Scott Brown

O-o-o-h: the bogeyman!  

On his MSNBC show this evening, Ed Schultz did his best to stampede Massachusetts voters into supporting the clueless Martha Coakley by repeatedly trying to tie Scott Brown to Dick Cheney.  How many times did Schultz invoke the former Vice-President in trying to scare Bay Staters?  I counted six, with a seventh assist from the Mass. Lt. Governor.

Nice try, Ed.  We'll see you tomorrow night.

The folks at the uber-liberal website Daily Kos are showing their political bias this evening with a new poll claiming Tuesday's special Senate election in Massachusetts is all tied up.

What makes this laughable is the Real Clear Politics average -- including the DK poll -- has Republican candidate Scott Brown leading Democrat Martha Coakley by 6.2 points.

Here are the most recent poll numbers:

Boston Globe writer Lisa Wangsness can't be blamed too much for assuming that appointed senator Paul Kirk's term ends when the winner of tomorrow's election in Massachusetts, Scott Brown (photo) or Martha Coakley, is seated. Wrong. Mass. law is very specific on that term limit as Fred Barnes has noted in the Weekly Standard. The reason why Wangsness can be forgiven for her error is that it is the same assumption made by most of the rest of the mainstream media. Here is the relevant section of her article about the effect of tomorrow's election on the health care bill:

Another possibility would be for Democrats to hurry and pass a compromise bill before Brown were seated.

It is not clear how much time Democrats would have in that case. Before the new Massachusetts senator takes office, Secretary of State William F. Galvin must certify the vote, and town clerks have to wait 10 days after the election to allow time for the ballots of military members serving overseas to arrive, then they have another five days to deliver the final results to Galvin, according to state election law. After that, the new senator can be sworn in.

Barack Obama appears to no longer be giving Chris Matthews a tingle up his leg, for the MSNBC host thinks Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts might end up being a reflection of how people are very averse to the new President's program.

With a visible frown on his face, Matthews told "Daily Rundown" co-host Chuck Todd Monday that recent polling data "has to do with reality of a terrible economy, of this new burden that people feel being put on their shoulders of bigger debt, perhaps taxes coming down the road."

Matthews continued, "And the fear that the burden of healthcare is going to be much heavier than the benefit."

The "Hardball" host cautioned, "I think it's going to show up in Massachusetts tomorrow with the results there" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Story Balloon):

While the broadcast and cable news media have paid plenty of attention to Martha Coakley's embarrassing Curt Schilling gaffe, much less attention has been paid to more serious matters that exemplify Coakley's hard-left campaigning tactics, such as her insulting devout Catholics as unfit for working in emergency rooms or insisting that Scott Brown wants to "turn away" rape victims from hospitals. [image at right via William Jacobson's Legal Insurrection blog]

It's that sort of insane, false hyperbole that has even Democrat-friendly media outlets like Time magazine reeling, even if the broadcast networks are asleep at the switch.

Take for example Michael Scherer's January 17 blog post at the magazine's Swampland blog (emphasis mine):

It's like the butterfly effect, but with fish! A guppy shortage in Florida is having an effect on a special Senate race in Massachusetts, according to New York Times columnist Gail Collins, still determined to ignore the nationwide anti-Democratic surge.

Back in November, Collins reacted with dismissive sarcasm to the Democrats losing governors' seats in Virginia and New Jersey:

Although there is no way to deny that New Jersey and Virginia were terrible, horrible, disastrous, cataclysmic blows to Obama's prestige....The defeat of Gov. Jon Corzine made it clear that the young and minority voters who turned out for Obama will not necessarily show up at the polls in order to re-elect an uncharismatic former Wall Street big shot who failed to deliver on his most important campaign promises while serving as the public face of a state party that specializes in getting indicted.

While concluding a story on the Massachusetts Senate race on Monday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez acknowledged the possibility that Republican Scott Brown could win the long held Democratic seat but wondered: “It’ll be interesting to see if Brown, the Republican, wins, if the Democrats can defer his swearing in and get health care passed. We will watch that.”

At the top of the show, Rodriguez teased the story: “In Massachusetts it’s more than just a Senate race, it’s a battle that could end President Obama’s fight for health care reform.” Correspondent Nancy Cordes followed up with a report that also focused on the impact the race would have on health care: “The President was here campaigning yesterday for the Democrat. And no wonder, if she loses, it will be a major blow to his ability to get his agenda passed.”

