A Personality Contest

Blumenthal goes through various scenarios and concludes that "Scott Brown is the likely winner." Tom Schaller looks at things within Coakley's control that went wrong:

Aside from healthcare and the implicit notion that Coakley would be a stand-in vote for the deceased icon whose seat she would be filling, what was the Coakley "platform"? Unless you are a particularly dynamic or celebrity-like candidates, when you are the nominee of the favored party in the state you want to avoid allowing the race to devolve into a personality contest.