Let’s think in terms of fundamentals: voter support, money on hand, money potential, organization, candidate skill/appeal, campaign skill/strategy. (Feel free to suggest any elements I’ve left out.)
Currently, Reilly leads in voter support, although the recent State House News poll is likely a major overstatement of his current lead, given that (1) it was taken before Reilly’s musical running mates/”I’m not a good politician” week from hell; and (2) it was taken before the news coverage of the caucuses and Patrick’s strong showing of the past few days.
At some point, polls do matter — polls within a couple of weeks of an election are usually fairly accurate. But we are more than seven months from the primary. Some portion of Reilly’s current lead — however big or small it will be in the next polls — is simple name recognition. Some may be more substantial than that.
You can buy name recognition of course, if you have money. Here again, Reilly has a significant present advantage, something like $3 million. How are we to evaluate this lead? How much of it came from money Reilly had accumulated from seven years as AG? How much was early “smart money” when Reilly appeared to be the only game in town for Dems? To the extent that Reilly’s money is of these two kinds, how much can be retapped over the next half year — and how much will stay on the sidelines or possibly go the other way?
For Patrick, how does he get enough money in the till to be able to be competitive in advertising? Given the deterioration of news coverage on mainstream outlets, it’s hard to get famous as a new politician just on free media. How applicable is the Howard Dean/Move On model of grassroots fundraising to Patrick? When, if ever, does his fundraising curve turn sharply up? Does he have national money potential that Reilly doesn’t that will help him close the gap?
On organization, Patrick clearly has something going on. For Reilly, the question is how much he really can count on mayors, legislators, and labor. There seem to be at least a respectable number of elected officials with Patrick already, and the events of the last week are not likely to send lots of pols who had been on the fence toward the AG. This is at least equally true of labor.
On candidate skill and appeal, we all have our biases and impressions. But if this is a fifteen round fight, can we agree that the challenger has shown surprising strength in the early rounds? At the same time, Reilly’s universally held to be a decent, public-spirited guy. People seem to like him and respect him even if they’re not wowed by him.
As to campaign skill/strategy, I have yet to see any brilliant moves by either side. At the risk of repeating what I’ve just said, the organizing skill of the Patrick people and the stumble over running mates by Reilly seem to be early indicators, but perhaps only that. We have a long way to go.
My assessment is that Patrick has made a race of this and that, if current trends continue, he will raise enough money to be competitive, have a better field organization, and be a skillful enough candidate not to succumb to rookie mistakes (we could not have known this last point six months ago, but now I think we do). I wouldn’t want to have to bet the farm on either one of them, but the odds against Patrick becoming the nominee have dropped substantially, and that may be an understatement.
What do you think?
I think that it would be a mistake to overestimate the power of the unions. I wish they were stronger, but their support has done very little for the past few elections.
Anyone who says that unions have done very little in the past few election cycles obviously hasn’t done much themselves. You must be sitting at your computer blogging too much. Because if you actually left your house to participate and actually attended any rally, door-knock effort, phone bank, stand-out, fundraiser, or any even remotely political activity over the past few election cycles you would have seen labor union leaders and members making up most of the participants. In 2004, Senate President Travaligni, Speaker DiMasi, and Chairman Johnston all acknowledged the absolutely critical role labor played in embarrassing the “Romney Republican Revolution” and helping the Dems gain 3 seats in the legislature. Ask any candidate who’s won a special election in the last few years whether they did it with or without labor. No one has won a special without significant help from labor. In particular, ask Senator John Kerry who won him New Hampshire – he’ll tell you it was organized labor from Massachusetts that worked with the folks in NH to put him over the top. Ask Senator Kerry about his 1996 re-election – all labor all the time to the rescue. Ask Senator Kennedy about his last tough re-elect in 1994 against Slick Willard. Labor again. As to gubernatorial elections, the only reason gubernatorial elections have been close, that is, the only reason Democrats haven’t gotten absolutely trounced in gubernatorial elections is because of labor. The Democratic Party would be nowhere without labor unions and our members, period. We’re the only thing keeping the Dems in the game. To say or believe otherwise is to unveil the real reason the Democratic gubernatorial candidates have struggled – cluelessness about what works and who works to get it done.
