I am still undecided. They all seem really progressive on the issues, they all seem like they are willing to take on Baker and the legislature alike, they have all had the same problem attracting funding and attention to their races. So how do I decide? Interested to hear from the hive mind and try and convince me why your candidate is the best rather than tear down the other two.
Please share widely!
Why don’t you just read all the great coverage about the race and the candidates in the Globe and Herald? 🙂
I don’t think there’s much room in this race to play my candidate’s more progressive than your candidate. I’m with Setti Warren because I believe he brings the most relevant experience having been Mayor, and you’ll always win points from me for putting a prop 2.5 override on the ballot and campaigning for it. Plus a lot of people I respect, particularly veterans of Deval Patrick’s campaign, are with him. I do have to say though that I’m also impressed by the detailed policies Bob Massie has put on his website regarding transportation and the environment and wonder if we can expect more such in other areas.
I’m in Jay’s camp. While I like all three, I see Jay as presenting the best contrast with Baker. Both were health insurance CEO’s which is not a contrast but serves to neutralize something that Baker may want to boast about. Charlie Baker is a tall, slow, boring guy, probably the last guy you’d want to be seated next to at a banquet. Jay is short, energetic, and filled with passion, and the guy you want at your banquet table.
I realize this is superficial, but so are barn jackets, pickup trucks, and red ball caps with American slogans – and those worked.
Jay ran the Boston Marathon last year. His smile is contagious. He’s just a great guy. He was a little late on health care but has come around to say that “Simply put, we need a single-payer system that is cheaper, simpler and better.”
Finally, and most importantly, I see Jay as having the greatest appeal to the one voting block that outnumbers Democrats and Republicans: the independents. .
I don’t want to sound anti-Jay because I haven’t made a decision. But I am personally concerned of the baggage Jay brings with him with his years working with Deval. For example, I believe he was the head a Administration and Finance in 2010 when suddenly the costs of 140 state troopers disappeared off the books. I understand the political maneuvers to make that happen, but what I don’t understand is how the financial watchdog agency misses something like that. I maybe wrong, but it is one of many landmines that Gonzalez may step on.
I wish I could say that it wasn’t going to be such a problem — or at least that it would be a fair fight — to pit one former Secretary of Administration and Finance performing arcane accounting wizardry in the midst of the ‘Great Recession’ (Gonzales) against another former Secretary of Administration and Finance performing arcane accounting wizardry to boon the doggle that was the Big Dig (Baker). But after Republicans went whole hog, in 2004, for a draft dodger against a war hero, upending reality itself and while christian evangelicals are openly, enthusiastically, supporting a congenitally adulterous, serial liar, in the WH… all bets are off on holding both candidates to the same standard.
In my book working for Deval is an asset rather than a liability.
As many of you might have gathered, I think that Massachusetts politics suffers from a cultural crisis, characterized by elite narcissism and entrenched Social Darwinism. Without disparaging other candidates, I think that Bob Massie is the best candidate to address this.
I find this fascinating. I have no doubt that many people perceive themselves to be on the receiving end of such elitism, and find the notion of ‘Social Darwinism’ convenient enough explanation for their circumstances.
I have no doubt about this because I’ve met many such people who tell me exactly this. But I don’t believe them. I don’t believe them because it fits too neatly into the narrative the Republicans have been peddling since, at least, Reagan if not Nixon: it’s the lament of the fading hegemon; “They’ think they’re too effing special to recognize how special I (or my special interest is…) and I all I do for them … boo hoo hoo..”
This dynamic of perception and entitlement, in fact, explains (at least in part) Charlie Baker… Consider: Deval Patrick steered the CommonWealth through the worst economy in a generation without making a single complaint about the circumstances or the difficulty. Charlie Baker has an economy that is, in almost every conceivable way, several orders of magnitude better and all he can do is complain from the confines of his administrative torpor: blaming circumstances or someone else, from the depths of his inertia. Future historians may well puzzle over various circumstances and, if going by affect only, they might guess that Deval Patrick was the Gov with the great economy and Charlie Baker was beset on all sides by direst circumstances. Only after the Republicans have long fostered a false perception of ‘Social Darwinism’ or ‘elite narcissim’ — or indeed victimization — can such a complaining but inert governor reach such heights of ‘popularity.’
