Practical Lessons From Brown's Win

GOPers are ecstatic with Sen.-elect Scott Brown's (R-MA) win last night. Dems are despondent, and bickering, over AG Martha Coakley's (D) loss.

But while DC debates the fate of Pres. Obama's health care initiative, both Dem and GOP strategists are pouring over each other's strategies, searching for clues that will give them a leg up in this fall's midterms.

Culled from a variety of Dem and GOP advisors, aides and consultants, Hotline OnCall has distilled the lessons learned from last night into a list of the 5 most important practical takeaways from the MA SEN contest:

5. Communication Is Key: DC Dems, Martha Coakley's strategists don't think very much of you right now. Coakley strategists, the same goes for DC Dems. Regardless of all the bickering about who is to blame, the simple fact is that communication between the MA-based campaign and the DC-based establishment completely broke down. Only when it was too late did the national party get involved.

On the other side, the NRSC began to mobilize last month, investing major dollars in the race and building an infrastructure with the help of the MA GOP and the Brown campaign. The groups shared polling information, on-the-ground strategy and message techniques. One system worked. One didn't. And now GOPers have 41 votes in the Senate.

4. Strong Candidates Matter: By all accounts, Brown was personable, in touch with his base and with parts of the electorate that might not have voted for him otherwise and a dogged campaigner. Coakley was aloof, didn't know -- or didn't care -- that Curt Schilling played for the Red Sox and took a significant part of the general election campaign off.

Take a look at some of the Dems who beat GOPers over recent years, or at Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) in '09. Even in conservative districts, Dems who were significantly better candidates than their GOP rivals won, while McDonnell stomped his Dem foe in a state that is trending toward Dems. Quality campaigns matter a lot, but having a gaffe-free candidate can elevate a good campaign to a great one. Even in the era of big-money politics, strong candidates can still make the difference.

3. Stay Home: This should come as a shock to exactly no one -- voters are angry, and DC is getting the brunt of the anger. Coakley's decision to come to DC a week before Election Day for a fundraiser with lobbyists may go down as one of the worst decisions in recent campaign history. With apologies to The Weekly Standard's John McCormack, it wasn't the incident in which a well-known Coakley aide shoved him that got MA voters angry, it was Coakley's very presence in DC.

Meanwhile, Brown out-hustled Coakley on the ground so much that she may as well have been in another state, or in DC, the whole time anyway. The lesson, according to race-watchers: Stay home, get your boots on the ground and go shake hands with voters, even if it's cold and you have to stand outside Fenway Park to do it (Side note, to go along with our Schilling reference above: Don't make fun of the local sports team. Unless you're Mike Bloomberg and you really can't stand the Yankees, it's just never a good idea.). The benefit a candidate gets from being known for visiting every corner of their state is worth loads more than any fundraiser.

2. Contrast Often: There were real differences between the candidates in this race, and an effective contrast strategy won it for Brown. He cast Coakley as the insider and pseudo-incumbent from the beginning. Realizing her mistake, Coakley spent the last week launching everything she could at Brown -- that he wanted to turn away rape victims, that he was a clone of Pres. Bush, and that his signature pickup truck was parked on Wall Street, not Main Street. Attacks, to work, have to be credible. The Coakley campaign's attacks simply were not.

Dems realize they have to cast the '10 elections as a contrast between themselves and GOPers if they're going to win. But it's hard to accomplish: GOPers tried the strategy in '06 and '08, and they still got thumped. The last successful contrast election came in '02, when Bush and GOPers effectively cast themselves as better able to defend a rattled nation from terrorist attacks. Dems will try the same technique on the economy, but given the constant bad economic news of the last year, it will prove just as difficult as any other attempt by a majority to shift blame to the minority.

1. Define First: What was wrong with Coakley's (and Pres. Obama's) characterization of Brown as parking his truck on Wall Street? Nothing, but it did show off the fact that Brown's efforts to cast himself as a real person in touch with the common man worked. Everyone knew about the pickup truck! Meanwhile, no one knew much about Coakley, except that she doesn't much care for the Red Sox or their former ace. She maintained high favorable ratings, but no one knew exactly why they liked her.

Both Dem candidates in NJ and VA were criticized for waiting too long to define their opponents, and in both cases they lost. Coakley, too, waited far too long to begin hammering Brown on any subject that might have turned MA voters off. Dems will press their incumbents to get ahead of the game and get every piece of dirt about their rivals into the media and on TV (Senate Maj. Leader Harry Reid will be the most prominent example of the tactic).

Campaigns are about stories. GOPers knew their main character in Brown, but Dems didn't understand their protagonist -- until Brown's campaign stepped in and depressed Coakley's vote by using the Christmas Day terror attempt to paint her as a coddler of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Defining one's opponent, and the terms of the race, first and most often, lead to winning campaigns.