Kerry Charges Brown With Palin-Like Tactics As Dems Prepare For Worst
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) lashed out at Scott Brown's Massachusetts senatorial campaign on Monday for adopting "intimidation tactics" that he deemed "reminiscent of the dangerous atmosphere of Sarah Palin's 2008 campaign rallies."
In a post to his own site, Kerry insisted that reports of out-of-state tea party protesters showing up at Brown rallies, the vandalizing of Martha Coakley signs, and the threats of violence and rape directed at Coakley herself were "not how we do business in Massachusetts."
The broadside by Kerry came as Democratic Party officials braced themselves for an election that seemed increasingly out of grasp. While polling numbers for the Coakley campaign took a small turn upwards on the campaign's final days, in private the picture looks quite dim. Indeed, sources say that Republicans in the state are jubilant with their position -- with internal surveys showing Brown up around five percentage points or more. A Politico poll conducted by the firm InsiderAdvantage on Sunday showed Brown surging to a nine-point advantage over Coakley.
Indeed, the Huffington Post has been told that the White House, congressional Democrats and others were preparing for the fallout of an embarrassing loss on Tuesday and the implications it would have on the party's agenda -- drafting out legislative possibilities for passing health care reform and laying out arguments for who was to blame for the defeat.
Not all of the immediate concerns of the campaign were abandoned, of course. In the waning hours the race, the campaign apparatuses trumpeted charges that the Brown campaign was engaged in voter intimidation tactics -- a complaint that is a staple of close (and even not so close) elections.
In the case of Brown v. Coakley, there have been several incidents that have party members somewhere between concerned and outraged. On Sunday, an attendee at a Brown event called for the candidate to stick a curling iron up Coakley's butt. The next day, a comment was left on Facebook from a woman hoping that Coakley would get shot.
A source in the state's attorney general's office confirmed to the Huffington Post that police officials had investigated the Facebook poster. They also relayed that she likely had some connection to the Brown campaign. "I believe she did make a statement in her discussion that she was affiliated with the brown campaign though I'm not sure if it was staffer or a volunteer," said the law enforcement official.
Democratic party weren't alone in seeking to establish pre-vote narratives. Conservative groups and officials also turned their attention to Massachusetts to preemptively lay out the argument that the election -- should Coakley win -- was stolen. Iowa Rep. Steve King traveled to the state on Monday to ensure that the vote was "legitimate" and "that poll watchers are deployed and we're focused on this."
The group Americans for Limited Government Foundation, likewise, is already trumpeting the possibility that dead people would be the deciding votes in Coakley's favor.
"The potential for voter fraud in Massachusetts is almost unlimited," said Dan Tripp, a project leader for Americans for Limited Government Foundation's election observers currently on the ground in Massachusetts.
First Posted: 3/20/10 Updated: 5/25/11