Cordes observed how affective Brown’s opposition to ObamaCare has been: “Coakley’s Republican challenger...has made stopping the health care reform bill a signature issue. A message that seems to be resonating with voters.” She then fretted: “If Coakley loses this race, Democrats will lose their supermajority in the Senate. Meaning they won’t be able to pass Democratic priorities like health care reform unless they can convince a few Republicans to vote with them.”

Teasing coverage on tomorrow's Massachusetts special election to fill its vacant Senate seat, MSNBC's David Shuster avoided any pretense of objectivity as he opened the 10 a.m. EST hour of the network's news coverage with the question: "Has Democratic-leaning Massachusetts lost its mind?!"

[See video embedded at right. Audio available here.]

Although he ratcheted down the bias a few notches later in the hour when he actually reported on the polling trends showing Republican candidate Scott Brown having a decent shot at upsetting Democratic candidate Martha Coakley tomorrow, Shuster's opening teaser speaks volumes about MSNBC's penchant for rooting for the Democrats.

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos is worried enough about tomorrow’s Massachusetts Senate race to be thinking about a “Plan B” for Democratic plans to push ObamaCare onto an increasingly unwilling public.

“You have top Democrats like Barney Frank of Massachusetts who said flatly if Martha Coakley, the Democrat, loses, health care is dead. So what kind of planning is the White House doing right now for backup?  What's their Plan B?” Stephanopoulos fretted to White House correspondent Jake Tapper.

Tapper replied that the current “Plan B” is for the House leadership to force an up or down vote on the Senate version of health care as it was passed Christmas eve, obviating the need for a new Senate vote that could be filibustered. But “House Speaker Pelosi has told the White House she does not think the votes are there,” Tapper informed Stephanopoulos.

[H/t NewsBuster P.J. Gladnick.] How panicked is the MSM at the prospect of a Scott Brown victory tomorrow? So much so that Chris Matthews has stooped to seeking to use Scott Brown's Protestant religion against him in heavily Catholic Massachusetts . . .

The Hardball host made his despicable pitch during a Morning Joe appearance today.

On Saturday’s Today show on NBC, anchor Amy Robach brought aboard MSNBC’s Joe Scarbarough to talk about President Obama’s handling of the relief effort in Haiti, and the President’s efforts to prevent Republican takeover of the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy. Robach introduced the segment referring to the possibility of a Democratic loss of the seat from Obama’s point-of-view of being a "potential political crisis here at home."

After Scarborough answered her first question about relief aid in Haiti -- at one point complaining about "carping from the far right" -- Robach segued from the Haiti earthquake by referring to the Senate race as a "potential crisis looming here at home" which could result from a "historic upset" in Massachusetts. Robach:

An outspoken Pro-Lifer heckled President Obama during Sunday's rally for Senate candidate Martha Coakley in Boston.

The man, holding a sign that read "Jesus Loves All Babies," was quickly removed from the facility by security.

Clearly not expecting to be heckled at a Democrat campaign event, the President was visibly thrown off by the untimely interruption (video embedded below the fold, h/t Ed Morrissey):

George Will on Sunday spoke an inconvenient truth about healthcare reform the Obama-loving media have dishonestly withheld from the public since this battle began: in order to get something passed, Democrats have resorted to "serial corruption."

Visibly amused by the socialist blatherings of "This Week" guests Donna Brazile and Katrina vanden Heuvel, Will during the Roundtable segment said, "They're trying to pass a bill that is, A, huge, B, radical, C, unpopular, and, therefore, D, they have no choice but to resort to serial corruption."

ABC's lone regular conservative contributor then elaborated as Brazile and vanden Heuvel grunted and moaned in the background (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, relevant section at 3:20):

"What we`ve got to figure out is whether all the talk we`re doing about this race will fire up Democrats to try to prevent a loss, a stunning loss, really, if it were to happen."

So said NBC's Kelly O'Donnell Friday during a discussion about the upcoming special senatorial election in Massachusetts.

Speaking with MSNBC's Ed Schultz, O'Donnell clearly had a hard time hiding which candidate she supports in this race (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

MSNBC's Ed Schultz believes a victory by Scott Brown (R-Mass.) in Tuesday's special senatorial election in Massachusetts would signal "the end of change as we know it."

"I think it`s just an unbelievable scenario that`s playing out and don`t kid yourselves, folks, this could derail the rest of the Obama agenda for 2010 and beyond," Schultz told his "Ed Show" audience.

"The way the political winds are turning right now is absolutely amazing," he continued.

