We Salute Martha Coakley
January 19, 2010
by The New Agenda
|The New Agenda salutes Martha Coakley on her historic run to become Massachusetts’ first female senator.
We recognize the challenges that women face when they run for political office. A study done by Brown University in 2008 titled Why Are Women Still Not Running for Office? describes why so few women are running for office. The innate biases in our system.
The New Agenda is devoted to changing that. To reinventing and reinvigorating women’s advocacy such that brave women like Martha Coakley are no longer the exception.
You’ll be seeing big announcements shortly by our organization. The New Agenda will continue to lead the fight for women and our issues. We hope that you will consider joining us as a member.
And on the lighter side for those of us disappointed by the Coakley loss, a quotable quote made by The New Agenda’s Thia Lawson during this evening to cheer you up:
The only upside is that Chris Matthews looks like a little boy
lost in a mall about to start crying for his mother.
We fight on! Please join us and stay tuned…
I am not understanding how being brave and fighting on will change in a situation where the cards are stacked against you.
women can only run on experience, because if they don’t have experience, they have no experience and are supposed to shut up. with a record come the opponents tearing everything apart and spin. while the male has no record and represents hope and change. we had “hope and change” in 2008, we had “hope and change” in massachusetts and Ford in NY is already stepping up the label hope and change against Gillibrand. he is running the 41 vote, but nobody is running on the 18th vote.
just think the roles reversed. the woman a junior state senator with nude picture from college days (she would not be junior state senator to begin with). now imagine she would have worked on wall street. can anyone imagine anybody would have bought the story with working calls driving a 200000 pick up truck?
brown as a female would have been a no starter against a male state attorney general.
i see just repetition of the Massachusetts staked game in variations happening this year.
Thanks Thia.
That and my daughter asking: “can they fire him now?” were the only bright spots this evening. So sad to get so close and then lose. Back to 17 – and who knows in November. We’ll be supporting the strong Republican women running in November and hoping to save our Dem women!
marille –
At the darkest moment comes the light!
Stick with us in 2010 – become a member – big things in store.
Coakley’s loss was not a referendum on her or women. It was a rejection of the administration and the so called health reform bill that is so compromised that rejection of it comes from all quarters.
For instance, Coakley won in the primary handily when she rejected Obama’s health-care bill. She lost progressive and feminist support, when she agreed to vote for the senate bill that was just as bad, if not worse than the house version.
For liberal pro-choice women, she became a cold fish to those of us who rejected the anti-choice language in the senate bill, as well as the Stupak-Pitts amendment in the house bill. N.O.W., NARAL and most of the pro-choice women’s organizations reject both versions of the health-care bill and have publicly stated that either versions of these bills would essentially eliminate abortion access for most women.
Additionally, both versions of this bill are polluted with insurance loop holes and give-aways. There is no public option or cost containment. Its mandatory, and people will be fined it they don’t purchase from private companies. Now, instead of rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to help pay for health-care, as promised by the Obama campaign, they want to tax working and middle-class people with existing plans that are even remotely decent. There’s a provision preventing the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada, and the list goes on and on!!!!
The democrats have been bought and sold by the banking industry and have shamelessly robbed American treasure to feed the bankers greed. Now we have watched health-care reform morph into another corporate bail-out at the expense of the people. You don’t have to be a republican to reject this crap. The Obama administration’s lies have been breath taking and people are angry about it, and the democratic leadership in both houses is just as bad.
Marille,
Ford is a wall Street whore and New Yorker’s are just as angry about the wall Street bailouts as everyone else. Moreover Gillibrand voted against the bank bailouts and will easily be able to distinguish herself from the Obama administration and the bankers. Ford is an executive for Marrel Lynch, is anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-union, etc…. I don’t think N.Y. voters will go for him. Many democrats here think Gillibrand is too conservative, Ford is more conservative than most republicans up here. He’ll never survive the democratic primary. In New York, only registered democrats can vote in a democratic primary.
I liked Martha, she seemed very competent. Women don’t have to win every election to be valid as candidates. She could have won if she was willing to represent The People of Massachusetts instead of the unpopular Democrat Agenda. Keep in mind she must have run many state elections if she is the AG.
Martha lost not because she was a woman, but because she made some critical errors–including siding with the Democrats and going AGAINST what her constituents wanted via health care–and ran a bad campaign. The fact that she was a woman was irrelevant. To claim misogyny brought her down diminishes what happened to Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in the extreme.
The more I read hear the more I think a better name for this site would be The Old Agenda because I sense a lot of been there done that going on here. I do not know the average age of a contributing member of TNA nor do I know your background either in knowledge or practical experience with feminism but I get a sense that tells me not nearly enough in either category.
