That's the line David quipped to me as I got out of the car, coming back from the Coakley event tonight. There's no humor like gallows humor.
We collared Alan Khazei for a minute in the ballroom. Uncle Alan, give us the good word! Do you have any advice for progressives who are about to throw themselves off the Tobin Bridge? “We have to not read too much into this. It's a special election,” What do we have to do to get out front of this wave? Khazei says emphatically, jobs. And the Dems have to get away from the special interests.
Yup. My little insight is that this is 1994 in miniature. It's a consequence of the Democrats' failure to pass health care (for instance) without a handful of Senators making hamburger out of it. The Ben Nelson Medicaid hustle was the most shameless shenanigan. But if they had passed it in August … never woulda happened.
Anyway, it's a wake-up call, definitely. We gotta suck up this medicine, folks. I don't have time to be bitter. I don't take it personally. People elect Democrats for a reason, and when they don't deliver … this is what happens.
This is also what happens when a race is taken for granted. Martha Coakley is guilty of that. I am definitely guilty of that. I think most Dems, most in the media … hell, everyone. Any conservatives out there can take comfort in the fact that we here are utterly stunned. Stunned. And we will never be complacent again. Count on it.
Mitt Romney is on, congratulating Scott Brown. Brown's approval ratings just dipped 20%. And by 2012 he will be marmalade on toast. We will assure that.
Update: Scott Brown just said that he ran a “clean, upbeat, issues-based campaign.” I think he's wrong about every issue, but that is substantially true. His campaign was a thing to be admired for its craft. His ads were mostly terrific. He stayed on message and spoke clearly, if repetitively. Respect is given.
david says
I thought it was “well, better luck next time.”
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p>Either way, yeah. Gallows humor.
charley-on-the-mta says
I changed it.
amberpaw says
Yes, it is true. Lets see what he posts on RMG.
hoyapaul says
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p>I agree completely. But as Brown is going to find out — just like Obama and every other politican finds out — governing is a lot harder than campaigning.
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p>If Brown becomes a conservative Republican robot down along with the other D.C. Republicans — something I strongly suspect will happen — then he doesn’t stand a chance in the presidential year. We’ll see if he decides to vote from the center or instead go along with his D.C. Republican colleagues.
nopolitician says
There’s no way Brown is going to break with the Republican leadership in the senate. No way.
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p>That means that every single Brown vote must be broadcast across the commonwealth. When he votes against the Employee Free Choice Act, people need to know that Scott Brown voted against unions. When he votes against extending unemployment, people need to know that Scott Brown wants to throw then on the streets.
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p>When he votes to limit abortion, people must know this. When he votes to ban gay marriage, people must know this.
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p>His simplistic message of “I’m going to cut your taxes and block health care” can’t stand. He will not have time to develop his own message — he will be too busy learning the job, and he won’t have the same national backing in the general election.
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p>His next election is in less than 36 months. Campaigning against him needs to start now. Let the people know what Brown is about. We’re not going to win over the Howie Carr listeners, we need to win back the Obama voters.
hoyapaul says
The video clips of him saying things like “I will be an independent voice in the Senate” will look nice with a big, red “Voted with the D.C. Republicans 90% of the time” plastered next to it.
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p>Of course, maybe Brown will tack to the center. It’s his choice.
billxi says
Sorry folks, I’m trying to be a gracious winner. This is a post I made a while ago.
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p>Congratulations Governor Patrick (3.00 / 3)
Your plan to cut Personal Care Attendant hours may not bode well for the clients and the PCA’s, but at least it will hurt you too. That is fairness!
You see, if you cut PCA hours, a great number of them will stop working as PCA’s. They stop working, they stop paying union dues to the SEIU. The SEIU sees a drop in revenue, they stop giving money to your re-election campaign.
The clients lose needed care. The PCA’s lose income. The state loses a bunch in payroll taxes. The SEIU loses dues income. You lose re-election. See, everybody loses. That is certainly fair.
