Politics is a business and money has the loudest voice: yesterday’s election was a stark demonstration of the point. In Massachusetts, Baker outspent Coakley approximately 2-1 — CommonWealth magazine put the total for third party groups at $8 million to $4 million two weeks ago. Nationwide, with the Citizens United legislation passed 5-4 by the Supreme Court’s Republican majority now solidly in place, Republicans outspent Democrats and took control of a second branch of the government.
Charisma, positions, and grass-roots organizing have important roles to play, especially in close elections, and there are always exceptions, but on the broadest scale and over time, money appears to be determinative. In 2010, under John Walsh’s leadership, Democrats outspent Republicans and Patrick beat Baker. If Coakley had outspent Baker 2-1, she probably would be the governor now.
We need to raise more money for our candidates.
adistius says
I don’t think it was a lack of money that caused Coakley to lose. It was her high negatives, even among dedicated Democrats. And, of course, her inability to campaign effectively. She is a horrible campaigner — for proof, see that she lost to Scott Brown. That wasn’t a loss on issues. In the next election, Warren got elected. It was a loss on personality.
If there is a consolation, it is that the last time Martha helped elected a Republican, in the next election, he lost so badly he got kicked all the way to New Hampshire.
Please?
Bob Neer says
I agree Coakley was a poor campaigner, but so is Charlie Baker, from his dismissive attitude toward women to his contrived tears and made up fish story. Do you doubt that if she had out-spent him 2-1 21,000 votes (the margin of victory) wouldn’t have flipped to her. Moreover, look nationwide: the Democratic candidates has lots of charisma and ability as a group, but as a group they got outspent, and as a group they got beaten. We should have done a better job raising money for Coakley, and the forces of reason, aka Democrats, in general.
Al says
Baker and his supporters spent that she would have won enough votes to win, but I do believe that her high negatives were in part the result of those relentless attack ads that overwhelmed the airwaves this campaign, thank you Beth Lindstrom.
sco says
Drop the Scott Brown stuff. This campaign was light years ahead of Coakley’s general election campaign for Senate years ago. I’ve aired my grievances with that campaign elsewhere so I won’t rehash, but this time around they did not repeat the mistakes they made in 2010. Maybe they made a whole slew of new mistakes — but at least from the ground level it was clear that they were working the field operation in a way that they neglected previously. I think that may have been the difference that turned the 4 point loss that Nate Silver was projecting into a 1 point squeaker (whatever it ended up being).
jconway says
1) Coakley did blow it
Hard to argue this, she had a significant lead and blew it again, but I agree she nearly won the race and the result can be called a comeback of sorts from the way the polls looked the last four months. I am much happier with Coakley projected to lose by 4 points to Baker losing by 1%. I am much angrier with Pat Quinn, projected to win by 4 points and losing by 5. I expected Coakley to lose, and expected her to lose by a bigger margin. She outperformed my expectations and I was pretty hopeful she’d win.
2) 2014 is not 2010
The national environment was actually far more toxic than 2010, particularly if we look at ballot initiatives failing that looked like winners, certain incumbents losing and the GOP picking up legislative seats, and the GOP winning governorships unexpectedly in IL, MD, MI, FL and by a wider than expected margin in OH, WI. Warner almost losing it, and Hagan, Nunn, Grimes, and Pryor significantly underperforming their polls. Mark Udall had a far bigger fall than Martha Coakley to a worse candidate. So she made mistakes and lost a lead, but barring this environment, I think she would’ve won.
3) Money talks
She did get outspend 2-1. And we do need to raise more money to be competitive. We also need to spend it better nationally but also on a statewide basis. But the ground game was far more solid for Coakley, I saw lots of friends on Facebook say they were personally contacted and campaign, and I had a lot more friends vote for her in this campaign than in the Senate special or the Patrick re-election.
Lots of different factors at play, but to exclusively say ‘she blew it’ or say ‘we got outspent’ or to say ‘the Dems sucked nationally’, misses that all three were in play at the same time and equally contributed.
methuenprogressive says
4) The number of ‘she lost to Brown so I’m not going to support her’ Dems played a significant role in Baker’s victory.
5) The ‘she’s the NRA’s Darling’ and other nonsence by Grossman led many of his supporters to not support her in the General, hoping a Baker win sets him up for the next cycle.
kirth says
Is there an outlet store, or do you get them from Amazon?
centralmassdad says
Did anyone actually refuse to support her because she lost to Scott Brown? Who are these people?
As far as gun control goes, every candidate has the same pro-gun control views, including Baker. How is this a wedge in this campaign?
