A few take-aways from last Friday’s second level PPP poll.
- John Kerry is now the most popular politician in the state. Who saw that coming?
- Martha Coakley is in a dead heat on fav/unfav with Scott Brown. And so begins the “Draft Coakley for Governor” movement. Strap on those seatbelts folks…
- Grossman and Murray have the same favorables. When people tell me how great Grossman has been, the public isn’t seeing it.
- Charlie Baker is stuck at 34-37% against any Democrat. Even with John McCain voters, Baker can only get to 43% favorability. How far he done fell.
- I would have liked to see how Capuano did in these polls. Probably in Grossman territory.
- Obama voters prefer Kerry over Brown 73%-17%. As a comparison, from last Wednesday’s PPP Senate Race poll, they didn’t do a straight up Obama voter candidate preference, but Obama voters liked Warren at 73% vs. 31% for Brown. So if those 800,000 voters from 2008 who stayed home during the 2010 Special do come out, Brown is going to have to win a pretty hefty chunk of them over to beat Warren.
- Overwhelming support of medicinal marijuana, and very strong support of assisted suicide, coming from both Dems and Unenrolleds.
- I’d love to see post-SCOTUS numbers on ObamaCare/RomneyCare.
- 34% of Republicans feel that equal marriage has had a negative impact on their lives. Please… do tell!
- While Kennedy family favorability is still extremely strong overall, 38/43 among Unenrolled is surprising.
- Republicans are so done with Terry Francona. Unenrolled want him back, and Dems seem to as well.
- Just a few of the diehards left who actually believe this Sox team has anything more in it but a one-and-done. (Shoulda polled on trading Youk… or Beckett. Ellsbury, Beckett and Iglasias for King Felix and a bullpen arm?)
- 59% unfavorables for Roger Clemens? I wish they’d polled on Curt Schilling.
Please share widely!
62% of MA voters say they are moderate/conservative or very conservative.
Ok, but by your same statistical analysis, I could also say that 73% of voters say they are moderate/liberal or very liberal.
Wow.
I am just shocked more people in MA do not identify themselves as liberal.
On Kerry: he has rehabilitated himself as a great senior statesmen on foreign policy issues, and has been a lot more low key at getting good legislation passed, his ‘liveshot Kerry’ rep finally ended with his failed Presidential hopes. I hope he doesn’t get State, partly to keep him here and I am a known Kerry critic. He still can’t get your pothole fixed and that level of service was lost with Ted and might never come back.
On Coakley: She has become a popular statewide figure again but is never going to be a credible candidate for higher office again. Its over folks.
On Warren voters: I do not see her campaign engaging the Obama voters who stayed home in 2010, mainly the college students and the unenrolled voters we will need. Brown will always have an uphill climb but she has not been the stellar candidate she promised to be so far and this race will be a lot closer than the Presidential contest which it should really mirror. At this point I’d say Brown has the edge and she needs to close the deal.
On Grossman/Murray: Grossman is not that well known outside of inner Democratic party circles, Murray has been a very visible LG and seems to have overcome his car incident. That said Grossman is awesome and he’d make a better Senator than Governor imo. Deval for Senate has a good ring to it as well.
On Ballot initiatives: Medical Marijuana and hopefully full legalization should be easy sells. The Assisted Suicide will likely pass but it will not have my vote. In OR this ‘right’ was used only 59 times and that is around the number that would have happened underground otherwise anyway. Codifying this into law serves a different longer term agenda to eventually allow the right to die for anyone who is sick and disabled at any point and eventually for Peter Singer’s wet dream where we can euthanize the retarded, those with Parkinson’s and the disabled at any point since they are not human beings capable of making preferences. It is important to draw the line in the sand somewhere on bioethics issues, and while I have nothing against those that are terminally ill who choose to take their own lives this decision will allows be between them and their doctors and is currently. The threat of the coercive state coming down on them is not significant enough to warrant the initiative. The greatest 20th century liberal Hubert H. Humphrey said that we should judge our government by how it treats those at the dawn of life, those struck down by disability or disease in the prime of life, and those in the twilight of their lives. I think his maxim applies here and I am surprised this issue has not gotten more attention or more debate and would love to hash it out in its own thread.
at any time. There were many things that he did that he did quietly through his entire career. There were also things that he did – the Iran/Contra and BCCI hearings that were more likely to end his career than to rocket him to the Presidency. Remember when he investigated the arming of the Contras, Democrats including the Clintons and Gore were as sympathetic to the Contras as the Republicans. On BCCI, he continued with the investigation as nearly every power in the party wanted him to stop. That title came from a RW talk show person.
Now, if you want an episode where someone COULD be fairly called liveshot, here are two:
After the 60 minutes show raised the issue of insider trading in Congress from a badly researched book and spoke of a House bill that was going nowhere, Brown and his aides quickly did a cut and paste job and he sponsored a Senate bill – as did Gillibrand. Both bills were referred to a committee and the committee marked up a bill written by its chairs, Lieberman and Collins. At the SOTU, the President spoke of wanting the bill passed. Scott Brown worked his way over to speak to Obama (or rather the media filming) and told the President that “Reid had HIS bill and needed to get it to the floor”. I don’t think there is any example of Kerry ever acting with this lack of respect to a President or claiming more than his share of the credit.
Scott Brown also made a point of going to the media to claim that he was among the people who saw photos of the dead OBL in a hearing – when he in fact had not.
In fact, I suspect that Kerry’s old fashioned politeness and anti-LIVESHOT sensibilities may actually have hurt him. Things like his office not telling the Boston Globe when he saved the life of a choking Republican Senator annoyed the paper when they learned of it when it was published in the Nevada papers.
This polling gives credence to what I’ve been saying about Baker since about this time in 2010. I served on the Board of Education with Baker and later interacted with him in the health care policy world as well. He’s a very intelligent guy, and there are plenty of good things to be said about him. But, Baker2010 was not the same guy as Charlie Baker. He tried far, far too hard to be the tea party idriveatruck guy that he is very, very clearly not. The in-authenticity turned off a number of moderate-to-conservative suburban voters nearly as much as it did the voters who would go for Patrick anyway.
The people who actually know him still see Baker as Charlie Baker, not as the Baker2010 creation. That’s why there’s so much conventional wisdom among insiders that he will be strong again. Of course, most people in Massachusetts have never met Charlie Baker. They only know Baker2010, and they didn’t particularly like him – as the 2010 results and this PPP poll show.
I saw Baker up close a number of times and this is my observation:
1. He almost always sounds like CEO Baker talking to the employees at a company meeting. Most CEO’s don’t talk down, but you just know that they’re the boss. Only once did I seem him really passionate, and it was about expecting better results after 12 years of public schooling. He hasn’t had the endless years of ordinary people wanking at him like Brown.
2. He tried to cultivate an everyman persona with a whole “I’m just like you” shtick, mostly around being a sports fan. That’s not a bonding agent for me, and I don’t think it’s really that universal an idea. It’s not strong enough for me to think he’s a regular guy at any rate.
3. A presidential historian, talking about Clinton during the 90’s, said the formula for US President in the 20th Century is dynamite mother, absent (and this can mean mentally absent) father. Funny how that is also Obama and to some degree Bush. The point is that family hardship can really shape a politician (like they say Robert Kennedy of 1964 was not the same as AG (or Senate lawyer) Kennedy). Trouble is Baker’s had a wonderful life. I wish I had it. That makes it hard for him to relate to the very many of us for whom life has been a struggle, and then he comes across as not sincere