On these pages, I hear plenty of support for Don Berwick. I know his background as a healthcare innovator. He’s expressed “progressive” — even paleo-liberal — peace-and-justice values. He supports single-payer, he’s against casinos. I get it.
I also know why people support Steve Grossman. Part of it is personal: He has a reputation as a decent guy. In a very brief version of his stump speech at an event in Arlington, I was impressed by his passion for social justice. He’s about universal pre-K, family sick leave — a discernible emphasis on work and family, kitchen-table issues. I get it.
Coakley? I don’t know how to pin her down, or how to attach a particular cause, program, or priority to her, much less envision how she would get it through the legislature. I didn’t catch her in either Arlington or at the convention, so I confess I probably haven’t heard her unfiltered pitch as much as I should have.
She always gives a very good impression as a decent, nice person and a dedicated public servant. But I have the same sense of vagueness from her campaign this time as I did when she ran for Senate. What makes Martha tick? What is her reason for running? Why her, right now? What two or three things are most important to her? In a nutshell, I can’t identify those things.
I know that her organization is reasonably strong; she’s got Kate on her side, and I know of several people very active locally who support her. She’s not in bad shape. So this is an invitation to those Coakley supporters who are reading this – and I know there are more than a few: Why Martha, this year, now? What are her priorities? Can you pitch me on her?
Addendum: Here’s her convention speech, which unfortunately doesn’t really help me all that much:
“fairness, equality, opportunity for all”
Boxes ticked: Minimum wage, equal pay, climate change, not teaching to the test.
Personal anecdote – brother’s suicide. Mental health parity and resources – (big applause).
Yeah I don’t think this is helping answer my question.
Though that is becoming a bigger issue w/r/t to substance abuse and public safety — a very welcome change in emphasis in our political culture. Mayor Walsh is helping with this as well.
1. I feel that I know her a bit, after supporting her in the last several elections and meeting her on a number of occasions, including a house party at our home and another at a friend’s home. She’s pragmatic, thoughtful, has a fabulous dry sense of humor, and doesn’t let her ego get in the way. She’s got the temperament to work well with the legislature and across state government to get things done. Her values are all about ensuring fairness and opportunity for the people of Massachusetts.
2. She’s got 15 years of experience working her way up in Massachusetts state government, culminating in two terms as the state’s first woman AG. She gets how it works at all levels and knows the players.
3. She’s done creative and effective work with the AG’s office, including challenging the Bush EPA on its inaction on climate change, filing the first suit against DOMA on behalf of Massachusetts married same-sex couples (and how those dominoes have fallen since! this year, for the first time ever, we were able to fill out one customs and immigration form when entering the country after a vacation and file one joint federal tax return in April, just like straight spouses), and created an innovative unit to fight foreclosures that is keeping people in their homes. I’ve been hearing stories from many people helped by the AG’s office in dealing with predatory lenders and other unethical businesses. She’ll do the same – put the office to work in innovative and practical ways to help people – as Governor.
4. She recruited Maura Healey to work in the AG’s office. That one almost stands by itself! I know others in the AG’s office; they’re smart, committed, ethical and a testament to Martha’s ability to recruit and motivate quality people. And the people I’ve met who work for Martha like, support and have great loyalty to her, which says a lot about her as a leader.
5. She’s won two statewide general elections for AG as well as the Democratic special Senate primary. This isn’t her first rodeo.
6. I respect, from the bottom of my being, how she didn’t stay down for a minute after the devastating loss in the special Senate general election. She picked herself right back up, got back to work, and won reelection as AG less than a year later. She’s tough, and she doesn’t quit. And she learned the crucial lesson from that unsuccessful race: she has so far built the best grassroots campaign organization in the race (with a little help from Kate Donoghue, of course!).
7. She listens and learns from people. She won over several delegates in our town through her attention and engagement on their issues. My spouse raves about how impressive she was visiting her agency to learn about community-based mental health programs.
8. Like other commenters in this thread, I like supporting qualified women candidates for office. In this race, Martha has the most relevant experience to do the job, the best shot at winning in November, and the policy differences on things I care about between the Democratic candidates are marginal (note that I’m a single payer skeptic). Girls should grow up seeing that they can be Senators, AGs … and Governors. Go Martha!
Agreed re: personality, temperament, sense of humor.
So what you would expect from, say, the first year of a Coakley governorship? She gets elected and gets to work doing … what? Dead serious question.
She and her current team seem to really understand some of the problems with the current state of mental health care and the stigma that people with mental health issues face. She and her current team have also demonstrated that they are eager to learn what they don’t know. She has approached learning more about this issue with an eagerness and curiosity that is not common. She also approaches the issue with passion and an open heart.
Several months ago she came to my place of work to learn more. She spent time at two day programs listening to the people who receive services for mental health issues and the staff who provide services. She also met with our executive team. While there she asked questions and listened, really listened.
I have seen her a number of times since. Each time she brings up the visit and talks about how much she was moved and how much she learned. She has said true parity in the treatment of people with mental illness is one of her priorities. She mentioned it again in her speech at the Convention. I believe she will get to work on this.
But it’s my bedtime, and I’ve got a town committee meeting after work tomorrow. Very briefly, I’d expect Coakley’s first year to involve useful steps/programs rather than radical reinvention, with a focus on education, human services (neglected under Deval), criminal justice, economic development, continued incentives for renewable energy and green economy. Inside rather than outside approach with Lege. Will see if I can put together more substantive Coakley first year predictions post this weekend.
A fair question.
It’s obvious to me why people would support Don Berwick, Steve Grossman, and even, to a slightly lesser extent, Joe Avellone or Juliette Kayyem. The people I hear from who are supporting Martha Coakley tout her impressive record defending the rights of women and the LGBTQ community, but I really don’t think she’s any more progressive than Berwick or Grossman on those issues. At least on LGBTQ issues, I believe Grossman’s record is just as strong. It just so happens that as AG, Coakley has been in a position to defend these positions on social issues in court, and she has done so effectively. I understand that’s a large part of why she’s getting the backing of Planned Parenthood, EMILY’s List, Mass Equality, etc., but I have no doubt that Berwick or Grossman would have taken the same stances if they were in her place, or that they will just as vigorously fight for these rights as governor.
I don’t mind the idea of a Governor Coakley, but I’d like to hear why her supporters believe not just that she would be good, but what makes her better than her remaining primary opponents. Personally, I think that the others bring a lot more to the table in terms of relevant experience and that they offer clear themes to their policy priorities that will resonate with voters. As somebody who supported Coakley in the 2009 special senate primary, I fear that the popularity she currently enjoys in her high-profile position will not be enough to carry her to victory in a general election if she doesn’t more clearly articulate her priorities and vision for the Commonwealth.
In a nutshell, it often seems like she’s running for another term as AG: talking about her record seems to reinforce that impression.
One could argue that she’s in a better position on LGBTQ issues (for instance) because she’s worked on them directly as AG. But what’s the legislative agenda? Or the executive agenda?
She seems to be the Shannon O’Brien of this race, running on her record in another office mostly it seems because others think she should.
I’m weary of supporting her because I know she won’t be able to do the things she has done as AG. It’s a different office than AG, which one should run as a different race than one for AG. I’m fine with her as AG (which is why I’m supporting Maura Healey), but I still don’t actually know what she will do as Cheif Executive of the Commonwealth.
I’m supporting Steve Grossman because I can see what he would do as Governor. I can see Grossman doing this, and how his roots from a family business owners can play into that. I, however, cannot see Coakley doing that based on what she is talking about on the campaign trail. The choice seemed obvious to me.
Charley asks, “Why Martha? Why now?”
Martha is running for Governor to stand for the same progressive values she has exhibited as AG. She speaks passionately about turning this economy around for everyone, not just Wall Street, not those who already have so much. She’s committed to ending the achievement gap in our schools to help every child reach his or her potential. She has made increasing access to mental health care a top priority. Martha dealt with tragedy in her own family, and she’s pledged that no family should be forced to deal with mental illness alone.