Al says
because of her loss to Scott Brown. It beats me who they voted for Tuesday, Falchuck, or did they see Baker as acceptable to the loser that Coakley has been depicted as? It beat me. It reminds me of the voters who supported John McCain instead of Barack Obama after he beat Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination. How they saw McCain as an acceptable alternative to Obama when you originally supported Clinton, I’ll never know, but I know people who did just that. Coakley was widely described in the media, throughout the long election season as somehow damaged because of the Senatorial loss, in spite of her AG win. This constant carping created a climate of Coakley as a poor choice. That cost votes. It made getting campaign donations more difficult.
fenway49 says
I spoke to them. Not just voters, but more importantly hardcore volunteers who blame her for costing Obama his 60th vote and ushering in the November 2010 disaster. Still so angry a couple hung up on me.
I thought the NRA stuff by Grossman was dumb and I don’t think it stuck at all.
cos says
In the past ten years, Republicans have lost every single race for US House, US Senate, or statewide elected office in Massachusetts, with two exceptions: the two times Martha Coakley was a nominee for one of the above offices. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Citizens United affects many elections, but there’s a clear common factor in these Massachusetts outliers.
centralmassdad says
Democrats have lost five of the last seven gubernatorial elections in Massachusetts. That sure looks like something else is going on.
cos says
The last time Democrats lost for Governor was 2002.
Massachusetts does seem to have trended bluer since the 90s. We actually had 2 Republicans in Congress in the 90s. 2010 and 2014 were Republican wave elections and yet Republicans failed to win either of our currently competitive House seats.
In 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014, Democrats swept every federal and statewide office, except for the two Coakley runs. That’s the most recent six election cycles in a row. Going back to 2002 and earlier is misleading.
There is one parallel, though: Nominating Coakley was a lot like nominating Silber, which is what started the series of Republican Governors back then.
centralmassdad says
There has been one (1) Democrat elected governor in all that time. The last Democrat not named Deval elected governor was Mike Dukakis, and that was in 1986. Halfway through Baker ‘s term we will celebrate three decades in which only one Democrat managed to get elected governor of the Commonwealth. That sounds like Mr. Patrick is the exceptional one.
I don’t buy the 90s Republican Congressmen argument. Federal elections don’t translate to state elections here. Otherwise how could the party that nominated and elected Sen. Warren also put Speaker DeLeo in the driver’s seat of our government. Most of those 90s Congressmen were more liberal than the 2014 leadership of the MA dems, and maybe even more liberal than the most recent Democratic nominee for governor.
The blueing of Mass in its Congressional delegation is entirely a function of the shittiness of the national GOP. If anything the process has retarded liberal governance here because asshats in Massachusetts will always vote for someone who sounds vaguely like a Democrat and votes specifically like a Republican (and even make him Speaker of the House!) because Ted Cruz is scary on TV.
fenway49 says
Weld won because the Democrats nominated the worst candidate perhaps ever. He was reelected in a big Republican year, 1994. He resigned during the second term and Paul Cellucci ran as an incumbent. The Republicans won another close race against a relatively unpopular Democratic nominee in another Republican year, 2002, when the Massachusetts Democratic Party was fractured.I agree with you 100% that a sizable number of Massachusetts voters are more willing to support a Republican for governor as opposed to federal office. I think it is going too far to make a blanket statement that Massachusetts prefers Republican governors. All of the losing Democrats were fairly lackluster nominees.
centralmassdad says
I think that it is fair to say that Gov. Patrick was the ONLY non-lackluster nominee since Dukakis.
My own sense is that the old-boy, political machine is less interested in the federal offices, and that the federal office holders are therefore more reflective of the actual Democratic Party voters. It is a little odd that our conservative local Democrats must establish their “liberal” bona fides by silly comparison to Ted Cruz, even though they will never have anything to do with Ted Cruz, while our federal office holders, who must actually deal with Cruz and his ilk, are among the most liberal office-holders elected by the citizens of the Commonwealth.
What I simply cannot understand is how the same party that nominated, energetically volunteered for, and elected Sen. Warren will give limitless political cover to these stiffs on Beacon Hill. I mean, for pete’s sake: casinos. Casinos! And the entire party, with the slight exception being the AG-elect (who made her stand and then moved on to less embarrassing matters), treated the issue like a random bad-weather event, that just sort of unexpectedly happened, about which nothing can be done anyway, and then ran away from the issue as if it were an Ebola patient.
