CQ is reporting that the Democratic national party has increased its spending on the Massachusetts senatorial race to more than $1 million.
I’m sure many, many readers are fired up about the chances of Scott Brown. And I have the sense that at some point, a certain type of candidate just can’t buck a state’s mood; the best recent example is Jon Corzine in New Jersey. You’ll recall I figured that the state party would just keep dragging in registered Democrats in places like Camden and Trenton, file a suit to keep the polls open, fight with absentee ballots, and eke out a win for a widely disliked governor. In the end, none of that was even worth it; it couldn’t have closed the gap.
Perhaps Martha Coakley is just too uninspiring, too cookie-cutter, too standard-issue, and too out of step with the anti-establishment, mad-as-hell mood to win in the Bay State. But in a state like Massachusetts, dumping millions is basically pressing a button that says “TURNOUT.” You spend enough cash, you call enough registered Democrats, you run enough vans to nursing homes – at some point, you bring out enough Democrats to deliver a win in a state like this one.
Scott Brown has a much higher ceiling of votes than almost any other Republican to run for Senate in this state in a long while. But he does have that ceiling, and if the DNC and DSCC decide to break the bank to keep the seat, it will be tough to overcome.
Of course, this will mean that Scott Brown and his supporters will have forced the DNC and DSCC to break the bank to eke out a win in Massachusetts. In terms of resources, this could very well be national Democrat committees’ pyrrhic victory: they’ll get no psychological boost from spending millions to keep Kennedy’s seat by a handful of points, while Scott Brown is well-positioned for some other run for statewide office in the future. If Massachusetts is close, Republicans can run and win in any state in the union.
Perhaps it’s appropriate that this key fight of 2010 occur in the state that includes Bunker Hill.