When I was at the polls in Weymouth today, all the people with iPods had Coakley bumper-stickers and all the people with Red Sox caps had Brown bumper-stickers. This means we’re screwed.
/Typical TPM reader report
I am enjoying Wonkette’s on-the-ground reports from the Globe comments section though.
Face
Repubs want this more than Dems do. Period.
NobodySpecial
I haven’t seen a blessed soul at my polling place.
This may have something to do with my location in Northern Illinois, however.
DougJ
This may have something to do with my location in Northern Illinois, however.
MAYBE. But if Democrats were really motivated that wouldn’t stop them from showing up there too.
SGEW
I’m glad to see that you followed my advice.
The Populist
Being a gigantic baseball geek, it still doesn’t mean I vote for a tea bagger because my team’s hero tells me to.
Argh, if Sox fans are voting against their own best interests, so be it. I just do NOT want to hear from any of these people when they can’t get health care, gridlock in congress is worse than ever and nothing gets done.
If you are a Sox fan, out of work and vote for this tea bagger you get the government you deserve. Enjoy unemployment because Obama will be even more handcuffed to fix things.
Argh, I guess it’s true. These people sure do forget who put us in this mess don’t they. Oh but the Dem made a crack about Curt Schilling (funny how the right say that celebs are people who shouldn’t give any opnions UNLESS said celeb is one of theirs).
matt
Where went to vote there weren’t any more than a usual election. Notably tho, there were several college students there who seemed to have never voted before. Demographics being what they are, that’s a good thing.
Econwatcher
Slightly OT, but Obama and the Dems would be in a stronger position now if they’d done a loud, aggressive, populist campaign for deep financial reform before attempting HCR (or at least in tandem with it).
They could have pointed out that the villains they were chasing were the actual cause of our current woes (including the 10% unemployment rate), so the campaign would have connected more with people’s immediate woes. That might also have focused people’s ire for the bad economy where it belongs, and not on the Dems.
Wall Street is not popular in most red states, so they could have also put their congressional opponents in the awkward position of defending plutocrats in the midst of a meltdown, against the wishes of their constituents (heck, even the tea partiers won’t stand up for Wall Street, for the most part). The ugly story of the AIG bailout could be at the forefront of national attention.
I’m not with those who think Obama has been bought and sold, but I really don’t know why he didn’t do this.
twiffer
i said this before, i’ll say it again. during schilling’s career, everyone wanted him to shut the fuck up and pitch. why, for fuck’s sake, is any one listening to him now?
The Grand Panjandrum
I look forward to the sun rising tomorrow morning. Of course, reading a good portion of the blogosphere you would think we had just suffered a 7.0 earthquake.
The Populist
@Econwatcher:
This x 1000000000000
AkaDad
I decided to got vote. I needed to go out and get some hookers and blow anyway.
I wore a Patriots hat and voted for Coakley. What does that mean?
KCinDC
Ben Smith at Politico points out bogus charges of fraud from wingnuts, but of course says they’re just the opposite side of the same coin as Media Matters.
Davis X. Machina
Weymouth…Southie with trees. I always voted at the Wessagusett school.
beltane
@The Populist: Are Red Sox fans really this naive? I have several relatives who are the craziest of Yankee fans and there is nothing Derek Jeeter could say that would influence their vote. Likewise, Rudy Giuliani is a douchehat no matter how loudly he cheers the Yankees.
asiangrrlMN
@AkaDad: That means you’re very funny.
Donald G
Four questions:
1.) Who’s Curt Schilling?
2.) Why is he such a beloved figure that a mis-identification of him as a “Yankees fan” will probably affect the outcome of health care reform?
3.) Isn’t rather silly to be basing one’s vote for a U.S. Senator’s seat on his/her sports knowledge and sports rivalries?
4.) Are voters insane?
Donald G
A fifth question:
Should the franchise in Massachusetts be restricted only to those people who don’t give a damn about the Red Sox or the Yankees?
asiangrrlMN
@Donald G:
1. Pitcher for the Red Sox and rabid rightwinger.
2. See #1.
3. Yes.
4. Yes.
Anything else I can do for you?
ETA:
5. Same could be said of any rabid sports fan who puts sports before politics.
Jim
@Donald G:
Not in MA but I’ll hazard a catchall answer: Curt Schilling is a blowhard who has become a convenient, shorthand proxy for the fact that Martha Coakley is a bad candidate, much as “concerns about healthcare reform” have become proxy for “the economy really sucks.” and 4) shit yeah.
MikeJ
@Donald G: There are plenty of sane people who recognize that the yankees are evil and that the Sox should not be measured by one idiot.
Mr Furious
I just do NOT want to hear from any of these people when they can’t get health care
They live in Massachusetts. They got theirs. Fuck you (us).
SGEW
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
If half of the people in this country cared half as much about politics as they do about sports, we’d be living in a democracy.
AkaDad
@asiangrrlMN:
How is the way I look relevant?
dr. bloor
@NobodySpecial:
Northern Illinois? Nobody there? Looks like Rahm strikes again.
Comrade Dread
Not sure why this is apocalyptic.
All this means is that you’re back to courting folks like Olympia Snowe and giving her
bribesearmarks to get her vote.A sucky situation to be in, I’m sure, but you’ve already
shamelessly bribed and panderedcompromised to Blue Dogs, it shouldn’t take that much more work to get Snowe on board.David in NY
“/Typical TPM reader report”
TPM need more parodying.
Jay in Oregon
@AkaDad:
It means you’re a stooge for Obama and his ACORN thugs, that’s what!
bayville
And I love the Comments at Wonkette to the Comments at the Boston Globe. Example.
