Written by Joe Tetreault | 12 January 2010

The HuffPo's Jennifer Donahue seems to be conceding on behalf of Martha Coakley.

At a time when jobs are scarce, terror is back at orange, and heating oil is expensive, not to mention the rent, guess what: after one year, Coakley and the Democrats can give up talking about Bush-Cheney-McCain. They need to develop and focus on a clear consistent message that comes from the leadership and transparency voters mandated a year ago. Change can mean anything. But voters did not mean more of the same.

But as delicious as her penultimate paragraph is - reprinted in pixelated perfection above - it's the final graph I want to call more attention to. Plainly the special election is tilting towards Brown. Whether the democrats can staunch their hemorrhaging depends entirely on Coakley. While it is not Brown's race to lose, he's ahead on ideas and he's established himself as likable and safe to vote for. Coakley's tentative debate performance left her in third behind Brown and the independent candidate, Joseph L. Kennedy (no, not related) and her clumsy negative ad seems certain to only further beclown her.

Donahue's point that irked your humble correspondent is this one:

It happens to be a lousy week for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to be under attack for word choices and imperfect vote counting. It could just lead to a filibuster hungry GOP. And not because they picked up a message. Just because they stepped back to watch Democrats try to find their way in a time that is perhaps the most challenging to govern in eighty years. [ed.-Emphasis mine]

I'll grant you, the Republicans need a message. I'll grant you they have done little more than get out of the way of the Democrats as they hang themselves. But the climate is no more hostile now toward governance than at any time in our nation's history. The mistakes that have made governing difficult are the culmination of broken promises and a lack of ideas on the part of democrats. It comes to the fore when Coakley tries to tie Brown to Bush and Cheney. That was how they beat the Republicans who themselves had grown rather contemptible. Instead, amidst a economic downturn where 10% of the nation's workforce is out of work, the administration threw money at the problem in an entirely haphazard way, created an obviously bogus method of tooting their own horn and then with laserlike precision focused on every measure to intensify the uncertainty in the economy. Voters aren't dumb. They know when a politician lies to them, talks down to them and couldn't care less what they think. They know when a man repeats a commitment eight times prior to the vote and then utters it no more hence that it was a sham. Those elements contribute to the democrats inability to govern the ole US of A, and nothing else.

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