Scott Brown Democrat: "Somebody's going to have to pay for this"

Screenshot of Scott Brown's social-networking-savvy web site. Even were we not to win the special election on Tuesday, the site itself should win top awards for "disintermediating the old-boy networks via the Internet." Contribute, volunteer, join Scott for The People's Rally at Mechanics Hall in Worcester today. Doors open 3 p.m. Details at Brown for US Senate website and Facebook.

"I think [President] Obama is scaring a lot of people with this health reform. Somebody's going to have to pay for this. It's not going to be a small bill," a Northshore working man told LA Times/Chicago Tribune Congressional Correspondent James Oliphant Friday. That's the reporter who called us from Gloucester the same day for a blogger's take on the historic political battle between good and evil that is playing out right here in our own Bay State backyard. Driving back to Boston, he stopped off in some of the cities and towns along the way and "met with some dems who say negative ads from coakley pushed them to Brown," we learned on Twitter. A few telling excerpts from the LATimes piece, out this morning.

One person who could end up paying for it is Coakley, Massachusetts' Democratic attorney general and once the overwhelming favorite to keep the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's seat in the party's hands. Just days from the special election, most political experts rate the race a toss-up, an almost unimaginable development in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 …

If he wins on Tuesday and is seated in time to vote on health care, he has pledged to help filibuster and kill the bill.

Several factors have been cited to explain Brown's surge: He's affable and telegenic, and has run an aggressive campaign, compared with Coakley's more reserved effort [That's a polite way of putting it!].

Oliphant has a storyteller's ear for the telling quotation:

But interviews with potential voters also revealed a persistent feeling that Obama and his allies in Congress have misread the public mood and have failed to concentrate on priorities such as the economy …

"People are tired of what's going on with the Democratic Party," Tebo said. "The health-care bill, what is it — 1,000 pages? Who can read that?"

"Some of them haven't read it, you know that," added the barber …  they viewed Democrats as elitist and tone-deaf -- citing Coakley's reference to the Senate post she would occupy as the "Kennedy seat."

"Like he owned the seat," Xerras said. "It's the people's seat" — a line often used by Brown.

Actually, it's a little more than "a line often used by Brown," as our friend neo discovered in researching her own latest blogpost on the biggest story in town:

But by far the most interesting part of the article about Brown’s candidacy announcement back in September of 2009 was that Brown seemed to take his own campaign very seriously from the start, plotting out the precise course that would put him in the spot he’s in now, and even using some of the same lines [including] "This Senate seat doesn’t belong to any one person or political party. It belongs to you, the people."

Back to Oliphant, who gets the quote of the day from another working man in Lynn — a 15-minute drive from here in Chelsea-by-the-Sea — "worried that the health-care bill will mean scaled-back union benefits"

North of Boston in industrial Lynn, Tom Pedersen and two co-workers from the Stanley Elevator Co. ate lunch at the Atlantic Coast Seafood Market. They are worried that the health-care bill will mean scaled-back union benefits.

"It's a big issue for us," said Pedersen, 50, over a carton of fried fish. "Do you bring everyone in America up to our level? Or bring our level down?"

Elevator man Pederson gets it. Obamacare will "bring our level down." That's exactly what every socialist-lite [or maybe not so light], we-know-better-than-you-what's-best-for-you program President Obama and the Democrats are trying to ram down our throats would do to the All-American spirit of rugged individualism.

More Oliphant: "It isn't just conservative and working-class voters who are moving to Brown." Listen to what two women dining in Boston's financial district had to say:

"You've got no one voting based on what the people want," said Rogers, 26, of Brookline.

Her friend Alycia Torres, 31, added: "I never thought we'd be this divided as a country so soon into his presidency."

Rogers and Torres said they would vote for Brown, casting him as the sort of independent-minded politician Obama once appeared to be.

'Course we knew Obama was a divider, not a uniter, way back in December of 2006 when he virtually called us a racist. How sweet it is to see so many of our fellow Americans finally seeing the light and putting their time and money into the effort to send Mr Brown to Washington.

