The Dems I think have realized that they’re basically assured of their worst performance in Mass since 1972.
They would not like to tie Coakley’s poor performance with Obama, Obamacare or the Democrats legislative agenda. They’d like to say, on Wednesday January 20, that Coakley did badly because her campaign was poorly run, that Coakley was a poor candidate. If Obama comes in, win or lose, if Coakley doesn’t win by more than 7%, it’s more evidence that Republicans can use to say either “Obama is so unpopular that he couldn’t even save Coakley in the most Democratic state” or “Obama helped Coakley to the worst performance by the Democrats in the US Senate race in Mass in 38 years”.
Obama doesn’t want to lose the votes of Nelson, Landrieu, Lincoln, etc etc etc on Obamacare or other legislation throughout 2010. He’s hoping to say “Nelson, it’s not that the people hate this legislation and will throw you out of office if you vote for it, no, the people love the legislation. The people just didn’t like Coakley, she ran a bad campaign.”
Obama doesn’t want Nelson to say back to him: “You went there to help her and she did terrible. Are you sure Coakley was the problem?”
I hope it ends up being the RATs’ worst perfornance in Mass. since 1984—1972 was a good year for the RATs in Mass., if nowhere else (it was the only state carried by McGovern).
I can’t say your wrong. But my thinking is what do they have to lose?
I’m also thinking Obama doesn’t have a backup plan to push Obamacare through ahead of Brown, should he win.
I could be wrong on the second part.