My sister Jean sent a link to an interesting map that tries to explain why Martha Coakley lost to Scott Brown.
For me, the most important piece of information is that Democrats stayed home, while independents turned out in force. If I were still living in Massachusetts, I would have had had to hold my nose in order to vote for Coakley. Her law-and-order rhetoric sounded like she was getting paid by the prison lobby. She’s quixotically stubborn at times, so that even after Hillary Clinton released delegates to vote for Obama, Coakley refused to vote for him. While Coakley claims to support equality (broadly construed), including marriage equality, I never saw that she was much of an advocate for people who were poor or economically disadvantaged. While I could stomach her as attorney general (and yes, I voted for her in that post), I did not see here someone who would fill Ted Kennedy’s role as an advocate in the U.S. Senate for those who are poor and oppressed; indeed, she seemed no better than Scott Brown. Given those comparisons, I’m not entirely surprised that Massachusetts Democrats stayed home.
As a religious and spiritual progressive, I’m finding it more and more difficult to distinguish between political liberals and political conservatives. Both political stances seem like shallow ideologies motivated solely by party unity and retention of power, rather than humane political philosophies concerned with making life better for all people. U.S. politics seems to be driven in large part by fairly unimportant wedge issues — abortion, gun ownership, same-sex marriage, testing in schools — rather than by truly important issues like feeding the hungry, caring for children, preventing usury and exploitation of the poor. In those few areas where U.S. politics currently concerns itself with substantial issues — health care, war — the big issues are so narrowed down that they are almost meaningless.
I better stop ranting now, before my blood pressure goes up too much. As ideologues, neither Coakley nor Brown deserved to win; neither one would bother much with the real problems. And so we will continue to not feed the hungry, and not help the suffering, and not be peacemakers; and the last shall not be first because those who are first plan to stay right where they are.
Corrected 21 January, thanks to Philocrites. See comments below.
My only solace in this debacle is that a loss in MA was probably a good wake up call. As you say, Coakley was not a great option, and had she won things would have rumbled along without anything alerting us to the need for change. Maybe this will spark conversation & action among MA progressives.
Martha Coakley is “nastily anti-abortion“? I haven’t seen evidence of that.
Philocrites @ 2 — I am completely wrong — this is such a serious error that I have removed my incorrect sentence from the above post. My apologies!
Here’s what happened: I had heard that Coakley was on Brad Pittman’s right wing radio show in New Bedford, and had made remarks about abortion. I despise Pittman, and with that emotion coloring my judgment I managed to mix up Coakley’s views. I’m embarrassed that I could have made such a blunder. This is why I should not try to write about politics (and mostly don’t write about politics).
For the record, my completely incorrect remark was: “She’s nastily anti-abortion (Scott Brown may be more liberal on abortion than Coakley).” Thank you for the correction, Chris!
Probably more than any election in recent times, the actual candidates, their character and positions, meant very little.
With the Republicans voting as a block, it doesn’t matter who Scott Brown is: it’s a safe bet that he will do what he is told.
This infected the Democrats. One friend, who worked on phone banks for the first time in his life, told me that he didn’t vote for Coakley in the primary, and in fact, she was next to last on his list.
BTW, I’m not so sure that unenrolled voters in MA are independents. Why would a Republican register as a Republican. The only advantage is that they can vote in Republican primaries, which are seldom, if ever, contested?