Clinton: Take back the Tea Party!

Stumping for Martha Coakley, the former president urges Bay State Democrats to fight GOP "abusers of power"

By Joe Conason

Former President Bill Clinton, left, addresses an audience as Martha Coakley, right, a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat left empty by the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., looks on during a campaign rally in Boston, Friday, Jan. 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Steven Senne) (Credit: Associated Press)

Topics:Martha Coakley, 2010 Elections, Bill Clinton

When Bill Clinton flew up to Massachusetts on Friday afternoon to campaign with Martha Coakley, he brought a special message for Bay State Democrats facing the enraged right-wing activists mobilized around her opponent Scott Brown.

“You need to take back this tea party idea,” he told the wildly cheering crowds in Boston and later in Worcester. “They say that the original Boston Tea Party was anti-government, but that is wrong. The Massachusetts Bay Colony had a strong government. They weren’t liberal or conservative, they were communitarians, which means they knew we’re all in this together. What they opposed was the abuse of power.” But the aim of the Republican Party and Senate nominee Brown, he charged, is to “protect the modern abusers of power” – namely, the corporate and financial leaders whose depredations can only be curtailed by strong, responsive government.

Coakley echoed Clinton’s populist theme, accusing Brown of wanting to spare the nation’s largest banks from paying back the billions of federal bailout dollars – even while the bankers paid themselves “seven or eight-figure bonuses.” The rich and well-connected “will always be able to hire someone to speak for them. But who is going to speak for the rest of us? That is why I’m running for the Senate.”

Confessing that she wasn’t sure anyone “could fill the shoes” of the late Senator Ted Kennedy — whose seat she and Brown are contesting in Tuesday’s special election — Coakley said that would be her goal. “Ted Kennedy stood for the poor, the elderly, the young, the disabled,” she recalled. “Scott Brown has no interest in doing that.”

By the time Clinton arrived at Logan Airport in a small private jet, he had spent three sleepless days working on Haitian relief. He fielded phone calls from government officials in Port-au-Prince and Washington en route, while trying to track events on the devastated, chaotic island. But the wildly cheering Democrats at the packed rallies lifted him, and he spoke passionately about Haiti, health care, energy and the economy, warning Massachusetts not to award the power of the filibuster to the “same Republicans” who had sought to thwart his initiatives a decade ago.

Fatigued and preoccupied as he was, Clinton felt a special obligation to help Coakley. Advancing “good government” and helping Haiti are “two sides of the same coin,” as he tried to explain to a writer from National Review Online. Moreover, Coakley had endorsed Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid during the Massachusetts primary, defying the entire Democratic establishment in the state (including Kennedy, Senator John Kerry, and Gov. Deval Patrick) that had backed Obama.

Despite the enthusiasm and crowds generated by Clinton and Coakley at the Friday events, her prospects seemed to be slipping with the latest Suffolk University poll showing a four-point lead for Brown. “I think she can pull this out,” said a Democratic Congressman who showed up in Worcester, but he didn’t sound entirely convincing. President Obama decided to stump for Coakley personally on Sunday, which can either be seen as a sign of Democratic desperation, or more likely, evidence that top Democrats believe she can pull it out, with some help (since the White House team wouldn’t send Obama to advance a completely lost cause.)

On the street outside the Worcester Polytechnic Institute auditorium where the Coakley supporters, nearly a hundred Brown supporters stood in the freezing darkness for an hour, lustily chanting slogans and waving signs with the fierce intensity that can turn an election — especially when turnout is low.

: Joe Conason blogs in Salon several times a week and writes a weekly column for the New York Observer. His latest book is "It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush." More Joe Conason

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Kay Bailey Hutchison: The GOP’s Martha Coakley

A politician with deep statewide popularity suffers a humbling defeat. Sound familiar?

By Mark Greenbaum

Texas gubernatorial candidate Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, smiles after delivering her concession speech in Dallas on Tuesday.

