Pat Dollard

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Boston Herald:

President Obama swooped down on Massachusetts yesterday to take on an obscure state senator threatening his entire White House agenda, in a dramatic 11th hour dash to rescue Democrat Martha Coakley as she battles surging Republican Scott Brown in the race for U.S. Senate.

“What Martha’s opponent is preaching, we’ve already tried and it didn’t work,” Obama told the rollicking crowd that filled a Northeastern University gymnasium for Coakley. “Understand what’s at stake here, Massachusetts. It’s whether we’re going backward or forward.”

Although a relative unknown just weeks ago, Brown, who has vowed to be the 41st vote against Obama’s health-care goal, yesterday drew thousands of supporters, who came from as far as Michigan and Washington state to cheer him at a Worcester rally.

“They put in a distress call to Washington, and the next thing you know, Air Force One is landing at Logan,” Brown told the fired-up Worcester crowd.

A Democratic win in tomorrow’s special election is seen as insurance for Obama’s health-care initiative, which would depend on Coakley as the Senate’s filibuster-proof 60th vote. It is also seen as a measure of Obama’s political sway.

“It will be very bad news for the health-care bill, not just because it’ll cost them the 60th vote, but because a lot of Democrats who voted for it might rethink that vote if Massachusetts elects a Republican senator,” Boston University political history professor Bruce Schulman said of a Brown win.

Amid several recent polls showing Brown ahead or tied with Coakley, the attorney general’s latest internal poll showed her leading by just 2 points, according to a Democratic source.

Yesterday Obama never referred to Brown by name, yet the Republican continued to define the conversation. Beyond the countless references to Brown’s now-famous pickup truck, the president was the latest to borrow Brown’s line about the vacancy created by Sen. Edward Kennedy’s death as the “people’s seat.” And while Brown has continually vowed he’ll be an independent voice in Washington, Obama attempted to steal back that title for Coakley.

“I want a senator who’s independent, too,” Obama said, adding that Coakley has “the character to be independent.”

“She became a lawyer not to cash in but to give working people a fair shake,” he said. “She became a lawyer to fight for working families like the one she grew up in.”

Coakley sought to redirect the anger that many see as propelling Brown in the race, saying the current recession is the product of “policies of the past.”

“We all know this economy is stuck in an incredible recession,” she said. “People deserve to be angry, but we can’t let that anger get in the way of remembering where it came from,” she said.

Following a series of recent attack ads, Brown urged Obama to bring civility to the campaign.

Said Brown, “How quickly the politics of hope have been replaced with the politics of desperation.”

He added, “It’s us against the machine.”