Scarab says at 1:39 pm, January 19th, 2010
–
hedgehog says at 1:54 pm, January 19th, 2010
Betsy
I always love elections if for no other reason than the fact that my polling place is “The Dante Club,” an old, weatherbeaten Italian-American social club with fake wood paneling, fluorescent lights, and a pervasive smell of decades-old cigarette smoke.
When I went to vote at noonish, there were no lines, but a steady trickle of folks coming in and going out. Mostly under 40, but that has to do with the neighborhood I live in.
Michael #2
I had no line – I don’t even think there were any folks in the voting booths. Went around noon at a local center for elderly Jewish residents.
I really didn’t think I’d ever see anyone rival John Kerry’s for an absolutely inept campaign. I agree, the GOP seems to have wanted this more. Much more. Coakley deserves to be de-frocked from the Democratic party if she loses.
Bostondreams
@Donald G:
That would leave us with maybe a few thousand eligible to vote, unfortunately.
After all, at the Patriots’ first Superbowl celebration, the crowd started chanting ‘Yankees Suck.’
Yes, we can at times be that pathetic. Much better since 2004 though.
And Curt is still an ass.
Cat Lady
@Donald G:
Curt Schilling lives a couple of miles down the street from me. You want me to TP his house?
Pedro used to call Schilling “red light” – when the camera light went on, the space between Schilling and the camera was the most dangerous place on earth. He has a regular gig on the morning drive sports show as Curt in the Cah, Bloviator Extraordinaire about everything everywhere, and let’s not forget Doug Flutie, Football Hero either as a Brown fanboy. We’re very, very provincial here.
Common Sense
@Comrade Dread:
This. A thousand times over. Snowe, Collins, or even Brown himself will relish being the most important person in America. The guy was trying to schedule a pickup one on one game against the Prez. I don’t think he considers Obama to be just like Hitler. Unless he wants to go down in flames in two years Brown will work with the man his state supports by a 2:1 margin.
Any Senator can be bought. Some just cost more than others.
Martin
I’ll gladly point out that iPod owners outnumber Red Sox fans, even in MA, by a wide margin. Thank FSM for that.
What’s the verdict on Red Sox fans with iPods? They just stay home? If so, then we are truly fucked.
@Mr Furious: This too. Unfortunately.
Comrade Darkness
Vaguely OT, but just a reminder that It does make a huge difference having a democratic administration, congress’s ineptitude be damned. Oversight matters boatloads to the economic health of the middle class: The FTC does its own collecting on debt chasers (wapo link, but it’s Singletary, who continues to have a good column)
GregB
Schilling was running around like a tool during the presidential election working for McGrumpy and Mooselini.
Then he was speculated as a GOP candidate for the Mass. Senate but he didn’t have the seeds to run.
Now he’s joined the testosterone set of athletes and B listers who’ve jumped on the Brown bandwagon.
As for Coakley, this stat says a whole lot.
Brown made 66 campaign stops from the time the primary ended until last Sunday. Coakley—–19.
-G
matt
@Donald G:
The whole thing about schilling is that he’s one of the most famous red sox players in the state. He was a major part of our first world series win in 86 years, and he’s pretty much legendary.
Coakley calling him a yankees fan is epic fail politically. It shows how out of touch she is to not know, and that feeds right into the Right wing talking points about democrats being completely out of touch. See also: Kerry’s 2004 “Manny Ortez and David Ramirez.”
The talk shows can play that clip, and people listening can just go, man what a dumb, fake broad.
Bender
@The Populist:
Try again. It’s not that Schilling said anything, it’s that Marcia Marissa Marcie Coakley put her foot where it has been so often this month. It’s another sign of what a terrible candidate she is that she can’t even play the “local sports team” card properly.
@Donald G:
His courageous pitching despite an ankle injury (which resulted in his pitching with a bloody Red Sock) was the key to the Sox winning their first World Series since 1918.
And again, the Schilling thing was just the latest moronic gaffe from this “Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic” candidate (saying Afghanistan was free of terrorists, misspelling “Massachusetts” in ads, ads using pix of the World Trade Center to symbolize “greed and corruption,” saying Catholics shouldn’t be allowed to work in emergency rooms, etc.) . Brown was already beating Marsha Marsha Marsha in the polls for a couple of days when this story broke.
Tomlinson
I’m a diehard, lifelong Red Sox fan and think Curt Shilling should stick his bloody sock in it. If anyone made a voting decision based on that Coakley crack (yeah, stupid), they really have no business voting for anything more important than head honcho of the lemonade stand.
Mark S.
@GregB:
Wow! And how many of those 19 were in the last week?
different church-lady
Yeah, that TMP post really raised “low sample size conclusion” to an artform.
Tomlinson
@Bender:
Gotta agree with that. Coakley truly is about the worst candidate imaginable. Or unimaginable. Her numbers started tanking about the time she opened her mouth.
The massachusetts dem party sucks too, BTW. Just for the record.
KCinDC
Considering that the voters don’t seem to be having much problem voting for someone who’s running to derail Obama’s agenda, the 2:1 support may not mean much. And if he works with Obama as you say, how does he plan to win the Republican primary when the angry teabaggers responsible for his present victory turn against him?
Martin
@Bostondreams:
Yankees do suck. Let’s not fault the crowd for simply stating facts.
Bruuuuce
If there were any way to root more against the Red Sox, your summary would provide it. But I’m already rooting for them to go 0-162 (which, combined with the Dallas Cowboys’ 0-16 and the New York Rangers’ 0-80, would be a very satisfying world), and rooting for injuries to happen is classless and nasty (so I don’t).
