Yikes. From Public Policy Polling — no numbers yet, but remember, this is not Rasmussen, which tends to slant Republican:
This has become a losable race for Democrats- but it could also be easily winnable if Coakley gets her act together for the last week of the campaign. Complacency is the Democrats’ biggest enemy at this point and something that needs to be overcome to avoid a potential disaster.
Let’s just be obvious about this: Scott Brown has absolutely no business being in the same area code as Martha Coakley. Not to be too personal (we’ve met, he’s nice), but ideologically, he is a predictable George W. Bush Republican — (pro-torture, anti-health care, etc.), as much of a breath of fresh air as a high school locker room.
Unfortunately this results from a heretofore dull, lackluster campaign from Coakley. What her campaign needs, and has sorely lacked for months, is a strong raison d’etre, an animating passion, a sense of compassion for real people and some drive for something other than a job promotion … dammit, something Kennedy-esque. A teaspoon of that would be most welcome.
should be worrying to you all going into this election:
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p>http://www.boston.com/news/loc…
that said their overall polling results were around 1% off from actual election results. I recall rasmussen being around 4-5% off in this graph.
in in that link, actually haha. Easy!
ssia
Coakley has done nothing but feed off the public trough while Scotty was a military aviator. Scott raised a successful daughter who can play hoops ( BC) and belt out lyrics like no other kid around here, where is Coakley;s family? Crickets please. Coakley locks people up that didnt do the crime ( Fells Acres) and then protect BIG BUISNESS Bechtel while crushing a mom and pop shop from NY that makes glue that union guys couldnt figure out how to use – one too many coffee break. Martha turns a blind eye to Tommy capo regime Keneavey when his is caught wiping out emails/hard rives and we are supposed to trust her in Washington? No thanks I will take military veteran/family man over her anyday!
Your poorly-constructed post is hogwash.
…if he were in the military isn’t he also “feeding off the the public trough”? Not that it’s a bad thing, but just pointing out the discrepancy.
It’s pretty hard to deny the import of info like this:
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p>I mean, that’s pretty compelling stuff, the daughter playing hoops an’ all…and that part about singing song lyrics…you’d be hard pressed to argue against those qualifications.
He also loves Mass public schools so much he sent her to Noble & Greenough. It’s probably why he votes to cut education budgets.
Coakely is much much better than Brown, but if she wins, we may be stuck with her for decades. If Brown wins, he’ll be quite defeatable in 2012, and we can hopefully nominate someone good that time.
at this point. I expect to see a primary challenge two years from now. Coakley makes a horrible candidate. She’s deadly dull, doesn’t connect with people, speaks an inarticulate legalese and is way too passive. She won the primary by getting out early (too early if you ask me) and with statewide name recognition. If she would actually go after tea party favorite Brown she might win.
As an incumbent, she won’t need to be a great campaigner, because she’ll no longer need to make the case for herself as much as her challengers will need to make the case that she shouldn’t be Senator. In a Democratic primary, that’ll be very difficult to do because most voters will agree with her on so many important policy positions. Her statewide name recognition will, of course, be even greater when she’s been serving as our US Senator for a couple of years. Even if a challenger is both a better choice for Senator and a better campaigner then her, they’d still have a very very tough time getting anywhere.
Cos. Obama supporters are telling us they’ll support Scott Brown this time because it’s a short two year term and they want to send a message to the President to get back on track with his promised agenda. Ironic, because many Independents also want to send a message to Washington by voting for Brown too. I suspect it’s the same medium to send two very different messages.
You’ll forgive me if I find that just a tad hard to believe. 😀
I know that I, as a Scott Brown supporter, will have limited credibility on these pages, but it’s true. People are very, very angry with the Massachusetts and Washington establishments right now.
They may stay home, which won’t be great for Coakley, but they will not give a vote to someone who is against a public option in principle.
We elect a Senator to do actual legislative work, and to vote on things that matter. It’s not a “message”, it’s a real legislator in an important position. I don’t know about you, but I can think of many other ways to “send a message” that don’t involve supporting someone who will vote against almost everything I want in the senate.
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p>My dissatisfaction with Coakley is strong. I very much do not want her as a Senator. But I highly doubt that anyone who shares my views, or the attitude I expressed in that comment, is going to support Brown. I mean, sure, Coakley supported the Patriot Act and has shown a tendency to favor harsh punishment and neglect civil liberties and doesn’t mind sending innocent people to jail or having corrupt prosecutorial practices, and opposes easing the war on drugs… but hey, doesn’t Scott Brown support the Patriot Act even more, and avocates in favor of blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional extra-legal judicial proceedings and allowing the executive branch to declare people guilty without a trial? Doesn’t he also favor the drug war, and doesn’t seem to mind torture?