I’ve been knocking on doors for Martha since the caucuses ended. I think that I have knocked on more than a 1000 doors so far. Martha herself has joined me twice. When I talk with voters they are ready to support her. One of the people who is volunteering with me tells me that he is in his home today because of Martha and what the AG’s office has done to keep people in homes.
It is 2014 and in response to the question “Why now?” I say that it is time that we elected a woman to be our governor. I’m not one to vote for a candidate just because she is a woman, but when she is an outstanding candidate with a strong record of accomplishment, I say yes, the time is now.
Come meet Martha at an event at Faneuil Hal at 10:00 AM on Saturday, June 28. You can hear Martha talk in her own words and give her own answer to the questions of “Why Martha? Why now?”
You and I have been quite respectful of each other’s opposing views in this race-and I am elated you are joining me in backing Mike Lake.
But, I think you failed to answer Charley’s question. On the social issues that are important to progressives-choice and gay rights-she has a great record as Attorney General-but I agree with Andrews it’s a record sure to be matched by Grossman or Berwick. On the key questions of education, income inequality, and how to make our state successful for all it’s residents for years to come I have heard great rhetoric and generalities but very few tangible public policies that will address this issues.
Berwick has Medicare for all, ending homelessness and poverty, a great transit plan, no reliance on regressive casino revenue, and an education plan not reliant on further privatization or teaching to the test.
Grossman has a strong pre-K plan, paid family leave, higher minimum wage, and expanding union rights.
What does Coakley have, beyond her gender or her liberalism on choice and equality to match that? I am not sure I’ve heard that answer yet.
I strongly feel this discussion should conform to the Fenway pledge about keeping 2010 out of it.
Sorry, anytime I ever see a statement like this telling me that a (even one of very many) reason I should vote for someone is because of some innate characteristic they possess, that person immediately gets a negative check-mark.
If she is the best candidate, she will get my vote, if she is a close second best candidate and a woman, she will not.
We don’t live in a world yet in which people are judged solely as individuals — and we may never. There is indeed a social value to electing fully capable women to prominent positions — just as there was a social value in electing an African American to be President.
In the distant glorious future, I suppose we’ll simply elect the person with the genetic material most suitable to be governor regardless of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, age, or occupation. Till then…
with “breaking the glass ceiling” as a tiebreaker among otherwise comparable candidates. Setting an example of diversity and possibility is not a bad thing at all.
The question is always whether they are, in fact, otherwise comparable.
It sounds like you’ve just offered the argument for the currently-discredited affirmative action program.
Is that what you meant?
It’s a perfectly lovely idea with lovely long-term consequences. And here I thought you were a liberal.
It is a sad stereotype that “affirmative action” hires are incompetent. An affirmative action hire is supposed to be fully qualified for the job just lacking some of the just-like-us cred that dominant groups take for granted.
I didn’t say I oppose affirmative action, I asked if that was the argument you intended. I’m happy to say that I am a liberal and I have always supported affirmative action.
The intended consequence of affirmative action, in the classical argument, has been that it encouraged employers (or in this case, voters) to actively seek out highly qualified members of the targeted minority precisely in order to avoid the stereotype that affirmative action hires are incompetent.
We saw that play out in the 2010 campaign (when supporters of Ms. Coakley made the same argument). The result was that a female candidate was recruited who was, and is, superior in pretty much every way to what “Senator Coakley” would have been.
I suggest that we do the same in this election. If the goal is to identify a woman who is to break the “glass ceiling” of the corner office (I assume we agree that Jane Swift doesn’t count), then it seems to me we should be recruiting a far more compelling candidate than Martha Coakley.
I, and others, have offered numerous arguments in support of our proposition that Ms. Coakley is not the best candidate — none of them having anything to do with gender. In this election, you would have us support a sub-standard candidate (in comparison to Don Berwick) soley because she is a woman.
If the gender of our candidate is important, then I suggest a superior approach is to actively recruit a far superior woman between now and the next gubernatorial campaign. Several names come to mind — including Pat Jehlen and Denise Provost — two excellent and very progressive women who currently well-represent Somerville in the legislature.
I appreciate your comment, and I respect your position. I, most respectfully, beg to differ with several aspects of it.
Regarding “the same progressive values she has exhibited as AG”, that is precisely my concern. Her efforts to support casino gambling betray what I mean by “progressive values”. We already use the lottery to derive far too much of our state revenues from our most destitute. Casino gambling will only worsen the plundering of our poor. I see nothing “progressive’ about that stance. It is no accident that the contemplated locations of the casinos are in our poorest, rather than our wealthiest, cities and towns. When “progressive” Democrats line up to site casinos and lottery outlets in Dover, Concord, Wellesley, and similar towns, then talk to me about “progressive” revenue generation policies.
Ms. Coakley’s consistent support for the Patriot Act and the several expansions of police and government authority — especially around surveillance and internet privacy — is, in my view inconsistent with progressive values. In fact, in those areas she has more in common with the conservative right clamoring to “protect us” by shredding our rights to privacy and our constitutional protections from search.
In my view, “it is time we elected a woman” is far and away your weakest argument. I remember that being offered in 2009/2010 as well — it is as misguided to today as it was then. Massachusetts voters rejected that argument in 2010. The result was Senator Elizabeth Warren, a FAR superior Senator than Ms. Coakley ever could have been.
In my view, it will be “time we elected a woman” when a woman steps forward for governor who clearly stands apart as a courageous leader with a clear vision that stands in stark contrast to the “centrist” Republican pap being offered by Charlie Baker — a candidate like Deval Patrick or like Don Berwick.
I apparently take a different approach to a candidate’s “record of accomplishment” than you. I compare to Ms. Coakley’s record as AG to what I want a progressive AG to do — in my view, she falls very short by that measure. I compare Don Berwick’s record of accomplishment in the several roles he has played within the federal government and the health care industry with what I want a progressive to do, and he greatly exceeds what I expected.
I support Don Berwick. The arguments you have presented here reinforce, rather than weaken, my decision to support him.
I Agree with everything you wrote here, somervilletom. I know a lot of people who supported Coakley the first time around and are proudly supporting Berwick this time.
The last thing we need is to elect someone because she is a woman rather than because she is an incredible candidate (i.e. Warren). For people with progressive values, Coakley represents settling. I don’t see any way around that. She’s not the most inspiring, the hardest working, or the most accomplished candidate. She doesn’t articulate how Massachusetts can be a leader on the national stage. She has a questionable record as AG and a terrible record as a candidate in tough elections.
What else is she going to do now?
There’s really nothing left for her unless Warren or Markey doesn’t run for reelection in 4 or 6 years.
What is open for her? Go work at a law firm? Replace Harshbarger on FOX 25?
That’s why she’s running.
Martha is not running to avoid retirement. She’s running because she thinks she’s the best person for the job. It’s your job, as a voter, to decide if she’s right about that.
But to suggest this is just to avoid retirement from public office is just insulting and wrong. I think BMG deserves more thoughtful comments than that.
I thought it was sort of amusing. Merrimackguy is differently winged and all, and so some of his humor is going to rub the wrong way
If we’re going to have differently winged contributors, I’ll take him over DFW any day.
Too much seriousness is the enemy of civil discourse.
That’s what I heard from a lot of my fellow delegates on Saturday, at least, and while I’m a Berwick supporter, I think they had a fair point.
Most of our conversations were before any of the candidates spoke. But their argument was, basically, that while they would be happy to see any of our candidates in the corner office, the first and most important thing was making sure that it is one of our candidates, and not Charlie Baker. Coakley has the name recognition and the good will of the general electorate, and after the 2010 experience she’s not going to take anything for granted in terms of campaigning. They were concerned about Grossman because they didn’t think he had the personal intangibles he’d need to win against Baker — it wasn’t about his commitments or policies, so much as it was a fear of a kind of Al Gore-like inability to project command and enthusiasm — and at least pre-speeches, they were concerned about Berwick for similar reasons,* and also because they weren’t sure they knew enough about him.