In case anyone missed it, David Sirota’s piece yesterday at OpenLeft about reconciliation if (when) Brown wins is exactly how I feel. I’m rooting for Coakley, and preparing for the scumball:
(Okay. Can’t get three grafs to be one blockquote; they are consecutive. The last one is set in bold in the original, except the last sentence. *grumble*)
John S.
All of them.
I think Martha Coakley is the ultimate ratfucker. She gives the right-wingers all their talking points (elitist, out of touch, phony, etc.) on a silver platter. At least most Democrats make the GOP work to get their talking points to stick.
If I were a paranoid conspiracy type, I would surmise that she was a PUMA that threw the election just for some payback.
mr. whipple
A friend called from Mass today and he said he voted for Coakley but is not optimistic. He said he thinks there’s a ‘lot of closeted white sheets’ up there.
The Grand Panjandrum
Love all the Yankees hate today. But one fact is still incontrovertible:
Yankees 27, Red Sox 7.
dr. bloor
@GregB:
Interesting ratio. Ironically enough–or perhaps, not ironic at all–Nate at 538 pegged Brown last night to be a 3:1 favorite today.
MikeJ
@Bruuuuce: Reconciliation requires the bill to come out of the budget committee. Russ Feingold has said that it ain’t gonna happen for health care reform, and he’s on the budget committee.
MikeJ
@The Grand Panjandrum:
This millennium, Red Sox 2, Yankees 1.
KCinDC
We’ve known for a long time that real Americans have to be white, but I hadn’t realized they have to be male as well, at least according to Peggy Noonan. Not sure how this affects Sarah Palin.
Martin
@matt: And it’s equally interesting that voters are far more concerned about whether a candidate is plugged into sports than issues that they’ll actually be responsible for. My wife couldn’t even name the pro baseball or football teams in my state (granted, there are 5 and 3 of them, but still.)
That’s not a commentary on MA or an excuse for the other outrageous mistakes such as misspelling the state name, but it does say something about American’s getting the governance they deserve.
zilifant
In my experience, the more rabid someone’s sporting loyalty, the more likely they are to be a GOP minion. Of course, there are exceptions, but certainly the loudest NFL fans seem to be redder than Schilling’s bloody sock. I can’t say I care much about baseball, but I wonder if the same dynamic might not apply there.
JK
Olbermann Blasts “Homophobic, Racist” Scott Brown; Scarborough Fires Back
http://www.mediaite.com/online/olbermann-blasts-homophobic-racist-scott-brown-scarborough-fires-back
I commend Curt Schilling for his contributions to the Boston Red Sox, but when it comes to politics he can go fuck himself.
matt
@mr. whipple:
There’s a shitload of racists up here, they just hide it behind their working class outer demeanor.
mr. whipple
Damn, she’s lazier than Bush.
Jim
@MikeJ:
Oy. Chairman Conrad. I’d say tough, but not impossible, if people like Sanders and Franken and Harkin and Boxer make enough noise.
@KCinDC:
Wow. That’s just gross. I don’t know Deutsch, but Noonan and Barnicle are exactly the kind of “ethnic white”/Reagan Democrats who will throw this thing to Brown, if that’s what happens.
Martin
@The Grand Panjandrum: Good news for you, Michael Schumacher got a F1 drive this season, so my hate will be divided. But still, FTFY.
Bender
@John S.:
Don’t forget “addle-brained sub-moron!”
@mr. whipple:
So the people who voted for Ted Kennedy and John Kerry for five decades are mostly racists? Whodathunk?
Seriously, is there any occasion in which The Post-Racial Party won’t immediately play the race card?
matt
@Martin:
Sure, but if you claim to be a person of the people and want to be an authentic masshole, its simply something you need to be able to deal with and handle, and know.
Her campaign is one of the worst run I’ve ever seen in my life. If there were a video to this it would be the Leon Lett/Don Beebee play in the superbowl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE1G-Dn7nUs
The Raven
@Econwatcher:
Simon Johnson, former IMF chief economist among many other impressive credentials, agrees with you.
(Reposted. The original link is buried in the health care open thread.)
The Grand Panjandrum
@MikeJ: Oooooohhhh …. impressive.
JenJen
How much longer until Josh Marshall hears from a reader who took the electoral pulse of a taxi driver?
Not to knock Josh too much, but this anecdotal stuff is coated in mustache-of-understanding-wax.
Joel
@Econwatcher: Probably because Obama still needed the 60 votes to quash the filibuster and certain Senators (Lieberman, e.g.) would have felt like they were being thrown under the bus.
The Raven
@KCinDC:
Cute gets you a pass.
Comrade Kevin
@Bender:
I know, isn’t it amazing how quickly, and hypocritically, Republicans do that?
JGabriel
Perhaps I’m too blase about this, but I’m having trouble believing Brown can win this thing. Almost every poll giving a win to Brown seems to have a screening that’s tilted more towards Republicans than is typical for Massachusetts. And today’s high turnout is probably good news for Coakley.
It looks to me like the same dynamic that happens every election in NJ: the Republicans hype up their chances of winning, then get disappointed on election day.
.
mr. whipple
@Bender:
Just telling ya what he said. Didn’t make much sense to me, but there it is.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Martin: Thank you. Your hate of the greatest franchise is professional sports makes me stronger.
eastriver
@MikeJ:
Fuck the Red Sux. Fuck. Them.
Carry on.
Joel
By the way, the Schilling thing is a red herring.
He’s a carpetbagging asshole through and through, but it matters not one whit.
Donald G
I’m sorry, I just don’t grok organized sports and sports loyalties. Never have, never will. That’s one of the reasons why I will never run for public office.
Yeah, Coakley screwed up big-time with that Schilling remark, but it’s frickin’ sports. The people of the Commonwealth are electing a senator, not the Commissioner of Baseball.