But not me, I receive 20 hours a week, so I’m good.
Do you folks want to tell me you’re not Social Darwinists again?
______________________________________
by: billxi @ Sun Nov 15, 2009 at 12:02:13 PM EST
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p>Please, tell me about unions? Your union leadership is screwing you blind. my two Personal Care Attendants are SEIU members.
jgingloucester says
sigh…. The Democrats lost this tonight by not having the courage of our own convictions…. when a guy who’s slogan is “gas up the truck” becomes our Senator, we’ve hit rock bottom — What it shows is that the D’s have lost their heart… time to get it back.
progressiveman says
…will be happy that the big smiling face on their victory was Mitt Romney? Change you can believe in?
nopolitician says
I think that if Romney got the nomination instead of McCain, we’d be looking at our first Mormon president.
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p>Romney has the economy talking points down pat. He channels Reagan when it comes to that. “If we cut taxes, we will see more jobs created AND get more in tax receipts”.
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p>We know he’s a fraud, but the rest of the country does not. All they see is a successful businessman who has a killer smile and witty responses to just about anything.
petr says
… that a lot of Brown supporters were surprised to see Romney at the victory party. Pretty savvy of Brown not to roll him out until then. Would have undone all his ‘craft’.
jumbowonk says
Anyone else think this is a possibility? He seems like a good candidate to do it, especially since it’s a regular election. I could see Capuano doing it, too, but since it’s a regular election, he’d have to give up his House seat. It definitely won’t be Coakley. She’s toast.
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p>Anyone want to start an effort to draft Alan Khazei?
charley-on-the-mta says
nt!!
dcsurfer says
You say he says “the Dems have to get away from the special interests.”
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p>Are those gay marriage and emergency contraception and abortion rights, things like that? Even if that’s not what Khazei was referring to, it should be noted that the Democratic winner in NY-23, and the Democratic winner of the Presidential election, threw gay marriage under the bus and hit the accelerator.
jumbowonk says
During the primary, Khazei (and, to an extent, Pags) set himself apart by not taking money from PACs and lobbyists. He believes that the PACs and lobbyists are destroying Washington. And, by abandoning them, we have the moral high ground. One of the most effective negative ads against Coakley had to do with her close connections to lobbyists. Unfortunately, she didn’t hit back by criticizing Scott Brown for his own lobbyist and PAC funding. So, no, Khazei doesn’t want to throw any of those under the bus.
dcsurfer says
True, the secret fundraisers with sleazy lobbyists hurt Coakley (good thing the messaging man was flown in by Obama to let everyone know about here whereabouts that night, cause the globe wouldn’t have told us about that). But there’s no denying the common denominator in victories. Patrick was an abberation, and he ran against Healey, who threw marriage supporters under the bus.
jumbowonk says
What are you saying the common denominator in victories is? I don’t really see how you’re tying in marriage equality to this, as Deval, who supported it, won, but Brown, who opposed it, lost. Are you saying that opposing gay marriage helps Democrats win elections?
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p>But anyways, rest assured, Khazei doesn’t want to move away from gay marriage, emergency contraception, or abortion rights
dcsurfer says
even though Deval Patrick won (that’s what an “abberation” means), my contention is that it was a special case, and Healey was a weak candidate who failed to tap into the marriage vote (and Mihos cost her, and Patrick didn’t come across as a MassEquality/GLAD pawn). Brown won by walking the fine line of being for traditional marriage without being over the top about it and making people uncomfortable.
christopher says
You’re really starting to sound like you think marriage equality supporters is a special interest. That’s offensive in the extreme. I suppose the Freedom Riders were a special interest too in the same category as private lobbyists looking out only for themselves rather than opening the American dream to everyone?