No need to be catty! Wow, you’re right… I haven’t worked on very many campaigns. But that has more to do with the fact that I’m 26 and half the time I’ve been of legal voting age I was living out of state for college.
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The fact of the matter is that we haven’t had a democratic governor in decades, in what is supposedly the most liberal state in the country. So we can all have our theories about what works and what doesn’t, but right now we’re talking about the gubernatorial campaign and the facts speak for themselves. What you claim to work obviously doesn’t, no matter how much you disparage my involvement.
No intention to be catty. My apologies. Just couldn’t let that misperception stay out there in the blogosphere. You are right, things have not been working, but they are not the things that labor has been doing. Again, labor has kept the Democratic side afloat. The candidates need to adjust their approach to bring themselves over the top.
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One note of clarification. No blanket statement can be made here or anywhere indicating that labor as a whole, a majority of labor, or even a significant portion of labor, has sided with either candidate for Governor. We have a very specific, well thought-out and intentional endorsement process, whereby candidates answer questionnaires, appear before central labor councils, are interviewed and have to make the rounds with local unions, area councils, and district councils asking for support. Some local unions have made endorsements, but they are overwhelmingly in the minority. Most unions are acting like voters, and waiting patiently, listening, and otherwise vetting the candidates to see who truly will be the best Governor for working families. Most labor delegates that were elected at Caucuses on Saturday were elected as Uncommitted or Neutral delegates. Certainly no one can say that labor won or lost at the Caucuses. Just to be clear.
And I did not mean to make it sound like I thought unions are inefecutal or lazy… I am wel laware that this is not the case and they they are great help to the candidates who they endorse. My point was not that we should ignore the presence of labor, or that their influence is negligable… I just meant that their influence should not be overemphasized. Labor is a great tool for democrats, but unfortunately the unions are no tenough to carry a race.
I’ll echo Scully9802’s “Anyone who says that unions have done very little in the past few election cycles obviously hasn’t done much themselves.”. The most powerful thing any endorsing organization can do for a campaign is send people to the campaign, and there are several unions that do this better than almost any other organization. I’ve never been on an SEIU-endorsed campaign without seeing a good number of SEIU people there, and the work hard. I’m convinced they’ve been worth a good percentage of votes on most of the campaigns I’ve been involved with in the past couple of years.
I for one was impressed with what the caucuses demonstrated in regards to Patrick’s field campaign. They seem to have a lot of talented people around the state. In different municipal and legislative races, I’ve seen how important that field effort can be on election day when used properly for GOTV (see Carl Sciortino over Vinny Ciampa for a key example).
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Of course, in a gubernatorial race, money, perception, and image will play a larger role than with smaller races. However, if Patrick takes this recent victory and uses it well, he should be able to raise a nice chunk of change from it.
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Personally, I think people are feeling put off by politics. This has been brought on largely by what they’re seeing on the national level. What’s going to get results is not platitudes and sound bites, but vision and ideas.
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Maybe it’s the optimist in me that wants this to be the case. The momentum is with Patrick for the moment, but it’s easily anyone’s race to win (or, for that matter, lose).
After yesterday’s caucus, I looked at the Boston Herald and the Globe’s sites (as well as WCVB and WBZ’s sites). There really wasn’t much coverage of the caucuses. If you wanted to find out results for individual caucuses, you couldn’t find them at the Globe — the best stuff I saw was here at BMG.
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Then today, most of the coverage seems not to be about Patrick but instead about Reilly, his stumble, and protestations of his residual strength, often backed up by words that aren’t quotations but written by the reporter.
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It seems to me that the local media believes that Reilly is the story and has a case of tunnel vision. And that the caucuses barely appear on their radar except as another minor, plot point in the predefined “Let’s watch the presumptive dem candidate get trounced — again.”