Just like not every vote against Obama was racist (dumbest thing Democrats ever said), not every vote against a woman is sexist. Coakley, if she wanted to win, should have run a centrist, pro-woman, pro-middle class, campaign. Instead, she ran as an arrogant member of the Obama team and got exactly what she deserved.
If women want to win we have to be strategic people, and Coakley should be an example of how to lose. Big time.
I didnt see sexism in the election, but I do in the aftermath. Obama’s folks are spinning things to blame Martha when the blame lies with their lousy managment this last 12 months. Throwing her under the bus now and failing to take the blame and acknowledging the problem rests with them means the GOP will take control at the end of this year. Blame the woman is as old as Adam and Eve.
Anote sexist activity also arose on some of the left of center blogs where to discredit Sen Brown the posted pictures of his daughters in bikinis at their grandmothers party. Would they have posted pictures of Obamas daughters? Michelle? Doubtful.No hands off on them but conservatives daughters remain fair game for the left
Spot on comment Bruce, and I concur 100%. NOW is when groups like TNA and other pro-woman groups should call out the misogyny….problem is they already cried wolf.
Brown supporters trying to suppress vote by bullying
By Joan Vennochi, Globe Columnist | January 18, 2010
Scott Brown is running for U.S. Senate as a pleasant guy in a pickup truck. But a mean spirit drives some of his campaign.
At a West Springfield rally on Sunday, a Brown supporter yelled out “Shove a curling iron up her butt’’. The remark was a crude reference to Brown’s opponent, Attorney General Martha Coakley, who was criticized in a recent Boston Globe story for failing to aggressively prosecute a sexual abuse case involving a curling iron.
After that charming rallying cry, a video clip shows Brown grinning and saying, “We can do this.’’
A campaign spokesman said the Republican state senator didn’t hear what was said and was merely giving his standard stump reply. But if Brown didn’t hear it then, shouldn’t he – especially as the father of two daughters – be outraged now ?
Instead, when Sen. John F. Kerry called upon Brown to curb his supporters, a Brown campaign spokesman replied “People are tired of John Kerry’s partisan politics. His baseless accusations reflect the desperate last gasps of a flailing campaign.’’
If Brown isn’t outraged by the crudeness of the curling iron remark, you would think Massachusetts voters would be. But so far, they’re more outraged by Coakley’s misstatement on a radio show that ex-Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling is a “Yankee fan’’, as in the evil empire, New York ball club.
Coakley is accountable for her record as a prosecutor – and for her campaign mistakes. But her opponent should also be accountable for the unpleasant rhetoric that some of his supporters are embracing in the last hours of this hard-fought campaign.
Messages posted on Coakley’s campaign Facebook include these vicious sentiments: “Scott Brown should rape Martha Coakley and then deny her emergency contraception’’. “Martha Coakley getting raped would complete my life.’’ “Abortion is wrong. Kill her.’’ After one message that states “Looking forward to the rally Friday, Martha,’’ a woman named Amelia Bosley writes:“Hope she gets shot.’’ Imagine putting your name to that in the name of political change.
According to Coakley campaign spokeswoman Alex Zaroulis, some Brown supporters surrounded Coakley’s car on Saturday in Gloucester and yelled “You suck.’’
On Monday, a Brown supporter in Pittsfield lay down on the road in front of Coakley’s car, Zaroulis said.
Brown should answer for some of the ugliness, which is reminscent of the misogynist attacks directed at Hillary Clinton when she was running for president.
Yet, somehow Coakley is getting all the blame for the tenor of their bitter showdown. Yes, she ran negative ads – and bad ones at that. But, Brown supporters put up the first negative ad, which distorted a statement Coakley made about taxes. Brown said he wished the ad would go away, but did nothing to make that happen. Will not-my-problem be his attitude in Washington?
Brown backers say they are voting for change. Instead, they are supporting a slick, packaged politician who is happy to manipulate them.There’s nothing new about that.
Brown appeared at Monday’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast for a purely political photo-op. Then, Brown called out Coakley for giving a political speech at the event.
He hid behind his daughters rather than admit the truth. He did sponsor an amendment that would have allowed emergency medical personnel to deny emergency contraception to rape victims. If he believes in that principle, he should acknowledge it. Who will he hide behind in Washington?
The polls are reportedly breaking Brown’s way and he may win. The only way to stop him is to get out and vote for Coakley.
Turnout is key. The Democrat’s best hope is a strong ground game.
That’s why Brown supporters are trying to suppress the vote, by bullying and making Coakley supporters believe the cause is hopeless.
That’s the picture Brown is trying to paint. It isn’t pretty, like a lot of his campaign.
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