Let the Games Begin!

And by "games", I mean finger-pointing, back-stabbing, and excuse-making...

Obama aide on Mass. Senate race: "We did everything we were asked to do"

If Democrat Martha Coakley loses the Massachusetts Senate race today to Republican Scott Brown, there will be a finger-pointing field day.

At the top of the list will be Coakley, the state attorney general herself, who took a break from campaigning for several weeks after she won her primary last month.

I've been saying this for weeks - that as soon as Coakley won the Democratic nomination, she thought the race ended. She thought that she'd have an easy cruise to a 70-30 crushing of the GOP cannon fodder candidate just like Dead Ted, and that she no longer had to campaign. She thought the race was won; that in the bluest of the blue states there would be no need for the Democrat to defend Ted Kennedy's seat from the {chortle} Republican! Brown, in the meantime, kept on plugging away and campaigning his heart out, and made serious strides.

I think the Coakley/Brown 2010 Senate race might replace Aesop's "Tortoise and the Hare" for slow and steady winning the race...

The recriminations begin, though:

Obama Chief of Staff David Axelrod was quick to respond today to any suggestion that the White House had not done enough.

In a meeting with reporters, he said, “I think the White House did everything we were asked to do. Had we been asked earlier, we would have responded earlier. But we responded in a timely fashion when we were asked.”

This is classic pass-the-buck; heck, the buck didn't even slow down. However, in this case, it's warranted. The Coakley campaign is the one who dropped the ball here - as I've mentioned several times before, they were acting as though they didn't have to campaign as late as New Year's day when they failed to show up at the Winter Classic. They certainly can't blame the Democratic party - as soon as the Coakley campaign asked for help they had big name Democrats coming out of the woodwork.

The trick is that they had to ask - a month ago, no one would have thought that this state senator nobody stood a chance against the state's Attorney General. Scott Brown was a complete unknown; Coakley has been the state's AG for three years now. She has statewide recognition; Brown was unknown outside of his district. After Øbama's ascension election in 2008 and the subsequent rout of the GOP nationwide, there was simply no reason to think that the Democrat in MA would have any sort of fight on their hands to replace Ted Kennedy.

Except that the reality of life in America didn't match the "everything's coming up roses" that the media and the Øbama administration would like us all to believe. Double digit unemployment - after we were sold a "stimulus" package designed to halt unemployment before it reached 9% - along with bailouts of General Motors, Chrysler, CitiGroup, and multiple other businesses deemed "too big to fail" combined to taint the rosy picture of sunshine and free unicorns offered. The health care "reform" bill was railroaded through the house and senate, with eleventh hour deals, sweetheart giveaways, and outright vote-buying taking place behind closed doors - and with the filibuster proof majority, there was nothing could do about it.

Until now.

In five more hours the polls will be closed. The voting will be finished; the signs will be put back in the trunks of cars (and in the beds of pick-up trucks). We may or may not know the results tonight; I suspect not, as this race is far too close to call no matter how much we may wish it otherwise. Obviously I'm hoping that Scott Brown prevails; the message sent to DC by his win would be unmistakeable. Even in MA we have our limits, and will take extraordinary measures once pushed beyond those limits. Coakley offered nothing to MA voters beyond, well, being the Democrat candidate.

And running on platform of "I'm the Democrat, who else are you gonna vote for?" didn't seem to be the magic ticket this time...

That is all.