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Point me to other stuff, though — I’m happy to see something that refutes this thesis. It’ll be very interesting to see how it gets covered in the CNC weeklies and in the independent local papers when they come out next week. Maybe the folks closer to the ground will have better coverage, or maybe more stories about the caucuses will appear in the major dailies later on. Shrug.
but I can’t. I think the campaigns themselves are still sorting out the numbers, so that may be part of the problem. As of now, though, our caucus open thread is the best source I know of.
why not, right?
If you look at NOT the cash on hand but funds raised since last year – you see Patrick has the upperhand both in dollar volume and WAY far superior numbers of donors (over 8000 individual donors) – That’s HUGE.
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Patrick raised more last year from April till Dec 31 than Reilly did ALL year.
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He outraised him in January $325,000 to $200,000.
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It doesn’t take a cray computer to see where this is heading. It doesn’t even take a 6th grader….
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After the debacles Reilly has had in the last 10 days – you can bet that a LOT of Reilly people are going to make sure they double up and get on the Patrick bandwagon with $$$ and some level of support be it promises of phone banks, etc….
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As Deval said last week at a fundraiser – “It’s never to late to be an early endorser (donor)”
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I think you’ll see Deval pull way ahead now and at some point when Reilly sees the incoming $$ trickle way down – well he’ll jump out and leave it all to Deval.
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There won’t be any others jumping in either – in my humble opinion. Coakley? Nope. Kennedy? Give me a break! After the caucuses yesterday though, Kennedy might win a selectman’s seat in Paxton. Galvin? Nuhuh. $19,000 trip-man Capuano? Buhbye!
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They’d risk alienating a LOT LOT LOT of people whose help they may need down the road in other races to be run – and won.
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Who’ll be the next Congressman to jump on the Patrick bandwagon? Makes McGovern looks smarter every day (not that that guy could BE any smarter mind you!) đŸ™‚
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That’s my take.
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Anyone?
…so I have no idea what your saying when you write, “If you look at NOT the cash on hand but funds raised since last year – you see Patrick has the upperhand both in dollar volume…”
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That is just not true. In ’05 Patrick raised $1,485,000 (not including the $300,000 Patrick gave himself) compared Reilly’s $2,056,209. Yes Patick has been out pacing Reilly in the last couple of months and that is very encouraging. But Patrick’s campaign just seems to be burning a hole in its pocket with continued expenses that prevent it from building up a media fund for the last few weeks of the primary, never mind having money to compete in the Healy and Mihos atmosphere. That is a problem that needs to be figured out, whether Bill Clinton does a ten city fundraising tour (not a reality based suggestion) or Deval does have the rumored wealth to kick-in major doe.
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Yes, Patrick has had a great weekend and things look up. But this is about round two of a fifteen round battle. Reilly still has impressive fundraisers (Alan Solomont (sp) and Steve Grossman, among others) and they will regroup and comeback fighting.
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I must say,I see some parallels between the way Patrick people are high-fiving each other and the way Deaniacs behaved in the fall of 2003 and we all know how that ended.
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Keep focused. Be humble. Continue to work hard. It is only the beginning.
Wayne,
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Frank is right on. Continuing to outpace Reilly by $125,000 per month through the primaries will only bring Deval $825,000 closer, which will still leave him well over a million behind.
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What is most interesting to me is the probability of the Massachusetts Democratic Party supporting Deval. What sort of financial impact will that have on the Patrick campaign over the summer if and when he wins at the June convention?
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Money is power in politics and Reilly has enough right now to overcome his horrific week.
The party’s support, in and of itself, will have minimal financial impact, IMO. I haven’t seen the state party do any effective fundraising for any of its candidates in recent years, since I got involved. Organizations like MassEquality and SEIU are far more effective, when they ask their members to support a campaign. Victory at the state convention could have an indirect impact on fundraising, because of its political import: It will show the campaign as having significant support. But it won’t be the actions of the state party that raise much money for either candidate, sadly.
