New poll has Mass. Senate race in a dead heat

[Darth Wagtaros]

Martha's gone superbitch on Brownie's ass.  Class act.

[Ed Anger]

Martha's gone superbitch on Brownie's ass.  Class act.

I liked her "slam" on Schilling. All he has to do is raise the bloody sock banner and waves of drunken racist massholes will flock to him.

<masshole accent> WICKED AWESOME. LET'S GO TO DUNKIN' DOUGHNUTS! </masshole accent>

[Faeelin]

Didn't think I'd have to clarify this, but it's the quality of the answer that I'm laughing at. I know most senate candidates are going to have little foreign policy experience, but any competent candidate should be able to offer a better answer than that.

So what would you say?

[jimmy olsen]

Didn't think I'd have to clarify this, but it's the quality of the answer that I'm laughing at. I know most senate candidates are going to have little foreign policy experience, but any competent candidate should be able to offer a better answer than that.

So what would you say?

I don't know her life story, but surely she and her DNC advisors can come up with some BS that's way better than that. Or how about the truth? I'm sure Brown has as little experience as she has so it's not like it's a disadvantage.

[Sheilbh]

I don't know her life story, but surely she and her DNC advisors can come up with some BS that's way better than that. Or how about the truth? I'm sure Brown has as little experience as she has so it's not like it's a disadvantage.

I think you're a wee bit off-piste here.  The link you have says the 'first credential' she offered was her sister lives abroad (she goes on in the clip to say that she's travelled extensively, because she's interested, but that she's AG so it's not something she deals with professionally).  It's the first credential but the clip, by the look of it stops before she gives her full answer.  Before we judge how bad her answer it it only seems fair to watch the whole thing.  If that clip is her whole answer then it's poor.

I think in terms of Coakley you'd be better off going at her cold/Kim Driscoll comment and her failure to campaign than what looks to me like a rather over-edited attack.

[jimmy olsen]

Attleboro is the town right across the border to me so seeing this quite shocking to me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/16/AR2010011601323_2.html?sid=ST2010011702095

Campaign workers reaching voters at home say the feeling runs even deeper. Norm Fay joined the legion known as the Brown Brigade after seeing every incumbent in his town, Attleboro, defeated in the Dec. 8 primary.

[Razgovory]

So is this Brown guy the one who was a male model?

[jimmy olsen]

Yup. I think Fate linked it in an earlier page.

Anyways, new poll out by PPP showing Brown up 51%-46%.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0110/PPP_Brown_up_5.html

Also, Coakley's stocks on Intrade are plummeting.
http://www.intrade.com/

[MadImmortalMan]

Tim is enjoying this...

[Razgovory]

Attleboro is the town right across the border to me so seeing this quite shocking to me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/16/AR2010011601323_2.html?sid=ST2010011702095

Campaign workers reaching voters at home say the feeling runs even deeper. Norm Fay joined the legion known as the Brown Brigade after seeing every incumbent in his town, Attleboro, defeated in the Dec. 8 primary.

Maybe they can call themselves Brownshirts.

[Razgovory]

Tim is enjoying this...

Maybe he's gay.

[jimmy olsen]

Attleboro is the town right across the border to me so seeing this quite shocking to me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/16/AR2010011601323_2.html?sid=ST2010011702095

Campaign workers reaching voters at home say the feeling runs even deeper. Norm Fay joined the legion known as the Brown Brigade after seeing every incumbent in his town, Attleboro, defeated in the Dec. 8 primary.

Maybe they can call themselves Brownshirts.

Nice.

EDIT: What?

[KRonn]

I'm just watching all this with amazement now, for the last week. I would have never thought a Repub would be so close to Coakley or any known name Democrat candidate, and until a week ago I would have said it's still Coakley's seat to win. But now I think the clear advantage is Brown's, though still too close to call. I'll be watching the Old North Church lanterns, one if a win by Brown, two if a win by Coakley.   

[Savonarola]

Barack steps in:

President Obama, putting his political capital on the line, swept into town yesterday to bolster Martha Coakley's campaign in the final days of an extraordinarily and unexpectedly tight US Senate race, saying that a Democratic victory tomorrow is vital to moving his agenda forward.

"Understand what's at stake here, Massachusetts. It's whether we're going forward or going backwards,'' Obama told a capacity crowd of 1,500 Coakley supporters at a Northeastern University gymnasium. "I can't do it alone. I need leaders like Martha by my side so we can kick it into high gear, so we can finish what we've started.''

The stakes for Obama are significant, as he tries to preserve Edward M. Kennedy's long-held Senate seat for Democrats and deflect the sudden and unexpectedly strong candidacy of state Senator Scott Brown, who would become the 41st Republican in the US Senate and give the party the filibuster power it needs to derail the president's health care over haul.

On a day when the race seemed to grow even more politically charged and vitriolic, Brown responded with a rally of his own at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, which drew nearly 2,000 people. The candidate, until recently a relative unknown, has been drawing increasingly large crowds in this overwhelming Democratic state, with recent polls showing him in a dead heat with Coakley or slightly ahead.

The Worcester event, coined "The People's Rally,'' was headlined by a cast of New England celebrities with working-man personas - former Red Sox ace Curt Schilling; Doug Flutie, the former Boston College and NFL quarterback; comedian Lenny Clarke; and John Ratzenberger (Cliff from "Cheers'') - as Brown sought to cast himself as a regular guy looking to send a message to Washington.