I don’t know that any of us has more to go on than our own gut or intuition when it comes to the question of who’s going to be strongest in the general election, or of how strong a candidate Baker’s actually going to be. But as I started off saying, I do think it’s a perfectly reasonable factor for any Democrat to be keeping in mind.
*Post-speeches, a bunch of people told me they were no longer worried about Berwick on this one. But some remained as concerned about it as ever.
This sounds like 2002 all over again.
Since I reiterated the Fenway pledge upthread, but I strongly disagree with the electability argument for a few reasons.
1) On Principle
If we want to advance the cause of progressive politics we should nominate progressives. Period. We should never water down our values since we think voters will respond to timidity more than populist passion. It has never worked anytime our party has tried it.
2) That Coakley fits the bill
I see her having, in this race, the safest, blandest, most centrist positions on nearly every issue. That means she will serve the least contrast to Charlie Baker. And when independents and voters paying attention to the race have to choose between a centrist who is not part of the establishment Democrats on Beacon Hill and a centrist who is, they pick the Republican outsider every time. 1990, 94, 98, and 2002 should be instructive in this regard.
3) Progressives win in MA
Patrick, Warren, and Clark all show that left makes might in Massachusetts. I don’t even see why we are even debating this at this point.
Only that if they really believe the others can’t get elected and Coakley can, they have a fair argument. You can’t prove a counterfactual, and we’ll never know whether the party would have been better off with Robert Reich than with Shannon O’Brien (which is the comparison I keep seeing). And even if we could know that, we wouldn’t know for sure how much of Reich’s victory or defeat had been his positions on the issues and how much had been how voters responded to him personally as a candidate.
As it happens I agree with you: I think Berwick’s going to be a stronger candidate in the general. (I also think the comparison to Bob Reich is less apt than people may think, but that’s another discussion.) I’m reporting what I hear, not endorsing it. The most I can say is that I would endorse it, in a parallel universe where the facts on the ground looked different to me.
Rember by three points then when engaging with persuadables, and I also agree the Reich comparison is less apt. That campaign was staffed by his Brandeis students and Cambridge neighbors, and while I’m proud that it was the first campaign I volunteered for-we never had the momentum Berwick is getting now. It is short of Patricks’ momentum-but this is a much more fluid race than that. No late entrant like Gabrielli or St. Fleur flubs in this race.
It’s a new race-and hopefully we keep seeing this momentum as it moves forward.
They are easy to find right here. But to me, one of her most endearing qualities is that she is a humble person. She is also a studious and pragmatic person. She is not filled with fluff, pomp and circumstance. It is not her “thing” or her life long ambition to stand on a stage and be applauded. Her ambition is to work, do the research, find solutions and make them happen. She does it because it’s the right thing to do, not because it will bring her applause. That is what makes her life worthwhile for her. That is one of the biggest reasons I am supporting her.
was difficult for her. She is just not the fluffy, stand on the stage, pat herself on the back kind of person. I give her a lot of credit for talking about the senate election. That is also a good sign. I sign that she is willing to communicate and discuss failures and look for ways to avoid it in the future. Far better character trait than glossing over errors and pretending they never happened. She is a very strong person. I admire her, and she inspires me.
as usual I’m too busy to be doing this so I apologize for the error.
As a junior in high school, and someone starting to look towards college, let me just take a moment to share why I’m supporting Martha in the race for Governor:
She has a proven track record of protecting students and a plan to improve our schools: Two years ago, the Attorney General began a probe of for-profit schools and job training centers. These schools recruit students who go on to saddle themselves with student loans and in return do not, in many circumstances, receive the education they need to find a job in our Commonwealth. Martha has also been a staunch support of STEM funding and aligning our vocational schools and community colleges with the jobs of the future. She supports increased access to Pre-K and a longer school day to allow for more targeted instruction and enrichment programs.
To me- Martha not only has a plan to increase the quality of education in our state, but the record to back it up.
And I’m happy to hear from folks with a dog in the fights that Coakley has fought.
See … but here’s her problem: Grossman says “universal pre-K!” Coakley says (her words) “increased access” to pre-K. Well, that’s a low bar. She consistently seems more reluctant to stake an unambiguous position; and, well, voters might get confused as to what she really wants.
To be perfectly honest, both Grossman and Berwick represent the twin scourges of white maie entitlement: networking glad-hander (Grossman) and naive but feckless technocrat (Berwick). To paraphrase a common aphorism: they were each born on first base and carried, lovingly and gently, to second where upon they proceeded to walk, unimpeded, to third. The best that can be said of them, sadly for all of us, is that they represent a step up from the aristocrats as represented by Mitt Rmoney and William Weld.
The fact that they, either jointly or separately, give anyone a warm fuzzy is harrowing.
Martha Coakley was born in 1953 and has mostly lived in Massachusetts since then. In all this time, most assuredly, she has seen every version of every facet of paternalism and patronizing male entitlement extant. Until now. To fault her for having developed a thick skin, and an excellent poker face, is to tout your own wish for a candidate to bludgeon you silly with white middle class male thinking.
Or, put another way, maybe the fact that Martha Coakley doesn’t make you rabid with delight is a good thing. Maybe that yearning sense of rightness is just a sinecure that comes with white male privilege. ‘Cause that’s all I get from Berwick and twice that from Grossman… To subvert another common aphorism, to get my vote you have to be twice as good and half as withe and male.
I think that, on a day to day basis, the job of Attorney General is a much more difficult job than that of Governor. That Martha Coakley has done this job, and well, for some 8 years is a testament to her work ethic and abilities. I’m well aware that some will bring up this case or that case as reason to disqualify her. But she’s been in the arena. Her face is covered with dust and sweat and blood. She’s won and she’s lost. But, win or lose, I trust her, as I trust Deval Patrick, to put in an honest days work as Governor. Day in and day out. Maybe Berwick can do that, but I have no reliable indicator to think so… And, for sure, Grossman cannot.
that your characterization of Berwick’s support or career as being driven by white-dude entitlement, flies utterly in the face of my experience talking to people at the convention. I’m sorry, you simply don’t know what you’re talking about.
petr I almost always love your writing and you’ve been right on a million things, but to say that Berwick’s or Grossman’s support is due to male white-dude privilege is pure crap. You don’t need to put them down to talk up Coakley.
And you’re wrong about my assessment of Coakley’s temperament. Actually it’s the best thing about her. I’m looking for a clear program: What’s first, second and third on her to-do list. Because as Governor, you only get so many opportunities to get what you want.
(Berwick as “feckless technocrat” … I mean, that’s just ignorant. You’re better than that, petr.)
Both Berwick and Grossman graduated from colleges (Harvard for Berwick and Princeton for Grossman) at a time when Martha Coakley would not have been even allowed to apply. How much more ‘white-dude entitlement’ contrast can you get?
I think the contrast is stunning and possesses a clarity that you rarely see (except, of course when you run Mitt Rmoney against Barack Obama). Two white, exceedingly well educated and articulated to a fare-the-well, men representing the pinnacle of white achievement versus a scrappy, but rather mum, woman who’s come up through the trenches in a way that, if male, would be celebrated and utterly devastating to any opposition. Martin Coakley would have emerged from the convention with 90% of the delegates. You need a second rate novelist to get that kind of detente and apposite counterpoint.
Instead we get what you wrote…
I’m not talking them down. I’m talking YOU down for uncritically accepting what they have to say. They don’t have any choice other than to be what they are. That’s fine as far as it goes. I just don’t think that’ll make good governor, is all. In fact, in a contest between Coakley and Berwick or Grossman it’s clear the better choice. And the fact that you, uncritically, accept what they have to say, and the manner and context in which they say it (as well as the vehemence with which you’ve replied to me) indicates further examination is needed on your part. I tell you this because I like and respect you.
