While Democrats were busy fighting each other in congress, here and everywhere else for all to see.....
Republicans, Bloggers and decision makers were keeping busy strategizing trying to figure out how to win an unwinnable Senate seat, in a state which was the only state won by McGovern in 1972. It might mean a 41 vote for them, and doing away with the 60 vote majority currently held by Democrats. It was worth a try, to say the least.
Let's walk this back.....
IS A BROWN WIN POSSIBLE? Wed Dec 09, 2009 at 12:01:00 PM EST
An Intriguing Long Shot: Could Massachusetts Save Us From Obamacare? BY William Kristol
December 22, 2009 9:54 PMNow, of course the Democrat Martha Coakley is the overwhelming favorite. But
someone might want to commission a poll in Massachusetts to see what might happen if the Senate race could be made a referendum on Obamacare. Brown and Coakley debated last night, and they clashed on the health care bill. But so far as I can tell, Brown didn't emphasize that by electing him, the voters of Massachusetts have a chance to save the country from Obamacare.
What if there were a massive independent expenditure that made that point? I bet Obamacare isn't popular even in Massachusetts. And
it would be novelistically satisfying if the Democrats lost Ted Kennedy's seat on the issue of government-run health care, thereby dooming...government-run health care. Conservative Bloggers take matters into their own hands (with or without instructions from above....that we don't know), while Democratic Bloggers continue to assail each other, busy holding feet to fire, demanding single payer, and ramping up a Kill the Bill Campaign.... Saturday, December 26, 2009Since the Media Wouldn’t Conduct A Poll - we did it ourselves! Because the main stream media have been asleep at Obama’s feet, Conservative Revival blog contributor Mark and I decided to gather our own poll data about the January 19 special US Senate election in Massachusetts.
To conduct the poll, we used the local phone book, a script we developed and old fashioned data-gathering tools of paper and pencil.
The random call system involved the Cape Cod phone book. We started with the letter “A”. We looked for residences of couples. We called each residence and recorded the results. We tried to made one actual contact per page, starting at page 1 of the white pages. This was our rationale: if we could get one contact per page, then 1 out of 300 people per page might be a good sampling of the actual Cape Cod population. Of course, as with all surveys, the more data, the more accurate the sampling.
If someone asks for the name of the polling organization, say “www.newmedia.blogspot.com Research Poll.” ... Incidentally, although my husband thought he made up this name, the URL actually exists and belongs to a blogger who last entered a post on June 17, 2004!
Here is the data gathered from the 157 answered phone calls we made today:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jguWpq0k7WY/Sza4CclFVmI/AAAAAAAABHc/xgWqhrzAlsk/s400/Dec+26+Polling+Data.pngUnofficial data: Liberal women are nasty and short-tempered. We can begin to understand what part of the problem is with Massachusetts voters: female Dems. Final thoughts: the Boston news media spent so much time focusing on Coakley, that sleepy MA voters will likely go to the polls on name recognition alone. Therefore, it is our job as patriots who live in this Commie-wealth to tell as many people as we can about Scott Brown between now and January 19.
When we get 500 actual responses (Brown + Undecided + Coakley), we will have an official poll we can publish.
Actually, if you just thought about it, Joe Kennedy's name on the ballot will likely take more votes away from Coakley than Brown. Mass. Dems are not known for their, shall we say, intelligence; Brown could take the seat with a plurality just by Dems voting for "their" Joe Kennedy! :-)
Maybe you should start calling Dems & pushing JK...
While Bloggers where in essence masquerating as a Polling firm, and busy working the phones, many of them
were leaving messages on answering machines talking about a race that wasn't being discussed.....December 31, 2009Can a Republican Really Win Teddy's Seat?
There have been no recent "scientific" polls for the January 19 Massachusetts special election that will fill the Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy's death.
