Thread: Charlie Cook: Brown now favored

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31593.html

Hours before President Barack Obama's appearance with the Democratic candidate in the Massachusetts Senate race, political handicapper Charlie Cook sent an unusual weekend update to his Cook Political Report subscribers saying that Scott Brown, the Republican, is now a slight favorite.


Cook added in his Sunday afternoon bulletin that the race can still go either way.


"This past Thursday, Jan. 14, The Cook Political Report moved the open Massachusetts Senate seat rating from lean Democrat to toss-up, having moved it from solid Democrat to lean Democratic on Jan. 7," Cook wrote. "We continue to see this race as very much of a toss-up, with Republican state Sen. Scott Brown holding onto a very narrow, single-digit lead over Democratic state Attorney General Martha Coakley.


"Given the vagaries of voter turnout, particularly in lower participation level special elections, this race could still go either way, but we put a finger on the scale for Brown. Last-minute Democratic attacks on Brown have driven his negatives up some and slightly diminished the incredible intensity of support that Brown enjoyed, but it looks more likely than not to hold."



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/01 ... z0ctt1vHep

somehow I don't think will be a low turn out! At least I hope they turn out in droves FOR Brown

Republican state Sen. Scott Brown

Let's hope he wins !

It is about time the American People send a message to the Obama Nuts.

In Massachusetts, voters' discontent threatens Democrats

A special election Tuesday to fill the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's seat has turned into a closer contest than expected, as disaffected party members and independents lean toward the GOP contender.


By James Oliphant

January 17, 2010

Reporting from Boston - Steve Giosi and Liam Foley have been known to tip back a few pints on adjacent stools at the Galway House in this city's Jamaica Plain neighborhood. But on Tuesday, they'll part ways -- at least politically.

"I'm leaning toward him," Giosi said one recent afternoon, nodding at the TV screen, which had been playing a seemingly continuous loop of ads both promoting and denigrating Republican U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown.

"I'm a Democrat. I always have been," said Foley, 55; to demonstrate his sense of loyalty, he pointed to his Tiger Woods cap. "I'm voting for Martha Coakley. I think she's good."

Countered Giosi, 48: "I think [President] Obama is scaring a lot of people with this health reform. Somebody's going to have to pay for this. It's not going to be a small bill."

One person who could end up paying for it is Coakley, Massachusetts' Democratic attorney general and once the overwhelming favorite to keep the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's seat in the party's hands.

Just days from the special election, most political experts rate the race a toss-up, an almost unimaginable development in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1.

Brown, a state senator, had so little name recognition when he launched his campaign that he was better known for being the father of an "American Idol" semi-finalist (Ayla Brown, who competed in 2006). But he's been pounding two issues of late: terrorism and the massive healthcare overhaul, which is in its final stages in Congress.

If he wins on Tuesday and is seated in time to vote on healthcare, he has pledged to help filibuster and kill the bill.

Several factors have been cited to explain Brown's surge: He's affable and telegenic, and has run an aggressive campaign, compared with Coakley's more reserved effort.

But interviews with potential voters also revealed a persistent feeling that Obama and his allies in Congress have misread the public mood and have failed to concentrate on priorities such as the economy.

Half an hour outside Boston in Salem, Spike Tebo was having his hair cut at Killy's Barber Shop. "People are tired of what's going on with the Democratic Party," Tebo said. "The healthcare bill, what is it -- 1,000 pages? Who can read that?"

"Some of them haven't read it, you know that," added the barber -- Killy himself, whose full name is Achilles Xerras. A lot of his customers, he said, "are going for Brown."

Tebo, 74, and Xerras, 71, said they viewed Democrats as elitist and tone-deaf -- citing Coakley's reference to the Senate post she would occupy as the "Kennedy seat."

"Like he owned the seat," Xerras said. "It's the people's seat" -- a line often used by Brown.

North of Boston in industrial Lynn, Tom Pedersen and two co-workers from the Stanley Elevator Co. ate lunch at the Atlantic Coast Seafood Market. They are worried that the healthcare bill will mean scaled-back union benefits.

"It's a big issue for us," said Pedersen, 50, over a carton of fried fish. "Do you bring everyone in America up to our level? Or bring our level down?"

Nervous union members are among the voters Brown has been courting.

Eric Fehrnstrom, one of Brown's campaign advisors, described Massachusetts Democrats as split between "Harvard elites" and middle-class voters whose families have been party members for generations. "When they see a good working-class guy like Scott Brown, they're drawn to him." (For the record, Brown is a lawyer. But he does drive a GMC pickup truck.)

"It has everything to do with this feeling that the elites in Washington think they know better," said Sissy Willis, a conservative activist and blogger from Chelsea who has been tracking Brown's rise. The "tea party" movement, Willis said, has finally "found a specific race where it has made a difference" -- partly by reaching out to alienated Democrats and independents.

It isn't just conservative and working-class voters who are moving to Brown.

Dining in Boston's financial district, Jennifer Rogers, who voted for Obama, said she was disappointed that Democrats and Republicans weren't working together on healthcare and other issues -- and she blamed both parties. "You've got no one voting based on what the people want," said Rogers, 26, of Brookline.

Her friend Alycia Torres, 31, added: "I never thought we'd be this divided as a country so soon into his presidency."

Rogers and Torres said they would vote for Brown, casting him as the sort of independent-minded politician Obama once appeared to be.

Rogers said she couldn't vote for Coakley. "She's so embedded in the Democratic Party, there will be no change."

Raymond La Raja, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, still expects Coakley to win, saying that Democrats have a greater capacity in the state to deliver voters to the polls. But he offered a caveat: "There's a huge swath of disaffected independents" that could tilt the election.

And if the Democrats lose, they'll be in store for a rough 2010 at the hands of an energized GOP, which would use Brown's win as a model for congressional races nationwide.

In essence, La Raja said, the victory would be the first shot in what could be a revolutionary war -- a topic this state knows something about.

"It would be," he said, "like the Battle of Lexington and Concord."

joliphant@latimes.com

LA TIMES

Originally Posted by nomas

somehow I don't think will be a low turn out! At least I hope they turn out in droves FOR Brown

With the Union thugs sent to MA by Obama, there should be LOTS of violence.
These Liberals are desperate!!!
So far every bit of violence this year has been from the pacifest LEFT!!!
So therefore NOTHING has been done about it!
BUT LET ONE REPUBLICAN DO SOMETHING AND THEY WILL BE SAVAGED IN THE LIBERAL PRESS!