Well, I stand by it. Everything I’ve heard him say is some version of thoughtless (that is to say feckless) technocratic fiddling and policy re-organization . I don’t think he’s deliberately feckless but feckless he is.. as a lot of white’s are. It’s the nature of the beast, frankly, in todays world. He’s not willing, or perhaps able, to confront real issues if all he has is policy fixes. There is no magic policy tinkering alignment that will make the stars line up and get everybody to agree. It’s gonna be a job and to be blunt, he’s not up to it.
Please, save that nonsense for GOP rhetoric!
… you are going to qualify the word ‘schools’ with the word ‘good’ you should be prepared to defend that. Princeton and Harvard may have been the best available at the time, and that’s not something to sneeze at, but where they “good”? They deliberately excluded a sizeable chunk of the population. And if that was ‘good’, are you, perhaps uncritically, downgrading the education of the people (like Martha Coakley) who were refused admission, not on the grounds of merit but on the grounds of sexism?
I mean, Harvard was willing to teach Norbert Wiener but they were not willing to add him to the faculty after he graduated because he was Jewish, despite a clearly demonstrated genius. So he went and taught at MIT profoundly affecting the character and history of that school… Harvards anti-semitism was MIT’s gain. Which one was the ‘good’ school?
it must be asked
; if you call them ‘good’, do you hearken back to a time of white hegemony? I’m not saying it’s a deliberate ‘dog whistle’, but I do say those frequencies are there.
…but that’s getting off track. I’m not here to argue whether or not those schools deserve their reputations. What I’m saying is that where someone graduated should not be held against them generally. I certainly did not suggest that Coakley’s should be held against her either, and I don’t believe anyone has.
… is that a graduation precis ought to be a point in their favor… That, in effect, a diploma from Harvard or Princeton is, was and always will be, an absolute good.
What I’m saying is that, if the good points of a Harvard or Princeton degree helped to form who and what they are, then the bad points likewise helped to form who and what they are. Any such degree is not an absolute good. It may have made them the best they could be but limited the “could be” part by a blind prejudice… Sexism, racism, whatever oppression exists doesn’t just injure the oppressed but warps the oppressor also. It’s a hurt to us all, really…
I pushed back on what I inferred to be your argument that it was a negative. That said, I think degrees from such institutions are on balance a positive thing. There are very few schools, mostly of the Christian Fundamentalist variety, for which I might see a degree to be on balance negative.
… exactly and precisely that very thing. First by mis-characterizing what I said (I never said anything about it being a negative. That’s how you perceived it because you perceive it, as I said, as always an absolute good) and second by refusing to read what I wrote when I said that if anything good about Princeton and Harvard redounds to them then anything bad about Harvard and Princeton also redounds to them.
Thirdly, no clear ranking, either good or bad, was made about any school, only the observation that you can’t fairly tout their participation in something others were excluded from as an unalloyed good… nor can you say that then, as they were younger, doesn’t inform now, as they are older.
Honestly, everybody acts as if there is this bright line we crossed separating us from a clearly sexist past. Before: sexist. Now: not. Therefore we all have permission to go about our business as though the rank and disruptive oppression no longer matters, no longer influences and no longer could possibly, in any way, be relevant.
Was there a memo I missed? Are we suddenly all enlightened and truly ‘good’ now? Was there some commemorative date wherein the last official sexist act was committed and now, after which, nothing of that sort could possibly ever even be countenanced so why even bring it up?
You’ll act, talk, argue and plow ahead as if you’ve conquered and overcome the invisible undercurrents of our society. So you voted for Elizabeth Warren? That’s not a free pass to ignore the discussion of sexism. You like Hillary? That doesn’t make you either full throated feminist or even the slightest bit fair-minded by default.
Guess what? We haven’t so much as scratched some of the undercurrent of our society and are just surfing some of the disruption looking for some electoral ecstasy… that’s what undercurrents do.
This confuses me. Coakley was an assistant DA, then ran for and won election as Middlesex DA, then ran for and won election as Attorney General, and then decided to run for Governor. Sound familiar? It should – Scott Harshbarger and Tom Reilly followed the same path. As you’ll recall, neither of them became Governor.
There’s nothing wrong with that career path, but I don’t think history bears out your claim that, if followed by a man, it would be unbeatable.
Please, David… Scott Harshbarger walked away with the primary in ’98. And, at least going into to the ’06 Convention, Reilly was the odds on favorite… But he got beaten by another man, so the comparisons aren’t exact.
You’re changing the terms of the argument. Your original point was, basically, “if a guy had Coakley’s resume, he’d be unbeatable” (your exact phrase: “utterly devastating to any opposition”). I pointed out that history doesn’t seem to support that claim. You then changed the point you want to make. OK, but don’t go all “Please, David” on me when you are no longer willing to defend your original argument.
… David. I feel that it is you who changed the terms of the argument. I said (immediately after I said what you quoted) that “Martin Coakley would have emerged from the convention with 90% of the delegates.” Clearly speaking only of convention opposition. You then went on to insinuate that I said something about winning the governorship. Which I did not. I then pointed out that, in fact and according to my original terms, that Scott Harshbarger did win the convention (and the primary) and that, going into the convention, Reilly had been the odds on favorite for exactly the reasons I posit.
Martha Coakley went into the conventions with, as you point out, pretty much the same resume as both Harshbarger and Reilly. Yet the results were not the same. Of the three, she did the worst. Maybe there’s too many variables at play to predict exactly what would have happened. I’m OK with that. What I’m not OK with is blithe and anodyne assurances on the part of some that sexism couldn’t possible be one of those variables in play…
but (a) the fact that Reilly may (or may not – I don’t remember it being the case, but I’d have to read through the 2006 archives to be sure) have been the “odds-on favorite” going into the convention hardly compensates for the fact that at the convention itself, he got clobbered, so his resume obviously was not, in fact, devastating to the opposition. And (b), shouldn’t we be more concerned about who is most likely to win and be a good Governor than who is most likely to do well at the convention?
I’ve long argued that “likely to win” and “good Governor” aren’t just mis-aligned but distinctly at odds. If the standard is good enough governor well then I’d probably be willing to settle for Berwick. But if the standard is best governor available then I think, clearly, it’s Coakley.
Berwick, alone, has an advantage over Coakley by being male. More men, and a sizeable number of women, will vote for Berwick simply because he is a man. It will have nothing to do with Berwicks positions nor Coakley’s but rather with cultural attitudes. That’s just the world we live in. If that were not so we’d have more than a handful of female congress and wouldn’t be fighting over who, or if, any female gets to be the first female governor of the CommonWealth (and not, I don’t count Jane Swift…)
Consider, if you will, a thought experiment:
suppose we posit, as I have above, that Berwick (or indeed any male) will get Y votes total where Y’ are the votes he’ll get on the merits and Y” are the votes he’ll get for being male.
Y = Y’ + Y”.
If, also, Martha Coakley gets X votes total where X’ are the votes she gets on the merits and X” are the votes she’ll get simply for being a women
X = X’ + Y”
let us ask the question: is X” < Y’ ? That is to say, the merits of Berwick, as a vote total represented by an inequality when compared to the merits of Coakley? Again, under my thesis it has to be so. The very fact that X” << Y'' means that very thing.
You might very well counter this in two ways:
— the absolute value of X' is much lower than the absolute value of Y' (Berwick starts off with more merit votes because he has greater merit). This is possible but very unlikely since X'' << Y''. If only X'' < Y'' then the numbers don't fit. Coakley would, under those circumstance possess only miniscule merit to begin with and the strength of her support would have to rely upon X'' <> Y”, the remaining 50% have to go somewhere and they are likely to vote X. Not to mention that X” has the same hidden merit dynamic… The very large size of Y” — that is to say, the sheer number of people who vote for males becasue they refuse to vote femaie is a problem for the males and any argument made upon, or to, their merits.
