Politics Etc.

Brown vs. Warren: Deja vu all over again?

 
   Will the Warren campaign end like Martha Coakley's?

Running for President in 2016 instead of for Senator in 2012

Today's poll has Brown 49 percent, Warren 40 percent

By Walter Brooks

The poll this morning has Scott Brown ahead of Elizabeth Warren 49 percent to 40 percent. Our own front page poll has the incumbent Republican ahead by two to one.

"Is it too late for Patrick to throw his hat in the ring?
I don't think Warren has a prayer of unseating Brown."The Suffolk University/7News poll, which was released last night while a poll in December had the Democratic challenger ahead by 7 percent, a 16 percent flip in only two months. The latest poll shows that only 3 percent haven't heard of Brown while two recent polls say between 13 and 29 percent have never heard of Warren.

A conservative, Republican friend who despises Brown over the way he cashed in on the Cape Good News horror without naming his abuser asked me last night, "Is it too late for the Governor to throw his hat in the ring for Senate?  I don't think Warren has a prayer of unseating Brown."

A Coakley-style campaign may be the reason

It's time to rethink the entire thrust of the Warren campaign whose campaign strategist Doug Rubin has impressive creds, but his past success for Governor Deval Patrick and State Treasurer Steve Grossman seem to have gone to his head to the extent he now thinks that he is the candidate.

A Democratic insider told me John Kerry is pumping to be Secretary of State since Hillary Clinton is leaving which would open up his seat for Patrick or Grossman.

Perhaps  Rubin would do better to recall his fiasco running the Diane Wilkerson campaign instead.

Humble beats hubris every time, and he has turned off local activists big time.

At present there are several major things wrong with the Warren campaign:

• Warren's website is a bust, Brown's is a blast.
• Warren's staff is ignoring local town chairs and running a "national" campaign.

Meanwhile from the Berkshires and Pioneer Valley

A prominent Democrat writes me:
It is clear that Rubin does not have the experience to do strategy for a campaign of this magnitude. IMHO,only an idiot would have made the deal with Scott Brown over handling the SuperPac ads. It is crazy. Brown (with help from Karl Rove) will empty her coffers.
   Rubin is correct about their building the statewide network. It is based solely on "give me your email address and money".
   But we have been given:
No materials to work with.
No bumper stickers to hand out.
No brochures about her candidacy.
No local radio shows so that new people will be inspired to contact the locals.
   This is when you want to begin getting the leaders, the coordinators from around the state together to get acquainted and to give feedback to the honchos in Boston.

Kerry Kerfuffle?

   I suspect that she is getting her Foreign Policy advice from Kerry. It makes me want to puke. If he is giving campaign advice, then it will be a disaster because Kerry ran terrible campaigns.
  I know. I worked on at least one.Tip O'Neil reminded us that "all politics is local," but the Warren campaign is ignoring them and in a some case insulting their intelligence. Last year when Elizabeth Warren announced her candidacy a Boston Globe article said she criticized special interests and the role they play in setting policy in Washington in an essay on BlueMassGroup.

And yet her campaign chair Doug Rubin operates Northwind Strategies whose clients have included the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, Bay State beer makers, and a lottery technology company, GTECH Corp. which does work for the state lottery commission.

The Globe reports that Rubin founded Northwind after serving as Governor Deval Patrick’s campaign strategist, then his chief of staff. He also worked for Tim Cahill’s campaign for treasurer in 2002, then worked for Cahill overseeing the state lottery and the state’s $40 billion pension fund. He was also senior strategist for Treasurer Steve Grossman’s 2010 campaign.

Sugar works better than vinegar

I have spoken to local town committee chairs who are so put-off by the Warren staff that they are sitting out her campaign and spending their time working "for people I like," as one put it to me.

The Warren campaign staff gets paid. Local town chairs and activists work for free. No one works for free for someone unless they like them, and that ain't happening here for Elizabeth Warren.

Here's what the Warren staff asked unpaid Cape Codders to do last week in 20-degree weather:

Canvassing door to door may work in urban areas, but it is anathema in the boonies where older and more affluent voters live.

As one town chair told the Warren staff, "Barnstable County has the largest number of seniors in the state. You need to think through what campaign activities might work best for volunteers whose average age is in their seventies. I have a real problem sending seniors out in the Winter to canvas."

Successful campaigns ordinarily get their network leaders and field coordinators together to discuss problems, etc. That needs to happen with Warren to deal with the problem about sending seniors out into the cold. What would an alternative strategy be? Top-down, buttoned up campaigns don’t see the necessity to do this because they know-it-all, but they don't. Ask Tip O'Neil's ghost.

Deval's promise to Barack

Deval Patrick should pick up the phone today and ask
James Carville to take-overDemocratic insiders tell us that the governor has promised his bro in the White House that he can deliver a new Democratic Senator to him this November 6th.

Patrick's place in the next Obama cabinet depends on his fulfilling that promise.

The failure of the Warren campaign locally is evident in yesterday's NECN poll where about a third of voters polled don’t know who she is or don’t have an opinion of her. And Brown is popular. Fifty percent of the voters polled think favorably of him, compared to 39 percent who say the same about Warren.

Deval Patrick is a good and wise man. He should pick up the phone today and ask James Carville to take-over, or ask David Axelrod for some suggestions.

Brown is winning the winning the battle for "middle class" votes

The NECN report further states

At a time when the middle class feels under siege, much of this Senate race has been about who is more “middle class.” And, according to pollster Steve Koczela, Brown is winning that competition.

“He has managed to put a little bit of daylight between himself and his opponent as far who is actually from the middle class,” Koczela said.

And when NECN asked voters who would better represent the needs of regular people, Brown led Warren 33 to 30 percent.

Needs to do well in usual Democratic strongholds, but she isn't

The Boston Herald reports that Warren is viewed favorably by only 36 percent of voters in the district being vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, the poll reveals. Nearly one in five voters has an unfavorable view of the Harvard Law professor, while nearly three in 10 say they don’t know or haven’t heard of her.

Those numbers are similar to the favorable ratings Warren got in a statewide UMass Lowell/Herald poll in December, an indication her momentum has stalled. The 4th District, redrawn by state lawmakers last year, is still heavily Democratic, and Warren needs to do well there to counter Brown’s strength among independents, and he is viewed favorably by 53 percent of voters in the 4th District.