(Is that still Peter Ueberoth, or has he been replaced? And there seem to be all these new teams than the ones I remember from when I was a kid – for both baseball and football. Is the Senate involved in hearings on steroid abuse in professional sports, or is that the House?)
For the record, my two favorite teams are …
1.) Anyone playing against the Yankees, and
2.) Anyone playing against the Cowboys.
And that’s it for me and sports.
freelancer
@JenJen:
[snort]
Thanks for that.
eastriver
@KCinDC:
I was at the gym this morning when I saw her say this. I almost flew of the treadmill.
DougJ
How much longer until Josh Marshall hears from a reader who took the electoral pulse of a taxi driver?
Ha!
Napoleon
@Martin:
That is a tough call who to hate more, Schumacher or the Yanks.
J.W. Hamner
@JGabriel:
Uhm… this would be slightly more reassuring if… well… you know.
But I’m still sort of with you… I just can’t believe Coakley is going to lose, no matter how terrible her campaign is/was.
Common Sense
@KCinDC:
He isn’t running as a hardline Republican. He’s running as an independent outsider. A plurality of Massachusetts voters are independent in fact. They won’t suddenly turn in to Mississippi Republicans if they elect Brown. And Brown won’t suddenly become Coburn. He will be what he always has been.
As to your second point — An incumbent facing hardline opposition in a primary? I can look to Leiberman and know how that works out. Methinks the TeaBagger extremist school of thought is a lot less popular than you are assuming in Massachusetts. Brown didn’t win the primary by sucking up to extremists. He won the primary and then started raising money.
Irony Abounds
Just another reason to hate the effing Red Sox. The point was made above – Yankee fans would not let anything Derek Jeter or any other Yankee, past or present, say influence their votes. Red Sox fans, on the other hand, are dumber than a bag of rocks (which might explain why they are Red Sox fans to begin with).
What I also find amazing, is that the Democratic majority in the Senate is dropping from 60 to 59, still higher than Republicans have had in a long long while, and yet it signifies the total and complete destruction of the Democratic Party. For some unknown reasons, Republicans set the ground rules no matter what. The USA sucks. I may even root against our athletes and teams in the Olympics this year.
dr. bloor
@JGabriel:
It’s all about the turnout. All of those polls tilting toward Republicans were focusing on “likely voters,” which were disproportionately R up until last weekend. We’ll see what the last minute blitz does for her–it would be the ultimate case of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.
Of course, with 19 campaign stops on the board over the entire general election season, she deserves to lose no matter how it turns out today.
MNPundit
So BJ wants what? Silence? The blogging has been from a very shrill place lately.
Common Sense
@Donald G:
You should add “whoever is playing the Lakers” to your list. Then you are set.
Jim
@Common Sense:
Probably true. But Snowe and Collins, while they haven’t turned into Coburn, still vote with him when it counts.
The Raven
BTW, most people don’t vote on issues, and, usually, a majority doesn’t vote at all.
Might as well sit back and watch the hominid show.
Croak!
Donald G
@Common Sense:
The Lakers are basketball, right? It depends, how cute are their cheerleaders?
Lessee, the first and last time I watched a basketball game (1988, I believe), my friends and I were rooting for the Celtics … against the Detroit Pistons.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Boston has long had issues regarding race. Hell, the Red Sox were the last major league baseball team to integrate (the first black Red Sox was Pumpsie Green) and the Boston Garden was notoriously a rough place to play if you were black (Celtics AND Bruins). It doesn’t surprise me in the least that the Massachusetts independents want to knock the black President on his ass. It’s who they are, what they do.
skippy
edit sucks
KCinDC
@Common Sense: Lieberman lost his primary. The only reason he’s still around is that Connecticut was unusual in allowing him a second chance as an independent after he’s lost. That and the fact that the Republicans abandoned their own candidate while the Democrats were at best half-hearted in supporting Lamont (since they foolishly believed it wouldn’t matter). Nothing like that will apply to Brown’s situation in 2012.
Brown is running right now as the 41st vote needed to block “ObamaCare”. You really think Republicans are going to forgive and forget if he turns around and votes for it after he gets into the Senate?
drew42
I guess that depends on where one includes the year 2000.
In any case, I know many Red Sex fans. And not one of them is so fucking stupid that they’d vote based on what someone said about Curt Schilling, or vice versa.
As a few commenters have mentioned, he’s just a proxy. Right-wingers of all kinds have been pouring all their effort into this race for the last few months.
Win or lose, the lesson is: Don’t ever take any election for granted. Thought we learned that one already.
beltane
@Irony Abounds: Yankees fans are aware that the players are paid to lots of money to win. Red Sox fans think their players are heroes who play out of the goodness of their hearts and their love of Boston. They also are said to believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
dr. bloor
@Donald G:
I don’t actually think I’ve ever heard anyone use the word “cute” when describing the Laker Girls…
drew42
Arrgh.. that should be “Red Sox fans.”
Just my luck — an awful Freudian slip, and the edit/delete comment options aren’t appearing.
Martin
@Napoleon: It really is. I have to go with Schumi on this one though, but it’s a tossup really.
JGabriel
J.W. Hamner:
Point taken. I should have said federal election.
.
skippy
i tried to re-edit this comment w/o success; i can’t get the blockquote function to nest blockquotes, so i’ll just re-post w/o the fancy dancy html tricks:
@Mark S.:
they were all yesterday.