But there has been one kinda-sloppy telephone survey suggesting that Republican contender Scott Brown, a state senator in the Bay State legislature, might actually defeat Attorney General Martha Coakley, who won the early-December Democratic primary.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-spine/can-republican-really-win-teddys-seatWow. Rasmussen: Scott Brown within 2 Points of Coakley Among Voters “Very Likely” to Turn Out.January 5, 2010Since this is the first official poll for the Jan. 19 Massachusetts special election, there is no way to know — officially — who is rising and who is falling, but one key lesson learned from the 2008 primaries is that a 9-point gap can be erased in 14 days by momentum.
Obama got 62% of the votes in Massachusetts. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans three-to-one (30%: 11%). Approximately 50% of registered voters are unaffiliated, otherwise known as independent. According to Rasmussen, these voters favor Brown by an impressive margin:
Both candidates get better than 70% of the vote from members of their respective parties, but Brown leads 65% to 21% among voters not affiliated with either of the major parties…. Eight percent (8%) of Democrats remain undecided while just 3% of Republicans are in that category.
Question for the mathematicians out there: Given the above-stated preferences reported by Rasmussen, what percentages of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents need to vote to generate a WIN for Scott Brown?
Special elections are typically decided by who shows up to vote and it is clear from the data that Brown’s supporters are more enthusiastic. In fact, among those who are absolutely certain they will vote, Brown pulls to within two points of Coakley. That suggests a very low turnout will help the Republican and a higher turnout is better for the Democrat.
http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/wow-rasmussen-scott-brown-within-2-points-of-coakley-among-voters-very-likely-to-turn-out/ January 17, 2010Seeing Brown comingThe overwhelming conventional wisdom in both parties until a Rasmussen poll showed the race in single digits in early January was that Martha Coakley was a lock. (It's hard to recall a single poll changing the mood of a race quite that dramatically.)
My conclusion:The above is only acnedotal evidence, but it appears that the netroot made more of a difference for the Republican party than we had done here lately. I believe that there was enough work done on the other side to put Brown's name out there (since it was just one state, and probably pushed top down) that by the time a poll was done, the results were as they were. It is very possible that Rasmussen "knew" who to call and basically mirrored the polls taken by the "sloppies"....as we all know that Rasmussen is reknowned for supporting Republicans.
In this being a win for them, we ought to take a page out of their book, and we should not sit on our laurels complaining and fighting each other any longer. Pointing fingers and playing the blame game IS EXACTLY what is expected of us, and if we actually do this, we will again be as predictable as our reputation states.
We need to become activist instead of critics, and we should start taking on the media and the Conservatives, and of course, the issues, but do it in an organized and thoughtful way. Those Fighting our own side should do so, if it turns them on, but they need to understand that we cannot forget to keep an eye on the other side. I think there should have been multi-tasking all along...cause the next thing you'll know, Palin will be the Next President, and by the time we have figured it out, she'll be getting sworn in.
The musing above wasn't made very public, and I think this is part of our problem as Democratic Bloggers; we have big mouths and like to shout everything out onto the Internet to prove how smart we are. In doing so, we lose any Strategic edge. Same goes for our treatment of our President; the louder we shout at him in public for everything he does, the more likely the WH is not given any chance to strategize effectively, as they are too busy responding to us to develop covert type of activities against the opposition that might be beneficial to us.
I just think we need to do a better job, if we, as the Netroots, are going to make a difference.
If we go around chasing news story, then we are in no way shaping or controlling the news, we are merrily following it.
If we don't do any Oppo research on the Republicans, but instead spend all of our time assailing
Democrats, then we are doing the Republican's job for them.
I don't know if we will ever learn, because part of our strength appears not in fighting
the opposition, but rather in fighting amongs ourselves.
In that sense, we are no better than those Democrats in congress that we so often criticize,
because we are as much the wimps as they are, as it is obvious that we are not fighters.....
not FOR our team anyways, and not AGAINST the opposition, specifically.
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