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Leah627
Leah627Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 1:06:00 AM EST
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Tonight, Martha Coakley lost her bid to become a Massachusetts Senator. Instead, an impressive showing of impassioned Independents showed up at the ballot box and elected Scott Brown (until now a member of the State senate).
Right now, embarrassed, frustrated, and terrified Democrats are tossing blame around like a hot potato: it’s Coakley’s fault for letting her guard down after the Democratic primary; it’s Obama’s fault for failing to campaign for Coakley early enough or heavily enough; it’s the fault of Democratic members of Congress for not coming through to the extent that they should have on the Health Care bill.
All or none of these accusations may be true. We do know a few things for sure, however:
- Scott Brown ran a solid campaign. The former nude model and “eligible bachelor” for Cosmo made good use of his charisma and vitality, as well as his constituents’ frustration with the lack of results emanating from the Democratic party, to win votes.
- The health care bill has spiraled into a series of concessions and disappointments, many of which have selfish Democratic congressmen to blame (Representative Stupak of Michigan, Senator Nelson of Nebraska, and Senator Lieberman of Connecticut—although he’s no longer a Democrat).
But how does electing Scott Brown, a man who vowed to vote against any health care reform bill, help alleviate frustration from a health care bill gone awry? Brown won’t solve our health care woes—he’ll seek to eliminate them by eliminating the bill altogether. A dismissal of health care reform defies what the majority of Americans want and need.
I feel scared, shocked, and angry that Coakley won’t fill Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat, and that it will go instead to a man who stands for much of what Kennedy himself despised. And I have some questions:
- Had the Republican candidate for the Senate seat been a woman who had posed nude for a Cosmo centerfold, would the GOP have given her as enthusiastic an endorsement?
- Was Coakley the best Democratic candidate? Would, say, Alan Khazei (an earnest underdog from the Democratic primary), have run a more effective and ultimately more successful campaign?
- Was Massachusetts afraid to elect a female Senator? Why does the gender gap still pervade Congress? Had Martha Coakley won, the Senate would have reached 18 female members, its highest ever number.
- Did Coakley’s admirable and unwavering pro-choice stance, and her unwillingness to compromise women’s reproductive rights in the health care bill have a significant impact on her candidacy?
- Why didn’t Coakley do more to campaign and raise money from the outset of her candidacy? Her campaign professed that it didn’t have enough money to poll voters until Brown had already surged ahead.
- Did the general disappointment in Obama’s failure to deliver “real change” affect voter turnout? How did democrats let Scott Brown appropriate the mantra of “real change”?
- Is there any hope that a health care bill might be passed that would include real reproductive health care coverage for women?
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by AFY_Abby
Coakley was a poor candidate. While I think Capuano would have been a better general election candidate, there is no chance he could have beat Coakley in the primary.
I also don't think this was some statement about American's hatred of healthcare reform. If anything, the Democratic base is angry about a lack of movement on healthcare reform, so they did not come out to vote. What's the point in voting for Democrats if they govern like centrists? Had healthcare reform already passed and Coakley campaigned like she was in it to win it, we would be speaking a different story this morning.
-E
- While in Boston and asked who Curt Schilling was, she said he was a Yankee. In Massachusetts, that may as well be a mortal sin.
- She did not do the necessary campaigning, blowing a 30-point lead in the polls to being swept by a Republican in the bluest state in the country. She even implied that she felt no need to "stand outside Fenway Park ... in the cold ... shaking hands." This is straight out of Politics 101, you need to do these things in order to win.
- The state changed the rule about empty Senate seats are filled because, when everyone though Kerry would be elected in 2004, they would have a special election rather than have some appointed by the governor take the seat.
- This election was about healthcare and derailing the Democrats filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate. Massachusetts already has one of the most progressive state health care systems in the country (one which Brown voted for), and the independents who decided the election did not want their system to be messed with.
There are a lot more factors in this election than whatever you imply about her status as a pro-choice female losing to a former Comsopolitan contest winner. It's important to look at the whole picture, and not see everything in male-female termsMy sources:
http://vodpod.com/watch/2891876-mass-backwards
Republican Scott Brown defends his vote for Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health-care plan