The Lights Went Out in Massachusetts

“And the lights went out in Massachusetts, the day I left her standing on her own.” That line from the Bee Gees hit “Massachusetts” must be running through the heads of many people in the democratic leadership tonight as the Republican Scott Brown has been projected as the winner of the special election to fill the remainder of Ted Kennedy’s US Senate seat. I’ll get to my personal thoughts on the race in a minute, but I’ll put my political scientist hat on for the moment and discuss why I think the improbable occurred as a conservative Republican won a statewide race in one of the bluest states in the country. The first Republican to win a Senatorial election since 1972 (interestingly enough, the year I was born).

First: Voter Excitement. The Republicans clearly had the excitement level in this race. One of the many under-appreciated truisms of politics is that races aren’t necessarily won by convincing the other side to switch their vote or even get the undecided voters to break their way. It’s won by getting YOUR voters to the polls and the other side failing to do that. In a sentence, that’s what happened here. Clearly, Republicans and more conservative independents were fired up about the opportunity to send a message regarding what’s been happening nationally over the last year. They are fed up with the federal government’s spending and the health care bill became the prime example of it. In the meantime, the Democrats were NOT excited about Martha Coakley.

I spoke with my cousin last night who lives in Massachusetts in an area that is in a city just outside Boston and he remarked about how many Scott Brown signs he was seeing, but hardly any Coakley signs. And he lives in an area where there were plenty of Obama signs in 2008. While yard signs are not a good indicator of polls, they are a good indicator of voter excitement. You figure if someone is putting a sign in their yard that they are supporting a candidate, they certainly are going to vote come hell or high water. Additionally, the news reports I heard tonight suggested that voter turnout in Boston in the urban areas and in heavily minority areas was down in comparison to the rest of the state. That shows a difference in voter excitement in a much more tangible way. Voter excitement was clearly in Brown’s favor and as I write this 97% of the precincts have reported and he has a five point lead. That excitement clearly was the difference in those five points.

Second: Democratic Overconfidence. Think about it. If I had said after Ted Kennedy passed away in August that a conservative Republican was going to win the special election to fill his seat, you would have laughed me out of the room. I think the Democrats were thinking that way as well. Consider this: Scott Brown’s campaign was going on an ad blitz on this campaign as soon as the primary was over. The Coakley campaign acted as if the election was over once she won the primary. The simple fact is, she didn’t get serious about campaigning in this election until just a few weeks ago. I heard another pundit put it perfectly by saying, when Scott Brown was campaigning actively through the Christmas season, Martha Coakley was, literally, on vacation. It was only after the Coakley campaign realized that it might lose that it sprang into action. By that time it was too late. She had already been labeled by the other side and it was going to be difficult for her to reframe the election at that late hour.

Third: The Candidate. Along with some of the tactical mistakes of her campaign mentioned above, Martha Coakley turned out to be a weak candidate. She was too easily tied to Washington in a climate where people wanted to blame Washington. She also made some out right gaffes. My cousin relayed one to me that happened during the debate. The issue of Iraq and Afghanistan came up and she made a comment that we were no longer fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan as we had driven them out. A couple days later the news a several soldiers being killed in Afghanistan by the Taliban drove home just how off that statement was.

All these things added up to a disastrous result for the Democrats and a HUGE victory for the Republicans winning that all important 41st seat in the Senate. I must say I am bittersweet about the result. Those of you who know me and my politics know that I still consider myself a moderate Republican and I enjoy seeing the party have a victory. I also feel that the Democrats deserved it for essentially setting this scenario up. Prior to 2004, the interim Senator appointed by Governor Patrick would have stayed in office until 2012, completing Senator Kennedy’s term. But in 2004, the Democrats changed the law because at the time they were worried about Republican Governor Mitt Romney appointing a replacement for John Kerry if he had won the presidential election against President Bush. So in some respects, the Democrats deserved this for trying to change the rules last time.

