Election 2018

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I’m gonna outsource the sercon (serious, constructive) explanation to a professional, namely, David Bernstein at Boston’s Phoenix:

… Now that summer’s over and the sprint is on to the November 6 election, polls and most close observers agree on where the race stands: each candidate has a solid 45 percent of the vote tucked away, and they pretty much cancel each other out. Brown has a slight lead, but that should be negated by Warren’s expected turnout advantage.

This leaves the race in the hands of the middle 10 percent, or some 300,000 persuadable voters statewide.

Who are those 10 percent? Put simply: they like Brown, but they hate the GOP. They plan overwhelmingly to vote for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney — by a six-to-one margin, according to a recent poll from Kimball Political Consulting. And yet people close to the Brown campaign, and a lot of others, believe that in the Senate race, people will ultimately vote the person, not the party.

Frankly, most Democratic insiders used to think so, too. That’s why, even with the expected outpouring of Democratic voters for the presidential election, the state’s A-list Democrats, including all of its US House members, statewide and county officeholders, and state senators, declined to enter the race.

But when Warren jumped in, and immediately shot up in the polls and raised unthinkable sums from progressives nationwide, expectations skyrocketed…

My own version on this divide: Our Commonwealth is politically overweighted with those commentor Davis X. Machina astutely refers to as “American Poujadists” — proud self-proclaimed truck-drivin’, barn-coat-wearin’ blue-collar guys convinced that Haaah-vad professors have conspired to steal all the cushy guvmint jobs for their affirmative-action cronies. If you’ve ever read Dennis Lehane or George V. Higgins, be assured that their characters are fictional only in that a readable narrative requires a degree of logic and coherence the actual voting templates are unlikely to muster.

“Why Would Anyone in <em>Massachusetts</em> Vote for Scott Brown?”Post + Comments (63)

Seven p.m. EDT, televised by Boston station WBZ (Channel 4), moderated by smarmy local media pest & Republican sympathizer Jon Keller. Supposed to be livestreamed here, and I’ll embed video if it’s available, but don’t get your hopes up.

Livestream here:

Twitter tag, for those who tweet: #wbzdebate

Also, remember that Money is the mother’s milk of politics:

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Brown has a very good grasp — even a deathgrip — on all the most current Republican talking points. Warren has actual numbers and statistics at her fingertips.

Notice, too also, how affronted Brown is that this WOMAN person dares to contradict him! He’s been running “Independent Scott Brown (independently) in favor of strong, independent women (who are not at all Republican)” ads — anybody watching this is going to see how much respect he actually has for women who are not sufficiently deferent to Scott Brown…

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“Professor Warren, you have to stop scaring women — “ It ain’t women she’s scaring, Scotty boy. And if you keep trying to hide behind the previous holder of your seat by LYING ABOUT HIS RECORD, Zombie Ted Kennedy is going to rise from his grave and eat your tiny hamster-wheel brain…

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Keller: We have hundreds of thousands of janitors with college degrees. How come?

Warren: We need an educated workforce if we’re going to stay the world’s greatest economic power. We need an economy strong enough to let these educated people use their brains to make us better.

Brown: Yeah, well, Professor Warren makes A LOT OF MONEY from Hah-vaaad, so it’s all her fault kids got college debt! Bazinga! I win!

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Best summary I’ve seen so far, a tweet from Monica Potts: “Warren wants voters to see Brown as a member of the Republican team. Brown wants voters to see Warren as a radical.”

Elizabeth Warren / Scott Brown — Livestreaming Their First DebatePost + Comments (215)