Once upon a time, I sat near a very beautiful woman in a busy bar, feeling too timid to approach her. I listened in as at least half a dozen guys tried lines on her, each one shot down. After one especially lame attempt, I leaned over and said: "Wasn't that last one the absolute worst pick-up line you've heard all night?'
She laughed, I got her number, and we went out.
So I'm going to try the same kind of approach here. I've been mainly listening in to the Massachusetts "conversation." I'm far away now, but I lived in that state for six years, still have family there, and have a pretty good feel for the place.
The recent movement in the polls toward Brown does not surprise me, as it does most other Kossacks, because what I overhear, coming from the Coakley side, is almost total and abject cluelesness.
In case you haven't been reading the "mainstream" opinion columns, and I gather that many of you have not, cluelessness is exactly what we stand accused of. Take my advice and cop a plea. Collectively, we're guilty.
It's not only the pundits who are saying that Democrats are clueless, its the voters -- the people who respond in polls and who will be casting ballots tomorrow. If Scott Brown wins, as seems increasingly likely, it won't be because Coakley didn't try hard, or because the GOTV efforts failed, or because voters were brainwashed by low-down campaign tactics.
It will be because voters are intent on delivering a message to the Democratic Party, and Democrats have kept their fingers stuck in their ears.
The message is this: It's not about the issues, stupid. It's about the C-word. And the C-word isn't Coakley or character or whatever you might be thinking.
The C-word is CORRUPTION. Right now, throughout much of the country, and especially in states like Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, and Illinois, the average American believes that the Democratic Party is a thoroughly corrupt party.
And party corruption is the one thing that Democrats, and especially Kossack Democrats, refuse to discuss in any honest or straightforward way.
In fact, most Democrats have defined corruption out of the conversation. The definition of corruption within Democratic circles has become a weird one. The attitude I encounter when broaching the C-word is that you've got to to be stashing cash in your freezer before it counts as corruption, and even after that, your party lets you keep your congressional seat.
So now let's talk about the common definition of corruption, the American definition, the one that has voters turning away from the Democratic Party in disgust. According to that common usage, a political party is corrupt if it practices:
1. Hegemony: establishing one-party rule as a goal.
- Dynasticism: the idea that political office should be held for decades and be heritable by family or clan.
- Cronyism: the growth of a government apparatus that then is beholden to the party of its creation.
- Influence Peddling: the selling of votes to moneyed interests.
Read that list and you'll immediately understand why ordinary Americans have come to fear Democratic Party corruption, and why Martha Coakley is having so much trouble in Massachusetts, if unfairly.
The particular styles of party corruption differ from state to state. Blatantly illegal influence peddling has been the problem in New Jersey. Cronyism is the chosen demerit of Ohio Democrats. Hegemony and dynasticism have marked the Massachusetts party.
And if you don't know what I mean, then you've never lobbied for a progressive cause in the Garden State, never competed for a state job in the Buckeye State, and never been involved in Bay State civil litigation where your success was dependent on how many friends of the judge you could count in your inner circle.
In brief, ordinary Americans face this type of corruption in trying to live their everyday lives. It is stultifying, demoralizing, toxic to the American dream.
And when we elected Barack Obama, over the dynastic Clinton clan, we did think things would change. We at least expected to see some effort. We minimally hoped that the new people in power would show they had a clue.
When did the Obama Department of Justice launch its anti-corruption campaign to root out illegal influence peddling in New Jersey and Ohio? Did I miss it?
When did the Obama forces within the Democratic Party carry out their purge of old corrupt elements in the state party structures of Massachusetts and Illinois? Did I not get the memo? If I missed the memo, then so did the vast majority of the American people.
And I'm sorry, but the promise of "New Politics" was not something to be itemized on the priority list along with HRC, energy policy, Haiti and Afghanistan. New politics was the precondition, the bedrock, the means to all the other ends.
Not only was it not done, but in many ways we got its opposite. We've seen incredible deference to old warhorses of Democratic Party corruption -- the Ted Stricklands and Joe Manchins and the like.
Americans do not object to health care reform, as we know from polls. What they object to is an overt buy-off of Senatorial votes by granting differential benefits to some states. And it took Schwartzenneger, an Austrian, to point out that the Nelson buy-off ought to be illegal. Suppose FDR had offered higher Social Security benefits in those states where he needed to sway Senate votes?
The Nelson scam was like waving a big red flag in front of the national electorate, and on the flag was printed: "We are crooks!"
Now Martha Coakley does not deserve to bear the burden for this epidemic of cluelessness. She's a good woman, she'd make a great Senator, I hope she wins.
But I mean, really. The scripts the Coakley phone bankers are using virtually all mention "saving Ted Kennedy's seat." With all deference to the late Senator, THIS IS NOT THE TIME.
Dynasticism and one-party hegemony are exactly those factors behind new voter fears about the Democratic Party, and exactly those forces driving Independents -- and Democrats -- to vote for Scott Brown.
I used to live in Tip O'Neill's congressional district, where the election-day drama was over whether second place would go to the GOP or SWP. I know how bad hegemonic party control can be, and the swing voters, en masse, are now saying they've had enough.
I suspect that the Democratic scripts, which are all about the Kennedy legacy and the need to "preserve" that Senate seat, are actually behind the most recent uptick for Brown in the polls.
By all means, keep up the phone calling. But for the sake of Martha Coakley, before you make those calls, think hard about what you're going to say. Don't promise voters more of exactly what they most fear.
To put it simply: Get a clue.