What the campaign and candidate have been doing so far regarding issues and message seems not to be working. Yes, MC is being outspent, but let’s save our whining about that for the post-mortem: nobody cares, and it’s loser talk. Yes, we will do our vaunted ground game, but if she’s down by even half of what the Globe said today that won’t turn the tide.
Being the woman and the champion of women will do whatever it will do, but right now that seems not to be enough. Ditto for painting Charlie as the cold-hearted Republican business guy.
So, BMGers, what else have we got? What should the MC campaign strive to make this race about in the next week? One suggestion: the difference between the two candidates on paid sick leave (Q4). The undecideds and the weak Baker supporters are probably fertile ground for this one, but an issue can’t cut unless you, literally, make an issue of it. With the ebola scare going on, the idea of being able to stay home from work if you’re sick seems particularly timely.
There’s one idea. How about some others?
edgarthearmenian says
Either Don Berwick or Steve Grossman would have won this election. Poor Martha simply is not a very likable person; the more that people see and hear her the less that they like her. I know that this is not what elections are supposed to be about, but image is important, rightly or wrongly.
Remember, it wasn’t so much that Brown won that senatorial election as much as it was that she lost it. I know that she is a fine person and has done an excellent job as Attorney General, and that she will automatically get many female votes. But she just doesn’t have what it takes to swing the independents and conservative democrats in her direction.
Christopher says
I recommended mostly for promoting discussion about strategy among political junkies, but the diary isn’t mine.
SomervilleTom says
I suspect you were cited because you were the first recommender.
jconway says
Just as I liked Capuano better in his primary against Coakley. But if they failed to beat her-it is reasonable to assume they would’ve been unable to beat Baker. Particularly Berwick who ran a relatively single issue campaign for an issue most voters view as settled. His other differences ended up getting obscured. I wish he ran against casinos more strongly, and his other proposals that would’ve pushed us leftward, and I wish Steve found his stride earlier. But wishes don’t catch fishes-so now what do we do?
Phone bank, email friends, and canvass for the ticket.
As for the OP: what can Coakley do?
Stop focusing on social issues and make this a campaign between a Brahmin businessman and a lunch pail Dem. Have your last ads go for this-positive pieces about your fights on behalf of consumers against corporations, your proposals for paid leave, pre-K, and a higher minimum wage. Your plan to create good jobs in MA vs. bakers record of outsourcing jobs overseas. That’s it. Make that the contrast and you win. People are hurting and they will vote their pocketbook. Make this a race about economic security and you win.
SomervilleTom says
A lunch-pail Dem would be fighting to tax the wealthy. A lunch-pail Dem would be fighting to expand public transportation. A lunch-pail Dem would be fighting for single-payer health care.
We had a lunch-pail Dem as Lt. Governor, before the AG destroyed his career with unfounded insinuations. We could have more easily cast at least one of the primary candidates as a lunch-pail Dem, but that candidate lost.
Our nominee is NOT a lunch-pail Dem. No amount of costuming will make her one. Perhaps our party will learn that if we want lunch-pail Dems in office, we have to nominate them. If we want to nominate lunch-pail Dems, then we need to support them in the primaries.
This race will not be won by a lunch-pail Dem, because there IS NO lunch-pail Dem in this race.
jconway says
I’ve seen too many neighbors out here in IL get fucked by technocrats who govern as extremists: Walker in WI, Snyder in MI, Kasich in OH, Daniels in Indiana. A guy like Mark Dayton in MN is as milquetoast as it gets-but he was pushed to embrace SSM, embrace progressive taxation and embrace findig schools with new taxes. Pushed to torpedo another private stadium funded at taxpayer expense. We have leverage with her we won’t have with Baker, and sitting home now elects a man we have no leverage with who has been waiting for the state to hand over the keys to drive his Pioneer institute Randian vision around. Ditto Quinn. Ditto Malloy. Coakley is no Warren, she’s no Raimondo either. Let’s reject the right wing soundly, and then build on the left wing of our party. I see the Fallon’s getting challenged and I think that will slowly start to send the message we want.
hlpeary says
Murray could have made the case, Driscoll could have made the case, Capuano could have made the case….but, they are not there to make it.
The chips will fall where they may, lesson learned or not.
jconway says
He’s been one of the most dynamical progressive mayors in the region. He has the local accent, a blue collar touch and background, and always hammers home how supporting mass transit creates jobs. Great in education too working with teachers to close the gaps in Somerville.
