This email from TPM Reader AF really strikes a chord with me. Yesterday afternoon, we brainstormed a piece based on what two of our DC reporters were picking up on the Hill, which was that it really didn’t seem clear that the folks on the Hill were at all prepared for a Coakley defeat — which wasn’t certain but looked quite likely. And everything that happened over the last 24 hours confirms that perception. In some ways, what surprised me most about today was just how little real thought seems to have gone into what the plan or even the message would be Tuesday morning.
Am I the only one who has the feeling that this morning, the Democrats in DC are winging the PR message? As if, last night, they looked out, saw the carnage, and sometime between 9 PM and 9 AM tried to pencil in a few minutes to think about what they’re going to say?
I live in Massachusetts and the Brown ground game advantage has been obvious to anyone who can count yard signs since December. (I live in a suburb Obama won by 30 points.) I’ve been saying for a week to people-who-might-later-be-pissed-at-me to set up an Intrade account and take the free money that was on offer for Scott Brown anywhere south of 80%. I’m no professional pol but two weeks ago I was thinking about what ought to be the framing if Brown won.
Even if in public every Democrat was optimistically saying they expected a Coakley victory, isn’t a key part of their job to privately know what the political realities are and to plan their political reactions accordingly? Even if privately DC Dems rated the race simply “tossup”, the collossal expected impact of a loss should have been enough to require political contingency planning.
It seems to me they managed at least a little bit of such planning on the legislative front (where one can recognize that time constraints might really prevent getting every duck lined up first.) But on the political framing and PR, it looks like nobody gave the response any thought before the AP called it last night.
