… and that sounds about right from this vantage point.
- Jay Fitzgerald at Hub Blog: “I talked to a few moderate friends yesterday, both of whom said they were voting for Patrick. The reason cited is they’re tired of Mitt — and they mentioned Paul and Jane as well. All I could do was nod in agreement about the malaise. How can you get excited about voting for more mediocrity? Healey may keep jabbing and chipping away at Deval’s lead. But she’s really only running another ‘against’ campaign, not a ‘for’ campaign. … For more Mitt, Paul and Jane? Try to get around that one. … “
- Well-known lefty Kool-Aid drinker Jim Rappaport: “Patricks lead is overwhelming and Healey needs to do more than latch onto this lapse to change the dynamics of the race. Every day that passes without her making significant inroads into his lead, is another day closer to Patrick being elected governor.”
- And, caught briefly on Jon Keller’s show yesterday morning, WBZ’s Paul Sullivan and John Henning, calling this a normal bump in the course of a campaign — as well as Keller himself, as noted previously.
Incidentally, Keller has results of a quickie poll: most folks (59%) say the LaGuer business will hurt Patrick’s campaign. Well heck, put me in the 59% of that. It will hurt. Does it keep him out of the corner office? Doubt it. But I’ll be interested to see the next round of polls. Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with down the stretch.
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…way to much of a nice day for that. The Fitzgerald quote above best captures my sense (Kerry is against things not for anything). But the LaGuer impact should be getting a second, and maybe stronger, echo, I assume, with an even more nastier ad from Healey’s camp. If that happens, I’ve been advocating for a strong ad from Deval–much along the lines of Ted Kennedy’s attack this weekend.
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Last week, polls showed a 20-25 point lead. Thinking best case for Healey, the killer cop ad and the first wave of LaGuer brings that low end to 15 points in polls this week. They launch a round of “Deval lied” spots and maybe they hope to drive Deval’s lead below 10 points. They get a one-on-one debate and Kerry holds her own, or better–all of a sudden the base is energized and they push the ball over the goal line in the last seconds of the game.
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Not a likely scenario and there are a lot of problems with the assumptions (like Deval will waste Kerry if they go one-on-one in a debate). But why take a chance. If Healey goes super negative with a round of “Deval lied” ads, I hope they counter it in a strong–but Deval-like way.
I think it’s actually possible that Deval’s only up 10 this week. But, take that to mean that he’s up ten his worst week. You can’t have a LaGuer week every week, so we only have one way to go, up.
Yeah, I expect that the lead will be somewhere between 10-15 points this week. Still pretty damn good, but the new media meme will be “HEALEY SURGES!!!” Technically true … but irrelevant.
And use it to good effect.
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