The Democrats Begin The Blame Game

Dems need to start acting like a sports team. Keep this kind of stuff behind closed doors, present a united front and play to win. And when you lose, the whole team takes responsibility - in public. Right now, they all just need to really shut up and get back to work.

The Dems deserve this embarrassment. They've played terrible politics the past year and the Senate Dems especially have handled the entire health care reform issue as cluelessly as the Reeps did just 4 years ago with Social Security reform. It's like these knuckleheads never learn anything.

Hopefully the Senate version of the health care bill dies right along with the Coakley campaign. It's a shame, because it never had to be this way.

Time would be better spent not assigning blame, but to use this as something to learn from so other races can recalibrate their recruitment, message, etc.

I will spend this quick moment, if the unemployment rate in Massachusetts was 5-6% no one would have known, or cared who Scott Brown was.

SteinL
I am afraid the emperor has no clothes...Rhetorician extraordinaire but alas he is poltician first and a leader second if at all

This may have something to do with internal Democratic Party strife within Massachusetts. Apparently, the people who supported Coakley and the people who supported her opponent in the primary didn't get along...different parts of the state. The party machine there was not in Coakley's camp and never did get over her winning the primary. The mayor of Boston and others didn't endorse her.

There were lots of blogs and lots of articles that warned this was coming as a result of continuing Bush II policies as placation under the false flag "bi-partisanship".

A tremendously dull and uninspiring candidate running a misguided campaign that badly underestimated the resentment of the economically strapped majority of Bay State voters and badly overstated the value of the Kennedy brand. As one who lived there for 15 years, this wasn't hard to predict.

JOBS! JOBS! JOBS! Health insurancve is not a great issue in MA.

Maybe Scott can really focus on undocumented workers in MA that receive health insurance.

If we get penalized on out taxes so should they. Thanks Mitt for the mess

Froma poster at dailykos

My Mom is a Democratic machine operative in Boston - here's her explanation

Tue Jan 19, 2010 at 07:50:30 PM PST

My mom has been a Democratic machine operative in Boston since the 70's. She knows about Massachusetts politics, and she knows about this election. Here's what she says happened:

* catlover72's diary :: ::
*

First of all, this is not a referendum on Obama or Washington.

This is about local infighting in the Massachusetts Democratic Party, plain and simple.

In this particular race, there has been a great deal of conflict between the Democratic insiders in Western Mass and the Democratic insiders in Boston.

During the primary, Western Mass backed Martha Coakley (who is from Western Mass) because her primary opponent, Mike Capuano, a current U.S. House Rep from Somerville, was from Somerville not Western Mass.

According to my mom, the Western Mass Democrats got a lot more momentum in the primary because no one in Boston believed that Capuano could lose. Western Mass turned out, Boston and vicinity did not.

Mom says Capuano would probably have won easily had he not lost the primary (he never has a serious challenge when he runs for his House seat).

Coakley, on the other hand, not only dropped the ball as everyone knows, but no politicians in Boston wanted their names associated with her after she won the primary. My mom isn't high enough up the chain to know why this is (or maybe she is holding out on me because she doesn't want anyone to read this and recognize her dishing the inside scoop - she is old school and thinks she shouldn't be talking publicly about this).

As the race went on, she (mom) asked around as to why she hadn't been called out to phone bank, check lists of registered voters, etc, for the campaign as usual. She was told "we're not backing anyone" by "someone on the committee" (she is not telling me what committee because this blogging thing is making her uneasy).

Menino never backed her publicly ("Don't name names!" says mom. "Everyone knows he's the mayor!" I say). He never backed her secretly either, the machine was not turned out for Coakley.

"Nobody likes her" says mom. What she means is, Coakley had no friends in politics. The Democrats in Massachusetts let this happen because - "I don't know" says mom.

Maybe they weren't about to let Western Mass manipulate them. Maybe it all comes down to nothing more than who is friends with whom.

All Scott Brown did was see an opportunity and turn it to his advantage.

There is no deeper national implication. This is not a death knell for the Democratic party or Obama. This is a story of a domestic spat between "parochial divisions" in Massachsetts.

The proverbial house divided among itself, fell.

UPDATE: Rec List! Thank you everyone, for listening to my mom's perspective.