In week after Rasmussen released its first report, Coakley’s 9 point lead shrunk to a single point.
Washington Dems started to pour dollars down the throats of Massachusetts voters. Hoping to stem the bleeding with truly terrible television and radio spots.
By the time Daily Kos did its own poll, and surely, this would be good news for Coakley, the poll was taken from the 15-17th, the race was tied. About at this moment, Martha Coakley’s campaign made the truly brilliant decision that the most important thing she could do was fly to DC and have a fundraiser with the health care industry lobbyists.
You couldn’t really do anything dumber. Really.
Because even people who don’t really follow politics got this one. If health care reform was going to hurt the health care industry, why would the health care industry do a major fundraiser for the woman who was going to make sure that the reform would happen? Shouldn’t they have been supporting Scott Brown?
Here in Massachusetts, I bet that the fundraiser and her comments about Scott Brown actually being outside and shaking hands with real voters were the two things that really irritated people.
DC Dems raised the threat level to code red and claimed that now, this was serious. The robocalls came fast and furious. Martha Coakley’s campaigns released tv spots talking about how she fought Wall Street excesses. There was only one problem. No one here could ever remember her ever fighting anything. And this just reminded people that the Democrats in Washington had actually done a really nice job of enabling Wall Street excesses.
It was time for the geniuses of Washington to act. They pulled out all the stops.
Democratic Party committees, who spent about $4.3 million, mostly on advertising and all of it in the last week, to prop up her wilting candidacy. Their GOP counterparts did not pay for any ads to help Brown. Outside interest groups also played a major role, with seven organizations spending nearly $2.7 million to help Brown, and five others spending more than $1.8 million on Coakley’s behalf.
At this point in our story, I would encourage you to look at a map of Massachusetts. We are not the biggest state. We have one city that is much smaller than many state’s major cities. The spend by Democratic Party committees of over $4 million in one week is just an enormous amount of money.
For context, annualize that number and you are talking about spending $200,000,000 a year on television advertising on a population of just under 7 million.
It’s insane.
Now, we all know how the story turned out. She lost by 5 points.
So where’s the accountability here?
It’s the same DC consultants running the same crappy ads and running them on the same tv stations they always do, pocketing their media fees all the way to the defeat.
And it shows you that the anti-DC rage, not anti-Democratic, nor anti-Republican, is a very real issue for political races in 2010.
When Martha Coakley become the candidate of DC, the people of Massachusetts said no thanks.
The record shows:
the more DC became involved, the more they spent, the more they yelled and screamed, the worse her numbers got. DC came to the rescue, all right, it’s just that they saved Scott Brown from defeat.
A well respected Democratic candidate vs. a loose cannon Republican? This is Massachusetts! Wow, the rage is powerful.
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p>An anti-DC rage, perhaps. Fueled by Hope & Change disappointment? People are seriously looking at the failures of the Democratic Party apparatus to attempt fix the economy, end the endless wars and seeing just more of the past.
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p>Of course, no one seriously expects any Hope or Change from Senator Brown. My own guess is that he will embarrass himself somehow in the two years he has. Either another Republican or a Democrat will take the seat, depending on how low the country will go in two more years. The public is seeing DC as a tag-team match against the helpless We The People.
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… is what Coakley’s campaign did. My sense is that odds are even Brown will prove to be pretty good at holding his job. What I think is more interesting, though, is how his campaign might be a model for other campaigns across the country. Remember he never once said he was a Republican, but always stressed he was an independent. How long before we see campaigns full of folks claiming the same, and distancing themselves from both parties, which are really really unpopular right now?
He also ran on very limited points. That seems to be what he did in his statehouse run too.
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p>By limiting the number of issues he spoke about, he avoided driving a wedge into his own campaign. Maybe a lot of people could get behind him for health care and taxes. But if he highlighted gay marriage, he’d alienate the people who that was important to. And if he highlighted immigration reform, he could lose more. And if he highlighted his position on unions and teachers, he could lose more.
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p>He avoided talking about everything except his two main issues — taxes and health care.
Obama has a tendency to wonk-out, and talk details to death. So much more powerful if he could just keep to a story that’s easy to follow and compelling. He was all story before the election; what’s happened to him since???
I think this analysis really lets Coakley and her campaign off the hook. The DC Dems did not decide to put her on the shelf after the primary because she was a) out of money and b) under the impression the general election would be a sure thing.
The DC gurus (WH and DSCC) did in fact put Coakley on the shelf after the primary. Immediately after the primary the DC solons were called repeatedly and asked for funds to replenish Coakley’s coffers depleted by the primary. They were told that “she has no problem, you are all set”…essentially they were ignoring MA feeling that it was already won…while Brown was already on the air with the JFK spot…after Rush and Beck etal had started flooding Brown with more money than he could even spend, the DC gurus finally woke up and showed up in the last 10 days, their ineptness, not to mention their arrogance, was a stunning blow, not help, to the campaign.
