I’ve seen a couple of comments now wondering why the Brown camp blew up this ‘story’ now, as opposed to August or September when it might have more of an effect in the general election. But before attributing Fehrstrom’s actions to ‘stupidity’ and a ‘middle school mentality,’ as one commenter did, let’s think more carefully about why this timing might be deliberate. What event might they be trying to affect *now*? The state convention, of course.
This makes sense for why they’re not only pounding away but escalating a ‘story’ 5 months before the election, when polls show most voters don’t really care. But think about the advantage of doing it now. Elizabeth Warren gets denied a largely uncontested flood of positive news reports from the convention — an advantage in a state that naturally leans Democrat. Plus there’s the very real chance of swaying just enough delegates to put a primary challenger on the ballot, siphoning off more money, attention and resources for the next 3 months than this ‘story’ alone ever could.
Trend lines show that Warren already came from 9 points down to even. The Brown camp had to be concerned that if they didn’t do something to shake up the race, a positive convention spin would help solidify that trend line — possibly to a point where it would be nearly impossible to reverse. And if Elizbeth Warren ends up with, say, 83% delegate support instead of 85.1%, it will have been well worth it to launch this attack now instead of August.
This is an interesting comment, coming at 8:18 this morning. It rings true with what we saw from the Brown campaign and its media supporters.
Now in hindsight we see that if this was the plan, it failed. Instead of moving delegate support downward from 85.1 to 83, the effect was instead to solidify Democratic Party support for Elizabeth Warren, raising delegate support to an astonishing 96%. Her 96% delegate support is especially significant in the context of a two-way primary campaign — delegates clearly chose to focus party resources on running a single candidate (Elizabeth Warren).
I hope that the media and the Brown campaign has seriously underestimated Massachusetts voters. This relentless harping on an issue which concerns only “low information” (I prefer “ignorant”) voters looks particularly bogus in the context of polls that show that 70+ percent of voters don’t care.
I now look forward to refocusing this campaign on things that matter.
Delegates might have decided it was even more important to rally around the Democratic candidate in light of the attacks of the last few weeks. But what do you do if you’re the Brown camp and your guy has gone from 9 points ahead to a tie? That trend has to be unnerving, and you’re going to want to try to do something to change the narrative.
Since Brown’s not running for president, he can’t, say, toss a Hail Mary and pick a Sarah Palin as a running mate. (That didn’t work out so well either) A primary might have given them a little breathing room to work on changing the trend lines. Or maybe it was just that they felt they needed to launch the attacks now, before Warren’s rise became what they saw as irreversible. But I just don’t feel the timing was un-thought-out on their part.
It’s heartening that so few Mass. voters are being taken in by this garbage, though.
Brown needed a big noise before the convention to contain Warren’s momentum and look for opportunities to split the vote ( the MDF factor). If Brown waited until Sept or Oct, Warren’s possible lead might be to great.
It appears it did not work. It also appears that there will be much more of this since Brown just can’t talk about policy and he has surrounded himself with tarantulas.