Martha Coakley (that’s Martha on the right, smug instead of senatorial) is trailing in the polls and expected to lose to Republican Scott Brown. The more I learn about this election, the more I’m convinced that Coakley, as Jason Linkins astutely observes in today’s Huffington Post, is losing because she’s smug, lazy, and doesn’t know enough about baseball:
To me, this quote from Coakley, responding to a Boston Globe reporter asking her if perhaps she hasn’t been too passive, sums up her entire campaign:
“As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?” she fires back, in an apparent reference to a Brown online video of him doing just that. “This is a special election. And I know that I have the support of Kim Driscoll. And I now know the members of the [Salem] School Committee, who know far more people than I could ever meet.”
Now, the above quote has been typically hawked by the press as Coakley dissing the Boston Red Sox, which is a bit obtuse. Subsequent remarks by Coakley lead me to conclude that she doesn't know enough about the Red Sox to diss them, anyway. But what bothers me about this is that she doesn’t appear to want to work hard for the seat! That she seems to feel that there are other people — like Kim Driscoll, I guess — who are supposed to do the hard, cold work of talking Coakley up to voters, while she stays warm.
If MC had busted her butt like Cheryl Steenson did campaigning for HD-8 in Kalispell, Brown would be 20 points behind today. Cheryl would have been at Fenway Park at 0500, warm in a parka and stocking hat. Not only would she have shook hands, she would have served hot coffee.
Coakley, it seems, expected potential voters to meet her at a warm high society ballroom where working stiffs could slake their thirst with a delicate chablis, assuage their hunger with dainty little slices of effete European cheese, and gently press the flesh with Martha after first washing their hands with perfumed antibacterial soap.
Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neill must be spinning in their graves.