It’s the argument that Ta-Nehisi Coates makes about Obama: he’s had to be twice as good and half as black to get anywhere. I think the same is true of Martha Coakley: she has to be twice as good and half as female. If you remove the irrationality of voting by color or sex, but either Obama and Coakley remains twice as good, then I don’t see how you can even consider anyone else.
dang.
Dropped in edit and pused the button too quickly. The phrase should read :
let us ask the question: is X” << Y''. By my thesis it is axiomatic. More voters will vote for a male because male than will vote for a female because femaie.
then… the next question is X' < Y' ? and pick up ther…
Drat.
How do you know that more people will vote for Berwick because he is man? If anything I have heard a few people say they will vote for Coakley because she is a woman. It almost sounds like you are pre-emptively looking for excuses if Coakley does not win the primary.
If you remove that irrationality, what is your reason for voting for Coakley?
I support single payer healthcare, oppose casinos, oppose charter expansion, and support progressive taxation
Single Payer No Casinos No Charters Progressive Taxation Gender
Coakley – – – – F
Berwick X X X X M
By your own admission, I am supposed to take the thing, you conceded, was least relevant to whether someone is qualified or not, and make my decision that way, betraying all my stated hopes and principles for our next Governor? I think that is absurd. Would you have backed Palin over Biden, Bachman over Obama? I would hope the answer is no.
The original question that Charley posit’d, way back when, described a vagueness about Coakley. I described it in another comment roughly as “I grok these two white dudes, whom I’ve known for some six months. I don’t grok this chick whom we’ve been discussing for lo these many years…” Something about that struck a dissonant chord with me and I said so.
Now, if you want to suddenly pivot and go and say Coakley is for this, that and the other and opposed to these other things where Berwick is clear and steadfast… well, that’s an entirely different argument. We didn’t start out positing clear positions on either side. We started out saying Berwick was understandable and Coakley was not. I bolstered my pro-Coakley argument by saying nothing about specific policy prescriptions or anything of the like, rather that I thought she’d be an effective engaged governor based on her effective and engaged tenure as AG. That’s what I like about her. If I thought casinos were a deal breaker I wouldn’t have voted for Deval Patrick the second time around. If I thought drone strikes and a still operating Gitmo were deal breakers I wouldn’t have voted for Barack Obama the second time around either. I thought I’ve made myself quite clear in the past, I never let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
I think you made a blanket judgment that those of us opposing Coakley did so because of her gender, and you were highly dismissive of the records and policy positions of Berwick and Grossman precisely because they are ‘two old white dudes’. Now you are backpedaling, but at least you now recognize my support of Berwick is based on his progressive bona fides which are lacking in those key areas in Coakley and Grossman alike. Gender has nothing to do with it, nor should it.
I said no such thing. I said that your uncritical acceptance of Berwick is as a response to your conditioned attitudes towards white men. Same goes for supporters of Grossman. You may regard it as a distinction without a difference, but that’s just enough wiggle room for some serious ratiocination…
No. I’m not. I stand by everything I say. You want that I should backpedal so that you don’t have to cruise that uncomfortable part of your id. But I don’t backpedal.
I think, for all the faults I’ve already described, Charley remains much more honest than you. His contention is that Martha Coakley doesn’t speak to him. I think that’s an honest, but incorrect, contention. I think Martha Coakley and Charley are, in fact, speaking two different languages. Charley, at least, is man enough to admit that such might be, in part, fault on his end.
But you’ve leapt passed that. You’ve taken Martha Coakley’s silence for opposition. You’ve made the leap that, since Martha doesn’t explicitly, loudly and comprehensively endorse the same things that Berwick exhorts, she must oppose them. Charley doesn’t understand Martha Coakley and he said that. You don’t understand Martha Coakley and, in the next breath, leap to the conclusion that her relative vagueness is apposite to your goals and aspirations.
I don’t know how to characterize that as anything other than childish and immature and sexist.
Ha. Sexist.
This absurd line of discussion has jumped the shark so much the shark is dizzy.
See you in November, petr. Won’t be reading you before then. *sigh*
.. If you’ve been paying attention then you will have noted several different places in which I specifically disavaowed any magical and sudden immunity to sexism. If I’m not immune then I can’t see where you have the wherewithal to claim any similar immunity. But from where I sit, it looks exactly like that. I called you out and your response is little more that “Absurd! I couldn’t possibly be sexist!!”
And from there all you’ve done is double down on the argument that you, indeed, are immune from sexism… despite your readiness to believe in it, and point it out, when I do it. Where, I wonder, would that kind of condign perception derive from… A total mystery.
You can’t prove a counterfactual. I have no reason to believe that AG Martin Coakley would have gotten 90%. There are still otherwise qualified candidates in the race who would have gotten their share.
Warren beat Brown. Boom. Your argument is disproven. Coakley didn’t lose because she wasn’t a man, she lost because she was and remains a terrible candidate. Why is she a terrible candidate? Because she keeps running for re-election to AG and offers no serious policy proposals or priorities. None whatsoever which is why Charley has started asking a question I’ve been asking for months now. And I’ve asked it of you, and even nicer and smarter advocates of Coakley like Kate, and it all circles back to shattering the glass ceiling.
Warren didn’t even bother mentioning her gender, she ran on solid populist economic principles and as a fighter for the middle class. Brown looked out of touch, because he was, and he assumed the electorate wanted a Wall Street defender rather than a Wall Street fighter. He lost. He will likely lose to Jean Shaheen, another women. Why is Coakley different from them? Because she doesn’t stand for anything. And when she loses to Baker it will be because of that, not because she is a woman.
For pragmatic and active government that helps ordinary people.
I am a direct beneficiary, in that my Massachusetts same-sex marriage now enjoys recognition by the federal government and many other states. It didn’t, before Coakley was the first AG in the nation to challenge DOMA and prompted other marriage equality states to do the same.
“confronting real issues” with regard to the Governor’s job, and how Coakley is better suited to it than Berwick or Grossman. All you’ve said is that they’re not and she is, in so many words. And that it’s clear except that I’m a dumb white privileged male who doesn’t get it.
You’ve spent a lot of fancy verbiage on assertion and insult. Again, sub-standard for you.
…You started this post with a question that, clearly, was little more than “I get the 2 white guys. I don’t get the women.” Would you like me to refrain from challenging that? …And why? Turning it around I can, possibly, see that what you meant to say, rather, was “why can’t the woman be more like the two white men?” which is hardly better…
It’s clearly very white, very male and very easy to say that, because Martha Coakley doesn’t speak to you Martha Coakley is, therefore, in-articulate. It’s a little more difficult to at least consider that there are cultural and social dynamics regarding gender and perspective at play here.
He named names. You are the one turning this into a battle of the sexes.
… I forgot the subclause to the rules that bequeaths a get-outta-sexism-free card when you actually name actual names. I’ll try to remember that for next time…
Petr is way better than DFW, but he is not worth engaging with on Coakley. Anyone who opposes her is sexist by default.
… That our society is free, open, equitable and fair as both deliberate focus and de facto organization? I think Lily Ledbetter would disagree with that characterization. As would any number of others… Why don’t you go divulge your salary to all your female co-workers? You think you’ll get acclaim and encomium then?
Or, put another way, is our world not ‘sexist by default’ to begin with? You don’t like being called ‘sexist’? Don’t, therefore, do sexist things. And simply claiming your not sexist isn’t good enough.
…besides supporting Berwick for Governor who happens to be a man (and also happens to support single-payer health care and opposes casinos, both of which are dear to progressive hearts and I believe different from Coakley’s positions)?
At least he is consistent on this, any opposition to Coakley’s candidacy is gender based. Anyone who opposes her simply does not want a woman in the Corner Office, even someone like me who voted to put a far more progressive and far better qualified woman in the United States Senate.
