Coakley ignored black voters at her own peril

http://www.thegrio.com/2010/01/coakley-ignored-black-voters-at-her-own-peril.php

". When the Massachusetts attorney general entered the race months ago, it was believed that she would easily win.

But something happened on the way to the Senate.

After winning the Democratic primary last month, Coakley disappeared from sight--literally....What was most disturbing was that Coakley took for granted the base of Democratic voters--African-Americans. Even before her bid for the Senate seat, she never had any relationship with the black community. Presumably believing that Ted Kennedy's strong support in the black community was going to carry over to her campaign, Coakley didn't bother reach out to us, not even on getting our support for health care reform, the last issue Kennedy championed in office.

It was only this week as her campaign continued to implode that she finally realized our vote was needed. She brings in President Obama for a very sad, last minute political rally to rouse a few more voters. The next day Coakley attended Boston's annual Martin Luther King Day breakfast, only to stay long enough to get photo ops of herself shaking hands with black attendees and give an uninspired speech about her campaign and King's legacy."


This should be instructive for any future Democratic candidate. Just because the black community enthusiastically voted for Democrats and for Pres. Obama, don't take the vote for granted.

Secondly, this analysis seems to be quite close to what I've been seeing from reading the news the last week or so.
Love this quote from the article: "Specifically, there is an urgency to discuss why we in the black community continue to allow white Democrats that take us for granted. The recent "light skinned with no Negro dialect" comments made by Sen. Harry Reid don't help the situation either. Hopefully Coakley's loss will be a wake-up call for the Democratic party because black folks are certainly starting to wake-up to them."

I just found it odd that even though the election was this week, I had no idea who Martha Coakley was until about 15 days ago. Now, considering I'm about 4 billion miles away from Massachusetts may have had something to do with it, but as interested as I am in politics and as much as I read, the fact that she was so far down on the collective radar was puzzling to me at best as recently as last week. A Democrat running for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat should have been news EVERYWHERE. The man spent his political career trying to get healthcare and has now been replaced by someone who has solemnly vowed to kill it -- it's just a damn shame any way that you look at it.

After reading an article on Coakley's response to MLK day, there was something about this woman that seemed "off."



I'm sure every black person in that room was sitting there with a :wtf: look on their faces after she said that. Talk about blatant pandering -- and not even GOOD blatant pandering. If she can't pull off talking to a group of black people, the most staunch and loyal component of the Democratic Party, on MLK Day, then that says it all.

woman. She is obviously VERY uncomfortable in the presence of Black people. She screwed that speech up, BIG TIME.

I can only hope the trend of "he/she was a lousy candidate" STOPS HERE.

When we lost the governors' races earlier this year, we heard "he was a lousy candidate."

Well, that shouldn't be the end of it. Where are the "good" candidates?!

QUESTION OF THE YEAR.

But as I was saying, Democrats pour salt and pepper over their elected officials as soon as they get elected and simply cannot WAIT to savor their sweet, sweet flesh. So I'm really not all that surprised that wonderful, qualified people with a passion for public service would not be all that inclined to run for office under the Democratic banner.

When your "base" is as quick to turn on you as your opposition, why would you stick your neck out??

eats its own?

and If they try and primary Obama,
Republican are going to enjoy an long ass reign; tell you that.


Someone over at DU asking if Obama's a Wimp. :wtf:

I started a thread asking if Bill Clinton was ever called a Wimp by Democrats?
cause if he was, I don't remember that.

It would be nice to see some pushback from the DNC counterpart to Michael Steele (talking about just the actual chairman title, that clown -- Steele -- is in a class by himself).

Where is the "noise" from our party chairman. And he is now 2-0, with the "2" representing lousy candidates in the races held since he's been chairman. Will we have a field blanketed with "lousy" candidates for the mid-terms?

I was just as shocked to see the lack of press with this election. And Martha Coakley didn't do herself any favors; she reportedly took six days off during the campaign for a personal vacation.

I suspect Ms. Coakley was soooooo complacent that Massachusetts voter would never in a million years vote GOP to replace Ted Kennedy. Hence the lack of reaching out to the community and actively campaigning.

Was Ms. Coakley the best candidate the Democratic party in Massachusetts could nominate?

The bright spot in this story is Senator-Elect Brown is only serving out the remainder of the Kennedy term. But we better be prepared to win this seat back. The next Democratic candidate needs to be vetted thoroughly and start raising funds NOW.