Finger-pointing begins for Democratic insiders

From politico.com:

By MANU RAJU & JONATHAN MARTIN & JOHN BRESNAHAN | 1/19/10 12:29 AM EST


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As voters head to the polls in Massachusetts, nervous Democrats have already begun to blame one another for putting at risk the Senate seat Ted Kennedy held for more than 40 years.

Many angry Democrats blame their candidate, state Attorney General Martha Coakley, for running a sluggish campaign that let Republican Scott Brown set the contours of the race.

Some Democratic strategists lay the fault at the feet of President Barack Obama, saying he should have done more to sell the party’s agenda.

And in private conversations, Hill sources say White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has blamed Coakley, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake for failing to see Brown’s surge in time to stop it.

“With the legislative and political stakes so high, it’s unbelievable that the Senate committee and White House let this race get so out of hand,” said one senior Washington Democrat. “There’s a lot of blame to go around. Martha Coakley is only one of the problems here.”

Coakley is at the center of the criticism. Democrats complain that her campaign was caught napping after last month’s primary — and that Brown was able to use the pause to shape the race.

“A malaise set in, and there was a failure to take advantage of the opportunity to define yourself the next day” after the primary, said longtime Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.). “You thank people for the primary and then begin to define the next six weeks.”

Added Neal: “Going dark was not a great idea.”

Although DSCC Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) was still predicting victory Monday, even he conceded that it would have been “better” if Coakley had laid out the differences between the candidates earlier. He said Democrats have learned a crucial lesson: that even in very blue states, Democrats should expect a “volatile” environment with a “tough” electorate — and “you can’t afford not to be aggressive.”

“You have to define your opponent before they define themselves,” Menendez said. “In Brown’s case, he’s working hard to try to disguise himself.”

Menendez learned that the race was tightening about a week and a half ago, when independent pollsters returned results showing the race much tighter than Democratic polls had been portraying. He acted quickly — unleashing more than $2.5 million into the race, including $1.4 million in television ads in the past week alone, according to sources familiar with the effort.

The DSCC also dispatched senior staff to take tighter control of the Coakley campaign, bolster her get-out-the-vote efforts, improve her fundraising and enhance coordination between the White House and the campaign. As a result, the tone of her ads and her stump speech were sharpened in an attempt to define Brown in the minds of the voters as a far-right Republican out of touch with the state’s mainstream voters.

“Look, we’re never in place of a campaign; a candidate has to run their own race,” Menendez told POLITICO. “When the alarm bells went off, we sprung into action.”

Emanuel has told his confidants that those bells rang too late — and that both Menendez and Lake, who declined to be interviewed, should have been moving sooner.

But the White House itself is facing a barrage of criticism among Democrats, with many saying that Obama has let the GOP frame the issues — particularly health care — in the minds of many independent voters, including those who elected Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey in the fall.

“We lost independents in Virginia, we lost independents in New Jersey and we’re losing independents in Massachusetts,” said one Democratic campaign strategist. “The only thing those three states have in common is Obama.”

The Democratic National Committee, which spent at least $750,000 almost exclusively on get-out-the-vote efforts, has also faced criticism for not dispatching its resources early enough.

For the entire article, go to: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31637.html