Our reporter finally hears from the extremely well-educated Democrat seeking to replace Teddy Kennedy in Daniel Webster’s Senate seat:

4:00PM, recorded call with Martha’s voice. It’s the first I have taken of that type, though my wife is just hanging up on all of them now without listening. (I gently harangued her, a straight-line Dem voter, towards Brown. That debate ended in a draw; after an hour of research, she expressed distaste for both candidates and isn’t voting. I suspect there may be more out there like her, particularly given the weather, which is utterly foul. It’s not a great way to win, but it’s better than losing.)

Martha’s tone on the call was school-marmish — like one would talk to a ten-year-old, or an old person hard of hearing that one didn’t particularly like. Reminds me of my fifth grade teacher who would lecture me about things like “keeping an open mind” and listening better. Said she would vote to protect Social Security and Medicare (as if she could single-handedly stuff paper towels into the long fatal tear in the hull and keep the Titanic and keep it from sinking.)

She also made an odd, cryptic reference to women “taking their daughters to the polls”, then talked about how she would protect “our” interests in Washington. Click. That unlocked what the call was really about — the single, gender-base-galvanizing issue when all else fails: abortion. She has no idea what kind of dark forces she is bargaining with. This may not be a hot one with this audience, but it has become one with me. My views on this have reversed 180 degrees in five years. In short: right to choose WHAT, exactly? (more…)

On Election Day in the Bay State, our intrepid reporter on the ground is receiving more phone calls than a bookie on payday.

I noticed the Kennedy name this morning on the ballot. (“Liberty” party). I suspect a few (perhaps only a few, but surely some) will vote “Kennedy” just because they always have. And virtually all of them will be Democrats.

LATE-BREAKING NEWS!!!:

10:37AM — Recorded all just came in from the Coakley campaign. Talker was a woman, speaking in a down-beat monotone. Said Martha was “aunt and godmother” to *her* girls. (I was mixed up within the first ten seconds; who on earth *is* this, then?) And why couldn’t Martha get anyone closer in her family to make such a call?

It was clearly a lame, late, last-ditch attempt to mimic the engaging calls from Scott Brown’s daughters the last few days and do damage control with stay-at-home moms. Her main push was “equal pay for equal work”. Not that that’s a bad thing if that’s what it really means, but it doesn’t. Forgive me if I’m not up on my left-speak, but I thought the myriad factors behind that simplistic gender-warfare koan (e.g., time in workforce, training risk, different job parameters, etc.) had been explained away long ago by responsible mainstream economists. What decade do they think they’re in, exactly? I’m waiting for Betty Friedan to call next

Not long thereafter, he filed this report: (more…)

Just now posting our correspondent’s report filed from the frozen hinterlands the interior East. He’s experiencing something that he has rarely experienced, the chance that his vote might make a difference. If you live in the Bay State, make sure to follow his example and vote for Scott Brown:

It’s 10AM and I just returned from trudging through an inch of new snow to vote for Scott Brown. You must understand: my entire life, I’ve known, when I cast my vote in this state, that it did not matter one whit. Now it does — in spades. I feel euphoric. To outward appearances, it was a routine transaction, though a few details were telling. (more…)

Welcome Instapundit Readers!!  While you’re here, check out our latest dispatches from our reporter embedded behind enemy lines in a liberal enclave of the Bay State.

Barbara Boxer hasn’t been polling nearly as badly as has her colleague from the Nutmeg State, but in a campaign that’s just getting underway, in a state that went for Obama by 24 points (just a shade smaller than the Democrat’s margin in the Bay State), she’s only six points ahead of her weakest challenger.   Her strongest challenger, my gal Carly, has made it a real race, trailing Boxer by only three points.  When the Massachusetts campaign got underway, the Democrat, though not an incumbent had won a statewide election, led her Republican challenger by thirty points.  Most polls have him up right now.

And while Democrats have a 3-to-1 registration edge over Republicans in Massachusetts, here in the Golden State it’s only 3 to 2.

Now, California Democrats are beginning to worry that a Brown victory in the Bay State could rev up Republicans out here:

For Boxer, a favorite Republican target, a GOP win in Massachusetts would be a particularly dark sign representing “not just the canary in the coal mine,” said Wade Randlett, a leading Silicon Valley fundraiser for Obama. “It’s the flock of dead ravens landing on the lawn.”