Our esteemed Speaker, proponent of a Wisconsin-style dress-down of public sector unions, architect of the introduction of casino gambling to the Commonwealth, is acclaimed by his party, which is already talking about the need to change term-limit rules in order to keep him in power beyond 2016. And gets endorsed by the AFL-CIO. How the fuck does that happen?
jconway says
How the fuck does that happen? We need new leadership. I like Stan and want to give him a chance, but DeLeo has got to go.
Bob Neer says
But you know how it happens: there are only two alternatives, as a practical matter.
centralmassdad says
Is why liberal Democrats go out of their way to support, in essence, conservative Republicans, just because they have a “(D)” after their name?
How do liberals nominate a candidate like we just had, and convince themselves that she is a liberal?
And then there are pages of comments here lamenting how the Democratic Party lost, nationally, because it ran away from its own principles.
cos says
You’re just reinforcing my point that looking at just elections for Governor is not helpful because there are so relatively few of them. If you want to look at state elections, Republican gains in the state house and state senate in both recent heavily-Republican years (2010 and 2014) have brought them to high water marks near 25% of the house and 20% of the senate, and then they recede. All the statewide offices get swept by Democrats, always.
I’m not talking about liberal vs. conservative. It’s definitely the case that we have a much stronger progressive movement in MA now than in the 90s, and that overall the composition of our elected officeholders has trended towards more liberal in the past 15 years, but that’s a separate matter. I’m talking partisanship. Many Massachusetts conservatives are Democrats, as you well know.
So, I don’t think your assertion that “something else is going on” is a good counterargument. It’s just cherrypicking. In over a decade, we’ve had only three elections for governor, and two were won by Deval Patrick – now one of them was won by a Republican. During that time, Democrats have swept all higher offices in all six elections, except for the other one where Coakley was nominated, and during that time Democrats have heavily dominated both houses of the state legislature, to the tune of 3-to-1 or better. Yet you reach back to a series of Republican Governors elected in the 90s to explain why Coakley lost this one, rather than to the overwhelming pattern of much more recent history from the past 6 state elections.
merrimackguy says
Do the D’s always win because they have better ideas, or are there other factors? I would suggest that the second part was more true.
Not saying that the idea part is not the reason that some vote D, or others vote against R’s because they assume their ideas are not good.
But those other factors are what run up the score and make the leads insurmountable. Without those factors (registration, organization, bench, history) you might see occasional wins (Mary Connaughton for Auditor in 2010, Tisei for 6th district in 2012).
Jasiu says
Well, here’s another data point: Patrick was the only Dem nominee in that time (other than Silber, who was an aberration) NOT to come from Beacon Hill. The other nominees:
– one state rep
– two attorneys general
– one treasurer
centralmassdad says
.
pogo says
We can all point to many examples of what Coakley did to blow the lead in the Senate election. But but can you cite on thing that highlights what Coakley did to blow the election? Yes she is not the best candidate…but we knew that. She learned from her mistakes and didn’t do anything fatally bad this time.
Sure, I think the hang over from 2010 still lingered with the voters and this didn’t help. But she did nothing to “blow” the election this time.
cos says
I’m all in favor of overturning citizens’ united, and think it’s having a horrible effect on democracy in general, but for this particular race, it’s an excuse. We knew well before she was nominated that Coakley vs. Baker would be close, and he’d have his best shot at winning if she were nominated. We all knew all along, if we cared to look, that there’s deep hatred for Coakley among a very large number of people in Massachusetts who usually vote for Democrats. She was the worst candidate we could’ve realistically nominated, and it’s frustrating to see so many analyses of this race, and commentary about it, that completely avoid this biggest of factors.
What’s so frustrating is that it’s not even clear that the much smaller and more partisan Democratic primary electorate even wanted her. She got 42%. Every single Berwick support I talked to about this race preferred Grossman over Coakley, and nearly every Grossman supporter I talked to about it preferred Berwick over Coakley, so there’s a good chance that a majority of those voters didn’t want her. We can’t ever know for sure.
I’m sick of this voting system. I was already sick of it ten years ago. Our collective response to this election should be a real push to get instant runoff voting on the ballot for 2016.
ljtmalden says
I actually agree for the most part with btofthe3rd on the “why” issue, and multiple factors are in play. Citizens United is poisonous and we need to overturn it.
There are actually three parties in Massachusetts and Charlie Baker won because he was able to get enough of the conservative democrats on his side, whether that occurred through ad buys or some other means. The perception was that he was a centrist who would be a new broom and an effective manager, while Coakley was perceived as a center-left insider who would be “same old same old.” (I’m not arguing truth — this was perception.) When Mass voters aren’t inspired, they look for the new, and they shelter under the idea of “checks and balances” between the entrenched Democrat machine (as they see it) and someone who’s Republican and therefore not beholden to the entrenched Democrat machine. (c.f. Weld, Romney, etc.) If you’re looking for people to blame, beyond the candidate herself, the Boston Globe is on my list, as well as SCOTUS for Citizens United.