"If the tea party-endorsed candidate nabs Ted Kennedy`s seat in Massachusetts it`s the end of change as we know it" (video embedded below the fold, h/t Mary Katharine Ham via Hot Air):

The panic on the left concerning Tuesday's special senatorial election is getting palpable, for on Friday, MSNBC's Ed Schultz said on his radio program that he would try to vote ten times if he lived in Massachusetts.

"Yeah, that's right, I'd cheat to keep these bastards out," he told his audience.

'''Cause that's exactly what they are" (YouTube audio embedded below the fold courtesy our dear friend Brian Maloney, h/t Story Balloon):

Things are looking so bad for Democrats in Tuesday's special election for the Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy that MSNBC's Chris Matthews is concerned there aren't any left-leaning votes for his Party to buy.

"You know in the old days...if the Democrats faced this kind of a disaster in the works, you`d go back to your ones, the people you were sure are going to vote Democrat, and you`d make sure they got to the polling place," Matthews told NBC's Chuck Todd on Friday's "Hardball."

"You`d get them lunch, you`d get them a car. You`d make sure they got there, and in some cases you`d be buying people to get them," he continued. "But I hear talking to somebody today there aren`t people up there in Massachusetts like that anymore" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t NBer shannon76):

With Massachusetts State Senator Scott Brown surging in the polls, NBC's Today show, on Friday, assigned Kelly O'Donnell to highlight the race for the open Senate seat in Massachusetts pitting Brown against Martha Coakley and the NBC reporter – even after airing Brown's zinger that "it's not the Kennedy seat...it's the people's seat," – ordained it "the Kennedy seat."

Today co-host Matt Lauer, in introducing the O'Donnell piece (that incidentally was accompanied by the on screen headline: Will Democrats Lose Ted Kennedy's Seat?") also read from the same song book: "Now to politics and the race to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat."

Over on ABC's Good Morning America Jake Tapper avoided describing the seat as the Kennedy family's personal property in his report that noted "there's a big question...as to whether President Obama will campaign in that special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat...because if the Democrat loses, all bets are off," and warned "It looks like health care might sink." CBS's The Early show aired nothing about the Senate race.

The following is a complete transcript of O'Donnell's profile of the race as it was aired on the January 15 Today show:

You've just won a tough Democrat primary fight. You are now in the general election campaign for the "Ted Kennedy" senate seat in "Massachusettes." So what do you do? Why, go to Disney World!

Okay, so maybe Democrat candidate Martha Coakley didn't go to Disney World but she did take a 6 day vacation in the middle of her campaign for the U.S. Senate on December 23. Why would a candidate do something so foolish? Perhaps because she actually believed the reports in the mainstream media that she was already in possession of the "Ted Kennedy" seat and that the general election on January 19 against her Republican opponent, Scott Brown, was just a mere formality. Here is Derrick Z. Jackson of the Boston Globe declaring Coakley the "winner" on December 3:

MARTHA COAKLEY will be the state’s next US senator. Michael Capuano handed her the keys to the late Ted Kennedy’s office by getting caught up in one last dumb shouting match with the sure loser in the race, Stephen Pagliuca. One can only imagine the smile inside Coakley’s head as Capuano and Pagliuca descended into a banter so banal that Pagliuca tried to nail Capuano as the Sarah Palin of the Democratic Party.

Update: Michael Meehan has apologized for shoving McCormack. See the story here.

It's not too hard to imagine the media firestorm that would ensue if a New York Times or Newsweek reporter alleges that a PR aide affiliated with a Republican senatorial candidate shoved him while he was trying to do his job, particularly if the alleged assailant has been nominated by the president for a post requiring Senate confirmation.

But given that the incident in question is a Weekly Standard writer alleging an assault by an aide for Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley (Mass.), it's understandable, but not excusable, if you don't hear much about this from the broadcast or cable news networks.

For its part, the Associated Press --  in a story run on Boston.com -- all but dismissed the incident for the Coakley camp with a five-paragraph article blandly titled "Reporter takes stumble chasing Mass. candidate," wherein John McCormack of the Weekly Standard was said to have been "involved in a scuffle with one of [Coakley's] aides," a man by the name of Michael Meehan.

To its credit, however, the Boston Herald newspaper invested its own resources in covering the story. [See McCormack's account at the Standard here.]

Here's how the Herald's Laura Crimaldi opened her January 13 story, "Reporter roughed up outside Coakley fund-raiser":

How panicked are top Dems at the prospect that Republican Scott Brown will do the unthinkable and win the special election for the open Senate seat in Massachusetts? Enough that Harry Reid, despite his desperate fight to save his own skin in Nevada, has returned to DC to do what he can to help the hapless Dem candidate, the charisma-deprived Martha Coakley, hang on.  