Even the Mayor of the state’s most liberal big city can read the tea leaves:

“We better get our act together – and quickly,” [San Francisco Mayor Gavin] Newsom said. Voters “are so angry. They don’t feel that we’re paying attention to their needs, in terms of their jobs, and what’s going on at the grassroots, in their neighborhoods.

Mrs. Boxer doesn’t spent much time in the jurisdiction she represents, having held no town halls on health care last fall.  When I contacted her office to ask if she had ever held any, they told me she does hold them.  In Washington.  Yup, that’s right, you gotta to make a cross country journey to talk to our Senator about the issues facing our country and our state.

So, given how poorly Ma’am’s been polling, you think maybe she’ll pull a Chris Dodd, opening the race for a Democrat who takes the time to listen to the citizens of the once-Golden State?

(San Francisco Chronicle article via Instapundit.)

No matter what happens in the Bay State today, we are witnessing what may be a milestone in American politics. A Republican candidate for federal office may well turn Massachusetts red by doing what the Gipper once did, getting the groups, which sixty years ago helped transform Massachusetts into one of the most reliably Democratic states in the union, to vote Republican.

Even as Massachusetts Democrats embraced the cultural left in the 1960s and 1970s, the working class voters remained within the fold.  While those voters opted for the Gipper in the 1980s and helped the Democrats nominate a (brainy) social conservative as their gubernatorial standard bearer in 1990 (who lost to a libertarian Republican), the state GOP never developed a strategy to wean them away from the party of George McGovern and John Kerry.

Now they seem to be rallying to Scott Brown:

In fact most of Massachusetts comes from ‘hearty stock’, or in other words a Catholic, blue-collar background. And while perhaps not as conservative as other places in the country, as a voting block it is certainly more mainstream than the liberal crowd pulled in and retained by the magnet of Harvard/Radcliffe/Brandeis/Tufts.

What this really means is that a mildly conservative, blue-collar candidate has a lot of unrecognized and untapped reserve to draw upon when running to tweak the nose of Massachusetts’ limousine-liberal elite. Call them the ‘Will Hunting’ voters.

Unlike the past when a liberal who lives in Beacon Hill, and the plumber who fixes his sinks and lives in Somerville could generally be relied upon to both vote for Ted Kennedy, this year the plumber from Somerville has a choice that easily appeals to *him* and will stick it to all those Ha-vahd snobs who have always looked down at him.

Via Instapundit. Perhaps, it was Ted Kennedy’s last name which kept them within the Democratic fold for so long.  Union leadership may be ginning up the turnout machine for Martha Coakely, but many of the union rank and file are breaking for Scott Brown.

Democrats would be wise to witness what is going on in the Bay State  and instead of doubling down on their own left-wing agenda, might try and figure out why people who once regularly voted Democrat are now pulling for the GOP.

From deep within his Bay State bunker, our intrepid reporter hears the bells ringing out, he hears the cannons roar, he hears all Americans free forever more. Oh, wait, it’s just bells he’s been hearing. Got a little carried away thinking of champions of liberty from Massachusetts who have five letters in their last name. Here’s the latest dispatch from the resistance, er, Sons and Daughters of Liberty:

I lost track of all the political calls today (my wife took several). I think we’re at five as of 6PM and the sheer volume is starting to get annoying.

One that I picked up was from Brown’s *other* (older) daughter. Like the one yesterday, it was very engaging, upbeat and forward-looking. I also heard an ad on the radio (local Christian AM station) with both girls. Scott came on at the end and said “thanks girls”, followed by a short trailer. You just
wanted to like them. Not sure the time on that station will do more than motivate the base, but it helps.

Driving around town, the thing that’s still conspicuous is a total lack of Coakley signs. I haven’t seen a single one since the primary. You’d think
her primary supporters would put them out again. The fact that they haven’t speaks to low awareness. Brown signs are easy to find but not common.
Despite the national coverage, this one is a sleeper.

