… if Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have to show up to Massachusetts to generate some excitement for her (nytimes). The state has not elected a Republican senator since 1972, i.e., 38 years ago. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab could probably win an election here, if running as a Democrat. Nearly every voter in the state knew that whoever the Democrats nominated was sure to win this election. Therefore if assuring victory requires the presence of the two most charismatic American politicians alive today, it is safe to assume that Coakley is truly unfit for office (not to mention that Clinton and Obama had to divert their attention from the challenges in Haiti).
It is tough to know what is so bad about Coakley. Her background is similar to that of many current senators. Her most memorable act was as a principal in the LED panic of 2007 here in Boston, which resulted in the shutdown of highways, bridges, and mass transit (prompting her predecessor, Ted Kennedy, to introduce S.735, The Terrorist Hoax Improvements Act of 2007, in the U.S. Senate). Driving off a bridge, escaping the car, leaving young Mary Jo Kopechne trapped inside to suffocate and drown, walking right by a house with a light on and not calling for help, and the rest of the Chappaquiddick mess was not sufficient to disqualify an earlier Democrat candidate for senator. What has Martha Coakley done that is apparently worse in the eyes of voters?
She called Curt Schilling a Yankee. Isn’t that enough?
Apart from making remarks that indicate she actively dislikes meeting her constituents, she and the Democratic machine made the mistake of thinking the office itself was what had the coattails.
It was Ted Kennedy who clocked the Senate time, not the Democratic party. However Teddy managed to win his first election, for all of the ones after that he held the crucial advantage that sends so many incumbents back: seniority. It is what gives our man in Congress greater pull for the folks back home. It is the fundamental conflict of interest for regionally elected officials serving in national office.
All over the country, we send a lot of scumbags back to Washington for this very reason. But Coakley? No seniority, and no other legislative record to demonstrate bringing home the bacon — so no free pass.
I don’t know if it’s true, as I haven’t been following the race, but I’ve heard from a few people that some of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign staff are high up in Coakley’s campaign. These are the same people who ran a campaign not knowing the rules of how delegates are apportioned. If that’s true, then its says a lot about the ability of the campaign to lock in what should be an easy victory.
The biggest problem for Coakley is the same problem that McCain had in the 2008 general election. In the general, Democrats were very enthusiastic about Obama, and Republicans were at best neutral if not disdainful of McCain. Even Sarah Palin, who one could argue has more of a personality cult than Obama, couldn’t stem the tide for more than a couple of weeks.
Fast forward to today. Obama has been in office for nearly a year. He’s been a competent but unremarkable leader so far. Gone is the flowing rhetoric and populism that marked his campaign. Quite frankly, he’s boring. His administration has also been much more moderate than his stated positions in his campaigns (I don’t buy the “most liberal president in history” for a second). All in all, the kind of things that get a Massachusetts Democrat excited at all.
Bring that to today. Obama is busy telling everyone that everything he needs to do depends on Coakley’s victory. A Massachusetts Democrat looks at that and thinks, “What good does that do? We don’t like what you’re doing!” Not that they like Scott Brown, they certainly won’t vote for him, he’s just a little too crazy. For example, Scott Brown question’s Obama’s birth. So, they’ll just stay home. Contrast that with Republicans, who DO see Obama as the most liberal president in history, and who will do anything to stop what they see as a fundamental destruction of anything and everything that is American.
In most of the polls so far, they are using “likely voter” models. Coakley still leads in raw polling, she just falls far behind when the likely voter filters are applied. Turnout will be everything, and the state’s minority Republicans have a lot more impetus to take the time to vote than do the Democrats.
Joshua: Thanks for the video clip link. I did not hear Brown “questioning Obama’s birth” in the traditional sense of wanting to see a U.S. birth certificate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Dunham confirms that Obama was born to a teenage mother, a fact that Brown apparently knew. When it was pointed out that the teenage mother was married at the time, Brown said that he didn’t know about that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama,_Sr. says that Obama’s father was born into a Muslim family in Kenya, married 7 years before Obama’s birth, and left a pregnant wife and at least two children in Kenya before coming to the U.S. No mention is made of a divorce in Kenya prior to the marriage in the U.S. Under Islamic law, obviously the guy can be legally married to two women at the same time and presumably his additional marriage would have been recognized by Kenya. Under U.S. law at the time, I think the question of whether Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham were legally married would require a legal expert to sort out. So I don’t think we should hold Brown’s “I don’t know” statement against him. He has not claimed to be an expert on Hawaiian marriage law circa 1961.
[Just so that nobody thinks I’m a “birther”, let me state for the record that this is the first time I have looked into this question. Even if it were somehow proved that Obama was born out-of-wedlock to a teen mother (and I don’t think that it could ever be proved because only a judge in Hawaii could consider the issue and, as the parents are now divorced, it would likely be considered moot), it would not change my opinion of Barack Obama. For those who get excited that Americans elected a person who identifies himself as “black”, I think it might be a positive. Our society is so meritocratic that we elected a black man born to an unwed teenage mother! This truly proves that anyone can become president… as long as he or she goes to Harvard Law School first…]
I’m not sure if this answers your original question, but Radley Balko doesn’t approve of her performance as a prosecutor and AG:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31413.html
Longer discussion of the Amirault case here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575003341640657862.html
Doesn’t bode well, but then again I don’t expect it to have a major impact with the population.
In the interest of accuracy, Michelle Obama describes Barack’s mother as “very young and very single.” No need for a Hawaiian legal expert.
Thanks, Heather. I didn’t know that. A Google search pulled up http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/10/1193601.aspx as a reasonably authoritative source for the “very young and very single” quote.
Really this is off-topic, though. What is it about Coakley that makes her such a weak candidate?
“What is it about Coakley that makes her such a weak candidate?”
I’m reminded of the old line about Evelyn Murphy – “Michael Dukakis without the charisma”.
“What has Martha Coakley done that is apparently worse in the eyes of voters?”
Perhaps it has something to do with a case where a police officer raped his 2-year-old niece with a curling iron and Coakley let him out of jail with no bail – because the rapist’s father was a union rep getting endorsements for Coakley’s AG campaign.
She dragged the case out so long that her successor had to finish the job, giving the this rapist two life sentences.
http://biggovernment.com/2010/01/15/coakley-and-the-curling-iron-rapist-part-ii-lawyers-seeking-justice-for-rape-victims/#more-60162