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p>For the DC crowd to try to claim they were not asked…repeatedly…from the get-go is galling…and just plain untrue.
If those “Washington Democrats” you rail about hadn’t gotten involved in the race, Coakley would have lost by double-digits. The Republicans and Republican-leaning independents were going to vote regardless.
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p>Just as NJ, Obama’s appearance and DNC money helped close the gap by driving up Democratic turnout, although obviously not enough.
The way I see it, the ads were bad because she lost. Her campaign was bad because she lost. What ads would you have run? What would you have advised Coakley to do? I thought she should have tried to reach out more to minority voters, maybe by enlisting Ayanna Pressley or Arroyo or something. Beyond that, I don’t know what else could have been done. A lot of white dudes with trucks would rather vote for a white dude with a truck than a female lawyers. Vennocchi’s recent column on women running for state office was pretty good, as was Renee Loth’s take on male economic frustration.
What else she could have done–had a ground campaign. Even a novice campaigner like me could see that there was so much that wasn’t in place in the easiest, simplest of ways (from distribution of signs to strong campaign support from the DTCs).
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p>Of course the things you mention play a role (naked manly men who have trucks) but let’s not discount the massive role of having a truly crappy campaign.
But you make a good point, regardless. I saw very little activity at the polls on election day, either from Brown or Coakley people. I thought that was sort of strange- the recent Boston municipal election was exponentially more exciting in terms of bodies “on the ground”.
Signs don’t vote, but they show organizational strength. They also tell me that people have been asked to be involved.
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p>They are one small indicator of an active campaign organization.
Where I live, people get very freaked out about signs, though. (I don’t get it but that’s the local culture–I try to tell them to chill but hey)
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p>But really that wasn’t my main point… Really that there was no local infrastructure to the campaign, within 10 days of election day.
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p>Volunteers did a valiant effort trying to make something out of nothing, but that should’nt have been the state of things.
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p>There was plenty of room for improvement on the ground
200 Reservoir Street the Thursday before the election previewing a new location for our business. Drove by a week before and was nervous for parking because this was supposedly a pretty much vacant office building and there wasn’t a parking spot to be found. Turns out that the location was Scott Brown’s HQ. Knew from there and from talking to the landlord that he was going to win. They handed out 8,000 lawn signs from Monday to Thursday solely on people driving in to get them. Ignore at your peril.
I would be surprised if people who read and comment on political blogs are influenced by much of anything that counts as campaigning. I will almost certainly never change my mind based on seeing yard signs. But I also look over as much information as I can find about all the candidates in a race and vote based on where they stand on the issues. Most people don’t do that.
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p>The campaigns aren’t intended to change the minds of well-informed, politically active people. They are intended to sway people who may otherwise not realize that there is an election. Someone who isn’t paying attention will vote for whoever their friends/neighbors are supporting. The yard signs also remind people that there is an election coming up.
“the ads were bad because she lost.” No, no, I was watching the campaign ad death-match the whole weekend previous (as was everyone, I guess); and I kept thinking Brown’s ads were WAYYYYY better.
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p>The Southie one of Scott going door-to-door, fake-U2-inspirational music in the background, showing hustle and excitement … just a great freakin’ ad.
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p>The negative one of Martha going to the fundraiser was good too … even though we all know that Brown’s going to do everything but give PhRMA a hot oil massage and loofah their bunions once he’s there.
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p>Martha’s ads? Remind me again?
Why not Roxbury, I wonder? Maybe JP? Even Rozzie?
I had my own fairly negative reaction to that ad, conditioned perhaps by pre- “Good Will Hunting” memories of Boston history. So I suppose what makes something “good” all depends on your perspective. But you’re right- it got Brown’s special message across.
…as old residents are pushed out in favor of affluent professionals.
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p>That said, it’s not the Seventies anymore; there are a fair amount of blacks and Latinos living in the neighborhood now.
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p>The centers of high voting and political organization are West Roxbury (Ward 20) and contiguous Jamaica Plain precincts (Wd 19), and have been for twenty years.
Not that you could tell from that ad… not a minority to be seen.
From a field perspective, neither campaign targeted the cities – any city, and the turnout reflected this.
… and tone deaf.
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p>It seemed to me in the days leading up to the election you would see two DNC ads for MC would blurt out “Don’t vote for SB because he will kill health care!!!” Then you would see a SB ad stating “Vote for me and I will kill health care!”. If SB is running ads with a certain message, why reinforce that same message with your ads?
Definitely Scott Brown could have been beaten by better campaigning.
43% turnout in Boston but lots of suburbs at 50 and 60%.
Definitely reaching out to minority community would have helped, as you noted. But also, early campaigning in Marlborough & other non-Dem strongholds to keep his percentage down in those precincts could have helped.
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p>Obama got 1.8 million votes in 2008.
McCain got 1.1 million votes.
Coakley got 1.1 million votes in 2010.
Scott Brown got 1.2 million votes.
and we’re nervous.