However, those of you who have followed my blog lately, know that I have been in support of the health care reform that is currently being debated. If this election ends up spelling the defeat of that legislation, I must say that I will be disappointed and for that reason, the result is bitter sweet.

So what now? I must give Luke Russert, of NBC News and son of the late Tim Russert, credit for this line, but I think it’s too good not to reprint – in the words of Axl Rose, Democrats must be asking themselves, “Where do we go now?” In the next day or two, I hope to post what options are available to the Democrats who are still hoping to pass health care reform. For now, I just keep thinking that the Democrats still must be thinking that as for health care reform “the lights [may have] went out in Massachusetts, the day [they] left her standing on her own.”

Reflections on Ted Kennedy

Unless you were completely hiding under a rock this week, you know by now that Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy passed away Tuesday of this week. His passing made me think a lot about my political pilgrimage as my reaction to his death was clearly not what it would have been 10 years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I would never have celebrated someone’s death, but I used to tell a joke in reference to his future passing. It went – “When Ted Kennedy dies, they won’t elect a new senator in Massachusetts, they’ll just stuff him & sit him in his senate chair & keep voting the way the liberal faction of the democrats would want.”

Obviously, the joke was filled with sarcasm, but as I think of it now, it certainly wasn’t a respectful way to talk about a man who served as a senator for well over half his life just like a similar comment would have been inappropriate from the left to say about an arch conservative like Jesse Helms. It is this lasting legacy that Ted Kennedy has left on me. Once, I considered him to be the punch line of jokes about the liberals in this country, but now my perspective has changed. While I still enjoy good political humor, I now view it as just that – humor. I don’t let it mold my thinking of the individual about which the joke is being told.

I think too often those of us on the different ends allow political humor to shape our image of the people on the “other side.” It reminds me of a story I put in my political essay on my view of the 2008 election regarding an incident that happened while I was in college. The story I wrote at the time follows: A friend of mine who was a fellow political science major had returned from a summer internship back at his home in Maine. It was with US Senator George Mitchell, who was the Democratic Majority Leader at the time. Upon learning this and knowing we were both conservatives, I asked him how he was able to work with them for the whole summer. His response was simple, “Karl, even though we disagree with their policies, they love this country just like we do.”

Think about that the next time you tell a joke about people in this country on the other side of the political spectrum. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have a good laugh with some political humor; just don’t let the caricature created in the joke affect your image of the real person.

One of the books that I read a couple years ago that really got me thinking about this was No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner by Bob Schrum. Bob Schrum was a clear liberal and was a campaign worker/advisor/manger for virtually every democratic presidential candidate from Jimmy Carter to John Kerry. He was one of Ted Kennedy’s closest advisors in his ill-fated attempt to take the democratic nomination from Jimmy Carter in 1980. I read the book as a staunch conservative because I just love the idea of a book that is sort of an Inside Baseball approach to politics, no matter which side it is. However, as I read the book, I was struck with how it showed the humanity of the politicians in the book and the fact that they love America even if we disagree with them. Even though I disagreed with many of the policies that Schrum and his candidates were proposing, I found that I had to respect their love of country.

The amazing thing is that the politicians themselves seem unfazed by the caricatures we place on them. I was watching MSNBC’s Morning Joe the day the news broke of Senator Kennedy’s death and I was fascinated by a conversation between Bob Schrum and Pat Buchanan about Ted Kennedy and his relationship with those on the right. Here you had two commentators now on completely opposite sides of the political spectrum talking about Senator Kennedy and how Kennedy and Buchanan used to battle oratorically over policy, yet at the end of the day they could still respect one another and share a laugh about what the other was saying about them.

In other words, they weren’t letting the words of the debate shape their respect for the person. That will be my lasting impression of Senator Ted Kennedy. While I disagreed with many things he stood for, I truly believed he loved his country and wanted what he thought was best for it. He also respected those on the other side of the aisle and was willing to try and work with them. Let that be our goal in life as it relates to politics. Fervently advocate for what you believe in, but respect others and ultimately try and find what is best for our great country.