@JGabriel:
we can only hope. i will here reprint a comment i left @ steve benen’s wash monthly on this same topic:
i know i’m whistling past the graveyard here, but a commentor on nate’s site (on another post about this election: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/25-0.html#comment-235310273812071979) pointed out something about “all the polls” that show brown ahead:
all of nate’s highest rated pollsters are sitting this one out…
“seltzer & susa [no shows]
rasmussen [punting – toss-up]
then it drops to:
r2000 [toss-up]
mason-dixon & quin [no shows]
then ppp [brown +5]
then down to lower rated insider advantage & suffolk & fox & arg
plus the unknowns like crosstarget [pajamas]
in other words, the available pooling is dominated by lower rated pollsters + unknows/dubious + leaked internals…
= low confidence level for the final prediction in an abbreviated special election
wv = unhook [lol]”
tho i have no idea what “wv = unhook [lol]” means, this commentor (dm in fla) makes a good point: everyone is basing their prediction of a brown blow-out on a combination of polling firms that either (a) are new and untested or (b) don’t have that great of a track record.
also, every report this morning speaks of a high, high turn out, and if i recall correctly, everyone has said that that would favor the dems.
we’ll see.
liberty60
@Econwatcher:
Exactly!
The Dems need to take the populist mantle away from the Glenn Becks and Tea Partiers, and show the public who is really screwing them.
But this also means saying godbye to that sweet corporate
PAC crackcontributions; which means a certain percentage of Dems need to be cleaned out of office before we get real representation.Right now the Dems are in a perfect trap- the public is willing to see them as So-shu-lists of the highest order, yet at the same time they depend on AIG cash to get elected, and in turn do their bidding.
So they end up hated by all sides.
Michael
Lubricant will alleviate the chafing, but hey, different strokes for different folks and all.
GregB
“Right now, Scott is showing a double-digit lead among people who describe themselves as douchebags.”
-Andy Borowitz
skippy
my comment above, w/o nesting blockquotes, is hard to understand, forgive me. pls. go to the original 538 comment for a more clear understanding of my point, if that is indeed possible.
for the record, the editing function refused to allow me to edit my comment more than twice. so, this time at least, it’s not my fault i’m making no sense.
Common Sense
@KCinDC:
I think it’s quite possible Brown runs as an independent if the primary doesn’t look good for him, a la Specter or Leiberman. What’s he got to lose? The Republicans don’t even have committee seats to hold over his head. I don’t see what Brown has to win by voting straight ticket SoCon GOP. I don’t think he’s going to do it myself (assuming he wins this thing of course). He’ll be like any other New England Republican, and like most New England Dems — Sanders being pretty much the lone exception in the Senate.
Xenos
Repeating it here, same as I predicted a week ago. Coakley by 8%. The polls are worthless, as they are all lame robocalls, indistinguishable from the hundreds of push-polls going out there, and people are not generally responding to them. I stopped picking up the phone a week ago.
I am way out in an ultra-blue town that is outside the reach of the activist wingnut radio and masshole sports-talk stations, so maybe I am just blind to it. But the fundamentals for Coakley are still sound, and Brown is not the politician to be flipping hundreds of thousands of confirmed Democrats to pull this off.
Common Sense
@Donald G:
They are well regarded among their peers. But then again, so are the Cowboys cheerleaders. Doesn’t affect my hatred for either team.
Jager
Think about this:
Boston has a population of just over 600k, during the work day the population is around 1.5 million. The traffic sucks, you are stuck in your “cah”…you know whats on the radio in Boston? Conservative talk, national and local, on AM and FM. Know what’s on the sports talk station in the morning? Dennis and Callahan, right wingers, know who has been on with them, many times? Scott Brown. Yesterday Scott Brown was on the morning show, the midday show and the Big Show in the afternoon on WEEI. (they have two sister stations that simulcast them, in addition to their 50kw signal.) Know who is number 1 (most rating periods) in Boston in men 25-54? WEEI. Curt Schilling has been on with Dennis and Callahan for years. WEEI is all local, all Boston and all right wing.
twiffer
@drew42: 2000 was the last year of the prior millenium. this one started in 2001. so, no, you can’t include it.
Common Sense
@Jim:
Believe me, I am not saying the Dems aren’t losing something. Coakley would have been a near guaranteed vote, as Kennedy was for decades. Going from that to a center-right vote will have consequences. It’s not so dire as some seem to think however. The realities of getting elected will take precedence — they always do. Even in the internet age, all politics is still local.
aimai
Jeezus, I hope you are right xenos. My precinct always votes and I daresay it will go for coakely but my 92 year old neighbor was too sick to get out so we are down one vote for coakley. But if an elderly shut in ethnic white lady says “I don’t know this guy brown! I’m not voting for him!” I really have to wonder if he is going over that well with all the other elderly white democratic voters we’ve been hearing about. Still, its fucking depressing. I can’t bear the thought of this faker, brown, for two years. But maybe its what we have to go through to get the democratic party in gear and run someone actually good for the senatorial seat.
aimai
Jim
@Common Sense:
In reality, no. The Dems go from a sixty vote “super-majority” they pretty much weren’t using to a fifty-nine vote majority. Most of this will just be about MSM noise-making “Is teh loss of Teddy Kennedy’s seat the end of the Obama presidency?” But that does make a bad political atmosphere a little worse. The trick will be keeping nitwits like Bayh and Lincoln on board, and forcing the Senate bill through, and hopefully some improvements through reconciliation.
KCinDC
@Common Sense, the question is what his best path to reelection is. I’m not sure that leaving the GOP and running as an independent is going to work well. His situation is completely different from Lieberman (who didn’t avoid the primary and didn’t have a significant Republican running) or Specter (who became a Democrat, not an independent).
I just don’t see how abandoning the pledge that a majority of his current supporters are counting on him to follow through on would be a plus in getting reelected.
