Make Massachusetts Scott-Free!

Scott Brown is a dangerous man. He's Sarah Palin in a suit and tie.

Scott Brown, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Massachusetts's special election to replace the late Ted Kennedy, more than opposes the Obama health care plan. He opposes taxing the banks to restore fairness to the economic system in this country. He opposes financial reform of any kind. He also opposes emergency abortions for impregnated rape victims. Martha Coakley favors more punitive taxes on the greedy bankers and no punitive restrictions on woman's reproductive rights - or any women's rights. You vote for Brown, you vote for reactionarism that sets the country back to the George Walker Bush days.

I reiterate this blog's endorsement of Martha Coakley for the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. Please make sure that the Coakley loss I predicted does . . . not . . . happen!

Martha my dear . . . you, go, girl! (Beatles title mixed with hip-hop slang - nice touch, huh?)

A Blue State To Go Brown?

I hope I'm wrong, but I have a feeling Martha Coakley is going to lose the special election to Republican state senator Scott Brown to fill Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts.

The first indication of a "Brown-out" in Tuesday's election is that Coakley is a worse candidate then she appears to be. After seeing audioless clips of her campaigning, on MSNBC, I watched the PBS NewsHour, which played a clip of Coakley speaking - with sound. It was then that I finally got to hear her talk.

To say she's stodgy is like saying Atlanta is uncomfortable in July. She's one of the stiffest women I've ever seen, and her voice could cure insomnia. She needs John Kerry to campaign for her . . . for the charisma.

That's where the second telltale sign comes in. John Kerry, Obama aide Mitch Stewart, and Democratic operative (and Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank's sister) Ann Lewis had e-mails sent in their names today - that's right, today - asking for money to give Coakley a lift in the final three days of the campaign. I got all of them. This is the kind of desperation associated with the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis in 1988, Dukakis, of course, was the governor of Massachusetts.

The thing is that even if Coakley were as glamorous or as charismatic as, say, Scarlett Johansson, it wouldn't help. She's the Massachusetts Attorney General, making her look like an incumbent in a year where being an incumbent officeholder isn't so advantageous right now. Also, Scott Brown has made some key tactical moves that has put him in good standing with voters. Asked by David Gergen in this past Monday's debate if he thought it was plausible that such an arch-conservative Republican like himself could take over Ted Kennedy's seat, Brown retorted that the seat doesn't belong to the Kennedys or the Democrats, but rather to the people. And all across Massachusetts, you could hear voters say, "Ooh, good answer - good answer!"

On top of that, Brown ran an ad featuring a clip of John F. Kennedy - who also held that seat - arguing in favor of tax cuts, which Brown supports. Brown conveniently left out the fact that Kennedy also believed in giving something back to your country, selectively using elements of the thirty-fifth U.S. President's record to make himself look like an appropriate heir to the Kennedy legacy.

Except for one thing - Brown promises to oppose the health care reform bill currently being hammered out in Congress. As noted, a forty-first Republican vote in the Senate to block passage of the bill will effectively kill it, making health care reform a dead issue for another generation. That the fatal vote could come from a senator holding Ted Kennedy's seat is, of course, ironic. But many Massachusetts residents may not care much because the state already has universal health insurance, courtesy of the gubernatorial administration of Mitt Romney, who in 1994 almost won the Senate seat of . . . Ted Kennedy. Brown isn't just a conservative Republican - he's even more reactionary than the last Republican to hold that seat, Henry Cabot Lodge II . . . and possibly even more so than the original Henry Cabot Lodge.

Which is why this blog endorses Martha Coakley for U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. Yes, she's boring, but, in regard to health care, if we don't get boring we're going to get screwed. Brown is a more exciting candidate, no doubt about that - that centerfold photo he did for Cosmopolitan certainly generated heat - but a hostage crisis is also exciting. I don't want excitement from my government. I want a shot at buying some decent medical insurance.

Another reason to vote for Coakley. . . . If you thought that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck were gloating insufferably over the failure of President Obama to get the 2016 Olympics for Chicago, well, if Brown wins this election Tuesday, you ain't seen nothing yet!