I dont know where you find Reilly “has the voters support”. Please link us to that. In matter of fact in the caucuses, yes plural,I attended there were “reilly” delegates that admited they would be his delegates until released that DID NOT MAKE IT. Patrick supporters were suprised to win delegates but not as suprised as the Reilly slates the were denied. There were also Reily delegates that are already pprepared to flip. Money is a big problem, but im betting my red whit and blue donkey Deval Patrick raises more between no and the convention that Reilly. So, Tom can spend his warchest on what?????? Bashing Patrick/ Raising name recognition? Convincing the public he is not an Irish chooch???? Patrick is going to win this one door at a time and 1 dollar at a time and it is all over for Mr. Tom Reilly…. If he truly is not political he should just leave this race and wait for something else to open up.
As I said, the polls at this point mostly measure name recognition. And the polls we have are now out of date. But the only polls we have show a sizable horse-race lead for Reilly against Patrick, most recently the State House News survey taken a week to ten days ago. The latest data we have, imperfect as it is, shows a lead in voter support for Reilly. Right?
Not really. As I said in another thread, polls this early that try to measure which candidate voters support, can’t be usefully interpreted. If you want to measure name recognition, ask that directly. Right now, most voters haven’t tuned in, and don’t “support” anyone. Some of them have heard of one or both candidates, and are perhaps aware that they’re running for governor, but even those may be in the minority so far. As for the even smaller minority of voters who actually care and pay attention this early on – I think the caucuses are a fairly good representation of who they support. They’re the ones who will need to do the work to reach the rest. For now, we really don’t know who the rest will support.
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I’d like to see a poll that simply asked, “who would you vote for if the election were today?”, without naming any candidates. And took a “maybe” or “probably” at face value, without trying to push people towards an answer. I think if we had such a poll today, the total number of solid Reilly and solid Patrick voters, added together, would be less than 20%. Maybe even less than 10%. “I don’t know who’s running” would win a solid majority.
We agree that early polls are extremely soft. But the press, many potential donors, and lots of citizens/voters do look at polling numbers in assessing what to cover/write, whether to donate, and whether a candidate is viable.
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If/when Patrick gets a lot closer to Reilly in polls, he’ll start getting treated more seriously by the press, his money flow will improve, and more people will get to know him and possibly become supporters. I think this is going to happen soon. But if we don’t see it happening, that would mean trouble for Patrick.
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This process can happen very quickly — see Kerry’s numbers in New Hampshire two years ago. (And yes, the most important mover of Kerry’s numbers in New Hampshire was his stunning win in — duh — the caucuses in Iowa. Note that the Iowa caucuses did get a lot more coverage than last weekend’s Massachusetts caucuses have.)
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At some point, if candidates’ poll numbers don’t move up, they fail to generate publicity, money, and votes. Maybe you want to call this something different that “voter support,” but voter support is what polling numbers serve as a proxy for until people actually vote.
Sure, the media pay attention to polls. Sure, polls can help or hurt with fundraising. That’s not what we were talking about.
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These polls are too early to measure “voter support”. We don’t know anything about “voter support” yet. That’s all I said, and I stand by it.
I have to disagree with the notion that “lots of citizens/voters do look at polling numbers in assessing what to cover/write, whether to donate, and whether a candidate is viable. ” Lots of us.( us meaning political junkies, activists whatever you want to call us) look at the numbers and know whether they are junk or not, and what part of the numbers mean anything. Mr and Mrs average voter could care less, have know idea what it is they mean or what we are even talking about. I remember not too long ago there was a poll showing Reilly slipping to Romney. No one I know outside of the political loop even knew or cared.
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IMHO the voters, registered democrats that came out in droves to elect DP delegates is a better indicator of voter support at this time than any poll.
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I think those of us braving the cold and snow canvassing in NH may have helped moving those poll #’s for JK.
