Pre-Mortems Trickle In For Coakley

With Republican Scott Brown leading Democrat Martha Coakley by five to 10 percentage points in nearly all independent polls (one exception: Research 2000 showed the race tied late last week), the prognostications of Coakley's defeat have come rolling in, and the pre-mortems on her campaign have started to trickle with them.


Talk on CNN and MSNBC has focused on what will happen to health care reform if Brown wins; FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver puts Coakley Brown as a 3 to 1 favorite, while Tom Schaller runs through intangibles that have favored Brown. Republican strategist Doug Heye writes in U.S. News & World Report that the race shows President Obama and his agenda have become a "political albatross"; Politico reports that finger-pointing has among Democrats has already begun; a Democratic strategist has some negative things to say about Coakley to The Washington Examiner's Byron York.