Clinton 2.0 d. Dukakis 2.0, 52-47

What an amazing development this past Tuesday night in our quirky little corner of the United States I sometimes refer to as the Commune of Taxachusetts.


The similarities are quite striking: In this corner, we have an almost-by-default Democratic nominee who fritters away a double-digit lead in the general election with an almost endless string of campaign gaffes. The result: A convincing defeat.

Dukakis 1.0

During the 1988 Presidential campaign, if memory serves me right (yes, I am a big fan of the original Iron Chef...but this was the first Presidential campaign I actually voted in, so my recollection may be a little hazy) Michael Dukakis didn't seem to have a huge battle in the primary. I heard Dukakis was running, heard he was nominated and didn't really hear about much else. The general election was a different story. Per my recollection, he had to fight off Willie Horton, pictures of him in a tank, and his own proclamation that Midwestern farmers should start growing Belgian endive. All the while, people were alleging that his wife Kitty wasn't exactly the most mentally stable individual on the earth (I by no means condone such muckraking, whether true or false…but I’m pretty sure it didn’t help). He exposed his stilted personality to anyone that would listen to him, while Republican nominee George Bush remained relatively in the background and watch his opponent implode.

Dukakis 2.0: Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley

Fast-forward to 2009: Martha Coakley cruises through the primary relatively unscathed. In the final primary debate, her three male opponents bludgeon each other to death, but don't want to appear that they're attacking the female candidate, so she stays calm, cool and collected, waltzing through the rubble to capture the nomination and an initial 30-point lead in the early polls. This lack of battle testing would prove to be fatal to her candidacy when mixed with the stagnant cocktail of entitlement and hubris.

After all, this was Ted Kennedy's seat in the Senate for almost half a century. OF COURSE the Democratic nominee was going to win. Before the primary, the SEIU radio spots read, "Tuesday's the Democratic primary, in which you'll elect the next Senator." As she took the latter part of December off from the campaign trail, her opponent worked feverishly to build his base and tap in to the over 50% of the registered Massachusetts electorate that is "unenrolled." She returned in January to see her opponent shaking hands around Fenway Park, to which she responded something to the effect of, "Well, what am I supposed to do? Stand out THERE in the COLD and SHAKE HANDS WITH PEOPLE?!"

Yes, Martha...that's EXACTLY what you're supposed to do.

She then made one giant leap towards alienation of Red Sox Nation-kind by calling Curt Schilling "another Yankee fan." But not before she proclaimed in the final TV debate that the "terrorists and Taliban in Afghanistan...they're gone." Around the time of that debate, the 30-point lead was down to the single digits. By the time she proclaimed Schill, he of the Bloody Sock, the newest member of the Evil Empire, she was in a statistical dead heat.

On the Sunday before Martin Luther King’s birthday, Coakley tapped the star power of an incumbent President Obama for an emergency relief junket sans necktie to save her and the 60th vote for a teetering health care reform package. All this scurrying about occurred in the Coakley camp while the real relief mission continued in Haiti, with Bill Clinton at the helm...only days after Clinton also interrupted his mission in order to be Shippin’ Up to Boston to save Coakley's hide.

Coakley’s final attempts to rub elbows with the public failed to shed her rigid veneer. TV reports of her weekend visit to the Eire Pub in Dorchester showed her gingerly sipping on a Sam Adams. Anyone want to chime in on whether she finished it or not? One customer refused to shake her hand as she introduced herself. I'm not saying he represented the entire crowd, but it's not often that you see such gaffes in "reading the room" for a Democrat candidate in a Democrat town actually reported. She greeted commuters at North Station Tuesday morning, only a day after her opponent greeted Bruins fans in the same location. To me, her gestures rung hollow as a last-ditch effort to show her human side. Clearly she was in trouble.

