On this site and lots of other places, I've seen tons of explanations, narratives, about why Coakley is (per the polls) losing the Massachussets senate race:
- "She's uninspiring, and has run a generic, horrible campaign." (can be said of 99.9% of politicians including Scott Brown, but they still win elections fine.)
- "She forgot to campaign in December" (really?)
- "Series of gaffes" (Which would bearly even notable if not for the media narrative surrounding her inexplicable demise.)
- "Massachusetts voters are just sexist" (possibly the least damaging "explanation" narrative, assuming non-sexist Massachusetts voters who aren't necessarily pulling for Coakley don't take offense at it. )
My take, there may be a little bit to each of these: but aren't the polls themselves a self fulfilling prophecy, since they force people to ask all of the above? I really don't see coakley as THAT bad of a candidate.
I think this all started with that Rasmussen poll showing coakley +9. This article by Scott Rasmussen himself, really got me thinking about it: how much do polls themselves drive the narrative?
Here's what that +9 poll started: Several news cycles of coverage, all leading with "What the hell is going on in Massachusetts, that the republican is within single digits?" leading to inevitable questions of "What's wrong with Martha Coakley?". Which leaves people to posit explanations such as the four i listed above.
Basically, Once the air of inevitability was shattered, people started asking "Why is she losing?". And it's not just the media, you'd see that question asked around the "water cooler" (sorry for the cliche).
But if people want to keep the conversation going and seem intelligent, EVERYONE, the media pundits, the regular people at your office, even the progressive democrats, would have to find some glaring fault with Martha Coakley to explain away the polls.
The result is that basically everyone, even liberals, portray Brown positively and Coakely negatively, not because they're biased but because nothing else makes sense. Even on Dkos, people are bashing Coakley. Brown-- despite being a total idiot-- seems to get gruding respect for apparently running a strong campaign.
I think the explanation is a lot simpler: The national environment being generally bad for the democrats, the demoralized democratic base due to the recent long-painful-death of the "Public Option", and the fact that the republicans are actually contesting this race rather than leaving brown to tilt at windmills on his own, created the perfect storm... for a +9 coakley win projected by an a republican-leaning pollster.
But after that poll she dropped like a rock, because of the narrative surrounding the obvious question of why a democrat was doing so poorly in Massachussets polls. At least that's my 2c.