BARONE ON COAKLEY – AT 8:24 A.M. ET:  The weirdness of Martha Coakley is examined by the great Michael Barone, who focuses on Coakley's behavior after a Washington fundraiser Tuesday night.  One of her aides pushed Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack to the ground, and a photo clearly shows Coakley staring at McCormack when he's down:

The photo makes it pretty clear that Martha Coakley, the Attorney General of Massachusetts, witnessed an assault and battery and didn’t lift a finger to stop it, as law professor William Jacobson notes. I tend to agree with Boston radio talk host Michael Graham, who sees this incident—and the photo—as a game-changer. Coakley, who took much of the month of December off and whose campaign didn’t even bother to run TV ads last week, seems to feel entitled to the Senate seat. After all, she’s the Democratic nominee, isn’t she? She’s going to vote whatever way the Democratic leadership tells her to, isn’t she? And if little people get in the way, like the mild-mannered John McCormack, well, they just have to be taken out of the picture.

Pretty devastating.  We'll see if the incident is a game changer.  It will depend on the way Scott Brown plays it.  Coakley denied that she saw what happened, yet photos show she plainly did.  She lied.

The thought occurs to me that if Republican Scott Brown wins this election—and every day his chances look better—Democrats might conclude that Martha Coakley was a Republican plant, a Manchurian candidate inserted into the race in order to deprive Democrats of their 60th vote in the Senate.

Seriously, Martha Coakley embodies the elitist sense of entitlement that seems to reign in today’s Democratic party. Scott Brown struck just the right chord when David Gergen asked him how he could vote against the Democrats’ health care bill from Ted Kennedy’s seat in the Senate. “It’s not the Kennedys’ seat, it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat.”

COMMENT:  It would be moving a mountain to elect a Republican to the Senate from Massachusetts.  Do I hear earth moving?

January 14, 2010