I am sitting here in California, dulling my pain with one of our wonderful Zinfandels. My mom is dead and never had anything to do with politics. And although I'm not in Massachussetts (sp? ha ha), I do follow politics. Here is my explanation of what happened.
- This wasn't a local problem. This was a national problem
The conventional wisdom is that Coakley wasn't a very good candidate. On the issues, the woman was a fucking superstar and most Americans, not to mention most Massa-whatever-the-hell-you-are's would have agreed with her. Judging from his acceptance speech, I would have to say that Scott Brown had less of an accent (bad) and more of a sense of humor, more self-confidence and more charisma (good). But since when have any of these factors stopped Republicans from getting uncharismatic, stupid Republicans elected. No, the difference is that Republicans understand that, contrary to Tip O'Neill's famous pronouncement, all politics is national. They understood that if they could pull this off, it would cause an earthquake in national politics. In the meantime, Tim Kaine and Ramh Emmanuel were.....well, what WERE they doing? Not treating this as a national race.
- This campaign was not on the issues.
Even from distant California (which feels much closer after tonight), I could see that this campaign was not on the issues. Candidate Obama had several good skills, amplified by a solid marketing team. Among these was the ability to snap the narrative back to the issues despite the huge number of distractions. Do you remember when they were showing Michelle 23 hours a day, saying that she was proud of her country for the first time in her adult life, leavin the implication that she had never been proud of her country before. Candidate Obama was able to ever so slowly, but surely, pull the campaign back to the issues.
This campaign was not on the issues. It was on baseball team rivalries (there go the men who value baseball over issues, of which there are millions), it was on spelling (which counts, but not more than universal health care), it was on whether her name was Martha or "Marsha" as Patrick (back to rehab please) Kennedy called her. Had the campaign been on the issues, Martha would have won. It was not, which leads me to....
- The Massachussetts Media
I know without being a citizen of the Bay State, or whatever you call that stretch of frosty tundra, that the media was in the bag for Brown. How did I learn this? By listening to an NPR radio presentation that featured an audio pastiche of what was being said on Massachussetts radio and television. It was stunning: Brown, Brown, Brown, Brown, Brown --get out the vote for Brown. This was followed by questions from listeners the next day, asking, "Can he do this?". That was followed by a discussion of the fairness doctrine and why it really isn't workable today.
But let's not ignore the obvious. There was no objective media in Massachussetts. That media, like the national media, promulgated the myth of "voter anger". Anger over what? Obama had been in office less than four months before this so-called anger began.
Rachel Maddow has documented well the fact that the so-called Tea Baggers are not (or were not) a grass roots campaign of genuinely frustrated Americans, but was instead a corporate group spearheaded by Dick Armey and which had one goal: kill healthcare reform. As she notes, the so-called Tea Bag Convention in Tennessee is a $500-a-pop affair. Sound grass-rootsy? No, I didn't think so. But the corporate media took this whisper of "voter anger" from the corporate "grassroots" and amplified and repeated it enough so that it became a reality in keeping with the strategy of the corporate grassroots.
- Marketing
What do Republicans have that we don't? A clear, straight, well-delivered message. If you yell "fire" in a crowded theatre when there is no fire, and some mousy guy whispers "wait a minute -- there's no fire", you will get the attention and Mr. Mousy will get trampled. It helps, of course, that the guy yelling fire has the megaphone (see Media above). But from the very first day of his Presidency, the White House failed to fight back on anything or to offer a different viewpiont. Obama made the mistake of concentrating on governing and not on marketing. Bush would have known better. And Obama should have known that you can do both, and not just expect to be known by your deeds. Not a month into the Presidency, the honeymoon was over. Republicans cautiously emerged to criticize him. And by the end of the year, you had McCain vigorously attacking Obama with the snarl and snark of a much more youthful man. I've been around awhile. This lack of deference is unprecedented. They were able to get away with it because they seized the marketing campaign early on. In August, we saw very clearly that the Republican party was gaining the edge on health care, by inspiring crazed people to disrupt public forums. We seized the presidency, but they seized the message.
Make no mistake about it. This was a tragedy of epic proportions. A man who stood against absolutely everything that Ted Kennedy stood for has become a Senator. He had the nerve to call Vickie Kennedy and rub it in her face. He had the nerve to call the President and say that he was going to drive his truck down and show it to him.
Health care is dead. Repeat after me. Dead. We don't have the votes to get it through and Brown thinks that he was elected to kill it (and he may have been).
In any case, this was not about Coakley. The Republicans could have won with Coakley had she been their candidate.
The rest of Congressional Democrats have seen that Republicans are more in charge in the minority than Democrats are in the majority. Scott Brown said he ran against the machine. He didn't. He ran with the machine.