One elected Democratic official — although required by the state party to support Coakley publicly — privately admitted over the weekend that he will vote Tuesday for Brown, as will his wife.
Coakley was “mailing it in” on the senatorial campaign trail, the official said, relating how in his own election, he had gone door-to-door “seven days a week” soliciting votes. After winning the Dec. 8 Democratic primary, however, Coakley seemed to shift into neutral, expecting to coast easily to victory in the general election. . . .
His name is Randy May. He spent his own money, left home in Mississippi on Thursday, drove 38 hours, arrived in Massachusetts on Saturday, and on Sunday afternoon was part of the Brown brigade in Boston outside the Obama-Coakley event:
In less than two weeks, when Massachusetts voters elect Martha Coakley to the US Senate — let’s not pretend that Republican state senator Scott Brown has any chance of pulling off the monumental upset — they will trigger a massive domino effect that has the state’s political class buzzing with anticipation.
— David S. Bernstein, Boston Phoenix, Jan. 8
How’s that Inevitable Triumph Of Coakley working out for you guys?
Riding the subway around the city Sunday, Da Tech Guy picked up the Phoenix, one of those predictable free “alternative” weekly papers that infests every big city.
Bored on the train, I thumbed through it and laughed out loud when I turned to Page 8 and saw Bernstein’s idiotic prediction. Unfortunately, I threw away the Phoenix before thinking to check their astrology column:
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) – You will soon be re-Tweeted by Alyssa Milano.
. . . that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. The Reason magazine senior editor was at Northeastern University in Boston for the Obama-Coakley rally Sunday, and was amazed by the turnout of Scott Brown supporters outside Cabot Center:
Here are a few photos of the Brown supporters who lined Huntington Avenue in front of the Obama-Coakley event.
Libertarians? In Boston? Who knew?
Poster slogan of the year?
Somebody told them it was Rule 5 Sunday.
A Tea Party activist sports an Obama-as-Joker T-shirt.
FITCHBURG, Mass.
They’re expecting as many as 10 inches of snow by Monday morning. Excuse the long interruption of blogging. Technical difficulties and travel hassles — we went down to Boston today — conspired to prevent online action. This morning I reported on the working-class Catholic reaction to the Senate campaign:
St. Anthony of Padua Church has traditionally served an Italian blue-collar congregation and the politicial views of those in the pews at 8 a.m. mass may not be indicative of all Catholics in Massachusetts. With that disclaimer, however, Martha Coakley may be on the verge of the most brutal Catholic backlash since the Inquisition.
The Democratic attorney general’s adamant support of late-term abortion obviously puts her at odds with faithful Catholics, but many of those attending morning mass — including lifelong Democrats — were harshly critical of Coakley in other ways. Her round-the-clock negative ad blitz against Republican Scott Brown was repeatedly mentioned as “awful” and “horrible.”…
The jaw-dropping god-awfulness of Coakley’s campaign is something you’ll be telling your grandchildren about. She may be the first candidate in two decades with less charisma than Michael Dukakis. I’m hogging the best quotes in my notebook for the next American Spectator column, but there are lots of Democrats in Massachusetts who agree with Taylor Marsh that Coakley has scraped right through the bottom of the barrel, straight into the sewer. At least one of those disgusted Democrats was interviewed Saturday night in Middleboro by Da Tech Guy.
It was already dark, which made it impossible to get a photo that showed the full size of the crowd, but it was at least 500 people. Listen to the cheers in this video clip:
BTW, we were offline for more than three hours Saturday evening due to a server overload. The folks at Silver Logic (our eco-friendly Web hosting provider) are saying we need to buy more bandwidth, which means . . . ah, IYKWIMAITYD.
How bad is the financial crunch? Without your contributions, we may have to skip Rule 5 Sunday this week. And that would be wrong.
Seeing the Senate campaign from ground level is weird, in that you see and hear things — TV ads, mailers, local news coverage, the comments of voters — that aren’t visible from outside the election battle zone. So you’re watching selected microcosms of the campaign that don’t necessarily match the Big Picture the national pundits are commenting on.
Example: The phone just rang here at my friend’s house where I’m staying. It was a pre-recorded “robocall” from Republican Scott Brown’s daughter, Ayla, saying that Democrat Martha Coakley has “crossed the line” with her latest “disgusting and malicious” attacks. This state’s phones are being flooded with robocalls, and you have to wonder what the effect will be. . . .
Scott Brown has consistently said he hopes for a fair election. “I have faith in the system,” Brown said yesterday at his rally in the North End.
The possibility of Democratic vote-rigging is like the rumors of a Lindsay Lohan sex tape — you can’t describe it until you see it. But as we were driving to a late dinner last night at the Border Grille & Bar in Leominster, I pointed out that there is no authority to hold Democrats accountable for their cheating.
“Who’s going to prosecute them? The state attorney general? And if you appeal to the feds — yeah, I’m sure Eric Holder will get to the bottom of it.”
Polls are not a prediction, but a snapshot of voter sentiment at a particular moment. Talking about polls three days before a big election is like Texas fans talking trash before the BCS championship game. In football, the pre-game predictions don’t mean anything once they kick off and start playing. And in elections, what counts in the end is whether those “likely voters” actually vote.
