How Coakley (Probably) Blew It In Massachusetts

Nine days ago, on Jan. 10, The Boston Globe carried a rather heartening headline for Democrats: “Senate Poll: Coakley Up 15 Points.” Now, on the morning of the Massachusetts special election pitting State Sen. Scott Brown (R) against Bay State Attorney General Martha Coakley (D), the tables have not so much turned as spun wildly out of control, crashed through the windows, burst into flames and exploded, leaving nothing behind but a smoldering heap of post-apocalyptic rubble.

Since last Thursday, eight polls have been released in Massachusetts. One, by Research 2000, shows a tied race. The rest show Brown clobbering Coakley by anywhere from 3 to 15 percentage points. Which means that as voters begin to trickle into the polls this morning, it's looking increasingly likely that Brown will win the seat that liberal icon Teddy Kennedy had occupied since 1962—the bluest seat in one of the bluest states in the Union—and become the first Republican senator from Massachusetts in nearly 40 years. As one veteran political observer put it yesterday, "If Brown wins, and he may, it will be the biggest political upset of my adult life.”

Despite all the Democratic hand-wringing, garment-rending, and finger-pointing already on display in the press, the answer, I think, is actually pretty simple: the Coakley campaign took the voters of Massachusetts for granted. Usually, this wouldn't have been much of a problem; the state is so overwhelmingly Democratic that any candidate with a "D" attached to his or her name is virtually guaranteed victory. Clearly, Coakley was counting on Massachusetts's liberal history to carry her effortlessly across the finish line. But this year, in this political environment, that wasn't enough—and the assumption that it was has turned out to be the very thing that may do her in.


Let's review, shall we? On Dec. 8, 2009, Coakley won the Democratic Senate primary by a whopping 19 percentage points. A normal candidate would've hit the streets, shaken some hands, given some speeches, and taken the fight to her opponent. But Coakley, who was leading Brown in the polls by 31 percent at that point, decided to "go dark" instead. Her logic was simple and seemingly safe: during the holidays, voters aren't paying attention to politics, so why give them an opportunity to turn against me when I can just quietly back into the job? As Globe columnist Brian McGrory wrote earlier this month, she "isn’t doing anything in public—no meetings with voters, no debates, no public appearances. For all we know, she's spending much of her time at home with the shades drawn waiting for Jan. 19, Election Day, to come and go."

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