Dems Won't Lose Kennedy's Seat
Well, we are a week out from Election Day in the Massachusetts Senate race. What’s that you say? Wasn't the December Democratic primary tantamount to an election for that seat?
Apparently not. The Democrats picked a lack luster candidate in state prosecutor Martha Coakley who has all the views you would expect. She also has Paul Tsongas’ charisma for the “Ted Kennedy” seat. Her prosecutorial experience, almost always a plus in elections, has actually hurt her because of certain sex crimes prosecutions that roiled Massachusetts at the time. She is also running at a time when the majority of Massachusetts voters do not like the healthcare plan now before Congress.
State Senator Scott Brown, the Republican, is a member of the Massachusetts National Guard. He is touting his conservative positions on national defense and tax cuts, even morphing into John Kennedy doing a tax cut speech on one of his ads. He is mostly pro-choice but is against tax-payer funded abortions, late term abortions and favors parental notification laws. Mostly, however, he is against Obamacare and treating jihadis like criminals in America’s courts rather than unlawful combatants. Can these issues win in Massachusetts?
John McLaughlin’s command is now in play “Predictions!” My last in these matters were not bad. So how is Massachusetts going to go? My certainty on this prediction is on the New York-23 level, I will take no bets. The Senate seat will go to the Democrat Coakley. She is aware of her danger. The unions are aware. The Kennedy machine is aware. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign is aware.
Scott Brown pulled in over a million dollars in campaign donations yesterday. Polls have shown him between ten down and one up. This will not sneak up on Coakley. The negative ground in Massachusetts is just too great for a Republican. It has only 14% Republican registration. Democrats outnumber Republicans by something like three or four to one. In the polls Coakley is always at about 50%. Worse, there is a third party libertarian candidate named Joe Kennedy (no relation). In close elections the libertarian line has been responsible for denying Republicans seats all over the country. If his name was not Joe Kennedy we could assume those votes come out of the Republican vote, and I still think the majority of his vote will be people who would otherwise vote for Brown. Martha Coakley is not scandal plagued. She should win this thing by at least 5%. That will be moral victory for the Republicans and should scare Democrats but it will be forgotten in a few months.
But if I’m wrong, and I hope I am, it will be an earthquake for the Obama administration. It will be bigger than John Thune knocking off Tom Daschle in 2004. It will have cascading negative effects on the Democrats’ position. To pass healthcare they will have to deny him his seat and rush the bill through. This will be worse for them than Ben Nelson’s Cornhusker surprise. Republicans, when united, will have the filibuster back. Best of all the Republican Senatorial Committee will be able to get its best nominees because if a Republican can take a Massachusetts seat held by Kennedys or their satraps for more than 60 years there is no place they cannot win. And that is why the Democrats will not let it happen.
UPDATE: Martha Coakley is doing her best to make my crystal ball cloudy. I have always found the Rothenberg Report to shade, just slightly, to the left on tracking election results. In other words I think he gives the benefit of the doubt to Democrats. He’s just moved this race to “toss up.” Scott’s Brown upbeat political ads and a public persona at odds with the negative ads blanketing the state have made a race of it. Attorney General Coakley actually dissed him for shaking hands outside of Fenway Park. So she disparages tea parties in Boston, shows condescension to meeting voters in person at Fenway, runs off to D.C. for a big lobbyist dinner in the last week of the campaign, turns a blind eye to roughing up a reporter, and states in a debate that Al Qaeda is out of Afghanistan. Maybe Michael Barone is right and she is some kind of Republican plant.
Still, even now I hold to my prediction. Scott Brown is a conservative. He is no Ed Brookes or William Weld. I’d say his current incarnation is more conservative than Romney was when he was governor of Massachusetts. The public unions alone should be able to swamp Mr. Brown in a low turnout election, and in a high turnout election he can’t win. The problem is it feels like he will win. I’m not Luke Skywalker and I’m not going to trust my feelings. I maintain my prediction, Coakley wins; but it is a long night in Massachusetts.