All paraphrased. I'm drunk and don't have a pad.

On money-bomb: We raised well above $1 million a day but didn't say so. One day was substantially higher than one million, and it was a couple or three days after the much-publicized Monday money-bomb. We were worried about even doing it, for fear of alarming Coakley.

On Voter-Bomb: We well exceeded expectations.

On Tea Partiers: Amazing intensity, people flying in on their own dime to man the phone banks.

On Comparisons to McDonnell Campaign: He worked on that one too -- he says that one was "boring" because it was so obvious. He declines to call this one boring at all. He refuses to endorse my 10+ margin prediction and says it will be close -- he's just hoping for north of 5.

But he does think it's 5 or thereabouts.

On the Race: He, yes, does think we will win, and I informed him it was after 8 and he no longer had to brave-face it. He wants north of 5, but that's as good as he hopes for.

Incidentally, Brown walked in 15 minutes ago but I couldn't blog that.

I am handing out pudding to people I deem "dip-worthy."

Posted by: Ace at 04:11 PM | Comments (180)
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H/t to Andy for both the picture and the pudding.

Posted by: Ace at 03:47 PM | Comments (625)
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Figured I'd land a short interview. The comedian Lenny Clarke, elder statesman of Boston comedy, has been supporting Brown hard, talking him up on talk radio all over the place.

Thirty second interview. He's been conservative-leaning for ten years, and is supporting Brown partly because he's actually a personal friend, but mostly (I'm guessing here) because Martha Coakley is an entitled bitch. Really, that's my own guess. He said nothing of the sort.

He predicts a "good win" but refuses to jinx it with a number.

Posted by: Ace at 03:44 PM | Comments (26)
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I continue reaching into Hot Air's pockets looking for stuff.

Even before the votes are counted, Senator Evan Bayh is warning fellow Democrats that ignoring the lessons of the Massachusetts Senate race will “lead to even further catastrophe” for their party.

“There’s going to be a tendency on the part of our people to be in denial about all this,” Bayh told ABC News, but “if you lose Massachusetts and that’s not a wake-up call, there’s no hope of waking up.”

I just settled into Blogger's Row at the venue. The place is busting; as you might have see at Hot Air, no one's using the coat-check at Coakley's venue. They don't expect to be staying long.

It's the opposite here. This is the lamest crap ever written but there is energy and excitement here, and the media seem to be here for a story.

And you know what? There is pudding on the way, being delivered.

Okay going to get a drink and see if I can scare up any nonsense hubbub about the campaign staff being "confident" and the other crap that everyone else writes about.

Brown by 11. Called by 9. My call.

Posted by: Ace at 03:21 PM | Comments (258)
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They just don't seem to have the testicular fortitude.

Just about every election night, Republican pollster Frank Luntz assembles a focus group of likely voters to help predict election results. Tonight you can see Luntz interview an assembly of Massachusetts voters on Fox at 9:10 p.m. EST.

But you probably won’t see all the work that went into it. As of late this afternoon, Luntz was still scrambling to balance his focus group with supporters of Democrat Martha Coakley. “I just lost another one,” Luntz growled over his cell phone from a hotel ballroom at Logan Airport. In the last 24 hours, six Coakley voters have dropped out. By contrast, Luntz hasn’t lost a single supporter of her opponent, Scott Brown.

The problem isn’t money. “They’re getting paid well,” Luntz says, “probably more than they’re making at their jobs. And they still don’t want to do it.”

Instead, says Luntz, they’re ashamed. “They don’t want to be on television defending Martha Coakley. It’s passé. It’s socially unacceptable. I never dreamed I’d see Democrats in Massachusetts embarrassed to admit they’re Democrats.”

Wow.

This thing might get called by 9pm.

Posted by: Ace at 02:13 PM | Comments (429)
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Just a big pudding of information here.

[O]nly 35 percent say they’re confident the president has the right set of goals and policies, and 54 percent believe he has accomplished “very little” or “only some” of his first-year office goals, versus 45 percent who think he’s accomplished “a great deal” or “a fair amount.”

Overall, ObamaÂ’s job-approval rating sits at 48 percent, up one point from the NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey in December. But itÂ’s down from the 60 percent rating he held after taking office.

Attitudes about the economy and the protracted debate over health care appear to be dragging down the presidentÂ’s political standing, the poll also finds.

Only 33 percent say that ObamaÂ’s health care plan is a good idea, compared with 46 percent who believe itÂ’s a bad one.

