From what I read of her campaign, cousin Martha (me maternal gram wuz bairn a Coakley in Malden MA in 1899) appears to have been disinclined to sully her hands with the vulgar impedimenta of vote-mongering. It was this state's electorate, after all, that gave rise to Tip O'Neill's adage that "all politics is local."

Anent O'Neill, the story is told in a few variants, but this is how I first heard it (pasted in from a Massachusetts history site): As a young man he ran for the Cambridge city council. On election day, a neighbor told him that she would vote for him, "even though you didn't ask me." When O'Neill protested that he had known her since he was a child, had shoveled her walk and cut her grass, and didn't think he had to ask for her vote, she replied, "Tom, let me tell you something. People like to be asked." The next day, O'Neill's father ascribed the loss to Tip's failure to work hard enough in his own neighborhood.

Coakley's problem, or one of them, appears to have been that she expected consent as a matter of course, and didn't think she had to ask. Let Brown enjoy his three-year tenure: he'll face some far stronger candidate in 2012.

cordially,