Her Tuesday evening ended a little early when, around 9 PM, she called her opponent to concede the election. Her "drinking buddy" at the Eire, Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray, explained to the disappointed crowd at Coakley headquarters and to the nation watching on TV that Coakley "was smart and understood that it wasn't about a single issue..." once again, taking the tried-and-true tack of essentially calling opposing voters stupid. Thus ends Coakley's 2010 Senate campaign, much as Dukakis' 1988 Presidential campaign ended...in the L column.


And in THIS corner, we have a little-known public servant emerging from the shadows to take on the incumbent party with a well-executed campaign and unassuming, unpretentious hard work to wring out a solid victory over an opponent that, while vulnerable, held distinct advantages in campaign infrastructure and finance.

Clinton 1.0

Now let's recall Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential campaign. When I first heard that he could emerge from a a stacked & not-quite packed Democratic primary field, my first questions were "Who?" "Arkansas?" "You kiddin' me?" Then he went to work. He worked, he worked and he worked some more. Clinton hustled to meet and greet any voter within eye or earshot and posted a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary. He kept the momentum going through his nomination and the general campaign...a campaign that bore one of my favorite political quips ever...by independent candidate Ross Perot (not-so-verbatim, but close enough for government work): "Now we have Bill Clinton here, who's the Governor of Arkansas and says he wants to run the country. Well, folks, that's like me saying I have a corner store and wanna run Wal-Mart."

Not even the ranking of Clinton's Arkansas in the high 40s and maybe even 50 proper for education on his watch, nor claims of infidelity from Gennifer Flowers (and the resulting notoriety of Stuttering John from Howard Stern show fame), slowed him down. Nor did his wife Hillary, who rubbed some the wrong way because she "could've stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but...wanted to have a career." Even questionable business deals in Arkansas, which eventually landed at least a couple of Clinton associates in the pokey, didn't stop the momentum. Bill Clinton kept working...and working. As a final gift, Clinton's opponent, incumbent President George Bush, showed up in a supermarket about a week before the election and marveled at this newfangled invention of the grocery scanner...which had been around for quite some time by then...revealing to the world what they already thought: This bloke has no clue what goes on in a supermarket. But Clinton still kept working. By early November his voice was tired, scratchy and horse. However, he'd have the rest of November, all of December and part of January to recover, for he was the President-elect.

Clinton 2.0: Massachusetts State Senator Scott Brown

Pretty much the first thing I knew about Scott Brown was that he was the husband of Gail Huff, the reporter on WCVB Channel 5 in Boston's "EyeOpener," its morning news program. Gail would show up in a blizzard on Route 128, in the pouring rain by the MassPike after a toll hike or in subzero temperatures in the winter at Fenway Park while construction crews built seats atop the Green Monster...always appropriately dressed for the occasion...at 5 in the blessed AM. Now that’s dedication. Gail’s husband Scott was a Republican State Senator, which made him quite an exception in the Democratic-controlled politics of the "Commune." Admittedly, I didn't hear much about his political career at all, as the Republican Party is such a super-minority in Massachusetts government that its voice is essentially stifled and coverage is limited in the various mainstream news outlets. We were happy to hear of the success that Scott and Gail's daughter Ayla had as a contestant on "American Idol." That was pretty much it.

As the candidates from each party assembled after Ted Kennedy's death, there were rumblings that Curt Schilling himself may consider a run for the seat. These were quickly squashed by Schill himself, and Scott Brown threw his hat into the ring. More of a product of his family, he admittedly had the most name recognition of any of the Republican candidates, but in Massachusetts, that and $2.50 gets you a venti bold at Starbucks and not much else. He nabbed over 80 percent of the vote in a barely-contested primary but quickly realized that he was down 30 points against the Democratic machine with little chance to win a seat that had been held by the Kennedy family for over 50 years.

So he went to work.