Watch him and Driscoll on this joint NECN appearance and tell me they wouldn’t make a great ticket! Either order is fine by me.
hlpeary says
Yes, jconway, that would be a strong ticket. In Massachusetts, if you polled the mayors, all mayors, you would find Driscoll (and what she has accomplished) at the top of the ranking. Great leader, articulate, smart, attention to detail, innovative and extremely likable.
publius says
Two days ago we Dems got a punch in the gut from the Globe poll. Sure, Charlie’s probably not really up 9. Maybe he’s only up a little. Newsflash: you only have to win by a little to be governor for the next four years.
Since my OP Friday afternoon inviting issue/message ideas to help Coakley pull ahead, there has been exactly one offered, jconway’s urging MC to emphasize economic populism rather than social liberalism. Every other comment has continued the pity party about MC not being their choice, or even begun speculating about our 2018 ticket. Swell.
I have lived through Weld, Cellucci, Swift, and Romney. It’s bad. Bad for workers, for poor people, for the environment, for infrastructure, for public purposes generally. It will take Coakley’s campaign and allies giving people reasons to vote, and to vote for her/against Charlie, to win this thing. Just more of the “I fought Wall Street, I stood up for women” is not likely to move this race. I agree with jconway that Coakley has to make a contrast with Baker. The questions are: on what issues? and how?
Really, BMGers, can’t we do better at generating campaign moves than this?
jconway says
Is a profound mistrust at the CEO background. Make his strength as a businessman and manager the liability it is. He got state bailouts and outsourced jobs. Outsourcing is killing Perdue and helping Nunn down south in Georgia and it would kick even more ass here. Go negative in that, emphasize how tough she was on child abusers and Cardinal Law, and hit him on failing to back a minimum wage hike, paid leave, and unions. This is still a blue collar state-she wins getting the hard hats on her side. Don’t go after Wrentham soccer moms on choice and marriage equality since Baker owns those issues too.
petr says
… on GOTV vs media. Charlie Baker has brought the air war and Coakley has brought the ground game. With little more than a week to go, messaging is fixed and it’s going to be execution of the respective strategies, rather than trying to make the message more compelling, that does it. There is a Globe endorsement to come, some more polls. I have not heard of any further debates… But it’s going to be execution of the strategy. If you want some ideas about how to help in this you can visit any of the recent posts by BMG’s long esteemed Kate who, I’m given to understand, is to the ground game for team left what Wes Welker once was to the Paitrots (I don’t have any more recent analogies available….)
I don’t know that Charlie Baker can have a good ground game. He’s tall, which is generally a plus, and handsome, but he’s wooden in affect on the stage and, i’m given to understand, sometimes imperious and brusque in person. This is in contrast to Coakley who is relaxed on stage, but the camera doesn’t love her, and measured in her tone but is, apparently, voluble and very personable live. I think the ground game is Coakley’s forte: people who meet her, I daresay, are far more likely to vote for her. I don’t think that this is the case for Charlie Baker. He’s no Bill Weld.
The Globe poll should be more worrying for Charlie Baker than for Martha Coakley. The crosstabs reveal a heavy heavy skew for conservative values (not necessarily the pollsters fault, they probably just randomly got 20 or 30 more raging conservatives on those days… and/or a similar number of liberals randomly decided not to answer the phone) and the numbers for right direction/wrong track lean heavily away from pseudo-incumbent like Coakley, who’s running to continue the policies of the present Governor. If the poll does skew conservatives that’s good news for Coakley because it shows Baker isn’t picking up the slack amongst conservatives: he’s not closing the deal with his base. And, however much he wants the independent votes everything about him fairly screams hard core right wing so he has to work twice as hard to get those people to even consider him…
I think advantage Coakley at this point, but the CommonWealths electorate has stymied me before now…
sabutai says
Most of us voted Grossman. Campaigns can only do so much to save a bad candidate.
But…as I’ve long said, Baker’s weakness is that he’s a freakin’ health care plan CEO. Those should be the ultimate villains of our economy — people who pull in millions by fighting against sensible health care reform while denying grandma chemotherapy. Death panels? Charlie Baker ran a company that depends on death panels in order to make money for his shareholders. But apparently Coakley didn’t want to touch that.
rcmauro says
Right now most of us are trying to figure out how many voters we can possibly talk to before election day. Also if we have enough clean underwear for the next nine days.
JimC says
But I just don’t see the need for four — oh, never mind.