The area’s most powerful Democrats all lined up for Attorney General Martha Coakley when she came to Brothers Deli on Market Street Saturday afternoon.
There they were under the warm sun on a springy mid-winter day: Representative Steve Walsh, Essex County District Attorney John Blodgett, state Senator Thomas McGee and our Congressman, John Tierney.
They came to bolster Coakley’s sagging campaign, to give comfort and support to one of their own and to dampen the spreading notion that her opponent is soaring to victory as she slips away into an ignominious defeat.
By Tuesday night at 8:01, her visit will have proved to be useful or too little too late in an election effort that seemed to go from bad to worse.
If Coakley wins, she becomes one of 100 US Senators, and among a small coterie of the world’s most powerful and influential women. And President Obama gets his health care bill passed.
If she loses to state Senator Scott Brown, she is relegated to the dust bin of stale politics and bad campaign strategies. And all is lost for health care reform for the near future – or until the nation is spinning toward bankruptcy because nothing was done.
There is so much talk and speculation in Massachusetts political circles and among those who still tend to care about government that it is as if everything, including the Haitian earthquake catastrophe, has been relegated to second place story status.
Brown’s rise has been captivating, motivating, almost inspirational to everyone watching.
No one gave him a chance just a few weeks ago.
Now he appears on the verge of gaining what used to be Senator Edward Kennedy’s seat – the rock of Gibraltar of democratic senate seats.
Up front and close, Walsh, Blodgett, McGee and Tierney seemed to form a united front.
Underneath this veneer of political brotherhood, all of them had questions about Coakley and the campaign she ran.
They were bothered, as many of us were bothered, by Coakley’s constitutional inability to be anything but a prosecutor running for senate. She is incapable of making a joke, knows nothing about and was unable to practice the art of self-deprecation and on and on and on.
She failed to connect and created instead a disconnect for voters.
She refused to engage Brown and when she finally engaged him, it was too late – although this remains to be seen.
If Coakley loses, she has only herself to blame.
If she wins, it is sheer luck.
If Brown wins, it is the upset of all upsets, handed to him by a candidate who failed to inspire and a party that looked upon replacing Ted Kennedy with complacency.
Those who believe the seat was Kennedy’s seat will forever feel let down by the Kennedys, who failed to find one of their number to run for the seat that was theirs.
On the other hand, it was Brown who gained so much support from so many for saying again and again to the voters of Massachusetts wherever he went: “This isn’t the Kennedy seat. It is the peoples’ seat. No family, no one person owns it.
The election proves whom the people want.
Will it be Brown of Coakley?
Get out and vote and be counted.