The Coakley-Brown Intangibles

[Pryderi]

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/coakley-brown-intangibles.html

<snip>
So...stick a fork in Coakley, she's done--right? Not so fast.

First of all, any chance Brown had of sneaking up on her is now gone. The closeness of the race is generating high passions--cautious excitement on the right, worry bordering on panic on the left. But in Massachusetts you don't want high passion and level of attention on both sides if you're a Republican; you want an asymmetrical level of passion favoring your side. You want to catch the Democrats napping all the way through to Election Day. That almost happened. But Coakley and state Dems--especially the unions--and the White House all awoke before it was over. We'll see if they rose from their collective slumber too late.

Second, intangibles make for good copy but campaign media narratives tell an incomplete tale. Whatever unions and the Democratic machine are doing, and whether it will be enough or not, their actions are simply less newsworthy than a Sox-Yankees comment, or a Schilling blog post, or whatever Scott Brown did or said at a Tea Party rally.

Third, we'll finally get a certifiable test of whether the Obama political machine has applicability for Democrats other than himself. As Mother Jones' Nick Baumann reports, the White House has gone all in with the Organizing for America list Obama built in 2008.

[nightrain]

1. and sad that they didn't use the list for other post-inaug issues such as

single payer!

[Doctor_J]

2. A Boston liberal talk radio guy was on with Hartmann yesterday

he said that liberals and Dems in MA are "very discouraged" about the Big Insurance-written health care bills. They feel like Ted would think very little of the White House's efforts to get Americans health care.

[h9socialist]

3. You know . . .

. . . if Martha Coakley pulls this one out, it will be a joy to watch the Republicans tomorrow: trying to explain why their boasting the past week was what it invariably is -- a load of bullcrap.