In the summer of 1988 despite my reservations about him I felt a surge of ethnic pride when Michael Dukakis was nominated by the Democratic party. He left the convention with a huge lead and then went on vacation and then tended to state business. He thought he had it in the bag but when you’re a cold fish: it’s *never* in the bag. Meanwhile his weasley opponent went to work and wound up winning.
In the winter of 2009, Martha Coakley won a smashing primary victory and then went on vacation with a huge lead in the polls. She thought she had it in the bag but when you’re a cold fish: it’s *never* in the bag. Meanwhile her weasley opponent went to work and wound up winning.
Tip O’Neill correctly said that all politics is local and I think that’s most of the reason for why this happenedBUT I agree with Josh who wrote:
Message of the day to all Dems, Coakley, Rahm, Celinda Lake,
national Dem committees, Axelrod, whoever, whatever: Shut the *$%&
Up! I don’t know how else to say it. I’m watching MSNBC and hearing all
the key players dumping on each other. As I’ve said, the Coakley
campaign seems to have been run just terribly. And that’s just the
beginning of it. But really, with all that’s at stake, the White House
political office left this to Coakley, unsupervised? Really? I just
have very little patience hearing all the people who are by definitionall to blame have an argument about who’s most to blame.What I’m seeing — and this isn’t just based on public comments but
our reporting behind the scenes — is that there’s a lot more energy
going into dodging blame for this unforced error of galactic
proportions than there is going into the real issue: closing the loop
on the health care bill. Which is the only issue in policy terms and
political terms. That’s it. Everything else is water under the bridge.
That’s right: stop whining, STFU and get back to work or November is going to be eerily like tonight. The next person in a position of responsibility who points the finger of blame should have it cut off and inserted where the moon don’t shine.
For my part, I promise to not use one of my tweets as the title of a post ever again but this was too good to waste on the tweeter tube. Okay, it’s time for *me* to STFU and find out how much Scott Brown wants for his crappy truck now that he won’t need it as a campaign prop…