The Coakley campaign worked hard, and yes, while CU is with us, we need to find ways to raise more money for candidates. But the voters ultimately made the choice. I think the Dems could have made more of the contrast between the candidates for lieutenant governor throughout the campaign. Steve Kerrigan should have been one important reason to vote for Coakley. I didn’t vote for Kerrigan in the primary, but I don’t think a different LG candidate would have helped the situation one bit. It would have brought different votes, perhaps, but not more votes.
Finally, and yes, I’ll say the word, sexism was involved. Many people pointed to mistakes in the past for both of these candidates, though somehow Baker’s were minimized while Coakley’s were put under a magnifying glass, from Fells Acres to the 2010 senate campaign. When we hold female candidates to a higher standard, expecting them to be perfect and spotless, while men are expected to get their hands dirty, that seems awfully victorian to me. Contrast this with Ted Kennedy, who had plenty of warts, but we continued to send him to Washington because he was effective and aligned with us policy-wise. Martha Coakley probably would have been a fine governor. It’s too bad not enough people thought so.
ljtmalden says
Still recovering from yesterday! 🙂
undercenter says
…much of what you say – including about the sexism argument. But it always infuriates me when people so casually write off Fells Acres – in this case dismissing it as if it were some minor misstatement or other faux pas on the campaign train – instead of the character-defining miscarriage of justice that it actually was.
undercenter says
Meant “campaign trail,” sorry.
ljtmalden says
…the miscarriage of justice in the Fells Acres case. We probably agree on that one. Though MC was not the original prosecutor, she missed important opportunities to fix things. But should that disqualify her from being governor? Chappaquiddick raised questions of character at the time, too, effectively disqualifying Ted Kennedy from becoming president. Then and later, his personal life was not above reproach. But we put up with that in order to have the rest of the package. We’d all like a candidate we admired on all dimensions, sure, but we should not be so pure as to require all our candidates to be perfect. If that were the case, we’d always elect promising young people with no experience. I have friends who, because of Fells Acres, found it impossible to vote for Coakley, and while I can understand, I think making that moral statement at the polls comes at a very high price if it has given us 4 years (or perhaps more) of Charlie Baker and Karen Polito.
kirth says
The rest of the package was not something enough people wanted badly enough. This is one of those “can’t you just skip the one thing MC did?” comments that sort of elide all the other things she did that people don’t like. See also the comment claiming that there are people who said “she lost to Brown, so I won’t vote for her.” Nobody said that, because it isn’t reason enough to withhold their vote. MC supplied enough reasons during her long career for enough people to not trust her enough to vote for her. Maybe they should have. I did, finally, but I sure didn’t feel good about it, and there’s no way I’m going to criticize anyone who couldn’t bring themselves to do it. Her baggage kept her balloon from getting off the ground.
ljtmalden says
Even so, the reason you and I both voted for MC, even though we could not feel inspired, was that we liked the alternatives less on November 4. I find it hard to understand why so many others did not see it that way. You may be right that in the final analysis, there was just too much baggage.
Christopher says
…when you consider that women were elected AG and TRG over male opponents by comfortable margins.
ljtmalden says
Never said it was the only factor, or even the most important one, just that it seemed to be part of the mix. Maura Healey, on the other hand, was an inspiring candidate. She was the surprise of the year.
SomervilleTom says
The only place I heard gender even discussed was from proponents of Martha Coakley. The candidate provided a long list of reasons to reject her, none of them including her gender. She didn’t lose to Scott Brown because of her gender nor did she lose to Charlie Baker because of her gender.
She lost to Charlie Baker because she drove away the Democratic base by trying to appeal to the “middle”, she lost the middle to Charlie Baker because she was virtually indistinguishable from him and voters in the middle are weary of Democrats, and she lost a little bit of everybody by banking on the Massachusetts Democratic Party brand — tarnished badly by years of scandal, gross mismanagement, and no discipline (beyond do-what-Bob-DeLeo-says).
Ted Kennedy was sent to Washington over and over because he clearly articulated and then acted on a passionate commitment to liberal Democratic vision, values, and priorities. His many personal failings were overlooked by his supporters because those failings were not relevant to his conduct of his office. The same was true of Bill Clinton.