I said that I think Coakley will lose. So come on, Bay State voters, prove me wrong.

Martha My God!

You would think that a nice Irish Catholic girl like Martha Coakley, a woman who's a loyal Democrat, a lifelong resident of Massachusetts (Massachusettian? It doesn't come up correct on my spellchecker), and an accomplished state attorney general, would be a lead-pipe cinch for wining next week's special election to fill the seat of the late Senator Ted Kennedy for the next three years. You'd think the Republican opponent, a tea-party conservative candidate named Scott Brown, wouldn't stand a chance.

You'd be wrong.

Coakley, who led Brown in Massachusetts polls only recently, is now in a dead heat with Brown in one poll and in serious danger of losing. Seeking a chance to gain the most prestigious Democratic seat in the United States Senate, Republicans have been dumping negative ads against Coakley the way Bostonians dumped tea in the harbor on a cold December night in 1773. Brown has been emphasizing the need to rein in government, campaigning on lower taxes and in opposition to the health care plan before Congress today. This contrasts sharply with Coakley's support for targeted tax cuts for the middle class, as well as her support for an individual mandate and a public option to lower health insurance costs. So what's going wrong for Martha Coakley?

Maybe it's that she's a flawed candidate. As Massachusetts Attorney General, she has refused to investigating Boston mayor Tom Menino for allegedly destroying public e-mail records in violation of the law. When state district attorneys made allegedly inaccurate and misleading charges about a marijuana policy initiative up for a referendum in an effort to defeat the law, such as suggesting anyone could carry pot any time (it passed), Coakley replied that "nothing in the proposed law explicitly forbids public use of the drug." In fact, the law still levies a $100 fine and confiscation for adults and mandatory community service for minors, suggesting Coakley, who as the state Attorney General should know what she's talking about, didn't read the bill.

Even Coakley's actions as a district attorney have been under attack A Somerville, Massachusetts police officer was charged with sexually abusing a 23-month-old girl in 2005. Coakley, serving on the grand jury in the case, decided not to indict him and allowed him to be released without bail. (Coakley's successor in that office charged him and got a conviction; the policeman is now serving two life sentences. Coakley defended her actions in the sexual abuse, insisting her decision was based on all the evidence available to her. How did the evidence that allowed the conviction to go forward, though, suddenly show up after she left that DA office?

Coakley's candidacy smacks of complacency among Massachusetts Democrats. After all, the state's entire congressional delegation is Democratic, and the Bay State hasn't sent a Republican to the Senate since re-electing Edward Brooke in 1972. But Massachusetts voters will elect a Republican for pragmatic reasons; as recently as 2002, they elected a Mormon businessman as governor because a skilled capitalist with moral rectitude who also rescued the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics was seen as the right man for the job. (Mitt Romney's election was the fourth straight Republican victory in a Massachusetts gubernatorial contest.) Even Massachusetts's reputation as a liberal state is inflated. The Boston busing controversy of 1974 had a lot of racial overtones, many white Boston residents angered by the plan to integrate their kids with black children in black schools that were seen as inferior. Scott Brown's success so far suggested that the people of Massachusetts are no more enamored with President Obama's agenda that residents of other states. It's typical of Democrats to take something for granted and put up anyone for office thinking nomination is tantamount to election.

So what does this have to do with everyone outside Massachusetts? Everything. The health care bill, flawed as it is, is the best chance for reform we're likely to get for another fifteen years. Brown opposes it. If he wins the special Senate election next week, he will be the forty-first Republican vote in the Senate needed to block the bill from proceeding. That is, if Coakley loses, health care reform loses.

The silver lining is that Coakley is a ahead of Brown by fifteen points in a Boston Globe poll, and she has a chance to turn things in her favor in a debate with Brown tonight. But even if she wins next Tuesday, I hope this serves as a lesson to Democrats in states where the party is dominant that a Democratic nominee only has to stay alive until Election Day to win.