Because I feel panicked about the prospect of Ted Kennedy's seat being taken over by a Republican, I have been constantly checking the news out of Massachusetts. This morning, when I went to Talking Points Memo, I saw a big headline exposing Scott Brown as a liar; as many of you know by now, he claimed to have no familiarity with the Tea Party movement, but, whaddya know, there is footage, in writing, photographs, and a video clip, of Brown addressing a Tea Party event in Boston. So . . .
. . . because the news was so fresh, and has the potential to be used to great effect in an ad, I called the Coakley campaign headquarters. The person with whom I spoke told me that no one there had heard of it yet, but that he would notify the press/publicity department of the campaign. He asked me where I found the info, and when I told him, he asked me for the URL of Talking Points Memo.
A few hours later, I was perusing Blue Mass Group, a progressive blog focusing on the Bay State, and I found another story that could hurt Brown in the polls: there was an incident where Scott Brown was addressing a student assembly at King Philip High School in Wrentham. Apparently, Brown had received some uncouth postings from students on his Facebook page in response to his anti-marriage equality stance. Well, instead of politely addressing the student body by saying that we should all be able to behave civilly while expressing opposing views . . . he started quoting what the students had said, and then responding to those comments with profanity himself! So, I called both the Coakley campaign and the DSCC headquarters,neither of whom was aware of this incident. I suggested to the Coakley campaign that they run an ad featuring some of the students who were at the assembly. It would be very effective if the students themselves made comments directly to the camera, along the lines of, "If he's this volatile in front of a high school student body, I'd hate to see how he'd act in the U.S. Senate," et al. Hopefully, the campaign run with that one, too . . . especially because anything featuring the well-being of children is a very effective selling point.
So, what's my point in posting all of this? Well, I know that many of us get frustrated when we see that a campaign is not fighting hard enough, not airing enough ads, or having ineffective ads, etc. My point is: sitting on the sidelines feeling frustrated will get us nowhere. Venting here in the blogosphere is great, but it is by and large preaching to the choir. The best expenditure of energy and time is to do our own oppo research, and contact the campaigns with our discoveries and suggestions. It's up to us to sound the warning. We have to "be Paul Revere," so to speak, and awaken everyone before an imminent disaster. And, to extend the Revere/revolution metaphor, which is particularly appropriate for Massachusetts . . . let's keep the redcoats from taking over!