Remember, despite all the press coverage surrounding Reilly’s LG choosing mishaps, some people were not paying attention. Though we are all very informed, the majority of MA voters are not. On caucus day I met a sweet old lady, who is still a Reilly supportor and didn’t really know about the past week’s events. She also had no clue who Deval Patrick was.
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Frank is right on with his analysis .I hate to burst the bubble of the Patrick supporters but the chances of making any dramatic headway in this state are zero. Also,it is difficult to claim a victory when you don’t have an opponent. Reilly had his 15% on the table before it started , never spent any time in the caucuses, and still has his $4,000,000 in the bank.
Patrick has now a track record of almost a 100% burn rate on his campaign funds to reach this point . But, it all may be a waste of good money because based on the state house poll last week he is still virtually unknown.
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It is also interesting if you read the poll in depth it quantifies the issue that concerns voters the most, which has nothing to do with Reilly or his problems.Taxes are the voters most serious concern . Patrick has already committed to raise taxes.
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I don’t understand all the excitement but I am also not a progressive so that may explain it. Taxes are death in this state and anyone who supports raising taxes in any way shape or form is not going to win.
Massachusetts is starved for funds. Communities have been cutting back services for years and now that the economy seems to be turning around everyone’s incredibly quick to jump on the “cut taxes” bandwagon (I’m not saying that’s necessarily your opinion, rightmiddleleft, but it seems to be what you’re saying about the majority of voters.)
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I remember a few years ago when the Republican governor of Alabama put a referendum before the voters to raise taxes in a specific effort to increase funding for public schools. The voters overwhelmingly defeated it and Alabama continues to have one of the lowest-performing public school systems in the country.
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Every politician is willing to give lip service to education (and adequately funded police, firefighters, libraries, public works, etc) but few are willing to put their political capital on the line to make it happen. Every voter will talk about how education or healthcare are on the top of their list of concerns for the state, but then they vote for the person who will save them $100 at the end of the year.
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I’d like to think that strong leadership can have an impact in reversing this trend, but I don’t honestly know. In my eyes Patrick is showing that leadership by saying that now is not the time to cut taxes. If he’s chastised for it, then the voters get the underfunded state that they asked for, but I’m still holding out hope.
“Reilly had his 15% on the table before it started”
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Just wondering how you figure that? Was he counting on the ex-officios? And if so, has he gotten their endorsements in writing? Elected officials aren’t always reliable. They do like to back a winner.
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I think humility and skepticism are a good thing. I just don’t see any way you can see what happened yesterday as anything but a true revolution in Democratic politics in this state.
And Reilly’s been around for a while, yeah he could rely on getting more than 15% just through his network. Lowell went entirely Reilly because he used to work up here and Sen Panagiotakos is supporting him. However, he’s had bad press this week and if/when the convention goes Patrick that will generate a lot of headlines with Patrick’s name in them. So just like everything else at this point it boils down to we’ll see what happens.
That should be “almost entirely Reilly,” thank you very much. DP folks actually managed to score a few seats up here!
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đŸ˜‰
Where and when did Patrick commit to raising taxes? I thought that he did not want to roll-back the present rate.
He did tell the Mass Municipal Association that he supported the local option meals tax that they’ve been pushing, but it would need local legislative approval. The meals tax was 8% in the 80’s and is 5% now. Money all goes to the state.
Two can be found in his health care plan. One is for increasing the tobacco tax and another is the employer mandated “assessment” for employers with 10 or more employees that do not offer health care. The third “tax” is advocating that cities and towns can impose local food, hotel and other taxes.
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Argue all you want about whether they are a good idea from a policy point of view. But for a candidate to advocate any hint on increased or new taxes and you’re in BIG trouble.
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And who can forget Deval’s “no unnecessary tax pledge” very early in the campaign.
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Trouble ahead, trouble behind…
So what’s a good Dem to do? Take a Manchester Union Leader-like “no new taxes” pledge and give up on the idea that state government can do much more than pay for Medicaid and local aid? Or take the pledge with your fingers crossed and change your mind once you fool the people into electing you?