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p>And then there are all those other things, like war and peace, equal rights for women and lgbt people, health care, the economy … all things on which Brown is horrible.
Those of us who pushed for Mike Capuano tried to tell you that this was coming. Martha Coakley’s insider politics were good enough to win a special mostly-local primary. They might not be good enough to beat the national GOP smear-machine when our candidate has all the passion of, well, a career prosecutor.
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p>The Beacon Hill and City Hall Democratic machine might well get a licking as payback for its arrogant treatment of the rest of us. We can only hope that if Martha Coakley loses this election, we can find a more Senatorial candidate to run in 2012.
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p>Meanwhile, a similar quandary might well be shaping up in the Gubernatorial race.
He would be taking every one of Brown’s attack on the ‘Democrat’ party and wiping the floor with them. He would have also chewed him up and spit him out in the debates. Poor wittle Scotty would have freaked at being treated so indelicately.
Capuano would have made a far better candidate, although Coakley is finally (in last night’s debate) showing some spirit.
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p>But Scott Brown is dangerous – like the rest of the Republicans today, he clearly only cares about the top 1% wealthiest Americans. As Ed Muskie once said, anyone who is not in that category and votes for these Republicans is “voting against themselves.”
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p>Brown’s contempt for American values show in his attacks on how Obama has handled the Christmas day attempted bombing (never mind that Bush handled Richard Reid pretty much the same way, except that Obama spoke about it earlier, more often, and more forcefully).
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p>Having chastised Republicans so harshly, let me add that I feel we need a sane and reasonable opposition party. In the past, I have voted for some Republicans, such as Ed Brooke and Elliott Richardson. That was in the day when the Republican party supported traditional conservative values, and had not been taken over by right wing anti-science, anti-Constitution fanatics.
This is voter backlash. Confuse the two and there’s tons more elections to lose.
I call a $400K ad buy from the American Future Fund a canonical example of the rightwing smear machine at work.
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p>Never heard of them? Here is some more information about them (emphasis mine):
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p>Yes, there is voter anger and backlash. That’s why these kind of smear campaigns are so despicable. Unscrupulous purveyors who are “careless with the truth” play on the genuine pain and anger of people being crushed by the consequences of REPUBLICAN economics, and — surprise surprise — the poll numbers shift.
Of course Mr. Brown distances himself from the sh*t-slingers — so what.
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p>I suppose, of course, you might attempt to make the argument that the Willie Horton and Swiftboat campaigns weren’t smears. Be my guest.
Coakley would be absolutely rocking the polls. Suuuure.
Well, Joe, let’s see what you make of the tactics reported by Stephanie Ebbert this morning (emphasis mine):
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p>Showers of attention from Sean Hannity and his ilk? Courting Tea Party protestors? An ad campaign from the friendly folks who brought you Willie Horton and Swiftboat?
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p>Sure looks like the smear machine cranking up to me.
How many people do you know who went to those protests? I know a lot, and none of them are outrageous bigots who are out to kill america like some people around here seem to think. Are we suddenly to ignore an entire part of the electorate because you guys have a fun new label for them?
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p>Should he avoid Sean Hannity because he’s a conservative? Did Rachel Maddow offer the guy an interview and he refused?
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p>Fact is, Tom, that the smear machine can say anything, but that won’t change the fact that the people are pissed over healthcare and are going to single-issue vote the daylights out of it.
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p>If Brown gets elected and the progressives go DAMN THOSE TEABAGGERS! then you seriously run the risk of alienating the independents with the holier-than-thou starbucks-style liberalsm.
I originally wrote:
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p>You responded:
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p>When I show that the national GOP smear-machine is, in fact, kicking in — and show that Scott Brown is, in fact, tacking to the right like
Mitt Romneya good rightwing doobee, you change your tune to tell us how shiny and bright the cogs of the smear machine really are.<
p>The fact is that the smear machine is designed to emit lies, distortions, half-truths, and anything else its operators think will swing angry and disillusioned voters.
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p>The dishonesty is, of course, essential because so many of the causes of that anger and disillusionment are the failed policies of those same operators.
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p>I don’t know whether Rachel Maddow offered him an interview or not. If he has even an ounce of gray-matter (and that remains to be seen), he’d refuse the interview. Rachel Maddow frequently has rightwingers on her shoe — she is very good at interviewing them courteously and at length, and letting them hang themselves with their own words. How often does Sean Hannity invite a liberal, and what sort of treatment does that guest receive?
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p>The fact about the health care bill is that people are pissed because the GOP stripped the provisions most people want. That’s something that the smear machine won’t admit, because it’s too busy propagating lies about “death panels”.
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p>Some of us can differentiate between objecting to outright lies and “holier-than-thou starbucks-style liberalism”. Some of us, apparently, cannot.
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p>It sounds like you liked the Willie Horton and Swiftboat pieces after all.