Is Coakley Crumbling?
After hitting up DC lobbyists for their cold, hard cash, only to discover that Scott Brown would overtake her in a Suffolk University poll, is it safe to say that Attorney General Martha Coakley is done?
I’m not sure I know the answer – but I received the following solicitation earlier tonight on the American University graduate student listserv:
For those who are interested:
The Martha Coakley Campaign is looking for Virtual Phone Bank Volunteers from now until the election on Tuesday, January 19th. It is really easy to use and runs on your own computer or laptop and will work anywhere with an internet connection. Calling hours are typically 9am-9pm, but you can do as many hours as you like on your own schedule.
If you are interested please email Kate Foster, the Virtual Phone Bank Volunteer Coordinator, at xxxxx@marthacoakley.com.
Thank you for your time and I hope the beginning of the semester is going well for everyone.
Okay, so is it a huge deal to solicit college kids and grad students to phone bank? No. Does it look desperate as Hell when the solicitation comes less than a week from the special election, especially when you’ve outspent your opponent 2:1? Absolutely.
There’s a lot on the line for this race – the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, for one thing:
Brown has boasted that if he wins, he’ll be the linchpin in a successful GOP filibuster of health care reform, and Coakley has stressed on the campaign that she would be the 60th vote to deliver one of Kennedy’s top priorities. If Brown were to win, Democrats would have to drop everything and fly to Maine to find out what Republican moderates Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe might want in exchange for their votes.
Now, interim Massachusetts Senator Paul Kirk has warned that Democrats will stall seating Brown in the case of a Coakley upset, but as Republican strategist Patrick Ruffini noted, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) was sworn in 6 days after a 1996 election. I guess it depends on what your own personal model of representation looks like – but as an opponent of this nasty healthcare handout “reform” bill, it seems an awful lot to me like the Democratic Party is putting politics ahead of principles.
Looks to me like Democrats everywhere are bracing for impact – and I’m looking for a big upset win by Scott Brown next Tuesday.
