Before The Election--Previews of Things to Come

Elections in Massachusetts have become fairly tame since the days of Louisa Day Hicks, who excited the racist crowd in South Boston. But the Boston Globe today lashed out at the Brown campaign for its attempts at voter suppression and its physical "bullying" of Coakley supporters. An engineer in the western part of the state said he was given a ballot with Brown's name already marked. He politely asked for a clean ballot.

Republicans only have a 15% party identification in the state; Democrats 35% and independents are huge 50%. Republicans--like William Weld and Mitt Romney--can't win office unless they are socially liberal. Yesterday, the Republican-oriented newspaper in Brown's home district brought this home by endorsing Coakley. The reasons were Brown's vocal support for torture, his "ambivalence" on choice (depending on which audience he's talking to) and his statements against gay marriage, calling for a Constitutional Amendment against it. They pointed to Coakley's "well-thought out plan on economics and her fiscal restraint". Curiously missing from the campaign has been Mitt Romney himself, who will vote using his son's address now that he moved to New Hampshire. Sarah Palin has enthusiastically endorsed Brown via her Fox News forum.

So what gives? The optics of the race are quite different whether you are in the State or outside. Outside it's all about healthcare and President Obama. In the state, Brown has tapped state anger at the Governor, the first Democrat after 12 years of Weld and Romney, and cases of corruption in the legislature. It has only been the last few days that Brown has been caught out with his strange new bedfellows the teabaggers and the birthers. In state, he tries to distance himself from this fringe because he knows Massachusetts don't take kindly to them. But to out of state audiences and the right-wing radio crowd he throws them red meat.

But the physical harrassment of Martha Coakley herself and the calling of her supporters "Nazis" allow us to look at what may be the Republican roadmap for the future. Republicans, especially under the tutelage of Karl Rove, are masters of voter suppression--that is their bread and butter. Suppress the available electorate and then use wedge issues to drive victory home. Here, you also have to look at the Brown campaign--it may be a model for the future.

Brown himself is surrounded by Romney staff, who play the moderate Republican card. The entire conservative network is flooding the state with money, including the Tea Bag Express. In many ways, this allows the major corporations to get around the law since these groups are their front organizations. We have the old stand-by the anti-Coakley robocalls--that she protects child abusers, the new epithet--from out of state. The actual Get Out The Vote campaign is being provided by workers hired from temp agencies because the campiagn and the Republican Party do not have enough volunteers.

In short, the whole Brown campaign actually introduces the idea that our political parties now will become "privatized". Except for the handful of Romney aides, everything else is commercial--even the outrage. And, of course, the national media fall for this because the narrative has conflict. Now the teabaggers are accepted as legitimate political forces even though their corporate origins have been examined and laid out ad nauseum.

For its part, the Coakley campaign has the democratic party machine. And now with the urgency of the situation, the labor movements have kicked in, Obama's Organizing for America, and the netroots overcame their progressive disdain for Coakley to fill the breach.

This is what the 2010 elections will look like. It will become double this when the U.S. Supreme Court rules that corporations can give without limit to political campaigns. The corporations will still prefer the astro-turf grass-roots groups because they seem to sanitize their contributions and actually make it appear that their positions are of public concern.

By this morning, Nate The Great Silver believed Coakley only had a 25% chance of winning, a chance from yesterday. Zogby believes Coakley will win. And others believe the electronic Diebold machines will push it toward Brown. I don't have a clue. But the campaign is worth studying for the pyrotechnics we will see this coming year.