Looks like the unions are getting behing Coakley. Why? Who knows...
Her and Capuano can now out-liberal each other. Great.
Scott Brown or bust.
I see now the battle will be between the Stalinist wing of the Democrat party.
We don’t get to choose our opponent, but among Coakley and Capuano I’d rather have Coakley run. Female Democrats have underperformed male Democrats recently (almost every race that Republicans won with the wind on their faces in 2006 were against liberal women, and combined with the fact that MA has never elected a woman to the U.S. Senate (or as governor for that matter) and that when Niki Tsongas was narrowly elected to Congress a couple of years ago she was the first woman elected to Congress from MA since Margaret Heckler in 1980 and only the second female Democrat ever elected to Congress from MA (the other being Louise Day Hicks in 1970). In addition, if Coakley wins the general, the GOP has, at least in theory, a chance of electing her replacement as AG, whereas Capuano’s MA-08 gives GOP presidential candidates less than 20% of the vote and would obviously elect a Democrat to replace him. Which brings me to my final reason for rooting for Coakley over Capuano—if Capuano is elected to the Senate, he could well be replaced by Joe Kennedy’s son, Joseph Kennedy III (which he could well use as a springboard for a future Senate run), whereas if Capuano stays in the House the Massachusetts Kennedys would be shut out for the first time since the end of WW II.