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No. The thing to do is to level with people, treat them like grown-ups, and offer intelligent choices like taxes to pay for expanded health care and local option taxes to give cities and towns more breathing room.
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The idea that the no-tax candidate always beats the maybe-some-taxes candidate is wrong. It’s a challenge, to be sure, and it requires a skillful, trustworthy candidate. But what is the alternative?
I’m not suggesting Patrick take a silly “no new tax pledge”. Just take the same position Mitt took 4 years ago…which was something like this “I’ll try like hell not to raise taxes” Patrick should be saying…”we have real fiscal issues (in this case skyrocketing local costs and a weak state infrastruture) and we need to innovate and show the people of the state that we are doing everything to invest in people and services wisely.” He needs to resell government to a lot people brainwashed by the conseratives.
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SOMETIMES I hear Deval say that. But most of the time I hear passionate progressive goobly gook that Republican consultants turn into code words and many folks hear “watch your wallets”.
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Any time you try to “explain” something during the last week of a campaign–when the masses are finally paying attention–you lose momentum. And unless your up by many points at that time–you usually lose.
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I’m sorry, but everytime I bring up Deval and taxes, people post that if we explain the reality of the spending issues, about how a health care tax will save money in the long run, about how increased state taxes will lower the more regressive property tax, blah, blah, blah…
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EXPLAINING WON’T WORK IN A CAMPAIGN! It may work for an incumbent who has more time and less commericals attacking them. Also they have time to prove what they say is true.
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This is a reality based site and the reality is that during a relatively short campaing period, reality is hard to find.
Clearly you’re right about not being in a defensive, “I can explain” position. But can a candidate come out for the House version of health care reform, since it involves a tax? Can a candidate be in favor of restoring the federal tax on oil and chemical companies under Superfund?
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Your counsel seems to be for Patrick to duck talking about taxes at all. But he’ll still have Reilly (and if he gets that far, Healey) saying that they’ll absolutely cut your taxes and that Patrick, therefore, is on record wanting to take more out of your wallet. That will provide enough “reality” for an opponent to advertise on it and paint him as the high tax candidate.
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I’m not in favor of a Mondale 1984-style pledge to raise peoples’ taxes. And your point about the need to build back the public’s willingness to trust government is well taken. I think it’s worth considering, though, that for some swing voters there may be benefit to speaking less coyly and more forthrightly than Mitt did in 2002.
One could always come back with something along the lines of: “Well, Reilly/Healey will also increase your taxes — your property taxes — but they don’t even have the decency to tell you so!”
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I don’t see DP playing this game; probably something more along the lines of “investing responsibly in our communities.”
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I don’t know if that message will resonate with voters, but I think most people are tired of high property taxes, underfunded schools, police forces, fire departments, crappy roads, unsafe bridges, etc., etc., etc.
Reilly has thus far ran a really, really sucky campaign and all the money in the world will not save his campaign unless he steps up and is 1000 times better in the future.
Congratulations to the DP campaign and its grass-roots supporters, all of whom did great field work in preparation for yesterday’s caucuses.
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Say, did the Boston Herald print an article on DP’s triumphant victory in yesterday’s caucuses?
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If it did, I must have missed it.
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And, I guess I missed the useless local TV news’s coverage of DP’s caucus victory.
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So, let’s stop the inside-baseball shop-talk, and look at both the past and the road ahead.
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Reilly’s had a terrible week. And, the people who are supplying Reilly’s talking points this past week are doing him a disservice, or else he’s ad-libbing, and doing a bad job of it.
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“I’m not good at politics”?
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“I’m running against the Democratic establishment with my support for the MCAS tests and charter schools”?
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What Reilly should have said, after his disappointing caucus showing, was that he has a lot of work to do in communicating to the base and organizing the state party’s grass roots, and that he’s going to work hard in the months ahead to connect with the state’s Democrats, as well as with independent swing-voters.
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Period.
