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Coakley's campaign leaves voters in the dark

The problem with the low-key cautious campaign that race leaders with large leads frequently choose to run is that the public does not get to know their candidate very well.

The compressed schedule for the special election, which is book-ended around the year-end holidays, has been bad for the race. The primary was 17 days before Christmas and the special election is 18 days after New Year's. The schedule is poorly suited to engage the public in the "full debate" that's likely to occur in a longer campaign when the voting public is not preoccupied with pressing year-end activities. The schedule has also enabled Martha's low-key approach.

It seems to me Martha has campaigned defensively in the primary and continues to campaign defensively in the run-up to the special election. For example, she declines to debate unless the conditions favor her even though she has far and away the most formidable debate skills in the field. Another fact in support of my assessment is that Martha has scheduled a lot of time off from the campaign, even during this compressed special election cycle:

Democrats Anxious Over a Once-Safe Seat
By ABBY GOODNOUGH | 1/8/10 | NYT
BOSTON — Martha M. Coakley, the Democrat running for Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts, had seemed so certain of winning the special election on Jan. 19 that she barely campaigned last month. link

McGrory: Where's Martha Coakley?
By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist | 1/6/10
...For that matter, let's take a look at Coakley's campaign schedule for today. Well, actually, we can't. There isn't one. She isn't doing anything in public link

As a result Martha's formidable rhetorical, debate and leadership skills have not been on full display to captivate voters, and her positions on important issues like civil liberties and government authority are largely unknown. (Imagine running in Massachusetts as the liberal Democratic nominee to win Ted Kennedy's Senate seat and not showcasing your positions on civil rights, Constitutional rights and government authority!!??)

As a candidate who has wrestled with pragmatic questions concerning the balance between civil liberties and government authority, first as a career prosecutor and then as the Attorney General, I find it surprising that her positions on these questions remain a mystery.

Martha has campaigned in support of classes of people - children and elderly - but she has not spoken much about civil liberties and other protections that all citizens are entitled to and which we have learned are subject to compromise and roll back by our government in the interests of security and counter-terrorism. These questions about the balance between civil liberties and government authority are largely first decided in the Senate, and then subsequently decided in the courts in the context of questions raised about the laws passed.

Our only point of reference are cases Martha argued on behalf of the Commonwealth, such as Melendez-Diaz, a sixth amendment case about the right to confront one's accuser, specifically the right to confront lab techs who test and identify substances like controlled narcotics and who issue affidavits but who may or may not be required to testify at trial about their procedures in the lab or error rates and the like. We don't know if Martha would legislate as she argued. She was representing the Commonwealth interests in that case, and she has not spoken about her own policy position on the issue.

Let's take her campaign on its own terms. What are the defining and captivating characteristics of "A different kind of leader?" We should know by now, right?


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Comments

Coakley has been underwhelming to say the least. She will probably be elected, and I will be among those voting for her. But only because she's a Democrat and I dearly want the Dems to keep their majority in the Senate. I hope she turns out to be a better Senator than candidate and AG. Granted, Teddy is a hard act to follow, but I didn't expect such an uninspired campaign.

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Brian McGrory got it right: the lack of campaigning is arrogance, Coakley thinks that as a Democrat, the Senate seat is a guaranteed. And that has been most regrettably true in Massachusetts for a long time,four of five decades now. It's like we're some sort of bannana republic here which rich elites rule for life. That may no longer be true! The last thing our whigged-out, 12-trillion-dollar-and-rising-Democrat-ruled Congress needs is ANOTHER liberal Democrat. Vote for Scott Brown!

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sorry she's not driving all across the state in a foreign truck like charlie brown, paid for by hairy man porn.

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I don't know which. Your tax dollars paid for the truck. He's a MASstate Senator who is diligent in collecting all of his per diem, not that there's anything wrong with that. That said, think he's charging his campaign fund the IRS reimbursement rate for mileage?

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If the Republican nominee had been a "Yankee" or "Rockefeller" Republican (i.e., social libertarian, fiscal conservative), s/he would absolutely thrash Coakley (particularly if she was coasting like this). I am not going to vote for Scott Brown because the first and only stuff I got from his campaign concerned the so-called "wedge" social issues. That said, I find Ms. Martha singularly unimpressive, and I am not sure that I can pull the lever (actually, fill in the bubble) for her. If I do, it will only be because she has to run again soon. Kennedy's Ron Paulesque end the Fed-type nonsense is too far removed from reality for me to seriously consider.

