Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

A double-dog dare:

By

For all the giddy Deval Patrick enthusiasts out there, here’s a press clipping to pin on the locker room bulletin board, as it were:

Reilly supporters say the results were not surprising. The caucuses tend to attract more liberal activists, said state Rep. Demetrius Atsalis, D-Hyannis, a Reilly supporter. And those are the voters who have been most galvanized by Patrick.

“We’ll never see a lot of these people again,” Atsalis said of the crowd that turned out for the Barnstable caucus. “(Reilly and Patrick) are both going to be on the ballot, and that’s the bottom line.”

(My emphasis.)

Hrm… I don’t think that “counting on the opposition’s fickleness” is generally a good strategy.

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  1. Most of the folks who showed were the “usual suspect” and most supported Patrick. We brought in about 20% more “ringers” but honestly it was pretty much the same crowd as last year… and the same folks (minus the seats we lost due the reorg) got elected.

  2. It’s Demetrius Atsalis!  From the Cape!

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    Yes, folks, what Demetrius Atsalis has to say about this past Saturday’s caucus reveals a GRAND, NEW strategy for the Reilly campaign.

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    On a related note, there’s a homeless guy on the corner of Clarendon and Chandler who had something to say about Deval Patrick’s performance in the Saturday caucuses.

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    Word is, he’ll soon be taking a paid senior-staff position at the Patrick campaign!

      • Meanwhile, how much of his campaign cash did DP blow on his grass-roots caucus effort?

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        I can tell ya, Reilly spent a fraction of what DP spent.

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        Now, the battle is on for the rest of the convention delagates.  Let’s see how that pans out.

        • Well, given that the Deval Patrick campaign has exactly one paid field staffer on its entire campaign, I’d hazard to say that Reilly with his four field staffers probably managed to outspend the Patrick campaign on fieldwork over the last few months, and still got trounced.

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          How funny is that?

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          The Patrick campaign didn’t spend its money on field. Field was done by remarkable volunteers who got so energized they gave up their prescious free time to help revolutionize Massachusetts politics. By contrast, Reilly couldn’t find anywhere near that kind of support on the ground. He probably had hoped to let his four-person field staff go after the caucuses in order to put all his resources into his tv campaign.

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          Looks like it’s time for Plan B.

            • The problem is, this has been the Reilly spin all week. That Deval shot his load on the caucuses. It’s preposterous to say that. It’s just the latest in the Reilly camp’s desparation spin as their world collapses.

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              One year ago today, the polls were 48% Reilly, 3% Deval. Now we’re within 9 points.

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              As the Globe points out, the entire playbook is heading to the scrapheap, as they figure out what’s next. And we all know what’s next. The kind of viscious swift-boat style attack ads are sure to be next on the docket.

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              Deval, the underdog, extended the olive branch of ‘no negative campaigning’ back when it was obvious that only he could benefit from it. Reilly didn’t bother calling him back. Now we know why. He must have foreseen that he’d need to go that direction, and it’s obvious that’s what’s next.

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              I think the most amazing part of the suffolk/Ch7 poll is that Reilly only has 39%. This is a guy who’s in the news almost every day for 8 years, with press releases and photo ops. There probably hasn’t been any Democrat other than Kerry or Kennedy who made more regular news over the last 8 years than the AG, and his number tops off at 39%. Anyone at this point really think his numbers are going to get much better from here on out?

              • That’s a good point about his presence in the papers… I might even venture to say that he’s been in the papers more than Kennedy, and if Kerry hadn’t run for president Reilly would beat him too.

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                Massachusetts has seens an AMAZING amount of legal issues in the past 8 years… gay marriage, the priest scandal, the Big Dig problems come to mind immediately.  And I’d warrant that he’s made more enemies than friends on all three accounts.  In terms of the first he pissed off a lot of people who are politically connected… and in the second and third he completely dropped the ball on hugely important things.  If anyone thinks that the Republicans are going to let him get away with either of them, they should really sit back and think about it.

              • But I’d feel better if Mooney himself gave a source for his claim that Reilly enjoys “an almost 6-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage.” He offers nothing to substantiate that statement. Where’s he getting this info from? (It may well exist somewhere in the public domain, and I’ve just missed it.) From the context of the article, this “fact” sounds like more Reilly PR spin.

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                We all know that the MSM — Glob included — can get incredibly sloppy with “facts”.

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                Still, even if DP has spent heavily so far, it sounds like a calculated risk: Drop a bunch of cash up front with the expectation that it will yield high returns over the rest of the campaign. It’s not like the $100k invested in online fundraising technology is an ongoing expense (like Deb Goldberg’s rent), nor is it just money being spent willy-nilly. There are anticipated returns, and a lean-burning campaign ahead.

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                Is this a good strategy? I’m no expert, but John Walsh seems to think so.

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                There will certainly be other expenses along the way — TV spots looming particularly large on the horizon — and cash will be critical, but I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that DP’s screwed because he’s allegedly throwing money around like George Bush on a Pentagon shopping spree.