I heard one Martha ad on a local FM oldies station. Anonymous announcer used a Brown clip to scare the base about him being the “41st Republican vote”. I doubt many know what that even means, much less why it matters to *them*. That plus the BHO call on Friday seem to point to an assumption, by the Coaklely camp that local folks care about big national strategy. I doubt many do. Everything I’ve heard out of her camp is defensive and
fear-oriented. Brown is still playing nice.

Weather is crappy, even by New England standards. Heavy wet snow and sleet, freezing to a dangerous black-ice glaze and the slop is expected to continue into tomorrow. Anyone not inclined to go out or make an extra stop tomorrow won’t. Put that together with the factors I noted above and closers advantage and I’m beginning to get optimistic that Mr. Brown just might take this one.

Decided to add emphasis to this dispatch.  Seems the Brown campaign has held to the high ground and perhaps that’s what helps him unite the “center-right-indie coalition” and keep his base energized.

UPDATE:   (more…)

I sometimes wonder if, in his spare time, Keith Olbermann opens up his laptop in a dark corner of his apartment and reads the conservative blogs, having become particularly of a certain gay blog on the right and under an assumed identity, comments on an occasional basis, saying horrible, no good and very bad things about Bruce and me.  Now, that unhappy correspondent on the house organ of the Democratic Party is calling Scott  Brown “Irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women.”

Not just that, Brown leaves the seat up after he pees and wears army boots.  Oh, and he doesn’t tip well either.  And he has bad breath.  And he blow dries his hair.  And he doesn’t inflate his tires.  And doesn’t recycle.  And he hates puppies.  And he doesn’t wash his hands as often as he should.  And he once forgot his wife’s birthday.  And he covered up his manhood in his nude picture.  And he was late for dinner forty-seven times when he was growing up, even on his father’s 37th birthday.  When he didn’t get him a present.  And he’s sexually attracted to women.

As Randy Haddock puts it:

MSNBC has completely lost it, not that they had it together to begin with. The stuff coming out of that network in regards to the senatorial election in Massachussets is downright disgusting and atrocious. . . . Their desperation has pushed them to a very dark, ugly place.

Well, not everyone at MSNBC has lost it.  Joe Scarborough called the bespectacled bozo “reckless” and “sad.”

Guess Olbermann realized the O’Reilly schtick was getting old and he needed someone else to kick around.

At a townhall meeting last week in Waukesha, Wisconsin, the state’s junior Senator Russ Feingold got an earful on health care from his constituents.  Unlike some of his fellow partisans, that liberal Democrat, as his wont, treated his critics with respect.

Should Scott Brown do well in tomorrow’s race in Massachusetts, would that strong showing, or even his victory, cause the Wisconsin Democrat to get cold feet on health care?   After all, Wisconsin was closely contested in 2000 and 2004, only narrowly going for the Democratic presidential nominees.  In 2008, John McCain ran 6 points better in the Badger State than he did in the Bay State.

If Brown does as well as anticipated, you can bet that a number of Wisconsin Republicans will be eyeing Feingold’s seat which comes up this fall.  Will he, to better protect himself from such challenges, mend his ways on Obamacare?  Will other Washington Democrats who voted for the health care overhaul when first it came up for a vote in their respective chambers?

I think a lot of them might be wishing right now for some way to just make the issue go away.

Back when I went to college in far leftist, er, western, fringes of the Bay State, I had occasion to talk to many a native about the state’s senior Senator.  It took me a while to understand his appeal, much of it having to do with his name.  But, that wasn’t all.  Ted Kennedy had, by all accounts a crackerjack constituent service operations and a staff considered the smartest on the “left side” of the Hill.  Plus, despite his upbringing, he had the ability to relate to the urban ethnic voters in his jurisdiction.  And he loved Fenway Park and the Red Sox.

Once when taking a cab from the bus station to Logan Airport, I asked the driver what he thought about his state’s senator, “Well,” this middle-aged man began, “he’s John’s brother.”  He hesitated before praising the man dubbed the “black sheep” of his family, but ended up saying that while he lacked his older brother’s charisma, he did look out for the state.  The Kennedy name will always have a certain magic in Massachusetts, particularly among the older Irish voters who know what it’s like to be excluded from the political mainstream.  I think that’s one reason Martha Coakley has been polling about even with older voters (while running behind Brown among younger voters), a constituency which nationwide is moving away from her party, largely based on opposition to the health care overhaul.