Special note: For Sissy Willis fans who've been following our own heady ride to fame and fortune [Just kidding about the fortune!] we are, indeed, part of Oliphant's story:

"It has everything to do with this feeling that the elites in Washington think they know better," said Sissy Willis, a conservative activist and blogger from Chelsea who has been tracking Brown's rise. The "tea party" movement, Willis said, has finally "found a specific race where it has made a difference" -- partly by reaching out to alienated Democrats and independents.

And special thanks to blogging friends/fellow fight-the-good-fight types Amy Kane and Dan Riehl for their totally awesome words of support. Here's Amy:

Brown supporters are organized not by unions or a funding behemoth like Organizing for America. Rather they are "organized" by information flowing rapidly online. [It's that  disintermediation thing again] They are sharing the facts and opinions that mean something to them, that persuade them. They are finding common cause, and finding each other, online.

Consider Massachusetts blogger Sissy Willis. She is a friend; I've met her once in person, at a tea party in Newburyport. She writes for free, on her own idiosyncratic weblog full of passion, personality and persuasion.

And here's Dan:

While bloggers like William Jacobson (see his latest) and Sissy Willis (see her latest) continue to go above and beyond the call of duty for Scott Brown, I've generally viewed the Army of Davids concept to be about a large number of people doing relatively small things to prevail, as opposed to some few doing exceptional work.

With the polls being so close and turn-out generally low in special elections, this is about getting out the vote.

Speaking of which, we just got a robo call from the big guy himself inviting us to come on down to Mechanics Hall in Worcester for The People's Rally this afternoon. "Let's show them that even a presidential visit cannot slow down our momentum!" says the man of the hour. Doors open at 3 p.m. If you're in the area, you know what to do!

Update: In good company on Michelle Malkin's Buzzworthy.

Update II: We'll drink to that! Vodkapundit Stephen Green welcomes us into the charmed circle of "The Week in Blogs — The Links!" Thank you, sir!

Update III: Patterico links, which is cool: "Plus, Sissy Willis is quoted. Which is cool."

Comments

[goomp]

As it says in the preamble "we the people in order to form a more perfect union" are once again making our voice heard. Lead on.

[kent jenkins]

Vero Beach , Fl loves Scott brown

[James]

I agree goomp. Time is growing short, and this is just one battle. In the words of an old song "I've seen the future. I can't afford it."

[altoids]

Went to the phone banks in Boston today...it's a mixed picture.

On the bright side, the number of phone-bank volunteers is absolutely incredible. Over half of the people I've called had been contacted, multiple times, by the Brown campaign.

Unfortunately, that was also a problem. People do not like to get 5 phone calls asking them to vote on weekends. The core problem is that there have been a massive influx of new volunteers, but they do not log their calls into the phone-bank system properly.

The system is designed so that each target phone number gets one call per survey. But the system is also designed in such a way that an incomplete call (a call that did not log a survey answer) will be called again. Unfortunately, volunteers are calling people, but not logging in the survey responses into the system correctly.

This is a problem. Approximately 5% of Brown supporters were clearly angry at the constant calling.

It is IMPERATIVE that phone-bank coordinators train the volunteers properly. The system is "fool-proof", in the sense that it will not stop calling a number until it gets a survey answer. This means that people will be continually called until the caller logs in response correctly.

I don't want to discourage volunteering, but if you are making calls, please make sure your hard work is properly recorded into the system.

[steve Quigley]

Right on Sisu! Another liberal for Scott Brown. Now if we can only get rid of that liberal bum O'Flaherty. All this talk about compassion - it's all bs. Like my father used to say - a hard line for hard times.

[Jim]

Wow, it's amazing that so many people, many of them working people think that Brown is on their side, he is NOT. If you're too stupid to figure this out then you deserve what you end up with, and to the union guys, don't be surprised you wages, for new hires goes down, but I guess they only care about themselves.