GOP pushes hard for Mass. upset

[spanone]

their dream is to steal Ted Kennedy's seat and use it to defeat healthcare.....


Fueled by the energy of conservative activists, a solid debate performance and a 24-hour, $1.3 million Internet fundraising haul, Massachusetts state Sen. Scott Brown (R) has thrown a major scare into the Democratic establishment in his bid to win next Tuesday's special Senate election over once heavily favored Attorney General Martha Coakley.

The intensified activity around the campaign to fill the seat of the late senator Edward M. Kennedy (D) highlights the degree to which the race has taken on national significance. A victory, or even a narrow loss, by Brown in the competition for the symbolically important seat would be interpreted as another sign that voters have turned away from the Democrats at the start of the midterm election year.

More urgently, a Brown win would give Republicans 41 seats in the Senate and the ability to block President Obama's health-care initiative and much of the Democrats' 2010 congressional agenda. Strategists on both sides concede that a Brown victory would drastically reshape the calculus of the health-care debate, which is now in its final stages.

Brown still has some distance to go to pull off an upset, but Democrats now recognize they were wrong not to have taken his challenge more seriously from the start and are vowing not to let the race slip away out of neglect and a lack of aggressiveness.

"We believe at the end of the day the attorney general is going to win the race, but we're not going to take our foot off the gas," said Eric Schultz, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/12/AR2010011203836_pf.html

[malaise]

1. It's not going to happen

Fugg them

[spanone]

2. i agree, but the media is really pushing this.....fuggem

[leftynyc]

11. Did the same with NY-23

That small congressional race was all anyone could talk about - until the Democrat won.

[TheCowsCameHome]

3. The threat is real.

I'm not taking Coakley's win for granted.

Certain Dems in this state have alienated a lot of the voters.

[graywarrior]

4. I'm headed to Boston for the Clinton rally on Friday

I believe Obama is going to show up. I'm also going to volunteer to phone bank for her over the weekend. She will win this tho it may be a squeaker.

[spanone]

5. good work graywarrior!!!

[graywarrior]

6. I'd feel like a traitor to Ted if I didn't do everything I could to keep Brown out of that seat

[Tesha]

9. Obama won't show -- Coakley isn't his sort of Democrat.

And at this point, he may be doing Martha a favor
by staying away; you don't see many Obama stickers
on cars any more.

Tesha

[WI_DEM]

18. Obama is more popular than Coakley is in MA apparently if she cannot get win in MA.

[WeDidIt]

7. It's win-win for them

If they win, it's a HUGE upset.

If they lose they will say, "It's Massachusetts and Ted Kennedy's seat. There was no way we were going to win, but we came much closer than we should have and we're pleased with the performance."

[zbdent]

8. so ... the teabirthers are backing a candidate who

will do exactly what they've been railing against?

[Broke In Jersey]

10. I would be shocked

if its closer than 8 points. Yawn!

[chelsea0011]

12. If Dems get out and vote, this won't even be close.

The media up here in Mass. are wetting themselves over polls that show a close race and ignoring the polls that show Coakley handily ahead. Like any election, you need a good turnout for your candidate to win. In Mass. if the Dems stay home, it could be close. Brown became unhinged during the debate the other night and the media has but given him a free pass because a poll shows him within 2 points and that's the story their going with.

[pipi_k]

14. I'm thinking that one advantage of those polls showing a close margin...

is that it might inspire a bit of anger in Democrats to get out and vote when they would otherwise just blow it all off.

Especially the ones who think it would be a travesty for Teddy's seat to be occupied by a Republican.

The ones I'd worry about would be the Independents. Although the Mr and I are registered Independents ourselves, but we vote Democrat at least 98% of the time.

I'll be voting Democrat this time, that's for sure.

[DFW]

13. In part, this is Howard Dean's fault

Not in a negative sense. Howard pissed off Rahm Emmanuel heavily with his 50 state strategy, and showed that we
could not only win in areas we thought lost causes, but also force Republicans to allocate resources they needed
elsewhere in order to preserve "safe" seats that suddenly weren't as safe as they thought.

They have not forgotten the lesson, it seems. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I wish the Republicans
would flatter us just a little less.

[lame54]

15. the washington post? - really?

[cleveramerican]

16. Brown is going to get run over

and all the pundits will go quiet.

[surrealAmerican]

17. Don't you just love how a "mainstream" article like this ...

... is already setting up the republicans to claim this as a victory no matter what happens?:sarcasm:

So, now if they win, its a "sign that voters have turned away from the Democrats". If they lose "narrowly" it's still a "sign that voters have turned away from the Democrats".

However few votes they get, they will claim it was a "great victory" to get that many votes in what is a reliably Democratic state.

Why are they treating as fact the idea that voters are turning away from the Democrats? We really don't have any evidence of that, only Republican propaganda.

[WI_DEM]

19. Too bad Dems couldn't field a stronger candidate than Coakley who made a major mistake

early on by thinking that she could just coast to victory. I saw the debate on C-SPAN and she does come across as a prosecutor and not a very likable candidate. Brown would be a disaster. I just hope enough Dems can turn out to save this one.

[TheCowsCameHome]

23. You nailed it - she thought she had it sewed up early-on.

Wrong, Martha.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

20. There was a post last week

about a woman suing a hospital because she was sterilized without her consent. She was a single mother
of nine kids. The story was in the Boston Globe. At the end of the article there were hundreds of comments
from angry Bostonians swearing to vote the Democrats out. We were blamed for everything wrong in Massachusetts.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1223441

[NYC Democrat]

21. this is really bad now if the Party does not pull ALL STOPS in the next week

its actually somewhat likely that we will lose this race and there goes EVERYTHING we want to pass in some form or another.

[Froward69]

22. Republicans are swarming

I couldn't find more than five positive comments between the Boston globe and the Harald. about 1000 negatives. All saying the same things...
at least the positives were different from one another.

I am too unfamiliar with Mass to jump in coherently. then again freepers do that all the time.