So,it does seems the endorsement of the Kennedy family will help Martha Coakley in tomorrow’s election.  Will then some of the currently wavering voters decide in the voting booth to vote for her to honor that celebrated family?  Perhaps.  And enough may do that to make up for the recent swing in the polls away from the Democratic nominee.

But, that’s not the only Kennedy factor at play in tomorrow’s race.  A third party candidate on the ballot has almost the same name as the Kennedy family patriarch, though this Joe Kennedy calls himself the Tea Party candidate.  Given his affiliation with the anti-big government tea parties, this affiliation would normally help the Democrats by taking away votes from the GOP whose candidate is running against the Democrats’ big government initiatives. (more…)

One of our faithful readers in the Palmetto State thinks it’s about time to unseat John Spratt.  The 14-term Democrat chairs the House Budget Committee, so he is kind of symbol of his party’s spendthrift ways.  John McCain won this district handily (53-46); itincludes some of the territory where Nathanial Greene rallied the Continental Army in some of its bloodiest battles in the last year of the Revolutionary War.

By chasing Cornwallis and Tarleton out of the Carolinas, he forced their retreat to Yorktown where General Washington did his magic.  So, let’s remind Mr. Spratt why so much blood was spilled in the territory he represents in the town named for that great American, patriotic Americans fighting against the tyranny of an overreaching national government.  To show just how vulnerable he is, reader asks us to chime in at Public Policy Polling to have them poll this race.  So follow the link and vote “for” John Spratt.  But, in the case, a vote “for” means a vote for polling.

I expect that this big-spending Democrat won poll very well.  And those low numbers will encourage strong Republicans to enter this race, giving Nancy Pelosi one less vote in the House.

Massachusetts isn’t the only “blue” state where Republican Senate candidates are nipping at the heels of Democrats.  According to Rasmussen here, in the Golden State:

Senator Barbara Boxer is now the latest Democratic incumbent to find herself in a tightening race for reelection.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely California voters finds Boxer with narrow leads over her three leading Republican challengers, including newcomer Tom Campbell.

Against each of the three Republicans, vying to oppose here, Ma’am holds at 46%.  My gal Carly does the best at 43% (didn’t I see a poll last week that had the Massachuetts race at 43-46?).  Tom Campbell, fresh from switching races (he had been barnstorming the state as a candidate for Governor, but had not been polling well against Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner in the contest for taking on Democrat Jerry Brown) is at 42, with longtime candidate Chuck DeVore at 40%.

Methinks Chuck might do well to shop for an open Congressional seat.

The best news for Republicans is that for the first time that Ma’am has faced the voters, the election is all about her:

The fact that Boxer’s support is frozen at 46% against all GOP challengers suggest that the race for now is about her rather than those running against her.

Men favor any of the Republicans by double digits over Boxer, while women prefer the incumbent by similar margins. Voters not affiliated with either party like the Republican candidates by anywhere from nine to 14 points.

Voters not affiliated with either party preferring the Republican?  Hmmmm. . .  now where have we seen that before?  Oh, right, yes, in, uh, New Jersey (getting a new Republican Governor on the morrow) and Virginia (with a new Republican Governor in Thomas Jefferson’s old job). (more…)

So, the immediate past junior Senator from Massachusetts is a little ticked off at Republican outrages that he won’t specify.  Guess that’s how he deals with a Republican candidate surging ahead in his home state:

“I’m no stranger to hard fought campaigns, but what we’ve seen in the past few days is way over the line and reminiscent of the dangerous atmosphere of Sarah Palin’s 2008 campaign rallies. This is not how democracy works in Massachusetts,” Kerry said this afternoon in a statement.

“Scott Brown needs to speak up and get his out of state tea party supporters under control. In Massachusetts, we fight hard and win elections on the issues and on our differences, not with bullying and threats,” Kerry said.

Dangerous atmosphere of Sarah Palin rallies?  Huh?  What does that mean?  Were people lynched?  Property destroyed?  Books burned?

Or maybe it’s just a “dangerous atmosphere” to John Kerry when conservatives are energized.