Reelection is going to be hard no matter what, so toeing with the party line and getting the rewards of wingnut welfare and lobbying jobs if he loses might be the most appealing future.
different church-lady
The Schilling gaff is a talking point, not a vote changer. It gives Brown mojo, but mojo isn’t always votes. The people talking about it are people who want to share the joy of sticking it to the dems, not people honestly trying to make up their minds who to vote for. This affects turnout, but not decisions.
However, turnout may decide this thing.
Lesson: play all 60 minutes of the game.
Common Sense
@Jim:
Herding cats. It always has been. Now we have a twenty four hour up to the minute live view of the process though.
Tomlinson
@aimai:
Me too, but I don’t believe it will. Coakley screwed this pooch but royally, the Mass Dem party aided and abetted, and this should be a massive, massive wake up call to them.
Then again, I see more Coakley signs than I ever saw Obama signs and the McCain/Brown ratio is about even, so who the hell knows?
I do know this – people who will openly admit to voting for Coakley are few and far between and the Brown people are everywhere.
Re: right wing radio in Boston. The dems have got to fix this. They MUST have a mass media plan to counter fox and right wing radio, and I do not mean AirAmerica and MSNBC. I would suggest starting with Jon Stewart, prime time.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Common Sense: Except the lesson he’s learned so far is stay under the radar, and Republicans will take care of your election, and the entire leadership will make sure that his “vote” doesn’t mean anything, which won’t be hard, since the ConservaDems will now have an out as well. Every newspaper in Mass will have to run is votes front page for him to vote against the rest of his party. I don’t see that happening.
DougJ
The traffic sucks, you are stuck in your “cah”…you know whats on the radio in Boston? Conservative talk, national and local, on AM and FM. Know what’s on the sports talk station in the morning? Dennis and Callahan, right wingers, know who has been on with them, many times?
It’s also all Irish, gift of the gab and all that. They like to yak.
JGabriel
So. Assuming – for the sake of discussion – that Coakley wins, how much of a meltdown will the Teabagger Right display? I expect frothing at the mouth by Fox News pundits about “corrupt liberal fascist Massachusetts politics”, “election fraud”, and “votes from dead people”.
.
Geoduck
@SGEW:
They care about sports because they are trained, quite literally from birth, that sports are Vitally Crucially Important, while politics is some dull thing that happens off somewhere and has no real bearing on their lives.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Is this the only blog in the world where you can cut and paste a phrase from a front page above-the-fold ad, and get thrown into moderation for it?
Why, yes. Yes, I think it is.
And yes, I am taking the peenus reduction pills. Been taking ’em for years. It’s either that or buy my pants at the Big and Tall store.
mr. whipple
Yes, but if Coakley loses, they’ll be the usual “stolen by super-secret Diebold programs/hacking/I voted for her but the vote showed up for him” yaddayaddayadda.
Jim
@Common Sense:
It’s an interesting paradox. All politics is still local–every Mainer I’ve “talked” to on blogs, when I ask how Snowe and Collins can keep getting reelected, has a story about constituent service, not abortion, not the wars, not the budget, not health care, getting phone calls returned–all politics is local, and all political commentary is nationalized and frenzified, both on cable and in the blogosphere. That’s why I refuse to accept this “referendum on healthcare!!” narrative. I think the whole story is in Greg B’s 66-19 stat.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
@Tomlinson:
Ha. You know who’s on the airwaves here in SF/Bay Area? Michael Savage and sundry other rightwingers. I’m not saying it’s unimportant, but rightwingers dominate talk radio across the US, even in liberal places.
beltane
@Geoduck: George Carlin explained why this is so better than anyone else ever could.
Xenos
@aimai: Maybe it is just wishful thinking on my part.
If so, well, those contradictions are not going to heighten themselves, are they? Capuano can have a couple years to build a serious, state-wide campaign and movement. Brown is going to make a fool of himself and get eaten alive in the local media, and Capuano can run a persuasive ‘I told ya so’ campaign. (Hey, I voted for Coakley, and now wish I had gone for him.) And it is time some of the egos in Congress realized they have to get it moving, play some hardball, and earn their pay. For once.
mr. whipple
Maybe the Democratic party can buy everyone an ipod or CD player for their cahs.
tigrismus
@GregB: Brown made 66 campaign stops from the time the primary ended until last Sunday. Coakley——-19.
FWIW, the Senate was only in session 9 times during that period.
Comrade Kevin
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason: Actually, Michael Savage currently is *not* on the air in the Bay Area. The local affiliate dropped him recently. That said, there are still quite a few right-wing blowhards on the air here.
Cassidy
So what’s the current spread?
JGabriel
mr. whipple:
Huh? Look through this thread — everyone acknowledges that Coakley ran a crappy campaign. No one’s going to accuse Massachusetts of rigging the vote for a Republican …
Oh, wait. Concern troll is concerned, and already marshalling arguments to defend the winger right in the event of a GOP loss (Whawawa, but the democrats would be worse, waaaaa!). Such a good sign.
.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim: It would be nice if someone explained, relentlessly if possible, that the Republican Senate is deliberately fucking things up to an unprecedented degree. Jim Bunning’s “candy-flavored cigarettes” thing should be common knowledge. No one likes whining, but no one likes bad sportsmanship either, and those Senate holds are just purely bad sportsmanship. I’d like to see a new strategy for highlighting Republican obstructionism, one that makes it clear that it’s not just politics as usual, it’s a whole new level of jackassery.
liberty60
@Jim:
I will repeat my comments from the other thread to disagree here- we were all kidding ourselves to think there was ever 60 votes for Obama’s agenda.
Lieberman, Nelson, and the rest of the Blue Dogs were never….ever…going to vote for something real, and to pretend that “if only Obama had sucked a few more Blue Dog wienies” we would have a public option, is just masochism.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
@Comrade Kevin:
Whoa, didn’t think I’d live to see the day. He’s like a lunatic institution.
mr. whipple
Lol. You don’t know conspiracy mongers.