Martha Coakley, even after YEARS of public service, did none of those things. She articulated no vision. Whatever values and priorities she demonstrated were only accidentally connected to those of Massachusetts Democrats. Her many failings (and in my view, there are a long list of them) were SOLELY focused on her conduct of her office (Fells Acre being just one of them).
Whatever the factors were the ended her political career, I reject the suggestion that sexism was a significant factor.
Peter Porcupine says
Look at poor Ed Markey, struggling along…
Bob Neer says
If he had been out-raised 2-1, don’t you think?
slapNtickle says
We need to go full Teddy Roosevelt, and fast, or the political landscape of this country will settle into a socially-liberal-Wall-Street(HRC) vs. Evangelical-fracking-and-Wal-Mart (Rand Paul) dynamic. All the glaring Bush-era problems with useless Democrats look to have returned.
ykozlov says
n/t
dasox1 says
no question about it. But, Baker won handily on the quality of his ads (not just the quantity). Her ads were not well conceived, or well-made. Moreover, great politicians are able to raise the money that’s needed—Warren, HRC, Obama. Cash chases great candidates. Coakley has to accept some responsibility for her own fundraising apparatus.
Peter Porcupine says
Every time she talked about her brother’s suicide and said ‘he had no place to go’, my immediate mental response was, ‘So where were YOU?’ I know that is not what she meant, but it is what most people heard.
dasox1 says
That is exactly what my very independent minded 80 year-old mother-in-law told me. “Why didn’t she help him?” If you run that ad, and that’s what people hear, you are wasting precious campaign resources.
Al says
the whole family might have tried to, and just failed? It happens, sometimes, no matter how hard you try.
Peter Porcupine says
But it was her choice of words that made it sound like she expected somebody else to take care of the problem. NOT talking about her actions or her family, not at all, but how it SOUNDED, the IMPRESSION it made, in repeated airings.
JimC says
I don’t know, Bob. We have all the infrastructure. Martha was on TV a lot. There’s almost uncountable in-kind donations called volunteering.
I heard yesterday that Thom Tillis holds a distinct honor this year: $32 million spent against him. He is now Senator-elect Tillis.
Which is not to say Citizens United didn’t have effects in a lot of places, but here? I just don’t know, and I’m reluctant to go there yet.
fredrichlariccia says
excuse my language, folks, but can we talk ?
Am I the only human on the planet that witnessed the death knell of democracy yesterday ? Our country is going to hell in a handbasket.
Senator Warren is right when she says the system is rigged and the Republicans rigged it. Wow have they ever. The Koch billions have now bought the best Congress and Governors money can buy. The oligarchs own
this country lock,stock and barrel and we are their bitches. So shut it, follow orders, suck it up and welcome to 1984.
We’re all on our own now. Stay healthy, don’t lose your job, and keep your head down.
As for me, I’m heading for the bunker.
Ciao,
Fred Rich LaRiccia
SomervilleTom says
I think we perpetuate a grave strategic error by ignoring the pervasive corruption that has badly damaged the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
When we so cavalierly dismiss multiple criminal convictions as “just patronage”, or “an out-of-control US Attorney”, and when we do absolutely NOTHING to address the perception that political corruption is rampant and widespread on Beacon Hill, then we reinforce the distrust of all those voters we work so hard to win over.
A certain level of plain old incompetence and bureaucratic paralysis is part of every large organization, including large government organizations. When a common thread that joins a long list of flagrant failures is that significant numbers of the perpetrators are spouses, nephews, nieces, children, in-laws, god-parents, and of course major donors, people notice.
The Massachusetts Democratic Party appears to work diligently NOT to notice.
Peter Porcupine says
…is that it is a PERCEPTION that there is rampant corruption on Beacon Hill.
It is a reality.
SomervilleTom says
I enthusiastically share your view that the perception of rampant corruption is absolutely real.
Nevertheless, there are those who have a different view. Even if the perceptions is an ugly mirage, the perception is what counts in politics.
The perception of rampant corruption within the Massachusetts Democratic Party is VERY real, and we paid a price for ignoring that perception.
Christopher says
…”corruption within the Massachusetts Democratic Party” from you I cringe, but probably because MDP means two different things to us. I think you mean within the Democratic legislative caucus or certain politicians with Ds after their names, which as we have discussed doesn’t say much about their actual positions or record. As a member of the Democratic State Committee I think of the MDP as being the institutional party and I think, what do you mean we’re corrupt? I don’t think members, officers, or staff of the DSC are corrupt and neither are the conventions, which are what constitute the Massachusetts Democratic Party in my mind.