Martha Coakley is a loser. She couldn't sell water to a person who was on fire.

[EEO]

She lost Teddy Kennedy's seat to Scott Brown in 2010 and yesterday she lost to a Republican in the race for Governor of Fucking Massachusetts. She is a joke.

Martha Coakley Loses Another Major Race In Massachusetts

[sharp_stick]

1. The fact that they ran her again was amazing

Profoundly stupid, epically moronic but amazing none the less. She went over like a lead balloon in the Senate race, totally tonedeaf and a horrible campaigner.

It's like the Connecticut GOP figuring that Linda McMahon just needed one more shot to prove to people that she wasn't an idiot or that Tom Foley could beat Dan Malloy the second time around because surely he's not stupid enough to run his campaign the same way a second time.

The people of Massachusetts are going to be paying for this moronic move for the next four years.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

11. Hey, in Rhode Island we ran Myrth York three times

Some people have some sort of pull, just not with voters.

[EEO]

36. Poor Myrth York. People just didn't care for her.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

37. She should have beaten Carceri

But she went negative with a 20 point lead in the polls, and that was enough of an excuse for the voters to turn on her.

And Carceri was a total scumbag who plunged us into a mess like all Rethugs do.

[EEO]

43. And Carcieri got two terms.

[savalez]

2. She's our Scott Brown.

[MADem]

18. What an offensive comment. She is not. What a shitty thing to say.

Plainly, you know nothing of her platform if you would say such an uninformed thing.

[savalez]

23. You're right, Scott Brown actually won once.

[MADem]

24. You're dancing awfully close to the fire.

How do you think she became attorney general? By magic?

She was elected and re-elected to the position. If you had any grasp of this subject you would not have said what you said--you'd have know that.

Keep flying your flag, there. Give everyone a good view.

[savalez]

26. You are obviously a big fan.

That's evident by the amount of posts you have in this thread. But the fact is she lost again. How do you explain that?

Keep flying your flag, there. Give everyone a good view.

Oh get over yourself.

[MADem]

29. If you bothered to READ my posts in this thread that you've gone to such pains to count, apparently,

...you'd have a very precise and thorough answer to that question you asked.


I think you're the one that, to quote you, needs to "get over yourself."

[savalez]

31. Here's a simple question for you.

Do you think it would be a smart move for Democrats to run Coakley in a state wide election again?

[MADem]

32. Maybe. It would depend upon the climate.

It would also depend upon the funding stream.

If we had enjoyed "Citizens United-style" money to splash out showy campaign events, and purchase relentless media buys like Phoney Boo Hoo did, she would have won, even with the historical sexism that imbues MA political campaigns.

But it's not up to "Democrats." It's up to her. I think right now, anyway, her heart's not in it. To come so close had to be very painful. It's also up to the voters of Massachusetts. She did compete--and WIN--a three way primary. It wasn't "the Democrats" who "ran" her. It was the voters who CHOSE her. That's a point that many in this thread seem to be missing because it suits some oddball narrative they've cadged from the GOP.

To anyone thinking that this contest was a rout, or even decisive, let's make one thing entirely clear: PHoney Boo Hoo does not have a mandate. Had Mister "We'll Show 'Em" Third Party not been in the mix, we'd be awaiting the inauguration of Governor Coakley.

People who think that there are no second acts, in life or politics, are often very young or naive. Ask Mike Dukakis. He'll tell ya!

[NHDEMFORLIFE]

45. No n/t

[mahina]

3. I live in a very small city and could find several better candidates without leaving this zip code.

What were the factors in play? Were there better candidates who were discouraged from running in the primary, and if so, by whom?

Honestly Mass has so many smart people, I can't understand why she won the primary. Mass people, anybody?

[MADem]

17. She's smart, she is decent, she gives a shit, and she is a fine human being.

All of this demonization is straight out of GOP central.

Amazed at how many people are repeating it. Disgusted, too. A lie can travel around the world before the truth has tied its shoes.

Let me put it this way--if she were such a "loser asshole" why did Ed Markey, Liz Warren and Deval Patrick go to so many lengths to campaign with and for her? Why were they there standing right beside her when she gave her concession speech? No one would have faulted them if they stayed away, but they got off their asses and went to stand beside her.

Frankly, I'll follow the judgment of my governor and senators before I put any credence into the parroted words of the GOP smear machine repeated, innocently and unknowingly, perhaps, on a Democratic message board.

[mahina]

21. OK, thanks for your insight.

She sure looks like a dud from here. If that makes me GOP parrot, at least it's a new criticism!

[MADem]

22. All I can tell you is Consider the Source. Who was showing you that "dud" picture?

The major media outlets are all snuggled in the arms of the GOP. They're cozied up to the Citizens United crowd, because they know who butters their bread. After all, Citizens United takes all that money they aggregate, and they give it to the major networks hand over fist to air their hate ads.