Topics:Martha Coakley

Politically speaking, Massachusetts and Texas are polar opposites, but they now have something rather amazing in common. With Kay Bailey Hutchison’s crushing setback in Texas on Tuesday, the (formerly) most popular politicians in both states have both suffered humbling defeats this year.

It was just over a month ago, of course, that Bay State voters turned back Martha Coakley, the state’s Democratic attorney general, in her bid to replace Ted Kennedy. When she originally jumped into that race, Coakley was the overwhelming favorite, both for her party’s nod and the general election – the result of her high job approval ratings and the state’s Democratic bent.

Similarly, Hutchison, who failed to even force Gov. Rick Perry into a run-off in Tuesday’s three-way gubernatorial primary, was the undisputed favorite when she launched her campaign last year.

The parallel collapses of Hutchison and Coakley serve as an important reminder about the dangers of complacency – and a warning for other seemingly-popular politicians about how toxic the pervading anti-establishment climate could be this November.

For 16 years after winning her Senate seat in a 1993 special election, Hutchison was Texas’ most consistently popular politician. When she showed interest in this year’s governor’s race, the only question seemed to be whether Perry would retire willingly or be routed in a primary. A poll last February put Hutchison 25 points ahead of the incumbent governor.

But Hutchison failed to appreciate the seething animosity towards Washington that was coursing through the electorate. Voters were (and are) furious over what they saw as Washington’s ineffective response to the recession and began pointing fingers at Hutchison, who’d voted for the bank bailout. Her support among Texans began to wane.

Capitalizing on her vulnerability, Perry ran from the far right – he embraced the Tea Party and dabbled in secession rhetoric — and relentlessly hammered Hutchison as an insufficiently conservative creature of Washington. The sky-high poll numbers that she’d built over two decades were gone in months. By last September, Perry was ahead by double-digits. Hutchison was caught off-guard by this aggression and was never able to find her footing as a candidate.

Something similar was at work in Coakley’s collapse. Her election to Kennedy’s seat seemed inevitable after she cruised to victory in the December Democratic primary, but – like Hutchison – she was then undone by a failure to appreciate the level of the public’s rage.

Sure, Scott Brown, who bested Coakley by five points in January, ran a terrific campaign. But we’re talking about a Republican winning in the nation’s bluest state – in the race for Ted Kennedy’s seat, no less. Brown’s populist appeal provided a spark, but the special election really served as an outlet for voters enraged by Washington – same as in Texas.

Some entrenched Democratic office-holders reacted with panic to Coakley’s defeat, with several potentially vulnerable incumbents (like Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh) heading for the exits in recent weeks. The GOP establishment should treat Hutchison’s defeat similarly. Her landslide loss is the strongest evidence yet of just how far to the right the Republican primary audience has moved.

It’s also true that Coakley and Hutchison, for all of their popularity, has never faced serious electoral tests before this year. Coakley once lost a local race for state representative in Boston, but other than that, her political ascent was charmed. And Hutchison, besides a somewhat difficult race against appointed Sen. Bob Krueger in ’93, was accustomed to having it easy at the polls, too.

Every incumbent across the country who is running this fall should take note: this year, you have to really work for it. If that’s true in both Massachusetts and Texas, then it’s true everywhere.

: Mark Greenbaum is a freelance writer in Washington. More Mark Greenbaum

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Don’t cry sexism

It's wrong and risky to chalk up Martha Coakley's loss to Massachusetts' misogyny

By Tracy Clark-Flory

Topics:Martha Coakley, Broadsheet, Scott Brown

Sexist and misogynist Massachusetts — the bluest of blue states is sure being called some dirty names in the wake of Scott Brown’s Senate win. In the Daily Beast, James Carroll argues the state “practices the politics of misogyny” and democratic nominee Martha Coakley was “croaked by an electorate that could not get past her gender.” But, as a lefty feminist, I’m calling B.S. It isn’t so simple, and suggesting otherwise is dangerous.

