-roots efforts. Now, more than ever, the door knocks and the phone calls are critically important. Voters need to hear the truth in direct conversations.
I mean, one would hope, but one does not put together a “focus group” for every single mailer or type of attack, even in presidential races, nevermind a statewide race.
I do agree the door knocking is even more critical now. We definitely had an impact with several undecideds yesterday, you could see it in their eyes.
I talked to a voter yesterday who said she supported Warren but was ‘disappointed’ in her debate performance. I was surprised since I thought Warren did very well in the Lowell debate.
Turned out that this voter had watched the first debate but not the second, and I was able to explain how Warren had countered the attacks effectively this time, how the asbestos workers union was protesting Brown’s misrepresentation. I was also able to stress Brown’s Scalia moment as proof Brown is not the bipartisan moderate he’s claiming to be. I think reinforcing the “leaning Warren” voters is also important while canvassing.
Yes, the mailers are tested, and, individual sentences within those mailers are tested to see what creates the best result. Basically, no reasonable political organization would send out an attack piece without testing it first.
Of course, we are talking about the Mass GOP here.
D’oh!
… that the tactic is good, just that its better than the alternatives.
… one reason is, as you allude, to soften undecideds. There aren’t that many undecideds.
The other reason is to prevent defection of previously expected voters: they appeal to the lizard brain of their base in case EW is making headway into them… as she is.
And not “Crappy” politicians. Because I can totally buy that the GOP are crappy politicians.
I have to wonder if it’s too slick. It LOOKS overdone, overdesigned.
In other words, more of a marketing piece than information one can trust. I don’t know about everyone else, but the slicker the marketing pitch, the more suspicious I get…that I’m “being sold to.”
Several undecided voters on my canvass yesterday seemed thoughtful and were planning to “dig for more information.” By that, they seemed to mean “not listening to the ads and the mailers” and crap like that. My canvassing partner actually had a cousin who died from asbestos poisoning, so she had a REALLY compelling story to tell about family members who are angry (like the asbestos union) about Brown’s misleading attacks on that front (and I always brought up how in his most recent ad, Brown quotes the Glove selectively…implying that Warren’s work was “disastrous for asbestos victims” when the full sentence in the article goes, “But after Warren left the case, it continued to twist and turn through the legal system, leaving a result that has been disastrous for asbestos victims.”) These things – one on one banging against this stuff on doorsteps – all help.
This has issue already proven to do zero to help Brown.
Ah, I guess if they were respectful of evidence, they’d be Democrats. All makes sense, now.
Maybe the kings and queens told him to do it, and he’s just following orders.
It didn’t work this summer because no one was paying attention, but as the WNEC poll shows, it has harmed her favorability, though not her margin.
It’s a simple strategy to counteract it: Scott Brown is afraid to talk about the issues and his record, and he’s acting like a Republican, Washington politician: he’s slinging lies and mud.
This suggests 1 of 2 things happening:
1. Some people now view her “unfavorably” but will vote for her anyway because they prefer her on the issues.
2. Some likely Brown voters who previously had no specific reason to view Warren unfavorably now have such a reason. They prefer Brown for other reasons anyway. In this case her unfavorables going up makes little difference in the race.
I’d bet the vast majority of growth in Warren’s unfavorables comes from group #2.
He tweeted that he is looking forward to another epic Brady/Manning showdown this afternoon at Gillette.
I’m pretty sure I was push-polled last week by a poll that in the end only focused on Brown-Warren and ended up focusing on Warren’s ancestry and legal work relating to asbestos. It was interesting that the poll questions were not focused in any way on creating a positive image for Brown.
to think that anyone will get some sort of affirmative action benefit from being 1/32 minority?
1) I got this ad in the mail on Saturday and it just reeked of desparation. How can you be taken seriously when you include the headline: “The jig is up, Cherokee Liz?” I’m amazed after all these months, they are still beating this dead horse.
2) My husband, who is in the Harvard system, laughs at the notion that ANYONE can get ahead at Harvard because they’ve checked off a box. It’s all about how many papers you publish, how much research/grant money you pull in, etc.
Scott Brown is targeting a demographic that doesn’t care about the reality of advancement within Harvard. Potential voters who do anything but retch when they see “Cherokee Liz” are not going to pay attention to such niceties. This campaign is a campaign of desperation, because the campaign knows that voters who embrace such garbage are its only hope.
The task for the rest of us, I think, is to turn out the voters who DO reject such ignorant nonsense.
I’ve been looking at the results from 2010 and 2008 on Boston.com. 2.2 million people turned out for the special election in 2010. Brown won 1.168 million to 1.059 million.
But more than 3 million Mass voters turned out for the 2008 presidential. McCain only had 64K fewer voters than Brown did, but Obama had over three quarters of a million more votes than Coakley had. It was a significantly different electorate for the presidential than it was for the special.
and fired up.
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