Tuesday, January 19, 2010

That darned circling squad

I don't know Celinda Lake.  She's a very well regarded Democratic pollster, so her reputation will likely survive this perfectly horrible interview she gave to Huffington Post in a weak attempt to deflect blame for the crappiness of the Coakley campaign.  I can't recall ever seeing so many vacuous consultant truisms shoved into one article.  To wit:
  • "If Scott Brown wins tonight he'll win because he became the change-oriented candidate."
  • Asked about reported criticism from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Lake said she had seen the stories. "I think it's a circling squad to protect the White House. I don't think it's very useful," she said.
  • "2010 is fast turning out to be a blame election."
  • "On the eve of the election, Martha Coakley had a 21-point advantage over Scott Brown on who would fight Wall Street and deliver for Main Street. But it didn't predict to the vote, because voters thought, even if they sent her down here that it wouldn't happen. 'Fine, she had done it in Massachusetts, but no one was doing it in Washington.'"
  • "Voters are voting for change and we have to go back to that change message."
  • "There's a lot of blame to go around, but the point of the matter is there's a wave. And that wave: it hit Virginia; it hit New Jersey; it hit Massachusetts," she said.
I don't think there are any statements in there that mean much of anything.  But one of the most damning things in the article is her claim that the general election campaign was underfunded so they had no tracking polls.  My God, man.  Lake seems to be using this as evidence that others mismanaged the campaign, but there are plenty of ways to work out the financing of polling even if the money isn't there at the moment.  This is especially true in a race that would obviously be of such significance to the White House.  Did Lake not propose this?  Did she argue for tracking polls or just let it go?

1 comment:

Kyle Baker said...

There is also an argument for just RUNNING A GOOD GOD DAMNED CAMPAIGN and not dicking around with internal tracking polls.