Our illustrious founder, Jason330, was at the meet and greet with Chris Coons last night, and he passes on his impressions:
Well I don’t know if Coons can beat Mike Castle, but listening to him candidly lay out his campaign’s strengths and weakness on his way to winning over an audience of Delaware4Obama grassroots activists, I
know he can give him a hell of a scare.
Here were the take aways for me:
1) This will be a tough fought campaign that will not descend into New Jersey style attack ads calling out Castle directly on his advanced age or other possible “low road” bullet points. Rather, Coons plans
to consistently point out that Mike Castle is a Republican. For Democrats that have crossed party lines to vote for Castle in the past, the message seem to be that it is okay to have voted for Mike
Castle. Mike Castle is a nice guy. But the Republican party has forced him into more and more Conservative votes. He is a nice guy, but he does not seem to have the courage to stand up to Mitch
McConnell and the horrible Republican party. Mike Castle’s recent record is clear. He works for the Republican Party in DC now – not for Delaware.
2) There is going to be a lot of help from the White House. Coons spoke with the President yesterday in the Oval office. The President and David Plouffe are very interested in this race and they think Chris Coons can win it. They do not intend to repeat the mistakes of Massachusetts and stay on the sidelines. Having the President or First Lady in Delaware will be huge.
3) Coons, while probably outspent by Castle, thinks that he can out grass roots organize the incumbent by tapping into Obama and Markell activist who are spoiling for a fight. There are a large number of Delawareans who were passionate about getting Obama elected. They are equally passionate about seeing that the President is successful. They view it as their duty to see that Delaware’s seat stays in
Democratic hands.
4) I was a little surprised by this one: Coons’ campaign manager thinks that Christine O’Donnell will ramp up her primary campaign since Biden has dropped out. The campaign is pretty sure that O’Donnell will try to tap into simmering teabag anger and will be a factor bleeding off (possibly) 10% of Castle’s support. I don’t see any signs that O’Donnell has a campaign, so I’m not optimistic about that. Besides, O’Donnell telling everyone that Castle is a liberal doesn’t really help Coons with his message that Castle is a Party Line
republican.
That’s my take on the meeting.