Massachusetts: What Happened?

How did the Massachusetts Senate race end up so close?

1. The Right Wing Noise Machine. 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, 60 minutes an hour, the Right Wing Noise Machine attacks Democrats and liberals. Their leaders are FOX and Rush Limbaugh, but there is an army behind them. To them, everything Democrats do is wrong and evil. And if the facts don't agree with their paranoia, then facts be damned. They never issue corrections or apologies, they just smear. It's who they are, it's what they do, and Democrats let them do it.

2. The Corporate Media amplifier. The "FOX Effect" extends far beyond FOX studios. Right-wing Republican Joe Scarborough gets 3 hours every morning on "liberal" MSNBC to echo FOX smears. The "gang of 4" in the White House Press Corps - Jake Tapper (ABC), Chip Reid (CBS), Chuck Todd (NBC), and Ed Henry (CNN) - throws every FOX smear directly into the face of Robert Gibbs. Just ask Van Jones.

3. Corporate Money. In those rare instances where powerful corporations can't directly control the news coverage of a story, they buy up vast amounts of ad time to attack whatever Democrats are doing. Democrats and progressives tried to buy ad time of their own, but we couldn't afford enough of them to make a difference.

4. Rahm Emanuel. As White House Chief of Staff, Rahm is the dealmaker-in-chief. And his approach to dealmaking is to give the rich and powerful 99% of what they want, and give The People 1% of what we need. Then he contemptuously tells us how brilliant he is and how stupid we are for not lavishing praise on his fabulous deal. If Obama wants to save his Presidency, he needs to Fire Rahm Now.

5. Joe Lieberman. Lieberman remains deeply bitter over his primary defeat by Netroots-backed Ned Lamont in 2006. He now spends every waking hour plotting to get revenge against the Netroots by making Rahm Emanuel's deals (see #3) even worse for The People. That's how we lost the hugely popular Medicare buy-in that would have saved the healthcare deal. The only way to deal with Lieberman is to Kill The Filibuster so his vote becomes irrelevant.

6. Martha Coakley. After winning the primary, Coakley took a month off - just like John Kerry did in 2004. She let Scott Brown go on the attack and waited until the very last week to fight back. Democrats must never let another candidate follow hte Kerry-Coakley strategy.