I’ve asked this before, would anyone trade in Senator Warren for Senator Coakley? I sure as hell wouldn’t.
And I would rather we get a Warren style progressive in the Corner Office as well, and the only candidate left in the race who fits that bill entirely is Don Berwick. But actual politics and policies take a backseat to gender optics in Petr’s world.
Taking his arguments to their logical conclusion, Sarah Palin was better qualified to be President than Joe Biden. And in 2012, the sexist GOP should’ve nominated Michelle Bachman and all us Obama voters would’ve been sexist for keeping her away from the nuclear codes.
… that some of your best friends are women, too…
In a race between Berwick, Grossman and Coakley, by far the better candidate, overall and by any metric is Coakley. That doesn’t make her perfect and I defy you to find anywhere I’ve said anything even remotely close to that. If Deval Patrick ran for a third term we wouldn’t even be having this argument. If Mike Dukakis got in to the race tomorrow he’d have my vote over Coakley. I wouldn’t even have to think about.
You voted for Elizabeth Warren? Good for you. That doesn’t free you from accusations of sexism especially. That you think it does, and throw it up like a shield, every time we go round and round about this is telling.
All I here is two things:
“I just don’t get this women we’ve been talking about and living with
for over 8 years now….”
“I easily get these two white guys that jumped into the race some six months ago…”
And the dynamic would be the same with most any combination of two white men and one women. QED.
You are unwilling to engage in any consideration of the actual records, careers, or issues these candidates are running for. Coakley is the most qualified because she is the most female of the candidates running-by your admission, not mine.
… against you. Where would that kind of entitlement come from, I wonder???
n/t
You say DFTT but you reply to everything I write with invective.
You say you don’t want to deal with me but you go around downrating everything I’ve written without ever having read it (’cause if you did you wouldn’t be able to mischaracterize my arguments…)
It’s kinda like you’re taking this personally.. .
That is on me, but I was bored at work, and decided to give you the benefit of the doubt, that at least you’d engage my points instead of repeating your own ad nauseum. To wit- I think we had a breakthrough up thread where I listed my reasons for backing Berwick, and you felt that Coakley was more electable or pragamtic or whatever-but at least those are areas where there can be a back and forth.
To me, calling someone a sexist, with your sole proof of that sexism being lack of support for a female political candidate, is a way to shut down debate and shut down an argument. How can I respond to that charge? That to me makes it personal. But I think upthread you got that I was backing Berwick for genuine reasons.
If we can put questions of entitlement aside, I do think it would be useful for many of us to know whether it is in fact your position that what makes Coakley the most qualified of the candidates is that she is the only woman, regardless of any other consideration?
… Martha Coakley stands well below Mike Dukakis, Deval Patrick, Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank and Elizabeth Warren. A little below that exalted state is Scott Harshbarger just above Coakley. She is also, roughly, side by side with John Kerry and Barack Obama and slightly higher than Bill Clinton and well above the present Speaker of the Massachusetts house and his three (indicted) predecessors all of whom stand head and shoulders above any Republican you can name.
Now, as a mode of comparison, where would I place the others in this spectrum? Steve Grossman I would place well below Robert DeLeo under the pond with the rest of the toad lobbyists. Berwick I’m tempted to place slightly lower than Bill Clinton. I just think he’s coasting on his gifts and probably would wander into unneccessary scrapes by lack of experience. I think that Berwick is, as I’ve said, a feckless technocrat in the same way I think Bill Clinton was a feckless technocrat: he thinks he can deliver the grand visions and aspiraations by policy fiat and the kind of calculus derived from triangulation. I don’t think it works that way. Plus, I think if/when a Governor Berwick has a sit down with Speaker DeLeo, say in budget negotiations or something, Berwick is going to leave the room with an empty wallet and a missing watch. On the other hand, a meeting between a Governor Coakley and Speaker DeLeo is probably going to result in DeLeo leaving the room missing some teeth.
So, no. regardless of other considerations, Coakley isn’t my candidate simply because she’s a woman.
is better than any Republican?
the present Speaker of the Massachusetts house and his three (indicted) predecessors all of whom stand head and shoulders above any Republican you can name.
Now you are just fully trolling, right?
All you hear is NOT what was actually said. If you truly believe that Coakley is the best of the three candidates “by any metric” then please tell us about some of the other metrics rather than sulking about gender.
… than to hold to the mistaken belief that I, against all evidence and context, possess an immunity to sexism.
He gave reasons for understanding the support for both male candidates that had nothing to do with their maleness, or their whiteness, and asked what the parallel argument in favor of Coaklay would be. And all other things aside for the moment, it would seem to me that if someone isn’t seeing that argument, for any reason including gender issues, it is the furthest thing possible from willful blindness about those gender issues for that someone to say to their community, “Folks, I don’t get what she’s doing, can any of you help me understand?”
Other things not so much aside, there really are policy differences among the candidates that have nothing to do with gender issues or with internalized misogyny. I like Martha Coakley. I’ll vote for her in the general if she’s the candidate, and do my best for her. But she’s not my preferred candidate. Not because of emotional reactions to the various candidates’ presence, either.
I mean, yes, of course it makes a difference to me in a purely practical sense that Don Berwick rocks the Yankee pediatrician kindly-patriarchal-authority vibe. It’s a nice plus when it comes to attracting votes. But that wouldn’t matter a damn to me if I hadn’t preferred him on policy grounds before I’d ever heard him speak. If Coakley were the one in the race whose assessments on issues I know anything about I mostly agreed with, and Berwick were the one who I was more likely to disagree with, I would be supporting Coakley. I doubt very much that I’m alone in this. Internalized misogyny is a real phenomenon, but it’s not the only reason anyone could possibly prefer one of Coakley’s competitors in this race, or need an explanation of her appeal from her supporters. Insisting that it is profoundly misstates the issue. And suggesting that it was the basis for this whole post is a huge stretch.
I’m sorry, but that’s rank sexism right there.
What about it makes it “a plus”?? Under what circumstances would you want to use that in attracting votes?? Honestly… “Yankee pediatrician kindly-patriarchal-authority vibe” is only a plus if the words yankee, patriarchal and authority is the ne plus ultra… I hope we can do better.
I hope you can see this for what it is. And I hope that you can see my response, not as an attack upon you, but as a challenge for you to questions some of your own assumptions…
But I do wonder at your willingness to leave useful electoral weapons unused, just because we don’t like the world that made them useful. My basic answer to your question about what makes it a plus is very simple: I want to see somebody in office who will try to execute policy I think will make the Commonwealth better; and having a specific kind of subliminal appeal to some percentage of the electorate is a plus when it comes to attracting votes. Votes are good, I want my candidate to have all of them that she or he possibly can.
If Martha Coakley is our nominee in the general, as seems very likely, I’ll feel the same way about her terrific speaking voice. It makes her a pleasure to listen to, and it makes receptive people open to her in a way they might not be otherwise. It’s an electoral weapon, and I’m down with that.
I do rather think you’re conflating an awareness of the advantages that kyriarchy confers on some players, and a willingness to use those advantages toward common ends, with approval of their existence. But I don’t see that unilateral disarmament on that score does us any collective good, and pretending that we don’t see what’s right before our noses doesn’t make us highminded. It makes us blind. It’s silly (and sexist) to pretend that this kind of advantage makes a person “better” on any other metric — that it makes them kinder, or smarter, or more perceptive, or anything else — but I don’t see that it’s either silly or sexist to say, “Yes, this is there, and this is how we can use it for the common welfare.”
(Finally, one somewhat unrelated note: In this particular case, I suspect that Berwick has indeed had one huge advantage over a theoretical similarly-situated woman, in that institutional sexism makes it much easier for a man to be taken seriously when he strays beyond the bounds of established consensus about any issue. I’m not sure a woman could have had the same career he has had, and yes, that’s deeply unjust. But if you agree with his policies his presence in the race is nevertheless a huge gain for the common good, regardless of any unearned advantage that may have helped make his accomplishments possible. I’m not prepared to throw that away for no tangible benefit.)
