While we’re talking about lessons to learn from the debacle in Massachusetts, two tough questions that need to be asked, discussed, and reflected on a great deal are:
1. How to get better at picking good candidates in primaries, and
2. What are the danger signs to look out for in a primary that might warn us a candidate that looks good in a primary will bomb in the general election?
More after the fold.
Some of you knew Coakley would be a lousy general election candidate. Did any of you suspect she would be too lazy to campaign effectively and would say a bunch of idiotic things? How did you figure out that she was gonna suck?
And what about VA-Gov? Did the Democratic voters pick the wrong candidate in Deeds? I think we all agree that his campaign strategy was awful, a guaranteed loser, and got even worse when he tried to sound like a Republican and turned off the base. But would Moran, for example, have had a chance of winning?
I don’t have answers, but if we are to benefit from this stinging loss, we will have to figure out how to get smarter in picking candidates who are more likely to win in state-wide contests, as we did in the Presidential primaries in 2008.
I look forward to any insights you can give on these campaigns, and more importantly, for the future.
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I genuinely don’t think Dems in VA picked the wrong candidate considering the scandals surrounding Terry McAuliffe and the potential scandals surrounding Brian Moran and his brother’s dealings with defense contractors and how they were asked to give to Brian Moran’s campaign.
NoVa Dems and liberal independents did deserve to be catered too more than they were by the Deeds camp. The people of NoVa should have realized that Deeds would have been a better Governor than McDonnell even if he wasn’t with them on cap trade and some gun issues. I’m not comfortable with cap and trade proposals until India & China agree to do something too and I live in IA-2 for pete sakes.
a Senate election in Massachusetts. I never knew that Coakley would be nearly as bad as she turned out to be.
New Rule: candidates are never ever allowed to go on vacation after they win a primary. Ever.
1. Make sure there are actually good candidates. I can’t help but to wonder if we were screwed in Virginia no matter what.
2. Resumes are very important but the job interview gets you the job. Don’t rely solely on the resume to win, especially considering the Republicans’ love of attacking the resume. Make sure the candidate is willing to defend their resume and is running on something in addition to their resume.
…he surely would’ve better shored-up liberals and Dems. Sure, I can’t imagine he would’ve outperformed outperformed Deeds’ 35% among Independents, but I do think McAuliffe could’ve turned 18% liberal turnout into 20% liberal turnout; 33% Dem turnout into 35% Dem turnout. The base was unenthused under Deeds and McAuliffe probably could’ve changed that.
What were the warning signs that Coakley was as bad as she was going to be before the primary? All I knew about her was she was basically a scandal free AG who had won the highest number of votes of any candidate in her last election. I do remember that her very early entry into the Senate race raised a red flag for me, but I thought that was more ambition than anything. (I admit that I didn’t scan any diaries or comments on the race because I thought it was in the bag)
It seems like Dem primary voters in Massachusetts could not have picked a worse candidate. Pan says above some people knew she was a disaster waiting to happen. What were they?
This thread only gets me terrified Im going to support the wrong person in the MN-Gov race. And senate district conventions (where we pick delegates) is only a month away!
I’ll probably just join the undecided caucuses at the convention and if Im a delegate, meet every single last one of them face-to-face and see what happens.
Remember when we were told ad nauseum that we needed a Southerner on the ticket to win? While it was true that the last several winning Democratic tickets (prior to 2008) had Southerners, many of the last several LOSING tickets did as well (1980, 1988, 2000, 2004).
2007 Boston “bomb scare”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2…
Let’s be fair, a couple of idiots putting LED placards on overpasses all over the city without informing the authorities is pretty stupid. But charging them with “placing a hoax device to incite panic” was bullshit designed to cover for the fact that Menino and his incompetent police force MASSIVELY overreacted. Same with getting Turner to pay $2 million to the BPD because the BPD screwed up. It’s little more than naked cronyism to protect probably the only city officials in America who are so stupid and sheltered that they can mistake obvious LED signs for an attempt to bomb the city.
Then I found out that apparently she’s also mega-corrupt and has various ethics complaints swirling around as well. By that time I was hardly surprised.
Even I didn’t think she’s screw it up this badly, but I’m not surprised that she did. But then, I’m also not surprised that Kerry screwed up 2004 or that O’Brien screwed up 2002. When will the establishment stop buying the nomination of aloof, clueless Boston Brahmins who nobody likes at any level, then wonder why they lose?
And for the record, one of the reasons I’ve seen for voting for Coakley in the primary, at least on DKos, was some politically correct crap about how “I’m supporting her because she’s a woman”. Look, I know it’s a good thing to have more women in Congress and all, but the same people probably rejected the “I should vote for McCain/Palin because Palin has a vagina” argument, which is just a hypocritical double standard, and frankly kind of sexist (and the sexist part I get from my fiancee, not from my male self, who really wouldn’t know.) If it’s a bullshit argument to vote for Sarah Palin, it should be a bullshit argument period, not just when it’s convenient to be.
I think part of the problem is that Democratic voters in general, and especially in New England, are often too obsessed with these sorts of politically correct emotional arguments to be able to understand which candidate can actually win. (See: “My heart says Dean, but Kerry can win because he’s a Senator and has more money.”, which is paraphrasing what someone who talked to Newsweek after voting in Iowa in early 2004 actually said. Wonder how that turned out?) New England/BosWash voters in general – especially Baby Boomers – also are insanely neurotic (no pun intended). They have this obnoxious aura of superiority, especially towards younger generations and people different from them, that requires them to pretend that they’re the most serious people in the room at all times. This extends to their voting patterns, which is why Howard Dean only won one New England state in 2004 (his own), and wouldn’t have won Vermont if he weren’t a native son. Everyone else had to prove that they were Very Serious People by voting for Kerry because he was the Most Serious Candidate despite his obvious lack of charisma, personality, or readiness for prime time in the rest of America (aka Afterthoughtland). Same deal with Coakley. It’ll only get worse because educated young people (the ones like me who would’ve voted for Capuano) are fleeing New England in droves, leaving the 18-24 demographic disproportionately college students (who probably won’t turn out) and lower-income young people who only finished high school, most of them white and Catholic, who will probably be no more liberal than their blue-collar Catholic anti-abortion, pro-Red Sox parents.
candidates who come out of no where when 2 or more front runners bloody each other up. Examples include Creigh Deeds, John Kerry, and Alice Kryzan (NY-26) come to mind. Candidates who come out of nowhere tend to not have base support and are somewhat reluctant to go onto the attack and define their opponents. These candidates (though not always the case) should be avoided like the plague