Follow this link to the Worcester T & G column by Clive McFarlane. You may learn something about the type of readers that the T & G has, by reading their comments.
Not that it is a really great column, but it is the backdrop that I used to explain my thoughts on what went wrong.
I reprint this here because I have already received one request for an explanation from a friend outside of Massachusetts. Now I’ll have a blog post to point to if I get anymore questions.
Below is a collection of my comments on the above article.
I agree with CRAIG P. I think Capuano would have made a better candidate.
Martha Coakley ran against Scott Brown instead of running for something.
Since the electorate cannot remember as far back as last March since when their 401K plans have risen 60%, they need a constant reminder of what the plan is.
The plan is to run a deficit until the economy recovers and then start running surpluses, as in the Clinton years, to pay back what we borrowed.
She did not need to refer to Scott Brown to explain this. However, it might have neutralized his mantra that our children will be paying for this deficit for generations.
She could have explained that the Christmas Bomber was spilling his guts to the FBI and that any threats of Waterboarding would be counterproductive.
She could have run with her positive plan for a better way to fight the war on al-Qaida rather than let the ‘She said there were no terrorists in Afghanistan’ meme hang in the air.
She could have explained how good the health care plan was before it got so compromised to appease some wayward Democrats because the margin in the Senate was so thin. This would have brought home the folly of electing Scott Brown without even mentioning his name.
She had absolutely no reason to go negative. She had every reason to tout the positive reasons why she was needed in the Senate.
I forgot to mention that she should have explained that if the federal government quickly cut spending, the economy would go into a tailspin.
She should have explained that the aid to states and cities that was in the original stimulus bill proposal and which Olympia Snowe (R. Maine) removed, in the name of bipartisanship, from the final stimulus package would have saved us from local layoffs and rising local taxes.
She could have explained why we didn’t need more thinking like Olympia Snowe’s, but we needed less of that sort of thing.
I had been emailing ideas like these to the Coakley campaign. Each time I would get a pleasant reply thanking me for my input. Too bad she didn’t use any of it.