Jim
@FlipYrWhig:
Absolutely. Now that Biden has made some noise about it, I think the Dem caucus needs to pick it up. I think Franken would be a good candidate, backed up by someone more establishment. A Franken-Feinstein double team, perhaps. That’d confuse the hell out of Tweety and Broder.
Cassidy
So who’s actually winning?
Jim
@liberty60:
agree, that’s pretty much what I meant. And on that coming together note, I need to get the hell away from the computer and get some work done.
Martin
@Jager:
Every place is like that. Right wing radio is 80% of the dial. Thank Clinton’s acceptance of media consolidation, unfortunately.
Rick Taylor
It’s all meaningless. I remember the stories of the great Democratic turnout in the 2004 Presidential election. Wake me when the vote has been counted.
Midnight Marauder
@Cassidy:
The terrorists.
Again.
Martin
@Cassidy:
Goldman Sachs, as usual.
General Winfield Stuck
@liberty60: I agree with this, but I do believe the Blue Dogs would have voted at least for cloture on the Reid compromise for a medicare expansion. That little traitorous turd rests completely with Joe the 6 faced POS>
geg6
@Midnight Marauder:
Those fuckers always win, don’t they?
Them and John Fucking McCain.
Redshirt
I’ve got a bit of a purity issue here. I’m from Maine, but have been “forced” to live in MA nigh on 15 years now. I still cannot stand this place – Mainers are raised to Fear and Loathe the Masshole, and take his tourist money, of course. This upbringing permeates me, and I’m having a hard time finding anything positive to say about MA other than “it’s not South Carolina”.
So maybe I’m not the most objective person on this, but MA sucks. As do the Yankees, of course.
FlipYrWhig
@liberty60: There’s a wicked paradox in all this: In dealing with a contentious issue, it seems to me that fighting hard for a policy that comes close but loses actually keeps up partisan morale… but it doesn’t actually put that policy into effect. Making compromises for a policy that comes close and wins deflates partisan morale… but actually does put the policy into effect. Actually making policy to handle difficult issues, then, is a losing political strategy. That’s probably why the Republicans have essentially given up making policy and reduced the whole point of their party to tax cuts and bloody fetuses.
General Winfield Stuck
@Midnight Marauder: The terrorists and Sarah Palin of course. Sarah wins always whether she does or not. She even wins when she quits. Just ask Norah Odonnell.
cat48
Zsa Zsa Hamsher is on TV ripping Obama promoting herself as a Democrat. GAHHHHH
Common Sense
@liberty60:
I think Obama’s agenda (such as it was) was to tell Congress to get something done and he would pass it into law. But I understand your point. It correlates with mine. I don’t think they can make it any more of a middle of the road than it already is. They already sacrificed so much of this bill to appease the Blue Dogs. I think that the basic building blocs will remain no matter what we have to give away on the details. And once those blocks are in place all bets are off. People forget that we didn’t magically grant equal rights for everyone on the first try. It’s taken multiple Civil Rights Bills so far, and we still haven’t.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Midnight Marauder:
Whuh? I thought our brave servicemen were keeping us safe.
God Damn America.
Jager
@martin
Boston is the only market where the freaking sports station is a right wing political talker!
The MSM
@Jim:
And in case any of you were wondering..
Oh yeah. Yes indeed. Big time. Oh baby yes.
Oh man. Oh man. I’m telling ya you got no idea. How. Much. It. Means. That. YESSSSSS!
Whew! That felt good! Excuse me while I go clean myself off.
J.W. Hamner
Looked to be a significant turnout for my ward/precinct when I voted half an hour ago. I’m in DFH land, so I guess that’s good.
Uriel
I will never understand the many and wondrous mysteries of moderation. Not complaining- just saying.
twiffer
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason: that cause the rest of us are listening to our iPods.
liberty60
Just found this – Simon Johnson’s article at Baseline Scenario where he describes the trap the Dems have themselves in:
The point is, the progressives have NOT sold the American people yet on their agenda; thinking that with the 2008 elections they could enact legislation was premature; we still need to win the argument for health reform, financial reform, etc.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Uriel:
Don’t feel bad. The guy who wrote the software doesn’t understand it either.
Midnight Marauder
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
I didn’t know you were a Juicer, Rev. Wright. Welcome to the party!
Jay in Oregon
@JGabriel:
That’s already happening.
http://www.google.com/search?q=coakley+senate+race+acorn&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
chopper
@skippy:
yeah, we’ll see. still a bit of a nailbiter tho.
the GOP is the zombie that just keeps getting back up. everybody talked about how they screwed themselves and were damaged goods and they tainted themselves for a generation, and now a year later they’re back to winning elections. i guess the rats were getting horny without them around.
batgirl
@JGabriel: Problem is that people who supported (and more importantly still support) Obama are too stupid to realize that voting for Brown just because Coakley is an absolute doofus will frak over Obama and his agenda.
There are no moderate Republican senators even if they run moderate. Unlike the Democratic party, the Senate Republican Leadership knows how to whip their senators into line with a big dose of fear from the teabaggers.
[This is the message I’m already working to drill into friends and family in Illinois who are solid Democrats yet have voted again and again for Kirk as their Representative. Voting for Kirk is not voting for a moderate. It is voting for an obstructionist that does not want to see government work lest Obama succeed.]
FlipYrWhig
@liberty60:
But that gets back to a point I was making earlier: it presumes that it’s possible to convert “convincing the mainstream middle” into picking off a few Republican votes (and/or shoring up a few particularly wishy-washy Democratic votes). That’s the part of the circuit that I think is completely broken. I think we have a politico-media system that guarantees that no clamor from the people can ever move the discussion or the policy leftwards. To move politics leftwards, we have to elect leftier politicians; entrenched politicians don’t move left due to public pressure (except in the context of a primary challenge; c.f. Specter and Gillibrand). But entrenched politicians _do_ move _right_ due to public pressure.
