I was just watching "A Perfect Candidate" on Sundance . . .

[janet118]

and it occurred to me that things have not really changed all that much since 1994 - the tea baggers have always been with us. The film is a documentary about the Senate race between Chuck Robb and Oliver North. North was definitely the superior candidate in terms of media savvy, enthusiam of supporters and photogenic good looks. On the other hand, Robb was squirrelly and uninspiring and probably won by 3% only because of Wilder's endorsement and the black vote. North's supporters were militant and very upset with the status quo. His strategists were the old Lee Atwater crowd - vicious but smart. The movie shows how really nasty and adolescent these guys were, but the public only saw the results of their advice, not the sausage being made. The film also depicts the sub rosa racism of the supporters and the campaign.

Anyway, I was thinking about the Scott Brown campaign here in Mass. It was a special election which changes the dynamic, but the themes were familiar. Of course, Scott Brown had no background of lying to Congress or much of any background actually - a blank slate. He had some celebrity association because of his daughter and connections to local colleges and sports. He had the same kind of outside money coming in that North did - right wing money and there is lots of it. He did not play the religious card as much as North did, but the states of Virginia and Mass. are different that way. Coakley ran her campaign or rather didn't run any campaign like she'd already won. It puzzles me why or where she spent so much money in the primary race, but supposedly she didn't have any money left afterwards. She ran the final leg of the campaign like she was an incumbent ignoring the young upstart. Unlike Robb, she was not the incumbent.

But despite the differences, there were enough similarities in the film and the recent special election to make it instructive.

The two variables that North did not have in '94 were Fox Cable News and a huge network of local right wing talk radio shows. Coakley lost by about 6% and I think she might have lost even if she had shaken every hand and had more than one debate. I was holding a sign outside my polling place for Coakley and was chatting with two local Brown supporters (not the ones that came in buses from Texas and elsewhere before election day). They both were Fox News watchers and cited weird trivia about Coakley that was played over and over on Fox and regurgitated endlessly on local talk radio.

IMO, underestimating the power of this media and having no counterbalance for the progressive side of the scales, is very, very dangerous. It will only get worse with the new corporate money that will be flowing in for attack ads.

[Blue_Tires]

1. first race i ever voted in at 18

and yes; that was a *very* narrow margin -- North would have been hard to get out of office if he ever got in...

[janet118]

2. How accurate was the documentary?

It looked like even the Robb supporters were not excited by his lame campaign - the same as the Coakley campaign up here.

It was an excellent film - I liked it better than "The War Room." There should be a mini-film festival with a bunch of campaign movies and films. I just saw a documentary at a local festival about the 1960 primary campaign between Humphrey and John F. Kennedy by the filmmaker who made "Don't Look Back" on Bob Dylan. It was interesting because it was really the first television campaign.

[Blue_Tires]

3. I didn't see it, but I agree with your points for the most part...

There was no Fox news then, but North did have the relentless support of the local RW radio hacks 24 hours a day...

And yes, Robb was the lamest of lame ducks (low approval rating and coming off a sex scandal, no less) who needed a miracle to save him...Sadly, he was representative of a lot of the old-mindset, complacent Dems in the party and congress that got chopped off (or retired) between '94 and '02...North had a lot going for him -- This is a huge military state, and a lot of residents to this day believe North didn't do anything wrong, The now-infamous Christian Coalition and their affiliated partners were flexing their muscles, zeroing in on political correctness, increasing diversity, immorality (i.e. the bedhopping of Robb, Clinton, and so many others), feminism, and abortion (Virginia was one of the frontlines of the abortion wars in the early 90s, which was a hairy time)...

Like a lot of longtime congresscritters at the time, Robb was too much of a Beltway Country-Clubber -- He loved the power, perks and rock star status of being a senator, and staying elected was more important than actually doing something positive with his office...

But at least the positive is after '02, the party with Dean made some drastic changes in fundraising, GOTV, organizing, message framing and candidate selection...

[janet118]

4. See the film . . . I think it confirms what you said

I'm amazed at how much access the crew was given to the insider team at the North campaign. The abortion issue wasn't mentioned at all in the film and that does seem strange when I think back to that era.