Brown vs. Coakley Continued
I noticed something interesting on my ride up to the RMV and my subsequent ride to work this morning: I didn’t see a single Martha Coakley sign. I saw dozens and dozens of Scott Brown signs. I like that.
Once I got into work, I checked my email and saw another from MoveOn.Org about this MA race. The amusing bit in this email is the following line:
“Right wing smear merchants are spending $1 million or more on attack ads, and the tea partiers are out in full force for Republican Scott Brown.”
I live in Massachusetts and I watch TV. I’ve seen the ads. You know who started with negative, smearing, attack ads? Martha Coakley and her Democrat supporters. She started in when she realized, just recently, that winning the election wasn’t a lock, that she might actually have a fight on her hands, that just being a Democrat was (for once) not a guarantee of a win. She aired the first attack ad, and I remember seeing it and thinking “she’s scared, she’s getting dirty.”
So MoveOn.Org – I respect your passion, but please try to present things fairly and accurately. Stop being disingenuous in your emails, and stop twisting the facts. If you can’t win with the truth, then you’re just as bad as the rest of the political machine that you originally fought against with your grassroots efforts. And you might want to give the people some credit. When you write things like:
Martha Coakley is fighting to hold onto the seat Ted Kennedy held for 47 years. Letting the tea partiers win this race is simply not an option.
…you’re implying the voters in Massachusetts can’t think for themselves (and I tend to agree with you, actually, based on their past auto-vote-Democrat settings) and hinting that somehow our choices are formed by the outside influence of Republican groups. Pay attention to the news and check the stats. Heck, even a small percentage of registered Democrats are voting Brown, most likely as a protest vote. It’s not the tea partiers that are influencing this vote, it’s voter’s disgust with Coakley’s work and the lack of representation we have in this state (as elected officials often ignore the will of the people here). Even The Atlantic has something negative to say about Coakley as a candidate (and The Atlantic tends to lean a bit left).
You know, I honestly don’t like either Coakley or Brown that much, and I’m sick and tired of both the Republican and Democrat parties…but I’m giddy over the idea of some checks and balances getting back into the system. And yes, I find it disturbing that the Democrats already have a plan in place to force their legislation through without Brown’s vote…and I guarantee you that the political machine in this state will take as long as possible to certify Brown’s win, should he win (and that’s still unlikely, in my opinion), in order to prevent him from being able to cast a vote in the Senate. As noted in this Washington Post article:
Brown has pledged to vote against the health care bill, and his election would give Senate Republicans the 41st vote they need to sustain a filibuster.
But Secretary of State William F. Galvin, Massachusetts’ top election official, said certifying Tuesday’s results could take more than two weeks. That delay could give Senate Democrats time to push Obama’s signature legislation through Congress. Sen. Paul G. Kirk Jr., the interim replacement for the seat, says he will vote for the bill if given the chance.
Republicans are using the threatened delay as a rallying point to argue Democrats have been gaming the rules to pass the health care bill despite public opposition.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s Democrats not respecting the will of the people, and that’s an insult to the very job that they have undertake (and yes I know that Republicans do the same shit…that’s one reason we all need to start supporting legitimate third party candidates).