I think that Bob Massie is the best candidate to address this.
I don’t think he can. I don’t think any one can. I don’t think anyone should address it, at least not in the manner in which you speak of it: as though it is a real and tangible thing to be tinkered with forthrightly.
Some examples of institutionalized Social Darwinism in the Commonwealth:
I cannot improve upon the work that Dave from Hvad does highlighting abuses within the human service community
Insofar as the electeds are concerned, consider the fact that Bryon Hefner was indicted this past Thursday, and that the events that eventually led to thee indictment had everything to do with Yvonne Abraham of the Globe, not any proactivity within the Legislature. Granted, the indictments were the result of joint efforts by AG’s Office and the Suffolk County DA;; but it is doubtful that any investigation would have occurred absent Ms. Abraham’s work.
Gentrification has gotten so bad that even upper-middle income tenants are being displaced.
I think that the casual exploitation of the comparatively weak is a good thumbnail definition of Social Darwinism.
To the extent that you consider this new or even particular to the CommonWealth… may I introduce you to a series of literary masterworks by a man named Dickens? You might find them illuminating.
You’re not, however, completely wrong and I should cop to an habituation — perhaps even a moral accommodation — of the situation regarding human services (agreeing with your shout-out to Dave from hvad for the oft poignant. all-too-necessary, reminder). But the problem isn’t anything like ‘social darwinism’ however apt that may be as a description of the effect: the problem is liberals who deliberately, and time-and-again, pit the perfect against the good and fight amongst themselves trying to get the more perfect solution or more perfect candidate, oft at the expense of real people and real solutions… allowing the right leaning amongst us to drive their ‘starve-the-beast’ idealogy through the breach. Tim Murray and Deval Patrick tried to make serious efforts against homelessness, making funds available for identification of at-risk families and serious attempts to intervene before shelter use. Many liberals complained about this, mocking the efforts and, in purported defense of the homeless, actually defended the use of shelters, as though the continued existence of the shelters were the important point, not the effort to eradicate homelessness. This is but one example.
On the other hand, however, you are wrong about the existence of any narcissism and elitism. If Bill Weld hadn’t provided such an object lesson, I’d be tempted to wish more narcissistic elitism upon the CommonWealth…. if only to shake things up. The most striking thing about the Bryon Hefner situation is how much of a clarifying juxtaposition his narcissistic entitlement really is… The rallying cry (such as it is) of the entirety of the. CommonWealth leadership cadre, starting with Bryon Hefners husband, Stan, and moving on to Marty Walsh to Bob DeLeo to Charlie Baker is a uniformly passive-aggressive weak tea constant stream of complaints that they are powerless. It’s all some version of “My hands are tied.” or, “I wish I could do something about it…” That’s all I hear from leadership, who exist in a defensive crouch and it sounds nothing like narcissistic elitism… It sounds, in fact, a lot like what I suspect it may truly be: a lot of low-self-esteem mouth-breathers who’ve come to realize just how far in over their heads they have found themselves…
The irony was that Charles Darwin would have opposed Social Darwinism.
You’re conflating Darwin with Herbert Spencer.
I made a variant of this post earlier. Big time freudian slip, but for some reason not posted here
I conflated Darwin with Dickens, and I apologize for the error.
You said, “the casual exploitation of the comparatively weak is a good thumbnail definition of Social Darwinism.”
To which my reply was, in essence, “While true, it’s nothing particular to the CommonWealth: Charles Dickens was describing that sort of thing ages ago.”
