Brown Surges in Final Days of Mass. Senate Campaign

Will Obama's visit Sunday Save Coakley?

New polls show Brown with clear lead:

As the race started Coakley had expected to coast to victory after winning the nomination as the Democrat candidate. She had the entire Massachusetts Democrat machine behind her and nearly three times as much money as Brown at the end of last year.

But while Coakley spent her time schmoozing Democrat big shots who control the Massachusetts machine, Scott Brown drove around the state in an old pickup truck and did his campaigning the old fashioned way. He went out and met the voters.

When asked why she didn't campaign that way Coakley snapped "As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?”

It's that attitude of entitlement that Coakley projects which has turned off many voters in Massachusetts. And when Coakley isn't dissing the voters, she's lying to them with the most vicious negative and personal attacks imaginable. The mailer that Coakley sent out suggesting that Scott Brown would turn women who were victims of rape away from Emergency Rooms was offensive, not to mention a possible violation of Massachusetts election laws.

Brown Supporters "Tea Baggers?"

When the Coakley campaign isn't lying to voters with offensive trash masquerading as campaign ads, it's insulting them. In one fundraising email, they brought in a ringer in the form of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) (later, Coakley would complain about Brown bringing in Rudy Giuliani, a "Yankee fan," to campaign for him... then went on to suggest that Boston Red Sox star Curt Schilling, who also supports Brown, was also a "Yankee fan."). Anyway, this Yankee ringer Schumer sent out an email in which he called Brown "a far-right tea-bagger Republican."

By extension Schumer intends the epithet "tea bagger" to be applied to Brown's supporters as well. Hardly the case since such a large number of them are Democrats and Independents. In at least one poll, 19% of Democrats in Massachusetts say they will vote for Brown. That's more than twice the number of Republicans who say they will vote for Coakley. The majority of the state's voters are Independents and they are going for Brown 2 to 1.

Why Brown?

Massachusetts is a state controlled entirely by the Democrat machine. Even on those rare occasions when a Republican sits in the Governor's office, the state legislature remains firmly in Democrat hands. It's a state that has seen taxes go up and up while government services are cut back and corruption soars.

The venerable Massachusetts columnist Mike Barnicle describes what is happening in a story for Time Magazine. In the heart of Boston, in a neighborhood that was long a Democrat stronghold Scott Brown was campaigning:

Scott Brown Rides a Perfect Political Storm in Massachusetts
By MIKE BARNICLE
Time Magazine
Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010

..." 'Scuse me," Joanne Prevost said to a man who had two 'Scott Brown for Senate' signs tucked under his left arm. "Can I have one of those signs? I'll put it in my window. My office is right there."

She turned and pointed across the street to a storefront with the words 'Anzalone Realty' stenciled on window. "Everybody will see it."
(See the top 10 political defections.)

Joanne Prevost used to be an important precinct captain for Kevin White, a former mayor of Boston. A Catholic, she was baptized Democrat and now, here she was, putting a big sign in her window for a Republican riding the wave of a perfect political storm, his candidacy propelled upward by a combustible combination of resentment, anxiety and anger toward anyone — anyone in either party — carrying a curious illness called incumbentitis.
...
The state, Massachusetts, is often mistaken for an easy Democrat lay-up. Ted Kennedy was elected nine times. Democrats dominate the state legislature. And voters sit, feeling helpless, voiceless and powerless as joblessness grows, taxes rise, services dwindle, disillusionment prospers and the roster of family anxieties about tuitions, mortgage payments, employment, two wars and a whole lot more make negative ads and campaign rhetoric seem hollow. Add the fact that many voters seem to feel questions about the cost of health care reform and the size of the budget deficit go unheard, and politics becomes flammable.

Now, Brown finished speaking. He plunged into the crowd alongside former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Given the often contrived and polarizing conflict that dominates the cable-TV landscape, it would be easy, on the outside looking in, to slap a Tea Party label on Brown's supporters. But most of those lunging for his hand were not lunatics from the fringe, merely Democrats and Independents feeling bruised, ignored and taken for granted by people in power.

So here was a state senator, virtually unknown outside of his immediate family just last Thanksgiving, being greeted with a clamor at the fire house, Ladder 1 — Engine 8, on Hanover Street. Then, it was Caffe Vittoria and Mike's Pastry, where a Republican has often been made to feel like Alex Rodriguez standing at the plate in Fenway. No longer.

Brown in 2012?

Democrats have abused their power in Massachusetts. They promised heaven on earth and instead we get hell. Instead of honestly coming before the voters asking for votes, they send insults and lies. The voters of Massachusetts are as fed up with one party Democrat rule as the rest of the country. Is it any wonder Brown is doing so well? Brown topped an earlier fundraising blitz in which he raised $1.3 million by going on to raise an additional one million each day last week. Voters across the country are flocking to his positive message and voting with their wallets.

Perhaps he should run for President in 2012. If he wins this race and goes on to the Senate he'll have just about as much experience in national office as Barack Hussein Obama (mmm..mmm..mmm..) did when he ran.

Don't Count Chickens Just Yet

Experience teaches me that we shouldn't count our chickens just yet. Just in the past year we've seen how victory can be stolen so easily, as it was in Minnesota or slip away as it did in NY-23. But momentum, the polls and energy are all on the side of Brown. No better evidence of that than to compare the Obama/Coakley rally on Sunday to the Brown event where jubilant supporters poured into the streets as if they had won the World Series.

People Power: If it works in Massachusetts it can work in your state too!