Still, since he’s asking Scott Brown to control people for fighting hard and campaigning on the issues, do you think he’d ask the officers of his party in his state to stop spreading lies about the aforementioned Mr. Brown?

Over at CampaignSpot, reporting polling showing Bay State bellwether communities breaking for Brown, Jim Geraghty includes commentary from pundits trying to spin the results:

Mike Barnacle says he’s not that surprised, citing that Brown’s appeal is “less about him being a conservative or Republican than against the existing order, against the establishment.”

Isn’t that kind of how Obama got elected way back in ’08?  Running against the then-existing order?

I knew the more conservative candidate had won the presidential runoff in Chile the moment I read the headline on Yahoo!’s home page:  President-elect’s victory could complicate Chile’s diplomacy.  The AP also does seem to cast conservative victories in a negative light.

Writer Michael Warren was quick to link the people’s choice to a previous (and much maligned) military dictator of the South American nation:

Pinera’s election victory Sunday night ends two decades of uninterrupted rule by a center-left coalition, and returns to power the same political parties that provided civic support for Augusto Pinochet’s brutal 1973-1990 dictatorship.

For all Pinochet’s faults–and they were many–he did restore capitalism and democracy to his country.  It continues to be one of the most prosperous nations in our hemisphere, in large measure because that center-left coalition, like a certain former certain-left American president, did not undermine the free market reforms of a previous bogeyman of the left, though the American one at least had a popular mandate.

In the fall of 2008, as polls showed her chances for reelection diminishing with each passing day, then-Senator Elizabeth Dole (R-Inside the Beltway) decided to jump the shark, er, pull the “Godless Atheist” card. She started running ads across the Tarheel State (which she supposedly represented, but rarely visited) pointing out (quite accurately) that a leader of the Godless Americans held a “secret” fundraiser for her opponent Kay Hagan. That Democrat attended said fundraiser.

Now, while Mrs. Dole’s ads had more basis in fact than some of the stuff put out by the Coakley campaign in recent days, they betrayed a whiff of desperation. With those ads, she destroyed whatever chance the native North Carolinian had of reviving her candidacy.

Now, if the Massachusetts media were as harsh on Coakley’s negative ads as the Carolina media were on Dole’s, then the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s mailer alleging “that Scott Brown wants rape victims turned away from hospitals” could have a similar effect on Coakley’s candidacy.  A Brown spokeswoman called the ad “patently false“.  When a candidate is down (or declining in the polls) in the last lap of an electoral contest, such negative ads rarely have the intended effect.  Instead of scaring people away from the savaged candidate, they make them disgusted with the candidate firing the broadsides.

Of course, it would be the Bay State Democrats sponsoring the attack.  They want to deflect as much blame as they can away from the Coakley campaign itself

Whether or not this ad alone will prevent a Democrat from winning in this Democratic state is still far from clear.  It is just one of many areas were the Coakley campaign (and it allies) have blundered in recent days.  (I mean, heck, the late Senator Kennedy’s son kept calling the woman vying for the seat once held by his father, Daniel Webster and Charles Sumner Marcia.*)

* (more…)

In one of the iconic comments of his political career (at 1:18 below), Richard Nixon, after losing the California gubernatorial election in 1962 told the press, “You don’t have Richard Nixon to kick around any more.”

Seems the Democrats can’t get enough of kicking around another Republican, their all-purpose bogeyman, George W. Bush, on whom they blame all manner of ills, including the groundswell of support in Massachusetts for a Republican sounding quite different from W, promising to rein in government spending. Still, Democrats contend “the fault for Coakley’s now-floundering MA SEN bid lies with one person — George W. Bush.”

To be sure, the son of a man who held Daniel Webster’s seat in the United States Senate did fault his party–for not being harsh enough on W:

One thing the Democrats have done wrong? We haven’t kept the focus on this disaster on the Republicans who brought it upon us. We’ve tried too hard to do that right thing, and that’s to fix it, as opposed to spend more of our time and energy pointing the finger at who got us [here] in the first place.

Yeah, Americans really like it when you’re always pointing the finger at someone else.  Guess he didn’t realize that it was a member of his own party who wanted “to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.”