That result is essentially unchanged from last month's poll. However, the number saying that Obama's health plan is a bad idea has increased 20 percentage points since April, when the public supported the reform effort by a 33 percent to 26 percent margin.

And you know who's fault this is? Martha Coakley's pollsters.

AHFF Geoff, again.

Posted by: Ace at 02:06 PM | Comments (30)
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Can they sacrifice their credibility any further?

The Martha Coakley campaign just sent out a media advisory, announcing a press conference at 5:30 p.m. ET, alleging irregularities in the special Senate election.

The press conference will involve reports of voters who received ballots that were already marked for Republican candidate Scott Brown.

It should be noted that the Coakley campaign will have on hand as an attorney one Marc Elias, who was previously the head recount lawyer for Al Franken in Minnesota, a legal drama that lasted for eight months after election day 2008. Elias also worked on another high-profile recount before that, the Washington state gubernatorial race in 2004. So clearly, the Coakley campaign was fully prepared for a super-close election by having Elias already on hand in Boston.

Their numbers must really be drooping.

Thanks again to AHFF Geoff.

Posted by: Ace at 02:00 PM | Comments (114)
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This administration really has a hard time dealing with wrinkly, stinky news, doesn't it?

They're both jockeying for position to see who can come out sounding the leatheriest.

And most ovoid. Or something.

Responding to that Coakley campaign memo blaming the DNC and Obama for her impending herniation...

This memo is a pack full of lies and fantasies — The DNC and the DSCC did everything they were asked and have been involved in the race for several weeks, not just the last one.

The campaign failed to recognize this threat, failed to keep Coakley on the campaign trail, failed to create a negative narrative about Brown, failed to stay on the air in December while he was running a brilliant campaign. It's wishful thinking from a pollster, candidate and campaign team that were caught napping and are going to allow one of the worst debacles in American political history to happen on their watch that they are at the 11th hour are going to blame others.

Before the DNC and DSCC got involved there was barely a single piece of paper on what the narrative is on Brown. The candidate in this race and the campaign have been involved in the worst case of political malpractice in memory and they aren't going to be able to spin themselves out of this with a memo full of lies.

This is truly a seminal election.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Don't Try Hanging This On Us: Nut up or shut up.

(These aren't even making any sense.)

"I think it's a circling squad to protect the White House. I don't think it's very useful," she says.

More:

Lake said that the problem for Democrats is that voters are blaming them for the nation's poor economic conditions. "2010 is fast turning out to be a blame election and I think that either we are going to characterize who deserves the blame - whether that's banks and lobbyists and people who still want to hold on to national Republican economic strategies - or we're going to get the blame. And that's a very different tone than, often, the administration is comfortable with," she said....

"There's a lot of blame to go around, but the point of the matter is there's a wave. And that wave, it hit Virginia; it hit New Jersey; it hit Massachusetts," she said.

Oh god they are pathetic. Spin, spin, spin. They think they are still maintaining the fantasy vision of Obama as messiah. They really think a sizable amount of the public think he's a genuine deity, and they are trying to protect that group from learning otherwise.

Can't he -- or should I write He ? -- ever fail or even stumble?

More! Another memo warned in December that the God Who Walks could drag Coakley down.

The internal campaign poll, conducted Dec. 17-21 showed Coakley with a commanding 19-point lead over Republican Scott Brown, coming out of the hard-fought Democratic primary campaign.

But the memo -- reprinted in full below -- summarizing the pollÂ’s finding identified several potential problem areas. Among those areas: a weakness among independent voters, and the potential for national Democrats and Obama himself to drag Coakley down, in part because of health care.

“On one hand, her strength of support is obviously a positive dynamic. One [sic] the other hand, we are underperforming both our personal popularity and our job performance ratings, even [after] voters hear that Brown is lucifer and Martha is the second coming,” read the memo from Daniel R. Gotoff of Lake Research Partners.

“Over the next weeks, our task is to consolidate Democrats and break even among independents. We do pretty well at that right now, but there are about a quarter of Democrats who aren't yet voting for us. And while we have a marginal lead among independents, they will be a battleground throughout this race.”

“The independents in MA today look pretty conservative, and the national political context is not helping us much. Obama, whose job performance is already just barely net positive, is rated solidly negatively by a majority of independents. What's more, these voters oppose the health care plan, are pro-death penalty, and would like to keep the Bush tax cuts in place when the issue positions are attached to Coakley and Brown (the opposite is true when the candidates' names are not associated).”

