| 18 January 2010
Coakley has not as yet lost her contentious race against Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election. Her faltering bid can be traced primarily to her lackluster campaigning. But look beyond Coakley's inadequacy as a candidate. Special elections are often outliers based on the whims of public opinion and get out the vote efforts. The herculean efforts of well-motivated candidates can sway the populace in even the most fundamentally recalcitrant enemy territory. Like Massachusetts with a Republican. Ironically, the decision to retain the Senate seat by Kennedy allowed the perfect storm that sends Mr. Brown to Washington.
A diagnosis in the early part of 2008 left ample time to conduct primaries and schedule a special election to coincide with the general election in November of 2008. As readers will recall, Republicans were on the retreat in 2008 and a special election concurrent with the general in Massachusetts would have likely resulted in a 20 point victory for Coakley (or whomever the Democrat candidate would have been) regardless of the ability to campaign by the Republican candidate. The fired up party at that time was not the Republicans or even fiscally moderate independents who are driving Brown's surge. The Democrats were in lockstep behind then Senator Obama as he steamed past John McCain. Any effort by the Democrats to paint the Republican candidate with a brush by Bush would have succeeded rather easily.
Instead, despite an elected Democrat governor holding office in the Bay State. Despite a monumentally good election for the Democrats in the offing. Despite the basic logic that fighting malignant brain tumors is best accomplished when one devotes the totality of one's being to the cause. Despite all this, Teddy Kennedy chose to stay on as Senator for Massachusetts. His appearances in Washington became rarer and rarer. His impact on legislation lessened. In a year when progressive liberals clutched the reins of power tightly their standard bearer was a premature ghost.
No one knew when Senator Kennedy would shake off this mortal coil, but even so, the decision to remain Senator allowed the climate to change, drastically. In his final months, the Tea Party movement went from an offhand comment by Rick Santelli on CNBC to a powerful coalition of angry voters. Voters who held the Democrats in particular and incumbents in general to account for the spiraling deficits.
It was Kennedy's signature goal, universal health care for Americans that derailed Coakley the most. Incessant back room deals after Kennedy's death soured voters even more on the current Congress. It's difficult to fathom the terms more starkly. One election would effectively determine the fate of the spendthrift agenda wending its way through Washington. In arguably the most liberal of states, the nominee of the dominant party so foolishly assumes the race was over before it began. Challenging her, taking on the mantle of leviathan slayer, one state Senator, whose own party hesitated to back him. All avoided if Teddy Kennedy had done the noble thing and step down to allow Massachusens to be represented in full during the 111th Congress. Now that's crushing hubris.
More Coakley-Brown coverage here and here and here.
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