When will the local (and for that matter, national) Republicans realize that a lot of people are willing to tolerate others living their lives as they see fit (so long as it does not directly negatively impact themselves) but that no one wants to feel like their money is being wasted? It is the winning recipe. Just ask Charlie Baker in a year.

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Adam,

Why is there an editorial posted here -- an anonymous one at that? Am I the only one taken aback?

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Universal Hub has taken no position on the Senate race, despite the fact that the entire editorial staff has decided it will not vote for somebody who supports torture, has the backing of anti-abortion groups and is BFF with Mitt Romney. Ahem. You'll notice the site has probably gone out of its way not to cover the election, though not out of malice or agenda but because the mainstream media is doing a decent enough job and there's only so much time our dedicated staff has in a day and he'd rather do stuff the MSM sees fit to ignore, such as disturbed people falling out of trains in Lynn and gap-toothed Dominican police impersonators in East Boston (OK, I admit I threw that last one in because I like saying "gap-toothed Dominican police impersonators").

Anonymous is not really anonymous. He's just a somewhat clever lad who noticed one day that I'd failed to lock down "Anonymous" as a user name and so registered it. He's a regular here. Real anonymous users here are tagged as "anon."

And while I do post the vast bulk of the stuff here, I do encourage other folks to post. Sometimes they do express an opinion. Disagree? Feel free to let them know (or me, if it's something I've posted).

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Hi Francesca Fordiani, Sorry about posting under my pseudonym, Anonymous. I am the only one who uses that pseudonym at Uhub. I posted the editorial (opinion piece) without giving a second thought (to posting it pseudonymously) so I'm sorry if that was jarring.

I wrote about Martha's campaign today because it was on my mind. I made an argument. Please, feel free to agree or disagree with anything I stated in the opinion piece or anything missing that might have been included or (as most people do) you can choose to ignore it altogether. Best, Neil

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Adam and Neil,

Thanks for the replies. I wasn't objecting to any opinions expressed, but I was taken aback that an opinion piece was posted. I'm used to seeing news items posted, and folks expressing opinions on that. I don't recall ever seeing an oped on UHub -- which is not to say for certain that it doesn't happen, maybe my recall isn't what it could be. You're free to write about whatever is on your mind, Neil, I was just wondering if a news aggregating site is the space for it. Thanks, FF

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I mean, the item from a day or two ago about the woman who blogged that she's decided not to take the MBTA any more and cried at Downtown Crossing is pretty much op-ed and not a "news item" by any stretch of the imagination.

Adam links news, for sure, but he also links blog posts that may have something or nothing to do with news at all. Sometimes it's the response from area bloggers to a particular newsworthy event that's linked here (because we all know how to read boston.com if we want to just read an actual news piece on the event at hand, right?). This was a blog post by Anonymous (it did not escape me that you posted it as a blog entry here, Neil. Thanks!) and as such, Adam chose to promote it to the front page. About the only difference is that instead of getting a 3-line summary and link to the blog entry, as Adam did for the previous example of the woman and her MBTA problems, we got the entry in its entirety since it was generated right here at UHub.

I do not see the issue.

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You're welcome. All the Best.

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Martha Coakley has failed to protect the people of Massachusetts, especially the vulnerable ones such as children, women and victims of violent crime. Her office has repeatedly failed to prosecute real wrongdoing or order investigations of wrongdoers under her authority, such as UMass Memorial Medical Center. Her sadistic, ignorant police officers and troopers are malignant political animals, seeking only to defend those with power, including themselves.

Multiple cases of medical fraud have not been investigated as well as violent physician perpetrators associated with Harvard and the state.

Shameful performance as Attorney General.

Coakley will only be a tool of the Democratic Money Machine. Not an advocate for the people. We have all seen this before...

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Democrats in Massachusetts chose the wrong candidate in the primary.

Use your vote to write-in Capuano or Khazei or Pagliuca and let Democrats know that their pro-corporate, anti-middle class agenda will cost them dearly.

The Democrats have chosen a pro-corporate, anti-middle class agenda? Really?

