Ghosts of evil past

RadioBoston asked what questions people have for Martha Coakley. Here’s one:

According to lawyers all over the area when you were district attorney, you trained a generation of ADAs to lie in court, withhold evidence, and disregard both truth and justice, all to further your pursuit of higher political office. As attorney general, you have quashed investigations into Beacon Hill, allowed insurance rates to skyrocket, and failed to address the mortgage crisis in any way that truly helps homeowners or punishes banks. When you insisted on arguing a case before the Supreme Court yourself, you somehow failed to convince a conservative pro-prosecutor Supreme Court to rule in favor of prosecutors. That ruling is what has now led to the fallout from Annie Dookhan being such a mess. As governor, who would you lie to, lie about, threaten, or lock up in order to improve education, transportation, human rights, and economic opportunity in the Commonwealth?

Here is what I wrote in 2010. I still believe it to be true:

Martha Coakley is deeply unprincipled. She serves her own ambition, and nothing else. She does not believe in the rule of law, or fairness, or justice. She willfully damaged her community as a prosecutor over and over again. She sanctioned child molestation, shielded predators, and persecuted the innocent. And when given the responsibility to hire and train young attorneys, she coached them to lie to judges, conceal evidence, and do everything in their considerable power to destroy people’s lives, innocent or not, in a quest for headlines.

I will not consent to give a person like that my vote.

While I would prefer that political candidates be, on the whole, cut from better cloth than they generally are, I do not refuse to vote for candidates simply because they are thoroughly flawed. I do not refuse to vote for candidates simply because their ideals, principles, beliefs, goals, or actions are at odds with some of mine. I can overlook a lot, but I cannot vote for a person I truly believe is evil. I believe with all my heart that Martha Coakley’s success has been a triumph of evil.

I know that there are many good people and informed people who will vote for Martha Coakley. You, dear reader, may be one of those people. You may believe that Martha Coakley cannot possibly be as bad or dangerous or immoral as all that, or you may believe that there are other concerns which warrant voting for someone who is. If so, please know that I disagree.