Now you want to bring Herbert Spencer into this because you think your notions about his argument have something to say about your version of my argument. Which is really funny.
I don’t believe in deliberate “Social Darwinism’ on, or from, the left: that’s the shtick of the Right. The Left are too busy fighting over the perfect, and assuming everybody should share their progressivism, that the good is oft compromised away by the feckless occupying the center as they are trying to placate the Right.
For me it’s Bob Massie.
I’ve gotten to know Bob since August, he’s wicked smart, dedicated, and an empathic candidate. As someone who has a mentally disabled sibling, Bob’s record as a social justice advocate is something that hits very close to home and inspires me on a daily basis. I can’t think of a more progressive candidate to run for governor.
The November election is ALL about turnout. The roughly 1 million voters EVERY top-of-the-ticket Republican gets — whether its Weld, Romney, Scott Brown, Trump, McCain, Bush — will vote for Baker. Issues don’t seem to matter for the Republican electorate in Massachusetts. They always get 1 million votes.
Simply put, the Democrat wins if over 2.3 million vote. The question is: who among the three candidates is more likely to get the highest turnout?
I believe that candidate is Setti Warren. Unlike the other two, he’s actually won an executive office election, so he and his campaign has some practice, albeit at a much smaller scale. And, he’s more likely to get higher turnout in urban places that historically have had low turnout in mid-term elections (e.g., Fall River, New Bedford, Brockton, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, Lynn, Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury, East Boston, Haverhill, …..) than the others.
BTW it would help all three candidates if Dem Party Chair Gus Bickford would at least try to drive up Charlie Baker’s negatives by making radio and TV appearances. Why wasn’t he all over the local news on Saturday during their March for Our Lives coverage? It would have been so easy to mention “Where’s Charlie?” and “Why did Baker appoint the head of GOAL as one of his Department Heads?” Why isn’t he on every time there’s an MBTA outage reminding voters of Baker’s incompetence? Why isn’t he commenting on the State Police scandal? Why isn’t he reminding voters that, although Baker ran on fixing DCF, he hasn’t? et cetera, et cetera
Bickford has done a much better job than his predecessor holding Baker’s feet to the fire.
Pretty low bar when the last guy praised him way more than he criticized him. It is time for Walsh and other prominent Bay State Democrats to follow Senator Warrens lead and start tearing into the Koch brother backed Baker. This is not the Rockefeller Republican the media and far too many elected Massachusetts Democrats make him out to be.
I like Setti Warren.
I like his biography, I like his positions, and I like his style.
From the above (emphasis mine):
The above piece is from almost a year ago. Setti Warren is aggressively promoting:
– addressing economic inequality
– public transportation
– single payer health care
– free public college
For me, Setti Warren is far and away my favorite candidate. He strikes me as the real deal.
Setti Warren’s remedy for economic inequality that is the “defining issue of our generation”…is more education and better job skills for the working class, according to an interview he replied to on WBUR a few months ago.
Naturally, I wrote him minutes after the program. If anyone has read my posts on BMG, well, you know what I asked him.
He never replied. He never explained why, without a better education and better skills, the .01%, the rent-seekers, have been able to garner all the money and get us to this point.
I’d still like to hear from him on this, so if he is reading BMG……I’m listening.
Is some part of the following difficult to understand (emphasis original)?
If I was running for office, and I was a reader of BMG, and I got that email from you, I suspect I’d ignore it as well.
Setti Warren has outlined a long list of things he proposes to do to address economic inequality. He has, for example, proposed raising taxes on the wealthy. Neither Setti Warren nor anyone else on this board insists that making education more affordable is tied to economic inequality.
The exorbitantly high cost of education is a fact of life, and that hurts working-class families more than the 1%. You jump to attack every proposal to address that issue, then deny that you oppose education.
The thread-starter invites us to put forward why we like the candidate we choose. I’ve not attacked your candidate.
I’d like you to please stop attacking mine.