"The voters are doing their own thinking, and the machine politicians don't quite know how to react,'' Brown told the crowd. "This Senate seat does not belong to one person, or [one] party. It belongs to you.''

Both campaigns said they had overflow crowds. Brown's campaign estimated that 500 people watched a video feed at a nearby hotel ballroom; the Coakley campaign said that as many as 2,500 watched the Obama speech on a live feed across the street.

The Republican - who has made much of the fact that he owns a pickup truck with 200,000 miles on it - rallied the crowd with one of the frequent refrains of his campaign: "I'm Scott Brown, I'm from Wrentham, I drive a truck, and I'm asking for your vote.''

Obama, in a reference to that Brown campaign line, told the crowd at the Boston rally: "You've got to look under the hood.''

During his 25-minute speech, Obama criticized Brown's record, saying that the state senator has voted with Republicans 96 percent of the time and that it would be "hard to suggest'' he would be independent from the Republican agenda.Continued...

Obama also cast the Massachusetts election in stark terms regarding the future of the Democratic agenda, including the health care reform plan, which Coakley supports and Brown does not.

"Martha's opponent already is walking in lockstep with Washington Republicans,'' Obama said, criticizing Brown for opposing his recently proposed tax on Wall Street. "She's got your back, her opponent's got Wall Street's back. Bankers don't need another vote in the United States Senate. They've got plenty.''

Democrats believe Obama, a dynamic orator who easily captured this blue state in last year's presidential race, can breathe life into a Coakley campaign that until recently lacked any sense of urgency. Still, it's unclear how much of a boost he can give her or - with unreliable polls and an uncertain turnout in this midwinter race - exactly how much she needs.

Obama's decision to stump for Coakley yesterday comes with great political risk, after he saw his efforts for gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey last November end with Democratic losses, which were cast as a commentary on his young presidency.

The prospects of another Democratic loss - and such an unanticipated one at that - have national Republicans giddy.

Karl Rove yesterday wrote on his Twitter account, "Want to help Scott Brown but don't live in MA'' and linked to Brown's website.

"This has electrified the country,'' Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday morning on Fox News Sunday. ". . . Regardless of the outcome Tuesday, we know that in the most liberal state in America you're going to have a close election for the United States Senate because people in Massachusetts don't want this health care bill to pass.''

Earlier in the day, Brown campaigned in western and central Massachusetts, visiting Holyoke and West Springfield and greeting skiers on a soldout day at Wachusett Mountain, where he posed for pictures and signed lift tickets and snowboards. He inked many of them with "Scott #41'' - the vote he would represent in the Senate.

In Worcester, Brown's supporters on stage and in the crowd said they could sense victory was near. Schilling, Flutie, and others likened the atmosphere to the locker room of a championship team on the morning before a decisive victory.

Brown's daughters also appeared on stage. "If there's anything I know, it's that an underdog can accomplish great things,'' said Ayla Brown, a former "American Idol'' semifinalist and member of the Boston College women's basketball team, which earlier in the day had defeated a nationally ranked Georgia Tech squad.

Coakley entered the special election with a huge advantage: Registered Democrats in Massachusetts outnumber Republicans three-to-one, and the GOP hasn't won a US Senate seat here since 1972.

But Brown, who swept yesterday through Central Massachusetts, has tapped into an angry electorate that has been vocal at his events. Coakley supporters in Hyannis and Needham reported finding her campaign signs stolen or burned.

The president's speech was also briefly interrupted by a shout of "Abortion! Abortion! Innocent Blood!'' Two men and a young boy were escorted out of the room by police as the crowd tried to drown them out with chants of "Coakley! Coakley!''

Coakley aides said the men were from California; a Boston Police spokesman did not have names for the men and did not believe anyone was arrested. There were no indications that the men had ties to Brown's campaign, although abortion has been an increasingly charged issue in the campaign.

A series of Massachusetts elected officials spoke to the crowd before Obama took the stage. Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the widow of the late senator, whose death opened up the seat Brown and Coakley are vying for, also spoke.

"As Teddy would say, Jan. 19 is the date, Massachusetts is the state, and Martha Coakley is our candidate,'' Kennedy told the crowd.

Several speakers, including Coakley, acknowledged the struggles that Massachusetts voters are facing. "People deserve to be angry,'' Coakley said, "but we can't let that anger get in the way of remembering where it came from.''

Coakley yesterday hopped from a Dorchester church to a Brockton diner to a bar in Hyannis, asking for both prayers and votes.

She began the day at Charles Street AME, where about 70 congregants came to hold a prayer service for Haiti. Coakley sat near the front next to Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino.

"They don't want Barack to be a president who leads this country,'' Menino said, to calls from the crowd of "Say it, mayor, say it.'' "They want him to be a president who fails. We're not going to let that happen. . . . We lose this one, we lose the opportunity for Barack Obama and the change agenda to move forward.''

It's wrong to make fun of people who had brain cancer, Vicky.   

[Darth Wagtaros]

A friend of mine is a Republican who thinks Reagan was an Ultra Liberal.  She tells me that Brown signs are so hard to come by that his supporters steal each them from one another.  She put one up in her front yard and within hours it was gone.

Bit later she saw one in a neighbor's hard that looked just like her missing sign and took that one.  A chain of thievery marks this election.