dcsurfer says
Same-sex marriage is not like ending racial segregation, because sex is different from race, or rather, “race”, since race is social construct, not a universal biological evolutionary fact of multi-celled life forms. It’s up to you to understand why it is not offensive to treat sex as the glorious reality that it is, rather than insisting it is meaningless, in order to release the Democrats and the Greens and everyone else from the electoral kiss of death that having to support same-sex marriage is. Set us free, you’re dragging down progress on so many fronts, because you’re offended when people won’t overlook reality.
christopher says
…about whether this is popular – it is RIGHT! You’re views are getting very outdated very quickly. Orientation is EXACTLY like race in that you are what you are, though I do think race is largely social construct and long for the day when it doesn’t matter. If marriage were not a legal institution at all we wouldn’t need this discussion, but since it is a legal matter then equal protection is essential. So yes, I’m offended by your views in a way that I very rarely get over an opposing opinion.
dcsurfer says
if it was, I’d agree that it was worth destroying Obama’s presidency and electing a truckload of Republicans and stopping universal health care and so on in order to stand up for what is right. But you’re just wrong about the specific issue of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. It is wrong that same-sex couples are equal to male-female couples, and wrong that they should have equal rights. No amount of propaganda and intimidation can change that, which makes it very unlikely that your fantasy that sex is meaningless can ever become a majority opinion in this country, or even in this state.
johnmurphylaw says
Pogo Possum (Walt Kelly)
gp2b3a says
I am in San Diego right now and everyone is buzzing about Scott Brown. People across the country have been following this race and the results will effect every race moving forward. Scot Borwon has energized the nation with his win in Mass. Thanks Scott, where do i sign up to help find John Kerry Heinz a new job?
lightiris says
nominee for President in 2012! And then, after that, I think he plans on buying everyone in the world a puppy!
sabutai says
Half the stuff I read says this loss is the fault of Martha Coakley and her campaign team. The other half says this loss is the fault of the Democrats in Washington, DC.
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p>Apparently the Massachusetts Democratic Party did everything right in this campaign.
lynne says
The top down structure of this campaign…buttoned up tighter than a librarian’s hair bun…well, if you don’t let people come in and run with it…
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p>Not sure at what point the MDP was even called, but I suspect it wasn’t the day after the primary.
charley-on-the-mta says
You think he’s to blame?
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p>How?
sabutai says
John Walsh isn’t the Massachusetts Democratic Party. There’s a whole group of people supposedly running it. I just think that on an election where the city turnout was so poor, it would be nonsensical to blame that on DC…and expecting too much to have Coakley do that all on her own.
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p>It may be a case of the White House refusing to admit reality, and Coakley refusing to accept help until it was panic time. Or it may not; I just don’t think it makes sense to pretend that only DC and Coakley had a hand in this election on the Democratic side.
petr says
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p> I don’t think I would have run the campaign any differently. Historical precedent in Massachusetts was solidly behind Coakley and she was up by 19 points exactly a month before the vote against a candidate running a schizophrenic campaign squarely at odds with itself (hard-right candidate calling himself ‘independent’? Any objective observer had to be able to see the cognitive dissonance in Browns approach…)
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p>To be perfectly honest, I think that Martha Coakleys’ campaign, the DNC and the Mass Dem party gave the Massachusetts voters too much credit. I did too. I still can’t fathom how they fell for the con, on it’s own… but even less so after Romney and 2 Bush elections…
sabutai says
Coakley ran a bad campaign, an absentee campaign. No way that JFK ad should have dominated the airwaves for days without response anywhere. I think she didn’t really know how deep a hole she was in until it was too late.
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p>The White House treated this election like the question of stability in Canada…something vital to their interests, yet entirely assumed. Not only didn’t they offer help until late, they didn’t think to wonder if they should help until it was clearly needed.
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p>I think the Massachusetts Democratic Party is somewhere in between. I mean, if the doyens of the party were burning up the phone lines, telling the machines to swing into action before the polls came out, I’m wrong. If they were calling at Coakley, telling her to get her butt out in public after Christmas Day, I’m wrong. If they were measuring the impact of the JFK ad and not listened to, I’m wrong. Perhaps they all but forced her to accept help — in which case (1) they did much of the right thing, and (2) hard-nosed, winning organizations force the candidate to accept help when needed.
