Scott Brown Touts His Bipartisanship And Ties To Obama
From the moment that Scott Brown was elected in Massachusetts in 2009, it’s been fairly obvious that his re-election campaign in 2012 was going to be difficult to say the least. For one thing, Brown benefited very much that year from the fact that he was quite simply a better campaigner than Martha Coakley, who displayed an inability to relate to voters that bordered on the inept at time. For another, Brown was elected in a Special Election in January rather than a General Election in November. When President Obama was elected in 2008, a total of 3,080,985 votes were cast. When Brown was elected, there were a total of 2,226,789 votes cast. That’s a difference of 854,196, or more than eight times the margin of votes between Brown and Coakley.
Republicans have won statewide General Elections in Massachusetts before, of course. From 1991 to 2007, every Governor of Massachusetts was a Republican (William Weld, Paul Cellucci, Jane Swift, and Mitt Romney). The first African-American Senator since Reconstruction was a Massachusetts Republican named Edward Brooke. Nonetheless, it doesn’t take a political genius to figure out that it’s going to be very hard for a Republican of any kind to win a statewide election in that state with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket.
That is why Scott Brown is quite obviously shifting into campaign mode by emphasizing his ability to get bills passed by cooperating with Democrats:
Will it be enough? Frankly, I doubt it. This is Massachusetts and Elizabeth Warren seems to be connecting with voters. If Brown he is going to win, however, this is how is going to do it.