Short term electoral gain is almost always long term pain. I don’t regard buying into a yankee patriarchal vibe as a useful weapon. I think it’s a lazy response to a shitty situation. You think that you can turn around and use it to your advantage, but it is bigger and more entrenched than you and it is likely to get it’s own way before it gives you yours.
I think that if you rely upon shortsighted and feckless thinking you will reap exactly that. If you want freedom, equality fairness and highmindedness you must first live it, before you can benefit from it.
It really is as simple as that. You must decide that it is bad and decide that you will not participate in it before you can move on. Otherwise, your participation in it becomes collusion and collaboration.
With both what I can discern of your definition of “feckless” (which I still don’t understand, but at this point I don’t imagine I ever will) and your idea of what’s short-sighted. In the end, my experience is that perfection is unavailable in most of the real world, and that a demand for it is generally . . . let’s say, unproductive, at the very best. And indeed you have no reasonable alternative to offer in this situation: what you’re advocating is that those of us who perceive one or the other of the non-Coakley candidates as better representing our interests and policy preferences trade those those considerations off in favor of a candidate who represents our interests less well, but whom you perceive as a purer vessel.
I don’t think you’re going to get a lot of takers for that trade. I certainly won’t take it, and I’m not persuaded I ought to, on moral, practical, or ideological grounds.
One has to wonder how I can be right “about a million things” yet wrong about this. Nothing I’ve said or asserted differs or deviates from any of the ‘million or so other things I’ve, apparently, been right about. It’s all of a piece and if you reject what I have to say you reject the million other things I’ve been right about. That’s some serious shit there.
So, as Fenway asserts, If I’m not right about this, then it is not, in fact, sub-standard for me. It’s par for the course.
If, however, some have found merit in what I’ve said heretofore, I am at least owed a hearing on this..
So Martha slummed it and was sent packing to Williams, class of ’75. Real class distinction between that and the Ivies, huh?
A person of Coakley’s age would have received a joint Harvard-Radcliffe diploma, ie. distinction without a difference.
Any other red herrings?
Irrelevant. Nothing that Martha Coakley did, could do, or would have done, changes the formative, privileged and entitled college experiences of both Berwick and Grossman: which experience occurred, deliberately, in the absence of women. Whether or no they, personally, feel entitled their individual paths were greased heavily by the entitlement that was a core part of their world.
For, if their Harvard and/or Princeton degrees are to count for something, then a clear examination of what Harvard and Princeton were like when they attended means something also…
What are we talking about here? The core of the argument is ALL ABOUT distinctions without difference… that’s sorta the absurdity of sexism, don’t you think? And the fact that Harvard, in the 70’s had to be bullied into a painfully slow and agonizing uplift of Radcliffe in the name of equality sorta makes my point for me… It wasn’t that long ago when Larry Summers, at the time President of Harvard, thought it was ok to spout long disused sexist nonsense in the guise of philosophical inquiry. He was later fired. He wasn’t fired just because he spouted sexist nonsense. He was fired because he was surprised at the indignation his sexist nonsense was met with.
It’s not their fault they were born white and male in a society that tends to favor white men. Should they hold themselves back? Not apply to certain schools? Not offer themselves to the voters as candidates for Governor?
She went to rat sh*t University of Houston and totally sh*tty Rutgers law school and still landed on the faculty at the best law school in the country.
Managed to maintain her realness because of she wasn’t tainted by Ivy conditioning.
. . . I can’t figure out what you mean when you say “He’s not willing, or perhaps not able, to confront real issues if all he has is policy fixes.” In my mind at least, the office of governor is a policy office: policy is what I’m choosing a governor to do. Policy is all about the identification of real issues, and about figuring out how to fix them. I certainly agree that there’s never going to be any set of policies that everyone will approve, but we don’t live in the Kingdom of Heaven.
What are the real issues that matter, that policy doesn’t address but that government, and our choice of governor, can address by some other means? What is that other means? I’d like to understand, and right now I’m completely baffled.
Martha Coakley went to Williams. I’m not sure I understand the point about Berwick and Grossman going to great schools other than to say that they’re slightly older than Coakley and gender-based discrimination was more prevalent before she came of age. Yes, white men are especially privileged in our society, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be great progressive leaders.
In the eight years of his being in the corner office, Charley, how often has Deval Patrick ever got what he wanted through the legislature?
Pretty much only when there was a crisis, or if leadership in the legislature wanted it even more.
Frankly, I don’t think it’s fair that these questions are only asked of Martha Coakley.
There is a double standard here — and I say that as someone who has no horse in this race.
—
~Ryan
My words are mine and mine alone. They do not represent any other person or organization.
I don’t think that’s fair. The point of this post is the what, not the how. Charley is saying that, for Berwick and Grossman, he understands the what, but he doesn’t yet for Coakley, so he’s asking. Perfectly legit question that has generated a very interesting thread. We can talk about the how in a different thread – certainly a discussion worth having.
In fact, I haven’t. More later.
I want to know what she’d be pushing for. Whether it could get through or not is a different question — for all of them, as you say.
First let me say that I appreciate the posts by kate, bean, and lynpb. Very helpful.
The one thing that I’m missing, though, is “the vision thing”. Now, we’ve all been through enough campaigns to know that a huge chunk of what any candidate promises never actually sees the light of day, or through the mechanisms that are necessary to make law in our system, go through dramatic changes. We don’t elect dictators.
Yet those campaign promises are important to evaluate a candidate. I need to know “what would you do if you were dictator?” In an ideal situation where you could get your way, what things would you enact? It may never come true, but it shows me where a candidate’s moral compass is and gives me an idea of how they will function given the limitations of their position. Berwick may never get to medicare-for-all, Grossman may never get universal pre-K, but by articulating these as goals, they give me vital information about what sort of governor each would be.
That’s what I need to know about Martha Coakley: If she had complete control over the Commonwealth, what is it she would do?
… You would not have voted for either Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both men, it is said, possessed near mystical powers of vacillation and, dare I say it, doublespeak… I think, therefore, we can reasonably conclude that your criteria is neither necessary nor sufficient for evaluating a candidate.
,blockquote>That’s what I need to know about Martha Coakley: If she had complete control over the Commonwealth, what is it she would do?
Honestly, I don’t know. But I do get a strong sense that, every day, she’ll show up for work. Whether or not I agree with the decisions she makes is different from whether or not I think she’ll be there, fully present and capable, in the face of those decisions.
I do not, in the least, get that from either Berwick or Grossman.
Where do you get off saying that neither Grossman nor Berwick will be fully engaged in their job. The history of both men very much suggests otherwise.
… and back again…
I said no such thing. I think they would be as “fully engaged” as it is possible for entitled white men to be. As it stands, that is decidedly less engaged than I’m sure Martha Coakley has been and will be. On the issue of ‘engaged’ there really is no contest.
Your notion that this is a contest more or less between equals speaks volumes about your conditioned response to white men. If Grossman didn’t carry himself with the confident assurance that comes with entitlement and if Berwick didn’t look like a genteel country doctor who just stepped out of Norman Rockwell painting, you’d have a different opinion of them. I don’t blame you. I have that same response. I have to recognize it and overcome it. I have to set the bar higher for white men, not because they’re white men but because I am. Absent this vigilance I would sink into a callow and comfortable familiarity that would direct my vote.
I have no reason to believe that any of them would be anything less than fully engaged in their job, and I don’t hold any of them to different standards in that regard. What does appearance have to do with any of this? In a democracy, no one is entitled to anything in terms of office. It will be the voters who decide which of those three (and obviously I hope it is one of those three) to honor with the Governorship.