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p>I’ve seen a lot of bad Democratic campaigns win in this state over token Republican opposition. Yes, Brown put together a mildly competent campaign with extensive media help, but it doesn’t take talent to run through a yawning gap in the defensive line.
petr says
… I wouldn’t have done anything different.
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p>
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p>I thought then, and I think now, that the JFK ad was a ridiculous joke. I laughed at. I laughed at it precisely because it was ridiculuous. And I will laugh at anybody who took it seriously as someone to put in the category of ‘willingly led astray.’
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p>I repeat: Martha Coakley, and the Dem establishment thought altogether too highly of the electorates ability to see through Browns fog. I think 9 outta 10 Democrats would have acted no differently in her place. It’s as simple as that.
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p>
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p>I don’t fault them either. The sheer preposterousness of a Massachusetts Republican putting on his George Bush costume and trying to win Ted Kennedys seat in Massachusetts by calling himself an independent is a palpable and visceral absurdity. No Democrat anywhere, prior to two weeks ago, even considered Brown a serious threat. No poll, of the many and contradicting polls put out there, ever had Brown as an answer to “who do you think will win” (as opposed to ‘who will you vote for’.) I think what was assumed was that Massachusetts voters would be able to clearly see Brown for the absurdity he is…
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p>
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p>Well… the mechanics of the campaign might have been competent, but the message was a complete tissue of lies and absurdities. I don’t fault either Martha Coakley or the DNC for failing to take him seriously. I think any generic dem candidate would not have done much differently than either Coakley or the DNC. I think a significant portion of Massachusetts voters were gulled. Simple as that. They fell for the con, as I’ve said elsewhere. I had more faith in Massachusetts voters. Go figure.
sabutai says
The JFK ad pissed me off from moment one. I was waiting to see Patrick Kennedy and the rest of the clan out there explaining how ridiculous it was. I was waiting for Coakley to say that Brown implies he’s for JFK’s policy of taxing just enough to cover our needs, when he wants to tax people at a fraction of what JFK wanted. It was silly, yes, and it was effective.
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p>For heaven’s sake, we’ve seen Weld, Celucci, and Romney. Kennedy and Kerry almost lost their Senate seats to those two. Perhaps any Democratic candidate would have forgotten the last 20 years in this state. More to their shame.
petr says
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p>Starting with his vile primary ad (‘cap-and-trade Capuano’… ‘public-option Pagliuca’…) to his breathtakingly mendacious caricature of ‘independence’ he ran as the anti-Kennedy and his message, however sweetly delivered is diametrically opposed to the hopes and aspirations of Massachusetts. I still can’t get my head around it: it’s the second coming of ‘compassionate conservative’…
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p>What’s the first thing he does at his victory party?? Trots out Mitt Romney! Nice. Wonder why Mitt didn’t campaign for him?? Oh, yeah… that’s right, people would have seen were Brown really stands. Martha Coakley tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen.
bob-gardner says
Wasn’t anyone here watching? Brown is from Wrentham not from South Boston, but he made a huge point of being there, to the extent of showing the street signs (Broadway and G Street, as I remember).
And then he talks only to white people–in an age when all policitians make a point of showing off the racial diversity of their supporters.
South Boston today is a lot more diverse than Brown’s commmercial. It would be tough today to stand at Broadway and G Street and only see white people. Brown (or whoever came up with this commericial) was less interested in showing the candidate in an actual neighborhood than he was in invoking “South Boston” as a code word, which seems to me is a slur on the neighborhood.
petr says
… was being thoroughly confused as to why the Governor of California (Ronald Reagan) was announcing his presidential candidacy from Philadelphia Mississippi. Same old playbook. Same old plays. I guess they’ll keep running them as long as they work.