Sunday, January 17, 2010

More from Massachusetts

from Andrew Sullivan:

A reader writes:

In the for what it's worth file: on my errands today, I counted signs basically Rte 6A from Barnstable village center for Yarmouth Port (Peterson's) and some side streets . . . approx 8 or 9 miles. Brown: 30; Coakley 5. Three families (each a g/l couple) that had Coakley signs up before our Dec. blizzard have not had them up . . . since. Phone calls at my house-sitting house (independent voters) Brown: at least 10, Coakley: 1.


Another writes:

I was in a hospital on Friday night, on a patient floor after visiting a family member. Ran into a friend. Four lifelong Democrats, talking outside the rooms of their loved ones in a hospital, and not a one of us was voting for Coakley.

We all want health care to pass. We all want Obama to succeed. We all want Coakley to go away. That's a problem for Coakley. This vote is not about health care and Obama, it's about the Senate and Coakley. If I voted in election after election and voted the Dem ticket except for Coakley (which I left blank), you might imagine I sure as hell would not start voting for her for Senator of all things.

At least the lightweight, brain-dead Brown will only hold that seat for 2 years. Coakley will share her mediocrity with us for the next 20 years if she gets in. Want my vote? Dems should make a deal - Coakley until 2012, then they'll put up a credible candidate.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

The View from Massachusetts

from a reader of Andrew Sullivan:
I'm trying to remain hopeful Martha Coakley will win the election next Tuesday, but that is difficult to do when listening to radio talk shows. I'm not talking about the right wing talk shows, I'm talking about the respected middle-of-the-road shows on WBZ-AM radio in Boston. My god, there is so much anger out there.

Many people say they're voting for Scott Brown simply because he is someone different. They're saying screw Washington, screw the Democrats, screw political machines. They want change, and Scott Brown, they feel, represents their best shot at that. They do not care what Brown stands for, they do not care how the country got into the messes we're in, all they want is change. It's kind of a "throw the bums out mentality" -- unthinking and purely emotional. Here in Massachusetts, the Democratic Party controls the Governor's office and both houses of the Commonwealth Legislature, so we can see on the state level what is happening in Washington. Gridlock, gridlock, political gridlock, and the Democrats can't get their act together enough to solve it.

I want Martha [Coakley] to win, I desperately want her to win, for her victory represents the best chance the country has in moving health care and other needed change forward, but I'm scared shitless she'll lose by that proverbial one vote. God, I hope I'm wrong.

Why Scott Brown is going to win in Massachusetts

Arrogance.

Arrogance of the incumbent Party. Their sense of entitlement led them to nominate an uninspiring political hack to replace a liberal icon and provide the 60th vote in the Senate.

However, the attack on Scott Brown posing for Cosmopolitan decades ago - like, who cares? - could only focus on how the media would react to a female candidate who had posed nude. Unless you want to see Martha Coakley nude - I certainly don't - it's totally irrelevant and reveals their desperation.

Martha Coakley has many other problems and issues in her decades of public life. If you live in Massachusetts and are quite happy with the way things are going in our country now, then please vote for her.

But if you want to send a message to the Establishment - political, economic, media, etc. - to which they WILL pay attention, well, this is your opportunity.
Photo tip to Andrew Sullivan.