Brown -1, Warren - 0.
I'm alluding. of course, to the "mutual" agreement reached this week between US Senator Scott Brown and Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren to refuse outside SuperPAC funded negative advertising as the campaign begins in earnest.
Warren, who has built a $250 million war chest to date, has been played by the Republicans. She has lots of dirt to work with while Brown's campaign hasn't been able to dig up anything to tarnish her squeaky clean image. And now she can't use that firepower? Please.
Brown's first vote after being elected -- rejecting a pro-union attorney to the labor board -- was a direct affront to the unions, and cemented his fate. Once these guys get burned, they don't forget.
He stood opposed to the financial regulations overhaul and only reversed course after extracting some goodies for his benefactors and effective bullying by Sen Kerry and Rep Frank.
Brown is still a fresh-faced incumbent yet he knows his seat is vulnerable. Since pissing off the labor class, he's tried to build support in some unlikely but strong constituent communities, like the gay community. But as Mitt Romney learned in 1994, the GLTB community pays zero homage to the lip speak of Republicans.
The fact is, the down-to-earth truck driving populist imagery that got Brown (and George Bush) elected has vanished and cannot be resuscitated.
Brown and his Republican friends know this and they are only doing what they know best -- trying to minimize the damage of his voting record by hijacking public perception and using the opponent's value system against her own interests. Brown knew that Warren's campaign would have no choice but to bite on a a campaign pledge that only benefits the incumbent.
But here's the deal, Elizabeth -- go negative all you want. If you've got the goods, use them, or at least package up some ads and have them ready to deploy. Democrats fully realize that the party's good guy image must be sacrificed if Democratic policies are to survive an increasingly corrupt conservative cartel running this country.
It took Al Gore's "loss" to George Bush, and the ensuing eight years of Bush's mass destruction on United States' interests, to drive home the point that sometimes the party has to play hardball. With the stakes as high as they have ever been, that's all the time.
Brown's campaign against negative advertising is absurd if not ironic. He was a virtual nobody in the Massachusetts Senate when he was elected to the U.S. senate two years ago, almost entirely due to outside Republican SuperPAC funding in a last minute blitzkreig television attack campaign that took an unsuspecting Martha Coakley and the Democratic Party by surprise.
I would not be surprised if Brown pulls the same rabbit out of a hat close to election time. Here's how I predict it will unfold: the Republicans will conjure up a clever plan that puts Warren in the limelight for allegedly instigating an "elitist" street brawl with the local boy, and he will "naturally" respond with a very wicked public attack that works. Republicans are good at this sort of thing.
I hope the candidate and Democratic Party don't get fooled again, but I wouldn't bet on it. Democratis take this beating over and over and over again, convinced the masses will one day regain their senses and vote for the party that represents their interests, but it almost never happens if Republicans administer the first big blow.
If I were advising Elizabeth Warren, I'd tell her to have three very smart, very accurate negative ad campaigns in the bag and then deploy them in high volume across the state close to election time -- before Brown beats her to the punch. It's high time that Democrats use their opponents' playbook and mobillize a beaten down constituency tired of being humiliated by Republican tacticians.
Time to take off the gloves, Elizabeth.
