By Dave Anderson:
Massachusetts should not be a competetive state for Republicans. It is right now a slightly lean GOP Senate take-over target for tomorrow's special election. WTF. So here is my pre-mortem as to how we got here and what lessons can be learned.
I've argued that the Democrats are making a three fold bet for the 2010 election cycle:
- Discredited Republican Party will make swing voters hold their noses before voting GOP or voting at all.
- Teabagger v. Establishment Republican civil war
- Democrats would maintain the money edge
Teabaggers were the only ones who got behind Brown and proved his viability at which point, national Republican establishment donors have gotten involved. All polling right now indicates that independents and unaffiliated voters are swinging hard to the Republican candidate, and the money advantage, 10:1 cash on hand for the Democratic candidate after the primary, is irrelevant because the Democratic candidate spent none of the money to define her opponent when she had a chance.
Liberals right now are holding their noses as the Senate is where anything that liberals want goes to die either due to Lieberman's ego, or Ben Nelson's desire to piss off everyone in Nebraska. Conservatives are pissed because they are out of power, and the swing voters are worried about their jobs and are attributing the bad economy to a too large deficit when the better policy for Obama and the Democrats would have been to run a much larger deficit to actually get some job growth going.
Even if Coakley manages to grind out a win tomorrow due to the machine advantage, there are a couple of key lessons. The first is that getting elected as a Democrat is tough in this environment, there are no gimmes, so that means working and spending money today and not holding it dry for a future cycle. I think if Coakley went up on the air and saturated Boston during December, she would be okay as she would build her positives while also defining Brown as a 41st vote for obstructionism. The second is that national trends matter far more than local idiosyncacies. The election will be determined by this summers' job reports; if we see evidence that jobs are coming back, then the Democrats will ride things out, if not, nihilism is rewarded because they are the other guys.
"I think if Coakley went up on the air and saturated Boston during December, she would be okay as she would build her positives while also defining Brown as a 41st vote for obstructionism."
ReplyDeleteDemocrats don't do that. It's bad manners.