I’m not fully decided. I don’t particularly care to play the game of ‘who can beat Charlie Baker?’ That’s short-term thinking very unlikely to eventuate in answering the question, ‘who can be the best Governor?’ Good policy is always good politics and this truth extends to the candidates.
Setti Warren has solid experience and Mike Dukakis in his corner. Because of Mike Dukakis he’s the default for me at the moment. But that’s a judgement on Mike Dukakis and not on Setti Warren. He could lose my vote by saying or doing something stupid, I suppose, but it is his to lose at the moment.
Jay Gonzalez also has experience, as well as Kate, in his corner. He worked for Deval Patrick which is a plus.
Bob Massie seems like an exceptional human, but I know the least about him.
Hi jconway, thanks for tossing us a good question.
I’ve been studying the gubernatorial candidates for months now and feel well informed. I’m to the left of center myself and my choice is Bob Massie.
All three candidates have nearly an identical progressive platform, so what I look for is a track record, not promises.
Massie has been at it for 40 years with documented successes in women’s rights, racial justice, advocacy for the homeless, etc. In addition to social justice work, he’s formed national/international organizations for corporate accountability and sustainable practices, he’s used institutional investments like large pension funds to pressure corporations, and he’s been a long time advocate of single-payer healthcare since he benefited from it as a child.
The candidates clearly differ on a few issues. Ranked Choice Voting is one of them. Jay Gonzalez and Setti Warren plead ignorance and say they need to learn more about it. Bob Massie is a strong supporter.
Another issue is legalization of recreational cannabis. Setti was against the ballot initiative. Jay says “The people have spoken.” Bob was not only in favor of the ballot initiative, he is now calling for the release of all those imprisoned on nonviolent marijuana charges.
I don’t think you’ll ever hear Jay or Setti speaking out against corporate power. Bob edited a 600-page book of essays about it in 1980.
Massie is a climate change warrior, endorsed by 350.org founder Bill McKibben. He has a detailed plan for moving us rapidly to a locally prosperous renewables-based clean energy economy, and he has the smarts to do it (Princeton, Yale, Harvard).
He also has a detailed plan for a 21st century transportation system. With a doctorate in business from Harvard, he eats spreadsheets for breakfast and is not afraid of complicated issues.
I encourage anyone who is still on the fence to take a good look at Bob Massie. The bedrock issues of his campaign—climate action, social justice, and democracy—have been the focus of his life’s work. Most recently he has piloted two organizations for social change: the New Economy Coalition and the Sustainable Solutions Lab at UMass Boston.
My dream? To watch Massie debate Baker. Charlie’s head will spin and he’ll definitely lose that boyish grin. Maybe he’ll lose the governorship, too.
Good to know on marijuana, climate, and ranked choice voting. I really think ranked choice voting is the only way we are going to create the kind of culture of competitive elections this state desperately needs to fix the legislature. It is good he supports that and a sensible approach to marijuana policy.
On that issue which is very important to communities of color and younger voters, it is important to stand out with the strongest contrast to Baker. I wish all three candidates hit would him harder on his drug warrior approach to the public health crisis of opioids. We cannot jail our way out of that problem, and thinking we can will ruin another generation.
As a delegate, make the candidates fight over you. Your vote isn’t free, ask them to take a public stance on an issue you care about that they haven’t committed to yet.
Thanks for everyones contributions. I tend to vote for the most left wing candidate in any given primary unless I think another candidate is better qualified or for tactical reasons to block another candidate I dislike. I probably would have voted for Berwick for the former reason last round, but defected to Grossman at the end to tactically block Coakley. In this race, I see no reason to tactical vote.
I think they are all good on the issues and will all have an uphill time against Baker due to fundraising challenges and media bias, but they offer a strong contrast to him. I like Massie the most on the issues and am leaning in his direction. If this were a ranked choice election, I would be able to vote for all three.
While true, and maybe a comfort to you, you would still only get one Governor.