Last week, I compared Elizabeth Warren to Martha Coakley, the Democrat who lost “Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat” to Scott Brown. Today, Politico confirms that Warren, like Coakley, is struggling against Brown, albeit more glamorously. A PPP poll in mid-August gave Brown a 5 point lead. That’s the same margin by which Brown defeated Coakley
Politico notes that Warren is losing about a fifth of Democratic voters to Brown, and that more voters think she’s too liberal than believe he’s too conservative — by an 11 percent margin. Meanwhile, Brown in the words of important Democratic donor Bruce Percelay, is “the perfect Massachusetts Republican; he’s socially moderate and fiscally conservative and not a strong ideologue — people are very comfortable with that.”
Percelay himself is very comfortable with Brown. A close friend of John Kerry and the donor of thousands of dollars to Reps. Ed Markey and Mike Capuano as well as the national Democratic Party, Percelay is supporting the incumbent Republican Senator in this election. He explained:
Elizabeth Warren is not someone who I can comfortably wrap my arms around. . . .While she’s very quick to chastise the wealthy, a lot of her fundraising is coming from very wealthy people on the West Coast. There’s a concern about how genuine she is. Conversely, Scott Brown is an extremely genuine person.
Percelay is far from the only Massachusetts Dem politico to support Brown. And even the Democratic mayor of Boston has yet to endorse Warren.
Warren will be a featured speaker at the Democratic Convention this week. But whether that will help her back home remains to be seen. As Marisa DeFranco, whom Warren defeated in the Democratic primary, puts it: “There’s a real disconnect between the national Democrats and people on the ground.”
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