Yes. For example, President Obama favors the Senate health bill, which has no Public Option (the house bill does), and state-based exchanges not a Federal exchange (we have that already); and an excise tax on health care insurance that hurts working people, as opposed to the House health bill which has a "millionaire tax" on families making more than $1,000,000 per year and individuals making more than $500,000 per year, and which would still be a lower tax rate than the tax rate on people with that level of income under President Clinton.

Obama's preferred health care policies from the more conservative Senate Bill marginalize the policies written in the house bill and marginalize the power of our elected Congressmen in favor of the power of our elected Senators subject to the will of President Lieberman (I-Aetna) and VP Ben Nelson (D-ProLife).

The individual mandate to buy health insurance from 'private for-profit companies' without the CHOICE of a public option is an insurance industry bail-out of epic proportions. You or your employer will pay $8,000 a year for a policy or be penalized 2% of your gross income collected by the IRS.

The insurance product you buy might have a $4,000 deductible and $30 copays so while you're required to buy health insurance, spending $8,000 a year on it, you still may not be able to afford health care.

And for people who object to financing for-profit health insurance companies profit, under penalty of law, this policy is like requiring cities and towns to hire for-profit Blackwater as law-enforcement, instead of having local police.

Coakley announced first and kept her lead but she's a far cry from the liberal lion whose seat she seeks to fill. Martha is a "special class" liberal for children and elderly but not particularly an advocate for civil rights, restrained government power, limiting the influence of lobbyists and corporate interests or campaign finance reform.

Coakley is a beginner, never having served as a legislator at any level. After making a big statement about voting 'no' on the house bill becuase of Stupak, she has declared her support for the Senate Health Bill without reservation in spite of the lack of Public Option (which she said was important to her) and restrictions on abortion access (which she is not happy about but was willing to accept nonetheless.) Coakley did not even make her support for the Senate bill conditional on addressing those issues she feels strongly about.

Coakley does not speak about civil rights on the campaign trail.

Since she the primary on Dec. 8 she's barely campaigned at all. Martha Coakley is running a box turtle campaign. Let her earn your vote if she wants it.

Why is anyone surprised by the poll numbers?

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"As a candidate who has wrestled with pragmatic questions concerning the balance between civil liberties and government authority, first as a career prosecutor and then as the Attorney General, I find it surprising that her positions on these questions remain a mystery."

This has been one of my issues from the get go. She once supported the death penalty under certain circumstances, but now claims she does not -- yet signed on with 18 AGs on an amicus brief to limit intervention by federal courts into death penalty cases. I don't see a liberal here.

She sold Gerald Amirault up the river for political gain despite a mountain of evidence point to his innocence and unanimous votes from his parole board recommending a pardon. I don't see a liberal here.

She publicly supported the Patriot Act, claiming the threats to civil liberties were overstated, until a conservative leaning SCOTUS declared bits of it unconstitutional. I don't see a liberal here.

She has done little to prove to me that she's the right person to follow in Ted Kennedy's shoes, yet my candidate lost in the primary.

Now, I'm too afraid to vote in a democrat that I really don't trust for fear that they will never leave.

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The one who would deny Constitutional rights TO AMERICANS (last night, he included that guy from Sudbury in his list of "enemy combatants" who should be locked away or something without a trial; you know what? Guy's an American citizen), who endorses torture, who calls his opponent a lawyer instead of a patriot (you know what Brown does when he puts on his National Guard uniform? Estate planning and real-estate deals for Guardsmen who actually go overseas, you know, the stuff a lawyer does; does that make him an enemy combatant like Coakley)? Almost enough to make one vote for the libertarian (who isn't on the ballot as a Libertarian).

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Until I heard Kennedy open his mouth at the debate yesterday. What a trainwreck of ideas he has...but at least he had the balls to say them. No, I can't vote for him though.

I'm stuck either writing in the person I'd rather have won the Dem primary, or not voting at all.

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"I'm stuck either writing in the person I'd rather have won the Dem primary, or not voting at all." - Kaz

Here's why I think it's the right way to go:
"The pragmatism of voting your conscience for US Senate" by Anonymous (blog entry 2)

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positions on how to handle terrorist suspects ... but in all honestly, electing one versus electing the other will have virtually NO effect on President Obama's foreign policies and national security policies.

We're not elected the king, we're electing a Democrat (for a lifetime) or a Republican (for two years.)

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Here is another alternative, "The pragmatism of voting your conscience for US Senate". Read it and decide if it makes sense for you.

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