National issues and the Attorney General. Can Coakley master the discussion in just a few short months?

With several of the Bay State's Congressmen falling all over each other to enter the Senate race, Attorney General Martha Coakley continues to look like the early favorite. She has state-wide name recognition, a base of volunteers, and the moxie to go ahead and enter the race without waiting for the Kennedy family to make a move. Obviously Coakley begins the race well short of her opponents financially, but she believes that she will be able to raise the money, and there's no real reason to doubt her.

So what could trip her up? In her press conference last week, Coakley said, "I believe that voters want somebody who will represent them well and who will do the job well, and will look at what each candidate brings to the table." In terms of background, Coakley certainly brings unique experience to the table among the candidates. She has never served in a legislative body (she lost a special election for State Representative in 1997), but was elected District Attorney in 1998 and was unopposed for both re-election in 2004 and in the race for Attorney General in 2006.


By my calculations, that means Coakley has not participated in a debate in more than ten years. I doubt this will be a major issue in and of itself (Capuano, Markey, and Lynch haven't exactly been in the debate club recently), but I do wonder how she will fare. Afterall, the issues of debate are likely to be very different than what she has grown accustomed to. And thus, we have arrived at what I foresee to be the one major stumbling block of her candidacy: issues. 


On her website, Coakley's bio, media clips, and volunteer and donor tabs are clearly called out at the top of the page. Only in a small link on the bottom can a voter find her issues. Even here, the issues (while substantial and informative) read like something from the AG's site. "Protecting Consumers," "Community Safety and Crime Prevention," and "Cyber Safety and Security," are all real issues that she has tackled in her current job. However, they are not the stuff of debates or U.S. Senate stump speeches.


When she steps out on the campaign trail, Coakley will be battling wits with sitting Congressmen who play a role in debate about the Federal government everyday. They know foreign policy, national health care reform, defense spending, the federal deficit, and tax policy in ways she cannot hope to match in just 3+ months before the Democratic primary. Coakley will have to familiarize herself with these national issues as thoroughly and as quickly as possible - not because the election will untimately be decided by candidate's positions (wouldn't Tip be pleased) but because any major miscues could help her opponents paint her as not-ready-for primetime.


Given that Coakley began laying the groundwork for this campaign some time ago, her advisers have more than likely already begun her education on the major national issues. If so, and if she comes out firing on the policy questions that dominate the discussion in Washington, Martha Coakley could be very difficult to beat.