I'm actually looking forward to the pure comedy of these jackasses trying to tell us that Obama is so incandescently popular he can't even throw an election in Massachusetts to a Democrat.

I won't have to actually blog for a week. I'll just quote them and say "Look at this weak crap."

Now Coakley's Blaming Her Own Voters: David in San Diego notes this little nugget.

I love this. As Jim points out, the Coakley campaign is blaming Democratic primary voters for forcing her to oppose the war in Afghanistan.

Democrats concerns with Obama's Afghanistan plan forced Coakley to oppose the Afghan war in the primary, which hurt her in the general.

Blaming your voters now? That takes some real huevos.

Posted by: Ace at 01:08 PM | Comments (330)
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As the old saying goes: We must hang together or we will surely hang apart.

Democrats will in fact hang together, they've decided.

No matter how strong the signal from 60% of the public that We don't want this, they are determined to ram it down our throats to appease their 30% nutroots supporters -- and even those guys don't like this bill.

The Democrats are determined to do this, even if it takes the taint of an anti-democratic maneuver to do so.

Congressional Democrats have been discussing several options, since a Brown win would break the party's 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority at a critical time for health care reform. Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, described a combination of tactics to get what his party wants out of health care reform.

First, he said the House could simply approve the Senate bill, sending it straight to President Obama's desk.

Then, Durbin said, the Senate could make changes to the bill by using the nuclear option, known formally as "reconciliation," a tactic that would allow Democrats to adjust parts of health care reform with just a 51-vote majority.

"We could go to something called 'reconciliation', which is in the weeds procedurally, but would allow us to modify that health care bill by a different process that doesn't require 60 votes, only a majority," Durbin said. "So that is one possibility there."

Though House Democrats have major misgivings about the Senate version, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Tuesday suggested they'd be willing to consider approving the Senate bill intact, if the alternative is no bill at all. A majority of Democrats in that chamber are opposed to many provisions in the Senate-passed bill, including the controversial tax on high-cost insurance plans which the unions are vehemently against.

Though Democrats, including Durbin, have previously insisted reconciliation would not be used, key aides have quietly pointed to a change in circumstances with the unexpectedly competitive race in Massachusetts.

But reconciliation is not easy under any circumstances. Any measure that is passed under the process requires 51 votes for passage, but that measure's authors must pass strict legislative tests to show the bill deals only with taxes and spending to bring the legislation in line with the budget -- a move that its creators made back in 1974 to keep extraneous provisions from being passed under this expedited process.

Reconciliation might allow for Democrats to modify the excise tax, but it would not appear to allow for changes to abortion and immigration language, among some of the hot-button issues.
Republicans have decried the use of reconciliation for such a massive re-ordering of the nation's economy. To be sure, Republicans were the first to use the tactic outside its intended purpose, and they have used it most often for tax relief, but they say health care reform is different.

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the primary point person in the Senate for reconciliation matters as the top Republican on the Budget Committee, has called this "Chicago-style politics" and has vowed to raise scores of objections, called "points of order." There are about 13 different ways Republicans can challenge Democrats, and nearly all of these will require votes.

This is nuts.

Posted by: Ace at 01:01 PM | Comments (77)
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Seventy-five percent? Hope that doesn't dip too much in other reddish areas.

Galvin called voter turnout "brisk," despite the snowy weather. He said turnout probably won't approach the record presidential turnout of about 70 percent, but he said 40-50 percent of the state's voters will make it to the polls.

"We're seeing a very good turnout considering the weather circumstances we're working under. There's a high level of interest. We're particularly seeing a high level of interest in some of the suburban communities. Traditionally, cities tend to vote somewhat later, but we have seen a number of communities, lines and people standing in lines, very patiently in the snow," Galvin said.

In Boston, Galvin said, officials were seeing more than double the turnout they saw during the senate primary in December. In Dover, a community southwest of Boston, officials said they were seeing almost 75 percent turnout.

Wiki notes this about Dover:

Dover is one of the few communities in metro Boston to have more registered Republicans than Democrats.[citation needed]

In 2008 Dover narrowly voted for Democrat Barack Obama with 51% of the vote to Republican John McCain with 48% of the vote. [2]

Dover is located in Norfolk County, which is one of the more conservative counties in Massachusetts.

Obviously this is highly anecdotal. Turnout is the key to this election, and I hope that Brown did not drop the ball on this as Coakley did, when she scotched her chances with her butterfingers political clumsiness.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Posted by: Ace at 12:22 PM | Comments (188)
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