Massachusetts is a fairly liberal state, so it's a bit surprising that the Democratic candidate didn't win the recent special election for US Senate. In this post, I'm going to attempt to offer insights that go beyond the shallow observation that Martha Coakley ran a terrible campaign.
First point: The BIGGEST national issue right now is health care, so logically a candidate might assume that the position somebody has on health care reform would have a significant impact on their ability to get elected. However, 98% of Massachusetts residents already have health insurance. This would suggest that individuals within the state don't have that much to gain when Congress eventually passes their health reform bill. The only reason I see for Massachusetts to pass this legislation is to help funnel money into the important life sciences industries that are headquartered in Cambridge and Boston. The list of hospitals, drug companies, and biotech research firms that provide top-of-the-line services at the state and federal level is too big to count. Having said that, I'm not sure these companies actually stand to receive a windfall from the currently proposed legislation. Since the Democratic Party wasn't out there singing the praises of the jobs that would be created in the state when the bill passed, I can only assume that the main beneficiaries in the current bill are small business owners and impoverished families. For Massachusetts, the national health reform bill doesn't matter if it won't benefit the big health care companies in the state.
Second point: Martha Coakley continuously ran about 12 negative ads against Brown and only 1 positive ad for herself on every channel during the week leading up to the election. During typical commercial breaks from a live television program, it wasn't uncommon to see two or three anti-Brown ads IN A ROW before the show you were watching resumed. I strongly disagree with this negativity because it exposes a side of her character that doesn't belong in government. As the childhood saying goes, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything." And her anti-Brown ads attacked (among other things) an issue that is misleading at best. She claimed that Brown "doesn't support emergency care for rape victims". At the time, I assumed this was an anti-abortion argument. After doing a bit more research, it turns out that Brown voted in favor of a doctor's right to elect not to provide patients with "the morning after pill" if they morally objected to it. As long as there remains one doctor in the city willing to prescribe this treatment, this is pretty much a non-issue.
Third point: Scott Brown charmed by not doing all that much. In the absence of a candidate that will take meaningful actions to improve the middle class quality of life, most people prefer the candidate whose campaign is, "I'm not going to change anything". And like I said, Martha Coakley based her campaign around the health care legislation and the rights of rape victims, while Scott Brown played the part of a do-nothing Republican marvelously by driving around in his pick-up truck and espousing the line that he'll try to lower taxes.
Final point: At the end of the day, having Martha Coakley lose might have been a good thing because in a liberal state like Massachusetts it'll be easier to replace a great Republican than a terrible Democrat during the NEXT election cycle (in 2012). Given the choice between a do-nothing Republican who will likely be out of office in two years and a clueless Democrat, I think it might have been a blessing in disguise to elect the Republican.