“The People” are always right-wing, because when they’re left-wing, in the eyes of the politico-media complex, they cease to be “The People” and become just another interest group worth ignoring.
That’s the Gordian knot. I don’t know how to work it loose.
Zach
Can anyone dissuade me on this; I think Biden can provide the 60th vote before Brown is sworn in:
My naive, but novel, theory of the law:
1. Article 1, Section 3 states that the VP is the President of the Senate, but does not get to vote. It also says each Congressman gets one vote. I wonder whether this applies to procedural votes within the Senate in addition to votes on passing legislation; obviously, each Senator does not get a vote within committees.
2. Senate Standing Rule 22 requires a vote of three-fifths of Senators “duly chosen and sworn” to end debate. The VP is duly chosen and sworn.
3. After Paul Kirk resigns, and before Scott Brown is sworn in, Biden can provide the 60th vote.
QED
The obvious paradox here is that the VP could vote with a 40-vote minority against a 60-vote majority to prevent cloture (60/100 = 3/5; 60/101 < 3/5). However, this seems unlikely since the President could veto any legislation the VP opposed anyway.
The Populist
@Cat Lady:
Flutie, Schilling = rich guys who basically buy into conservatism so that they can have lower taxes.
Man, I wish the rank and file (which 99% of us are) would stop buying into this crap. If Schilling’s taxes go UP it doesn’t mean yours are too.
Idiots. Or should I say rubes.
Sentient Puddle
@Zach: Nice try, but no. Constitutionally, the vice president only gets a vote in the event of a tie. 59-40 is not a tie.
The Populist
Fact: If Coakley somehow pulls this out, the right need to realize that people WANT health care and this b.s. from polls that show people do not want it is bunk.
I am a facebook “friend” of Sen. Webb. Welllll….the other day a whole string of posts threatening him over his support of health care were popping up. One lady wrote:
I loved this guy Al Ensley:
Al Ensley Don’t worry folks, by the time the Democrats sign the Health Care bill into effect, pass crap and tax bill, give 100 billion dollars to third world countries in hush money the economy will be dead and the planet will be safe. We will be like those poor people in Africa that are starving but the planet will be safe. By the way if this Health care … See Morebill is so damn great, why is congress exempt from it. They claim to know what we need but its not good enough for them.These democrats are so arrogant its sickening. We have to have climate change so tax payers can spend millions to create worthless jobs, like the ones created this past year. The government is the only thing around here growing. How many new government agencies does this health care bill create. I heard over 100 but who has seen a bill or even read one. I’m sure have of the congress hasn’t read it.
There were supporters that mocked this but I cannot find them right now. Hehe, it’s funny how people are so righteous in their beliefs yet I bet each of these two examples are simple middle class people who buy the right’s nonsense. I own a small business, I make a lot of money and I want what’s best for the COUNTRY, not some rich country club a-holes who would bury my business in a heartbeat.
Donald G
@Cassidy:
The Red Sox, surely.
tigrismus
@Zach: Kirk has stated his intention is to stay in office until Brown is actually sworn in, if Brown wins.
The Populist
@JGabriel:
I would love to see her win solely to be able to point and laugh loudly at teabaggers.
KCinDC
@Zach, the VP may be duly chosen and sworn, but he’s not a senator.
Zach
@Sentient Puddle:
I realize this is the case in votes to pass legislation as dictated in Article 1. However, Article 1 also says, “each Senator shall have one vote.” Each Senator does not have one vote to get a bill out of committee. My argument is that votes pertaining to Senate rules are governed by the rules of the Senate and not the Constitution (to the extent that the rules are constitutional), and Senate rules merely say that three-fifths of Senators duly chosen and sworn need to vote to vote for cloture, not three-fifths of Senators with voting rights.
KCinDC
@tigrismus, there’s some controversy over whether Kirk can continue until the new senator is seated. Not sure how serious it is.
Zach
@KCinDC: In this case he actually is, but I get your point.
And whether or not Kirk intends to serve until Brown is sworn in doesn’t matter; there are enough chickenshit Dems (Bayh, Nelson, Landrieu, etc, etc) who will bail out of the 60 if there’s any scheming. Obviously my theory doesn’t matter in this situation, either; I was just curious.
The Populist
Found it! Here is the funny Facebook Health Care comments:
All time best response…maybe he’s a poster here:
Or
The Populist
I might add that the most vocal Webb critics on Facebook all have Scott Brown for Senate pics on their profiles. Interesting.
tigrismus
@KCinDC: Yeah, I knew there were differing opinions, and a stink would certainly arise. Hopefully Coakley will win and the the issue will not become more than academic.
JGabriel
mr. whipple:
Apparently not:
Damn. You win.
.
JGabriel
The Populist:
Me, too. In fact, it’s what I expect to do tonight. Well, maybe not the pointing (that’s rude), but hopefully the laughing loudly.
.
The Populist
@JGabriel:
Well, what’s good for the goose…blah blah blah. Teabaggers think it’s normal discourse to yell and hijack political town halls and facebook pages to post and shout bile and boo anybody who has a reasonable counterpoint. So pointing may be rude to you and me but heck, it’s like pointing at a silly monkey in a cage at the zoo. You point at them when they do silly things to show others, so it’s far from rude to do the same to show others what a sore loser looks like!
LOL.
JenJen
Funny tweet from Nate Silver:
JGabriel
Sigh. I hate it that Nate was right about this election.
.