It takes willful blindness to argue that Coakley’s loss was chiefly the result of anything other than a crappy campaign. After winning the Democratic primary, “she took a vacation, pulled her ads and refrained from pressing the flesh,” as Steve Kornacki wrote in Salon. Add to that growing insecurity and a fear of change among Americans, particularly independents, and the way Republicans were mobilized by early polls showing that Brown had a fighting chance, and his win seems not only understandable but predictable.

It may sound silly, but the most compelling evidence of sexism in this election is the centerfold. As you have likely heard and seen, Brown stripped off his clothes for a racy Cosmopolitan photo shoot in 1982. Yesterday, Salon’s editor-in-chief Joan Walsh argued: “No female candidate would ever survive a race for Senate with a photo spread like that in her past. It’s unthinkable. The double standard is appalling.” Brown simply couldn’t have won if he had been a woman — but that doesn’t mean that Coakley lost because she is one.

There is no denying that female politicians have struggled to be let into Massachusetts’ boys club – Coakley was vying to be the very first woman elected as state senator – but the Bay State isn’t particularly remarkable in that regard. Ruth Mandel, founder of Rutger’s Center for American Women and Politics, told Politico: “I wouldn’t say Massachusetts has a great story to tell for women in politics, nor is it a tragic, sad tale. It is a typical tale in women’s struggle to move forward in representation in elective politics.”

That isn’t to say there isn’t sexism in the state’s political sphere or that male candidates don’t have a leg up on their female counterparts. Per the usual, the media contributed its fair share of sexist stereotypes; consider Mike Barnicle’s comparison of Coakley to an unpopular “substitute teacher” running against a beloved “high school football coach.” But when political commentators label a state as “misogynist,” it’s important to weigh the actual merits of the claim and put them in perspective. The truth is women’s political advancement within the state is actually “a little above the middle mark” compared to other states, according to Mandel. As Kornacki put it: She may be the eighth “woman from a major party to seek a Senate seat or the governorship in Massachusetts,” and the eighth one to lose, but it’s also “too simplistic to simply say Massachusetts is filled with sexist voters.” Remember: Hillary Clinton won Massachusetts in the 2008 primary.

As much as I genuinely appreciate a man like Carroll sounding off about sexism, we can’t afford to be so defensive and simplistic. If feminists cry misogyny one too many times, people will stop listening.

: Tracy Clark-Flory is a staff writer at Salon. Follow @tracyclarkflory on Twitter. More Tracy Clark-Flory

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Reactions to Brown’s win in Massachusetts

Bad news on Obama's one-year anniversary

By Gabriel Winant

Topics:Scott Brown, War Room, 2010 Elections, Martha Coakley

Democrats have gotten their beating in the Massachusetts special election over with. Now, it’s January 20 — the one-year anniversary of the Obama presidency — and the coincidence of the date and yesterday’s dispiriting results mean that, for both the party in power and its elated critics, it’s obviously a time to reflect.

Salon has rounded up some interesting reactions to Scott Brown’s stunning victory in Massachusetts, and what it means for the year-old Obama presidency.

Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of the National Review:

After the 2008 election, the Right was written off as stale, out-of-touch, bereft of political leadership — with the assumption it would be that way for a long time. In McDonnell, Christie, Brown, we see just how short-sighted that critique was, and there will be more new talents coming up behind them in November. Of course, they have to succeed in governing, and have to hold the center. But ’06 and ’08 are looking more and more like a great cleansing that enabled a return to principles and new, fresher expressions of conservatism to emerge. Here’s hoping it’s just the beginning.

Josh Marshall, founder of TalkingPointsMemo:

The president is going to have to find a way to say, No. We’re doing this. He’ll need to stand down a lot of cowardly and foolish people in his own party. He’ll have to stand down the vast and formless force of establishment punditry and just say, No. We’re going to do this. And he’s going to have to make the case to the public, not necessarily convince all those who have doubts about health care reform but make clear that he thinks this is the right direction for the country and because he thinks it’s the right thing to do that he’s going to make it happen.

Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, said on MSNBC that the president “is not believed” when he makes his case, because he is the face of the status quo. In the end, this is not about Massachusetts, and this is not about Scott Brown and Martha Coakley, this is about a national Democratic Party that has lost its way, and this is the time to course correct.”

At Slate, Republican Rachel Larimore isn’t optimistic about replicating Brown’s success nationwide:

It’s hard to say whether the Republicans will be able to replicate Brown’s success nationally. In 1994, when the Republicans took control of the House and the Senate in the first midterm after Bill Clinton’s election, they were guided by Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America. Now, instead of offering contracts to the public, Republicans are holding their own candidates to “purity pledges.”

Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union, has a simple explanation for Coakley’s failure: “The reason Ted Kennedy’s seat is no longer controlled by a Democrat is clear: Washington’s inability to deliver the change voters demanded in November 2008. Make no mistake, political paralysis resulted in electoral failure.”

George Packer writes for the New Yorker:

[Our] problems, which can be summed up as the decline of the American middle class, have been so resistant to solutions that the readiest and most reasonable stance is profound skepticism. It is so much harder politically to do something affirmative than to stand in the way and say it can’t be done. Obama has made his job all the more difficult by trying to do something—and in some cases succeeding—without offering much of a challenge to the people standing in the way. So he pays the price, and they do not.

A couple of Democratic members of Congress also managed to let slip what they really think. Blue Dog Allen Boyd, D-Fla., said he feels sorry for his party’s freshmen members. “It’s like they walked in and got hit upside the head with a big jackhammer.” And Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., the son of the late Ted Kennedy, said that voters are out for blood. “It’s like in Roman times, they’d be trotted out to the coliseum and the lions would be brought out,” Kennedy said Tuesday night. “I mean, they’re wanting blood and they’re not getting it so they want to protest. And, you know, you can’t blame them.”

: Gabriel Winant is a graduate student in American history at Yale. More Gabriel Winant

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The final results

Republican Scott Brown ends the night up by an impressive margin over Martha Coakley

By Alex Koppelman

Topics:2010 Elections, War Room, Martha Coakley, Scott Brown

Election night is over in Massachusetts; 100 percent of the precincts involved in the special election to replace Sen. Ted Kennedy have now reported in. The results could still change a bit due to absentee and provisional ballots, not to mention the usual election vagaries, but as it stands right now, Republican Scott Brown’s victory looks pretty decisive: He got 52 percent of the vote to Democrat Martha Coakley’s 47 percent.

Granted, that’s a bit off from where some recent polls had Brown — a few had his margin in or close to double digits, though they did get his share of the vote just about right; late deciders apparently broke for Coakley — but that doesn’t really matter. Any Republican victory in Massachusetts, not to mention one that involves a seat that was held by the Kennedy family (and one placeholder in between John F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy) for more than 55 years, is a very big deal, regardless of pre-election polling.

: Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon. More Alex Koppelman

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Dems fighting over in-fighting?

A Democratic strategist warns colleagues that the blame game isn't helping fix problems

By Mike Madden

Topics:War Room, 2010 Elections, Democratic Party, Martha Coakley

Pointing fingers between Boston and Washington may be the capital’s new favorite bloodsport, but it’s not exactly the best way for Democrats to prepare for November. One senior party strategist tells Salon it’s time to get past the in-fighting:

This is not the apocalypse for November. But if all the takeaways from this race are about the tactics, and whether Celinda Lake sucks or not, and Rahm Emanuel pissing on whether the signs are the right color or not, that spells disaster… It’s not constructive in terms of, why are independents fleeing from us like we have the bubonic plague?

Nobody here is going to nominate Martha Coakley for campaign of the year. But there’s something bigger here.