Enough that NBC political director Chuck Todd describes top Dems as having a "huge concern" over the Mass. race.

Todd gave his dismal-for-Dems assessment on this evening's Ed Show . . .

Update - 9:25 AM | Lachlan Markay: David Gergen commented on Brown's response. His comments below. 

The death of Ted Kennedy hit the liberal media particularly hard. NBC's Andrea Mitchell caught the mood of the nation's pundits when she said the "heavens were weeping" during Kennedy's funeral. Now that Kennedy is dead, some pundits feel as if Democrats are entitled to the seat he left vacant.

CNN senior political analyst David Gergen had to be reminded of this fact Monday as he moderated a debate between the two candidates for Massachusetts's open Senate seat. He asked Republican candidate Scott Brown whether he'd be willing to "sit in Teddy Kennedy's seat and [say] I'm going to be the person who's going to block it [liberal health care policy] for another 15 years."

But Brown, refusing to take for granted Gergen's blatantly left-wing premises, responded instead: "Well, with all due respect it's not the Kennedys' seat, and it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the people's seat." (video and transcript below the fold - h/t Kerry Picket)

As Republican Scott Brown’s campaign warms up to take Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts, Frank Quaratiello of the Boston Herald is reporting something shocking: if Brown wins, Massachusetts Democrats may drag out his certification as the victor to enable appointed Sen. Paul Kirk (the former DNC chairman) to put ObamaCare over the top.

"We want to get this resolved before President Obama’s State of the Union address in early to mid-February," Kirk told reporters at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast...

"Absolutely," Kirk said, when asked if he’d vote for the bill, even if Brown captures the seat. "It would be my responsibility as United States senator, representing the people and understanding Senator Kennedy’s agenda. . . . I think you’re asking me a hypothetical question but I’d be pleased to vote for the bill."

After all the rule-bending shenanigans of the Massachusetts Democrats, leaving a dying Kennedy in office, and then ramrodding Kirk's appointment to the Senate to help ObamaCare, now they're desperate enough to ignore the people's vote?

On Friday, New York Times reporter Abby Goodnough described the surprise struggles of Mass. Democrat Martha Coakley, once considered a shoo-in to fill the Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy, but now facing a strong challenge from Republican Scott Brown: "In Massachusetts, Surprise Anxiety for Favored Democrats."

Goodnough's hook was a Rasmussen Reports poll showing Brown within nine points of Coakley. But she emphasized that "many news organizations dispute its methodology." Yet Rasmussen called the 2008 election with far greater accuracy than did the Times.

(Goodnough also authored an admiring December 10 profile of Coakley after her win in the Democratic primary.)

From her Friday story:

Martha M. Coakley, the Democrat running for Senator Edward M. Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts, had seemed so certain of winning the special election on Jan. 19 that she barely campaigned last month.

But the dynamic has changed in recent days. The news that two senior Democratic senators will retire this year in the face of bleak re-election prospects has created anxiety and, even in this bluest of states, a sense that the balance of power has shifted dramatically from just a year ago.

With the holidays over and public attention refocused on the race, Ms. Coakley's insistence on debating her Republican opponent, Scott P. Brown, only with a third-party candidate present has drawn mounting criticism.

And a new poll that showed a competitive race between Ms. Coakley and Mr. Brown has generated buzz on conservative blogs and energized the Brown campaign -- though many news organizations dispute its methodology.

Congratulations Massachusetts!

You have just chosen the person last night who will succeed the late Ted Kennedy in his Senate seat. The Boston Globe's Derrick Z. Jackson declared the winner a week ago on December 3 in this story, Coakley gets the keys to the Senate: 

MARTHA COAKLEY will be the state’s next US senator. Michael Capuano handed her the keys to the late Ted Kennedy’s office by getting caught up in one last dumb shouting match with the sure loser in the race, Stephen Pagliuca. One can only imagine the smile inside Coakley’s head as Capuano and Pagliuca descended into a banter so banal that Pagliuca tried to nail Capuano as the Sarah Palin of the Democratic Party.

There is only one "little" problem with this story; the winner of the Senate seat from Massachusetts doesn't actually get chosen until January 19. What Martha Coakley won last night was the right to run in that general election as the Democrat nominee. However, that hasn't stopped the Boston Globe's Jackson from declaring her the winner of that Senate seat.