It didn’t take long for the Dems to start the finger pointing in the wake of Martha Coakley’s loss in the Massachusetts special Senate election.
As the election night returns came pouring in so did the blame. Coakley, a Democrat and the Massachusetts Attorney General, was ahead of Republican State Senator Scott Brown by double digit margins well into December. But, her lead faded in early January and her campaign was never able to recover.
State and national Democrats began trading barbs almost as soon as Coakley’s poll numbers started plunging. In the days leading up to the election, high-level Democrats were calling Coakley weak and ineffective. According to the Associated Press, the polls hadn’t closed on Tuesday before White House aides began anonymously contacting reporters to blamed Coakley for her troubled campaign in an attempt to shape the narrative after the race.
President Obama’s top advisor, David Axelrod, did make a few comments on the record. “I think the White House did everything we were asked to do,” he said. “Had we been asked earlier, we would have responded earlier.”
Obama himself was said to be “surprised and frustrated” and “not pleased” by the state of the race in Massachusetts. The president campaigned for Coakley on Sunday.
Earlier today, Politico reported that a Coakley adviser leaked a memo blasting national Democrats for failing to help the struggling campaign until it was too late.
The memo, according to Politico, also states: “Coakley’s failure to release television advertisements until 12 days before the election was the result of a fundraising problem that national Democrats failed to resolve. Meanwhile, right-wing groups pumped significant amounts of money into Brown’s campaign, allowing him to go up with ads first, including negative attack ads funded by the Swift Boat and Willie Horton groups.”
Coakley has been criticized for taking a laissez-faire approach to the campaign. It wasn’t until Brown started surging in the polls that her political operation ramped up, and she has been accused of taking the race for granted.
Politico also reported on Tuesday officials at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel were trying to blame Coakley for potentially losing a seat that had been held by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy for close to five decades.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also weighed in on Coakley’s misfortune and took a shot at her colleagues in the Senate.
“We’re always in touch with our members,” Pelosi said at an afternoon press conference. “In the House, we don’t have surprises when it comes to elections.”
The blame game continued late into election night.
In an interview with MSNBC, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said late Tuesday night that it was clear the Coakley Campaign treated the primary as the election. “The buck stops with the candidate at the end of the day,” Wasserman Schultz said.