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But, bottom line, it’s February. And, Reilly will recover from this past week’s messaging missteps.
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And, he’ll keep on raising lots and lots of money.
… nor will it be.
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He is running to the center and assuming he will win the Democratic nomination. He is thinking ahead to the general election, and planning on grabbing Massachusetts independent voters, as you mentioned. But he will be sacrificing the state’s “grassroots” (read: liberal wing of the liberal party) in order to do it.
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That strategy is based on good numbers, the Karl Rove way. There are 2 million independent voters in Massachusetts, 1.5 million registered Democrats, and about 500,000 Republicans.
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Here’s the important shorthand in terms of political strategy for these two guys: Tom Reilly = Bill Clinton, Deval Patrick = Barack Obama.
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Don’t get confused with the personalities, for Reilly obviously has little in common with Clinton (although Deval is very similar to Obama). Strictly political strategy.
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If Christy Mihos joins the general election, he, Healey, and Reilly will be fighting over the same votes and the “grassroots” of the Democratic Party won’t know what to do.
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There’s nothing inherantly wrong with either strategy. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. I worry that if Reilly is the Democratic nominee, then the Dems could lose the corner office altogether. I worry that if Deval is the Democratic nominee, Mass. voters will rush away from the left like the rest of the country has been doing over the last decade.
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It’s going to be an incredibly interesting campaign, though.
(CAVEAT: The following is based purely on anecdotal evidence and limited to small sample sizes.)
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I think that Patrick has more crossover appeal than people give him credit for. Based on my own personal experience and from what I’ve heard from others, DP does seem to be attracting some attention from ostensibly conservative voters.
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We have a normally conservative radio talk show host in Lowell upon whom DP made a favorable impression; we have staunch Republican family members and co-workers who are willing to give DP a look-see simply because the other options (Reilly and Healey primarily, but also Mihos) are simply so unappealing.
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Now whether this initial interest will hold and translate into votes is another matter altogether, but at this early stage it does suggest that Patrick’s appeal extends well beyond the “liberal wing of the liberal party.”
Tim implied in your arguement is that people will take the time to get to know Deval. This goes back to a past conversation we had…if the election is close it will be decided by the ten perecent of the electorate who are the least engaged. I do worry that not enough people will block out the clutter of a campaign (negative ads) and be able to each candidate a valid “look-see”.
I won’t claim to be familiar with the specifics of Sen. Obama’s successful campaign in Illinois, but I think that the comparison between him and Patrick is very apt. Obama clearly energized the progressives within the Democratic party, but the key to his victory was being able to reach out to disaffected Republicans and independents. If Patrick is able to accomplish the same, he should do very well.
… but for different reasons. The key to Obama’s victory was defying expectations to win the primary. The wave of publicity and jubilation from that carried him into a general election where nobody from the Republican side wanted to run against him. The candidate eventually chosen had no chance, and Obama’s overwhelming win in the general was no surprise. But his primary win, against two establishment Democrats who were expected to compete only with each other (leaving Obama a distant third) truly was key to setting up that situation. Disaffected Republicans and independents were probably not a big part of his winning the primary đŸ™‚
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I can see some analogy between that and how Patrick’s campaign might play out. And I don’t dispute that Obama had a lot of appeal to people voters outside the Democratic base, just that by the time that mattered, it didn’t matter very much.
Obviously you were paying closer attention than I was!
How does DP (and the democratic party) avoid the following scenario:
DP wins a tough primary during which he’s frequently characterized by Reilly as a crazy lefty. The Republicans take over the charge for the general and convince a large bloc of independents that DP will tax and spend them into oblivion (because that’s what crazy lefties do). Though he has a very solid base, DP fails to win over the indies and more conservative dems who either don’t vote or who vote for the person that they see as being more fiscally conservative.
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I know who I want for Governor. I’m just afraid that if we don’t think past the primary then we may win in September at the cost of November.
In personality, Patrick actually reminds me more of Clinton than Obama, FWIW.