Brown tirelessly worked to meet as many voters as he could. His campaign went viral in the social networking media of Facebook, Twitter and Google. Before we heard the ubiquitous "this isn't the Kennedy seat, this isn't the Democrat seat, it's the people's seat" during his final debate, we read it on Twitter. Campaign ads showed him in Southie meeting people along East Broadway, driving his ubiquitous truck and even in his own kitchen. What he lacked in star power he made up in sincerity and the sole focus on the issues concerning all citizens of Massachusetts and the nation. He was one of us: “I’m Scott Brown. I’m from Wrentham, I drive a truck and I need your vote.”

His last major campaign rally on the Sunday before the election was a People's Rally in Worcester, which drew a grassroots crowd of about 2,000 in Mechanics Hall (with an overflow crowd of several hundred next door) and working-class local celebrities such as Lenny Clarke, Fred Smerlas, Steve DeOssie, Curt Schilling, Doug Flutie and John Ratzenberger of "Cheers" fame. This outpouring of genuine support created yet another favorable juxtaposition against the flat-lining Coakley campaign and Obama trotting in from the bullpen. Really, the only barely-noticeable slip-up I caught at that People's Rally was his mention that he "was probably only three years old" when Woodstock happened (actually, he would have been closer to ten). No worries, since the only thing the crowd remembered about Ratzenberger's Woodstock discussion was that he suggested any monument to the event consist of a "National Guardsman feeding a crying hippie." Flutie, an undersized Boston College quarterback that defeated the juggernaut University of Miami with his Hail Mary pass, spoke. Schilling, who had a tendon stapled in place when he mowed down the Yankees in Game Six, introduced the candidate. Brown continued to hammer away at his opponent on the issues, noting that “our tax dollars should be spent for the weapons to stop terrorists…not for the lawyers to defend them.”

On Monday's holiday, he shook hands with fans before an afternoon Bruins tilt. This was probably the highlight of any goings-on at "the Gahden" that day for many, as the Bruins were crushed by Ottawa, 5-1. Lucky for Brown, the lackluster effort by the B's wasn't contagious; he was going to play "a full sixty minutes of hockey" and work straight through to the finish.

Brown woke up on Election Day in unfamiliar territory for a Massachusetts Republican. He had the endorsement of the Boston Herald, the State Police, and the Cambridge policeman's union...the same union that listed his opponent's husband as a member. Better yet, he had a slight, albeit within the margin of error, lead in the polls. The day started with snow, which turned to a light frigid rain. After many in the media wondered how the weather would affect turnout, Brown voters came out in full force. In cities and towns carried by Scott Brown, 58 percent of registered voters showed up at the polls, while only 49 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the localities carried by Coakley. Boston residents voted at only a 43 percent clip...even after Obama was brought in to "gin up" the electorate. Springfield and Lawrence, two other cities decidedly in the Coakley camp, had even worse turnout at 32 and 28 percent, respectively. The voter turnout on each side fell in lockstep with each candidate's perceived level of effort. Brown carried the unenrolled vote at around a 2-to-1 clip. 1 in 5 registered DEMOCRATS crossed the aisle to vote for Brown. By late Tuesday evening, FoxNews was rejoicing and MSNBC was whimpering...Scott Brown had pulled off the unthinkable with a nearly-flawless campaign, and had captured the special election to fill the United States Senate seat...The People's Seat...of Massachusetts. The crowd at Park Plaza responded to Ayla Brown's news of her dad's victory with a resounding "Gas up the truck!!!"


The conventional wisdom states that "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Martha Coakley and Scott Brown have most likely witnessed hundreds of campaigns during their political careers and taken valuable lessons from each of them. That Coakley unwittingly emulated Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential campaign, while Brown utilized the lessons of Bill Clinton's infinitely-more-successful 1992 Presidential campaign, is just about all anyone needs to know about the 2010 special election in Massachusetts. It's the kind of lopsided matchup you would set up in Madden football for kicks, and it played out just as you would expect it. The difference is that at the start of the game, nobody expected it.