The polling has been contradictory -- but what is amazing to me is that the Coakley/Brown contest for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat -- is even a contest. What this situation suggests to me is not the disappointment of progressives as some have suggested. Progressives were very active in the four way Democratic primary.
What I hope that we will look at, when the dust settles, is the role of the top down, consultant-driven campaign model that opted to wait until the last ten days to mount a significant campaign despite raising more than five million dollars. Good grief.
Tip O'Neil, who had many a relevant political aphorism, and filled the Congressional seat once held by John F. Kennedy and ultimately became Speaker of the House, said not only that all politics is local, but that you have to ask people for their vote. You can't do much asking, particularly in person, if you don't campaign. Name recognition and advertising is just not enough. Voters need to know the candidate.
It is symptomatic that an arm of the DNC, Organizing for America needs to be called in at the last minute to encourage out of state calls to Democratic voters in MA. That is what passes for "organizing" these days folks. Something to think about going forward.
Meanwhile, I hope that people who can, will participate in the Coakley campaign's town by town phone banks. There is an extensive listing of them on the campaign web site.
Additionally, the Young Democrats are holding a phone bank on the 11th in Charlestown.
Looking ahead, there are many electorally focused, progressive organizations in MA. Many of them are part of the Mass Alliance, and many conduct trainings of various sorts.
Two of my favorite electorally focused groups with long term political development ideas (both members of the Mass Alliance) are Neighbor to Neighbor and Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts. (I wrote about them a few years ago in In These Times magazine.)
Neighbor to Neighbor of MA has chapters in major cities. Voter empowerment is central to the project.
Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts has seven chapters and a statewide network of electoral activists. PDM has a very useful listing of electorally-related resources on its web site.
We also have world class organizer training resources via the Practicing Democracy Network, headed by Marshall Ganz out of Harvard's Kennedy School. And of course, we have an active progressive political blogosphere, the hub of which is Blue Mass Group, as well as DFA groups, and more.
We have no shortage of places to plug into the Coakley campaign, and no shortage of ways to be involved in voter mobilization, and long term electoral capacity building in Massachusetts.
Let's make use of, support, and strengthen that capacity. And let's become more a part of it ourselves.
Update [2010-1-10 22:24:24 by Frederick Clarkson]: As if to underscore my point, I got a DNC robocall for Coakley this evening.