MA Special Election Watch Thread

[minionofmidas]

At least so far, he's not running and all those Dems are running. The reason: at least so far, there is no conceivable way he could win.

[minionofmidas]

I'm not sure what news cycle Vosem's been in the past two months. Evidently not the same one as Brown, though.

[minionofmidas]

And losing two races in a row tends to be an electoral death sentence.

Unless you want to unskew them for me...

That is going to be difficult to do seeing as these outfits seem to have no track record whatsoever. Though I did look at the second in detail and its findings can be summed up as a) Scott Brown has a hell of a name rec advantage that is going to skew all early polling b) Vicki Kennedy would be a very bad choice; doing worse than the Congresscritters despite her name rec advangage c) and yes, obviously, if Brown runs Dems will actually have to spend money here and this will be a legitimate race. (Indeed it looks like "only if" from that poll, but I wouldn't buy such a claim. Unknown Republican can turn out a decent candidate, whoever gets the Dem nod can turn out campaigning Coakley style, the Dem primary has great potential to become a complete clusterfuck. These latter scenarios are what I thought of when I wrote "for now" earlier.) It does not in any way follow from it that pundits should consider him the favorite.

EDIT: And yes, that is actually a little better than I would have expected him doing even in crap polls like that; and no I wasn't aware of them. Forgot to work that in somehow.

[minionofmidas]

The perception at least as far as I'm able to tell is that Brown's staying undecided for long enough that it's not really helping him.

The situation for the Republican brand has deteriorated dramatically in the last four weeks to an extent that is noticeable even  to Brown.

I think Brown's more attuned to that than the average Republican, in Congress or in this thread, actually.

[minionofmidas]

It makes absolutely no sense though. As if it was Obama's fault that his most deserving pick for SoS (excluding Rice) happened to be a Senator form MA.

Why would one think so? "Deserving" is a completely inappropriate word for positions this powerful, anyways.

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Why should they? Markey won't give them anything back. He'll be mostly useless to them, not doing anything they want unless the Democratic Senate leadership tells him to. Lynch, on the other hand, is their man and working class.

[minionofmidas]

It makes absolutely no sense though. As if it was Obama's fault that his most deserving pick for SoS (excluding Rice) happened to be a Senator form MA.

Why would one think so? "Deserving" is a completely inappropriate word for positions this powerful, anyways.

Sorry, I was looking for "qualified" and for some reason could not find that word at the time. Point is, Kerry was a good pick.

He's not a "wtf", atrocious pick or anything of the sort. He would probably not have been mine (no, don't ask me who my pick would have been. No Congresscritter though.)

Lynch is a union man, an actual elected union rep once upon a time before his political career. He has the contacts there, he'd provide access and a voice to argue their position in Senate committees etc. Markey's just some professional politician who's never worked a day in his life and who doesn't have these kind of connections at all. That's not to say he'd vote against union-backed legislation that gets the support of the party leadership - he's a party soldier, he'll vote for it. But that's not all there is to crafting legislation, especially in a chamber as small as that one.
The flipside being that Markey is a reliable social and environmental liberal. While Lynch is pro-life and sorta anti-gay.  Really, neither is what I'd prefer (though if forced to choose between them I'll take Markey... I'd much prefer to bake me another Warren. Which is something the unions would get behind, obviously.)
Small wonder Markey is the establishment choice, then, the national Democratic establishment being what it is. That union official is probably overstating his point to make it clear they're not taking such a meh choice foisted on them lying down. In the end they'll probably have to.

[minionofmidas]

A lot of Republicans there are pro-labor.

Even at the federal level though? I think it's pretty safe to assume any Congressional Republican is going to vote against the working class' interests >95% of the time - or be thrown out of the party.

It certainly used to be true in upstate New York as long as places like Buffalo and Syracuse had Republican Representatives.
Which unsurprisingly was back when people weren't thrown out of the party over such issues yet.

[minionofmidas]

Brown is making a logical and intelligent decision to not run in this race.  He'd have a much better chance at the Governor's race in 2014. 

Bqhatevwr.


It's more that the slightly-less-than-inevitable defeat here would have ended his career, while the highly-likely-but-not-inevitable defeat in 2014 won't.

[minionofmidas]

The last dozen or so posts have been deleted, due to overall idiocy and poor English usage.

If you did that in real life, I'd hold you down so Smoltchanov could hit you harder.

But you couldn't have done that in real life so the point is moot.