Democrats will always have W:

As I was driving to the airport today (another hellish travel week ahead), I wondered why the Obamacare health legislation was ignoring gay-related issues.  After all, this healthcare legislation has devolved into a series of identity-politics buy-offs.

For example, unions are getting a multi-year break from the “Cadillac” healthcare tax.   And we all know about the Nebraska bribe that Senator Nelson secured.

So what’s missing?  You got it!  The most liberal Congress and Administration in a generation is completely ignoring the impact of healthcare reform on the LGBT community — one of its most loyal identity -politics shills.

With the passage of Obamacare to be decided on less than a handful of House votes, where is Tammy Baldwin or Barney Frank?  Why the hell aren’t they standing up and demanding the same kind of treatment for gays and lesbians under Obamacare that union members are getting?

What do I mean?  Well, one example is the individual mandate.  My health insurance covers my partner, John.  But he, like millions of others like him, will be forced to buy health insurance under Obamacare even though he doesn’t need it.  This individual mandate is the “Gay Health Tax” as it punishes domestic partners more than any other group in America.  Funny how the media hasn’t reported this and Reps. Baldwin & Frank aren’t standing up for us.

If that idea isn’t good enough for LGBT-friendly Democrats, how about exempting HIV drugs from whatever formularies are mandated by the “health exchanges”?  Or providing subsidies for HIV drugs regardless of income.

I could go on and on.

The question that American gays and lesbians need to ask:  Where were your Democrat friends when the goodies were being handed out in the Healthcare Reform Legislation?

We already know the answer:  AWOL.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Idea originated from a comment on Hot Air.  Unfortunately I can’t remember who it was who originated it.  Hat tip to them with hopefully no ill will.

Like the cartoons?  Support the artist!

Alerting us to a weather report showing snow across the interior north of the Bay State, our reporter embedded with the Sons and Daughters of Liberty speculates how that will impact the election on Tuesday:

This is not a big storm, and most of it is going to fall tomorrow, but Tuesday is supposed to be ugly as well, as the snow tapers off to rain, sleet, slush, etc. As a lifelong Boston-area resident, the pattern is interesting. VERY few storms blanket the state this way. Most hit East *or* West, North *or* South but not the whole 150-mile length of the state, top to bottom (see map). As one who believes that God was sending a message with the post-Copenhagen blizzard that hit DC when BHO and Al Gore were returning, I’m not willing to concede this storm is an accident either.

Be that as it may…

Reading the AP report, my mind begins to grind through turnout scenarios (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100117/D9D9L4P01.html): “Turnout is notoriously low in special elections, and Democrats need their loyalists -particularly blue-collar and minority voters who might not be motivated – to show up at the polls. Judging by Obama’s track record in elections since taking office, however, the strength of his political muscle is in
question.”

The idea that blue-collar voters would help Martha is wishful thinking. I can see almost nothing about her that would appeal to them. (See previous posts about Catholics not working in hospitals, her overall look, etc.) Blue *blood* is not blue *collar*. Scott, by contrast, is from a “blue-collarish” community. The Schilling call confirms that image.

Who’s more motivated to get up early the morning after a holiday weekend, clear their driveway (or shovel out their car) and get to the polls? Those voting for the closer, and Brown is that. There’s always a lag in peoples’ impressions of what’s going on and I suspect the average Dem voter is just waking up to the fact that this isn’t a coronation. Coakley’s lack of
mailings (and less-than-convincing phone calls) don’t help. (more…)

Once again, our embed lets us “listen in” to his political voicemails:

3:35PM, Sunday — Physician’s PAC, recorded call on behalf of Brown. Sounded like a cross between Charlton Heston and another 60′s-era radio personality whose face I can see but whose name I can’t recall at the moment. Unidentified name and number. Emphasis was taxes and jobs. Very populist. Bound to resonate.

UPDATE: And another call:

About half an hour after the physicians’ PAC call for Brown, another one paid for by his campaign, from his *daughter*. Never gotten a call like that. She sounded very credible. Hitting family-friendly angles, but nothing heavy. Basically: trust my dad; I do; he’s a good man. (I’m paraphrasing).

One wonders if the surfeit of calls will turn people off.