One hand washes the other, both hands wash the face. The media takes their cues from the people shoveling all that money at them.

The rich get richer and we get screwed over.

[Exultant Democracy]

55. From the couple of times I've met her she has seemed aloof and entitled.

She ran her senate and governors races that way too.

She runs like she is ten points ahead every time and for most of her political career that worked, but it has done significant harm to the US by giving Scott Ted seat and now to MA by giving away the governor's mansion.

She may be a nice person, but she is a terribly ineffective politician for the top of a ticket.

Obama, Patrick, even Warren can make you feel like you are the only person in a crowed room when you talk to them, the first time I met Teddy I felt like I was walking on cloud the rest of the day. The first time I met Martha and I knew we were going to get our ass kicked and lose Teddy's seat.

[MADem]

56. Try meeting her in a not-crowded room. She's a fine human being.

Of course, she's a woman, and we've never elected one of those governor.

Sexism sucks and there's a lot of it MA. Had Evan Falchuk not run she would have won.

[Exultant Democracy]

57. If Warren had been running she would have won in a landslide, it isn't sexism.

She just doesn't have what it takes to be on the top of a ticket.

Warren is a lot newer to the game, but she is light years ahead of where Coakley will ever be.

[MADem]

58. You don't have a grasp of Warren's campaign, either.

It was neck and neck right up until the end. She was in trouble for a while, too, even with all the money from out-of-state and the heavy hitters coming to campaign on her behalf.

A couple of things "saved" her.

First, Dumbo Brown decided to get condescending with her, calling her "Per-fesser" like Sylvester the Cat in debate. It went over about as well as Lazio aggressively waving papers at Hillary Clinton. He looked like a snarking bully. Never a good look.

Second, he decided to go all RACIST on her ass.

This kind of bullshit was everywhere for awhile. Go do an image search for "Warren Pocahontas" and you'll see how busy his team was.

Warren has said that she will finish out her senatorial term, so there's no way she would have been running for governor, so that supposition makes no sense. Also, she has no executive experience, and she would have been dinged hard for that. I don't think she views Beacon Hill as her future -- ever. Don't assume she would have won the corner office at all, never mind a landslide. It's a different campaign altogether for the gubernatorial position. It's insular, it's local, it's city-by-city, town-by-town. No one gives a shit about Wall Street--they give a shit about jobs in Springfield, and potholes in Plymouth. It's about unions, firefighters, and small business association influence.

It's not the same focus at all.

But back to Brown. Here's the kind of stuff his idiot supporters thought would Get Out The Vote:

Initially, that racist shit worked, but then the pushback began. A lot of people who were not especially motivated to vote suddenly became motivated when they saw that shit. But that breakaway that resulted, in the end, in her very solid win, was not present until right up until the end of the campaign and only AFTER those Brown missteps.

Your denial of sexism in MA politics is unconvincing. You do know that it took tons of out-of-state cash and influence to win Warren her seat? And you do know that Warren was the FIRST FEMALE SENATOR EVER from the Commonwealth? EVER?

This is the 21st Century. That's how LONG it took to send a woman to the Senate, and we couldn't even do it on our own. We needed out of state help, and lots of it.

[MADem]

4. Smallest margin of victory for Phony Boo Hoo Baker since the sixties.

With THREE other candidates--one of whom ran "Let's show the PTB" ads on TV--on the ballot.

Loser? No. Massachusetts is a sexist state. They shit on women candidates and judge them ten times more harshly than they do men. Look at the dozens of MA women who have served in Congress down the years...oh wait. You can count them on the fingers of ONE HAND.

Everyone KNOWS this--it's not a surprise. It's why we've never had a woman elected governor, and it's why it took a FORTUNE in out-of-state money and national DNC backing to get Warren her seat. And she damn near lost--she would have, had Brown not gone all "native American RACIST" on her, and performed so shittily in the debates.

Leave Martha alone.

Damn, hearing that shit HERE is a bit surprising. She's not "the joke."

[NYC Liberal]

9. And after all that effort it took to elect EW in Massachusetts,

some want to pull her out after only 4 years so she can run for President.

[MADem]

13. They do, but they won't get their way. They can't force her to do what she has said

repeatedly she's not interested in doing.

[sketchy]

10. I agree -- LEAVE MARTHA ALONE

To the OP and other people piling on Coakley: Stop all the personal insults.
It seems to me they're flying thick and fast on this site, and it makes me sick.

She came very close to winning the state, and that's not nothing.

[MADem]

25. +1,000 !!!! nt

[savalez]

27. Please point out the "personal insults" in this thread.

As of this writing I see none.

[sketchy]

33. Oh, you see none do you? Hmm, that's -- interesting

There are at least three in the OP right off the bat.

Have a real nice day.

[savalez]

34. Obviously I meant in the responses to the OP.

Thank you. You have a nice day too.

