Michael Barone thinks Martha Coakley showed her true stripes and may have tipped the race by ignoring the shoving of reporter John McCormack in front of her eyes. “Coakley, who took much of the month of December off and whose campaign didn’t even bother to run TV ads last week, seems to feel entitled to the Senate seat.” She feels entitled to hide behind an independent candidate at debates and to ignore legitimate questions on foreign policy. Barone thinks that her attitude is now plain for the voters to see — namely, “if little people get in my way, like the mild-mannered John McCormack, well, they just have to be taken out of the picture.”
In fact, as Barone points out, Coakley has proved to be an inept candidate running a weak campaign, raising the real potential for not only an upset win by Scott Brown but also a whole lot of second-guessing about how Democrats (in a state with no shortage of Democrats) wound up with such a mediocre candidate in the first place. Barone jokes, “Democrats might conclude that Martha Coakley was a Republican plant, a Manchurian candidate inserted into the race in order to deprive Democrats of their 60th vote in the Senate.”
Actually, Coakley is beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to Creigh Deeds, who ran an atrocious campaign, got tied up in knots during debates, and failed to impress anyone. In both cases, the candidates really weren’t equipped to run competitive races with well-articulated positions on the issues. They simply assumed that being the Democrat in the race was enough.
In Virginia, New Jersey, and now Massachusetts we have learned, however, that being the Democrat this year is hardly an asset. It brings up troublesome questions about spending, ObamaCare, deficits, and being a rubber stamp for the Reid-Pelosi-Obama cabal. Playing defense in a year in which the president’s ratings are dropping and unemployment is sky-high isn’t easy. And to make matters worse, Democrats are having trouble keeping their A team on the field and recruiting other top candidates who might be able to bob and weave through hard campaigns. The prospect of a wave election is chasing the better Democratic candidates from the field. The result may be many more races with a Creigh Deeds– or Martha Coakley–type candidate in the race. And that, it turns out, makes for many a cringe-inducing moment for the Democratic faithful.