Why the hell not? They were educated under different standards. They grew up… you know, during their FORMATIVE years… under an entirely different standard and lived that for a large portion of their existence.
So I look at them and see a path greased with entitlement. They have not proven themselves. They have been given things others were excluded from. So,yeah, the standard is diiferent. They got to prove to me that they aren’t simply assuming their success will be similarly greased in the future than it was in the past.
I don’t think that makes them, per se, bad people. That’s not my argument. My argument is that they are limited in perspective (how could they not be?) and therefore are limited in capabilities. They have a higher bar to earn my respect and my vote. You think that’s ‘unfair’ but I think that’s a consequence of the blinkered perspective they have no choice but to hold…
…all of us have our perspectives based on experience, but that is so obvious I didn’t think it needed to be stated. Neither one of them acts as though they are entitled. Grossman in particular knows better because he tried in 2002, barely got his 15% when candidates had two chances as a result of horsetrading, then dropped out over the summer because he wasn’t gaining any traction. I’m also pretty sure Berwick understands that he does not have a traditional resume for the Corner Office. If their perspectives are limited by being a man, then Coakley’s is by being a woman. As you say, that’s not bad or makes her a bad person, but everyone has their perspective and experience so that’s a wash. We should be fighting against double standards rather than exploiting them.
…
A women who’s had to work twice as hard, and succesfully, gets my vote over any man who coasts. I absolutely agree with you that Coakley’s perspective is modified by her experiences as a female. And, to me, she’s met that challenge with grace, grit and intelligence. Berwick and Grossman might have superficially similar looking grace, grit and intelligence but they’ve never really been put under the same pressures and constraints so we don’t really know their true temper do we?
Coakleys struggled. She’s faced opposition. She’s had to swallow disappointments that white men have never even contemplated. All that while doing the normal job of AG and Assistant AG. A job that is difficult for both men and women. Comversely neither Berwick or Grossman have ever, really, had to face the same things in the same way. Their paths, I repeat, were greased where others were obstructed. That’s a specific type of perspective that, to my mind, is deleterious.
You act like everything occurs in a vacuum. Like, suddenly, everything popped into place and we’re supposed to judge in situ, in such a way so that past isn’t prologue and cheap equivalence matters more than logical consistency or moral calculus. If that isn’t distinctly sexist, it’ll do until distinctly sexist comes along…
… in terms of working hard? That too strikes me as a sexist judgement in reverse. All along there has been an assumption that certain groups do not deserve equality because they don’t work hard enough and now you seem to be reversing it. File under two wrongs not making a right. These are apples and oranges comparisons. We should stipulate that all three candidates have worked hard throughout their careers and are up to the challenges of being Governor from that perspective. It’s not even really the criterion I’m basing my support on anyway and didn’t even know where they went to school until this thread. You have again made assertions about the challenges you don’t think Grossman and Berwick have faced without evidence. Grossman led a national party trying to regain their recently lost majority status and Berwick ran an agency that many in power probably preferred didn’t even exist. They both have had opportunities to work under pressure and both have performed admirably, but this should not be construed to detract from Coakley who has worked hard under pressure as well.
If you watch her convention speech or better yet if you see her in person you will notice that she doesn’t yell out her stump speech. She also doesn’t make promises that she will not be able to keep. As Bean said she has 15 years working her way up through state government. She KNOWS that if she becomes governor that she will not be dictator. She has a practical side which is one of the things I admire about her.
It is critical to see the difference between not making grand promises and not having vision or passion. She is one of those people who expresses her vision and passion through actions not campaign promises.
PS Thanks for the thanks
If you scroll back a couple of years, you will find that I supported Michael Capuano when he ran against Martha for the senate seat. I love Capuano, and I thought he would be a kick-ass junkyard dog that would have turned Scott Brown into kibble and presented a bold progressive agenda in the senate.
That was then, this is now.
Some of the things I discounted in Martha Coakley in the senate race are just the things I admire about her in this race. She is not the poet, she is not the one throwing red meat onto the floor (and the nosebleed seats ) of the DCU center. She doesn’t speak in bold words. She just works hard and advances progressive issues one step at a time in the day to day work of public governance.
She wasn’t a very good senate candidate, and Don Berwick speaks with much more poetry, but this is not a contest of oratory or poetry. This is a campaign about selecting the next governor of Massachusetts, and everything I know about Martha Coakley tells me that she will govern extremely well.
My heart and soul is in local government and K-12 education. In my world, every single thing we do depends on the state. Money. Mandates. Regulations. The state has a profound influence on what we do at the local level. I want somebody who understands local government, and somebody who will support our work.
Martha Coakley is a diligent progressive who will govern well.
I look back to Martha’s time as Middlesex DA. I live and work in Middlesex, so I had a front-row view of Martha’s leadership style.
First, on the school district level, Martha was not the kind of elected official who drops in and tells you what she is going to do. She walks in the door asking about your problems, asking about issues, and asking about ideas for possible solutions. From a prosecutor. She came in with a staff who was concerned about helping, not ideology. She developed programs at the local level to help with families and students at risk, in cooperation with local school districts. Quiet, under the radar, hard working, progressive action.
When Martha started to run for governor, I told her directly that her platform was unsatisfactory. She genuinely believes in universal PK, I was questioning her understanding and ability to deliver on this issue. She asked me for my views on education. She asked me to tell her what I would push for if I were running for governor.
I emailed her my list. I told her I didn’t expect 100% agreement, but I wanted a thoughtful response that indicates an understanding of my work and the state’s role in supporting public education. She doesn’t align with my views 100%, but I know where she stands and I know she will work diligently to do the hard work of improving the context where I live and work.
She understands. She listens. I absolutely believe, based on past performance, she will use the power of her office to support pubic education in Massachusetts. Nothing flashy, just good old fashioned hard work.
Martha may be the leader, but the folks I deal with on a day-to-day basis in the AG’s office have all been first rate, dedicated public servants. She hires great people who are committed to the common good. Her history supports the claim that she hires smart, capable, energetic people who gain results for all students. She will make progress as a progressive, solid, steady, strategic, incremental progress.
I have faith in Martha’s dedication and work ethic. I have faith in Martha’s efforts to put together a great team that works extremely well together. I have faith that Martha can carefully, strategically, and thoughtfully advance a progressive agenda.
I have confidence in Martha Coakley, and confidence she will put together an excellent team that will help to enact progressive legislation.
Martha Coakley is our best choice to attract a wide range of long-term election. I know Martha Coakley will be a low-key, determined, dedicated, and effective. She is our best candidate if we want to move progressive values forward in Massachusetts.
I am excited and inspired to support Martha Coakley. I hope you will join me in supporting her.
I am backing Berwick and strongly disagree-but you are the only Coakley supporter who has answered Charley’s question with any degree of satisfaction. Frankly, she and Doug should get you to post for her since you did a better job with one post advocating for her than anyone from her team has done all campaign. A strong argument for your candidate-well done.
… that settles it. You’re not looking for the right candidate. You’re looking for the candidate, and the answers, that satisfy… Leaving all other considerations for second place and all other motivations behind your inchoate need for gratification.
I’m sorry, I can’t indulge you. Nor, for that matter can Martha Coakley. Neither, it must be said, can Berwick
Jconway has absolutely found the right candidate for him, and why shouldn’t that be based on who gives him satisfactory answers and information based on his own views and preferences?
Deep breaths, as Judy would say. “Inchoate need for gratification?” Really?
Writing a long post in the midst of this interface, the act of cutting and pasting to improve the order of paragraphs can be a bit of a challenge. Obviously when I wrote:
I was in the middle of cutting and pasting arguments and came up with a sentence that makes absolutely no sense. In the midst of this, I was talking about Martha attracting a wide range of voters, and that in the long-term Martha Coakley’s style and substance will result in significantly more progress toward progressive outcomes.
And, jconway, thanks for the kind words.