Posted 1/17/2010 11:19:00 AM by Douglas

Democrats, with Obama at the helm, are going after one senate seat in Massachusetts like Captain Ahab. But is this whale worth it?

President Barack Obama will travel to Massachusetts on Sunday afternoon to campaign for Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley — a risky bet that puts Obama’s own credibility on the line on behalf of a weak candidate in hopes of averting a loss that would shatter the party’s 60-seat Senate supermajority.

Obama’s trip represents a stark, late recognition not just that Coakley may lose, but also that her defeat can’t be spun away. The defection of independent voters and some Democrats in one of the nation’s most liberal states would deal a stunning, and possibly fatal, blow to the centerpiece of Obama’s first-year agenda, health care reform, which congressional leaders would be left trying to jam through using procedural loopholes.

From what I've read of Coakley, it doesn't sound like she's worth the fight. Hell, it doesn't sound like she should be running for school board.

Attorney General Martha Coakley—who had proven so dedicated a representative of the system that had brought the Amirault family to ruin, and who had fought so relentlessly to preserve their case—has recently expressed her view of this episode. Questioned about the Amiraults in the course of her current race for the U.S. Senate, she told reporters of her firm belief that the evidence against the Amiraults was "formidable" and that she was entirely convinced "those children were abused at day care center by the three defendants."

What does this say about her candidacy? (Ms. Coakley declined to be interviewed.) If the current attorney general of Massachusetts actually believes, as no serious citizen does, the preposterous charges that caused the Amiraults to be thrown into prison—the butcher knife rape with no blood, the public tree-tying episode, the mutilated squirrel and the rest—that is powerful testimony to the mind and capacities of this aspirant to a Senate seat. It is little short of wonderful to hear now of Ms. Coakley's concern for the rights of terror suspects at Guantanamo—her urgent call for the protection of the right to the presumption of innocence.

Sounds like a prosecutor trying to make a name for herself at the expense of other's lives. Not unlike the ass-hat that wants to be Texas' governor. Remember this?