[yeoman6987]

28. Jane Swift is suddenly not counted as a Gov?

Wow!

[MADem]

30. She NEVER RAN FOR THAT OFFICE. Do read. It saves having to respond to things I've already said.

She was Celluci's LT GOV and fleeted up when he abandoned MA for the Canadian ambassadorship.

As I have SAID in this thread.

She was never a "governor." Thus, she can't be counted as one.

She was an "acting governor." Unelected to the corner office. The voters did not choose her to be their leader.

And, if you remember your recent history, she was bigfooted OUT OF THE GOP PRIMARY by King Mitt, who wanted a coronation, not a contest. She was rather pissed off about that, but having been told by the GOP that her already tattered (helo-gate, anyone?) reputation would be further dragged through the mud, she retired from public life.

MA has never ELECTED a female governor. Game. Set. Match.

Not that it is anything to be PROUD of....

[Sugarcoated]

5. I can't believe anyone actually bought

the phoney tearful act...cringe worthy!

[MADem]

14. Here comes PHoney Boo Hoo!!!!!! Thank GAWD for a Democratic legislature! nt

[Filibuster Harry]

6. People can complain about how Coakley and her losses but hey , Massachusetts voted for

a guy who lied about meeting a fisherman from New Bedford and how the fisherman wouldn't let his 2 sons (who got football scholarships) play football because they had to be fishermen. The guy mentioned how this ruined his son's lives. But the man lied;
it was a story in the papers back in either 2009 or 2011. He never met the fisherman on the campaign trail -- How do you vote for a guy like that for your governor??

[MADem]

15. Sexism. It's a real problem in MA. It is a failing.

For all our liberal ways, we have an uncomfortable sexist patina. We're also clannish, insular, traditional--though we are intermarrying these days at a fair clip so that whole equation is starting to get a bit interesting.

We like the IDEA of equality of race, gender, orientation, culture, religion or lack of same, etc., and we put our money where our mouth is when it comes to enacting laws on these topics, but we're often snarky when it comes to affording this equality to others in the state-wide voting booth. It takes a lot of campaign MONEY to make the unfamiliar, familiar.

Also, and this is an important and simple FACT--the GOP outspent the Dems by a hundred and twenty million or more across the land. A good chunk of that money went to PHoney Boo Hoo.

Finally, the GOP ground game was fear, fear, fear. Soon, though, they will have something to be afraid of. Thing is, when Charlie takes the helm , they'll see their property taxes go up, and instead of blaming PHoney Boo Hoo, they'll blame their towns and cities. They won't realize that Charles In Charge line-itemed shit out of the budget, and the cities and towns have to get that money they used to get from Beacon Hill from somewhere.

[TroyD]

7. Markey won by a landslide, with 62% of the vote

And swept every county, making the map totally blue.

So I do agree with you that considering that more than 60% of MA voters selected a Dem for Senator that a stronger candidate for Governor could have made up the only 2-3 points that were needed to beat Baker.

I don't get why Coakley was selected to run for Governor after losing the Senate seat to Scott Brown. This is the second time now that we will have to win something back that Coakley lost.

[MADem]

19. How many women have been elected to the Senate before Elizabeth Warren from MA????

Answer: ZERO.


Get that? ZERO. And a ton of out-of-state money and star power came to help Warren. Martha didn't get that money or that help. But you know what she did do? She played the tethered goat, so Warren had what she needed to win against Brown (and she almost didn't win--if not for his late-season missteps, a shitty debate performance coupled with racist/sexist comments, Brown might have succeeded).

How many women have been ELECTED Governor of MA?

Answer: ZERO.


MA has a sexism problem. The gubernatorial glass ceiling has not been cracked.

I saw the same nasty sexist bullshit spread about by Democrats who should KNOW BETTER when Shannon O'Brien (who cleaned Romney's CLOCK in debate) was defeated in the gubernatorial race (Romney spent MILLIONS to win, too and didn't take the paycheck--he just wanted the political check block so he could run for President and claim executive experience).


Stop repeating GOP memes.

I don't get why people on a Democratic message board are buying into them, frankly--they aren't at all accurate.

[Recursion]

8. 5 of the past 6 MA governors have been Republicans

Our party actually doesn't do well statewide there except for the Senate.

[MADem]

16. You are leaving a strongly false impression with that statement.

One of those governors (the woman, FWIW) was not elected. She fleeted up to finish Celucci's term when he sashayed off to Canada for that cushy Ambassador's job. She was the other half of a team.

Of the last five ELECTED governors, two were Democrats--Deval Patrick and Mike Dukakis.

And Bill Weld was such a shitty Republican--from Jesse Helms' perspective--that he blocked his appointment as Ambassador to Mexico. Neither he nor Celucci would have worked or played well with the Republicans on the Hill in DC. They were closer to Linc Chafee of Rhode Island (who left the party) than any of these nastyass clowns in Congress.

Now, if we want to talk about the last six ELECTED governors, the count goes to three and three. Ed KING was a Democrat. If you want to talk about the last SEVEN ELECTED governor's races, the count goes to four-three, in favor of the Democrats. Why? Because MIKE DUKAKIS was the governor--he ran and won, ran and lost, then ran and won again. He was governor twice, on two distinct occasions.

So this whole thing about MA "preferring" GOP governors that we might read about, well, it's not really true, at least not in the post Civil Rights Act era when the Republicans turned into racists, and that turned the Brahmins off. My perspective is that they get elected when we get complacent. Ask Mitt "One Term" Romney, who barely escaped town without being tarred, feathered and run out on a rail.

[RtHonLordBob]

12. Its an Epidemic

The main-stream party seems to have a real talent for nominating the person who's "next in line" over people who actually have ideas and charisma, and then acting shocked when this ends up handing elections to the Republicans. Here in Maryland, we had the opportunity to nominate the excellent progressive Heather Mizeur, but instead nominated our bore of a Lieutenant Governor. The result? A Republican who no one had heard of a few months ago is now the Governor-Elect of one of the bluest states in the country.

We definitely have to put more resources into supporting progressives in the primaries next time around.

[MADem]

20. That is just false. Why don't people do a little research before making statements like that??

Take a look at the PRIMARY BALLOT.

The voters chose their nominee--not the "main stream party."


Three candidates ran--MARTHA WON the nomination.

http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/ele14/democratic14.htm



Oh--welcome to DU. I guess.

[Scootaloo]

51. I'm not familair with how MA conductes its Primaries

I'm a west coast lifer, and all, so, if you could explain to me...

Does the Massachusetts Democratic party maintain a strict and complete hands-off policy during the primary?

[MADem]

54. Does ANY state party? The point is, there was plenty of choice. nt

[BlueDemKev]

35. WTF were Mass. Democrats thinking???

Putting up the same shitty candidate who lost a safe Democratic Senate seat back in early 2010 to a completely-unknown Republican?? They run her again and now have lost the governorship?? WTF!?! Do Massachusetts Democrats have a death wish or something!?!

[Justice]

38. Martha may be an ADA or a DA or prosecutor but she did not pivot into a manager of business

Charlie Baker lost four years ago because his personality turned off voters. He would get whiny when he was mad. His voice literally would go up a few beats. He learned his lesson - he took 4 years and worked on his persona. The media helped him keep that new persona in check. Like it or not, he changed for this campaign. However, he was beatable.

Martha Coakley followed her mentor Tom Reilly around in the DA's office. They were tied at the hip. They sensationalized every murder and other ugly crime in Middlesex county for years. They were on the 11 pm news frequently. When he ran for AG, she ran for DA. When he ran for governor, she ran for AG.

We have already talked about Martha's sad race against Brown. In this race, Martha campaigned on her work in the AG's office and her personal life - women's rights, foreclosures, mental health. She never pivoted to talk about issues a governor deals with - financial issues, taxes, infrastructure, managing a business, etc. It was truly weird. Also weird was that Reilly came out for Baker - what a betrayal.

Martha did not win the convention - Steve Grossman won the convention. Martha has a strong core following who wanted to see a woman win the governor's race. So Martha won the primary (small number of voters voted in the primary) - the die was already cast. I knew that day, when Grossman lost the primary that Charlie Baker would be the next governor. I believe Grossman would have won.

[EEO]

41. I appreciate the details. I didn't know many of them.

[Old Nick]

39. Agreed

With a rec

[EEO]

40. Much obliged.

[Nye Bevan]

42. Yep. Good person, but awful candidate.

It happens. Hopefully at this point she realizes where her talents lie.

[davishenderson265]

44. And why did she get nominated again? Whats wrong with Mass. Democrats?

She is a loser.

[takakupo]

47. MA Sexism problem

I'm glad someone else is pointing out Massachusetts's sexism problem. It's insane how close the vote for Elizabeth Warren was in such a high turnout election. Obama got 1.9 million votes and Warren got 1.6.

[UCmeNdc]

48. Martha Coakley has had her chance.....

Time for new blood to run next time.

[mythology]

49. At least she didn't go on vacation near the end of the campaign like she did against Scott Brown

She isn't a great candidate, but she's also not a joke.

She's done good work as attorney general including making Apple make iTunes more accessible to the visually impaired and challenging DOMA in court.

[EEO]

50. She's no politician.

[cilla4progress]

52. I agree!

It was her campaign and loss in 2010 that lost our comfortable majority in the Senate as I recall. What is up with the Massachusetts Dem Party that they can't come up with someone better than her to run?

[bluestateguy]

53. Her name should never appear on a ballot again

No excuses.