                • First, Demetrius Atsalis is the Reilly campaign’s newest surrogate spokesman on future campaign strategies.

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                  Now, Reilly supporters like yours truly are allegedly crowing that DP’s “screwed” because he spent a lot of money on organizing the field effort for the caucuses?

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                  Down here on Planet Earth, I merely made the plausible connection between DP’s expenditure of considerable campaign cash to organize the party’s grass roots, and his splendid success in last Saturday’s caucuses.

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                • Soopa, you still provide no real evidence to support your claim that DP actually did spend “considerable campaign cash to organize the party’s grass roots.” I’m sorry, but the Mooney article in the Glob doesn’t count by itself, and you haven’t yet shown anything else that would actually substantiate it.

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                  As Qane has pointed out previously, the DP turnout on Saturday was the result of a lot of passion and hard work on the part of volunteers. Reilly was outworked, that’s all.

                • …on DP’s expenditures on a fancy computer system enabling his campaign field operation effectively to organize for the caucuses, I asked a question, based on what I had heard from sources whom I trust are knowledgeable about what goes on inside the DP campaign, about how much money DP spent on the caucuses, and suggested Reilly had spent a fraction of what DP spent.

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                  (Anyone who’s been active in the Commonwealth’s political campaigns in the past has friends and former colleagues inside both the Reilly and DP campaigns.  Hence, my question arose from things I had heard from people I consider reliable.)

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                  And, then, the Mooney article comes out today, but it’s dismissed as inapposite to my queries of yesterday?

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                  I mean, I’m trying hard, here, but I don’t see how a Boston Globe article confirming what I had heard from my own sources isn’t of some probative value….

                • First, I do appreciate your efforts. I missed the previous day’s Globe article, so I presume it explains in greater detial how the $100k in field operations technology was used leading up to the caucuses. Speaking as someone who was actually involved in organizing for the caucuses, however, I certainly didn’t get the feeling that we had a “secret weapon” — just a phone list and a several hours of volunteer time.

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                  That beig said, I think it’s also important to consider that news reports can be self-perpetutating: A reporter gets a juicy lead from a supposedly reliable source, writes a story without sufficient fact-checking, and that story is then cited by other reporters who are too lazy to do their own legwork. I’m not saying that’s necssarily what’s going on here, but I’m also not yet seeing anything that proves otherwise.

        • It will be interesting to see what the final tally is as far as percentage of delegates already elected and committed is –

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          Does anyone think Deval yet has 50% plus 1 of all delegates -including all ad-ons?

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          I have a feeling he’s there – and with the momentum in his direction – by June it will be higher.

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          My hunch only.

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          Will be interesting though to see where February $$ numbers are for both campaigns as well…

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          January was $325k Patrick vs $200k for Reilly.

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          What if Feb goes $400 to $100?

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          Does Reilly call it quits there?

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          How many of Deval’s $500 donors in February will also have given the same to Reilly last year?

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          It’s gonna be a long 4 months…

  3. Patrick supporters not only will turn up again, but will multiply like looves and fishes. You can put whatever spin you want on it, but Patrick won – by a lot.

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    The reason? because a lot of people are sick to death of the “more of the same” strategy employed by the party for the past twenty years. And they are not proud of Reilly who seems to think that the office is his by right – which gives him leave not to vet his running mate, flip flop whenever the political wind changes and thumb his nose at the people in the party he needs to get elected – ex officios ain’t gonna do it in the primary or the general.

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    It is just possible that we are witnessing a sea change in the party, and it’s about time. As to the liberals turn up at caucuses and won’t be seen again: bitter lemons and sour grapes.

  4. I’m a Deval Patrick supporter, but watching the self-destruction of the Reilly campaign is really sad.  Everything that they’re saying, everything that they’re doing is just so desperate, it’s really depressing me.  It’s so sad I can’t even be gleeful about my own candidate.

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    What, he honestly think that people willing to spend a few hours on a Saturday morning a stuffy gym/library/community center aren’t going to show up at the polls for a few minutes in September?  And correct me if I’m wrong, but annecdotally all of the stories I’ve heard about “people who get the candidate’s name wrong but say that they’re there because someone told them to come” have all been Reilly people.

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    At this point, Reilly is just embarrassing himself and he’s embarrassing the Democratic party.  Democrats who disparage their own party, particularly the active wing, don’t deserve to even be in the race, let alone to win.  Does he honestly think that the repugnantcans aren’t going to latch on to all this when it’s time to air their ads?  And does he honestly think that it will endear him to swing voters?

  5. The numbers being thrown around about the Patrick campaign spending money for the caucuses is Reilly spin that the media has decided not to bother checking.

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    Don’t buy the spin.

  6. Blogger is acting up again, otherwise I’d post this to .08 Acres.

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    Anyway, this Friday, everyone will have a chance to prove him wrong.  According to the Barnstable Patriot, Rep. Atsalis will have office hours on the 10th.  Here’s the fourth item down on that page:

    Rep. Demetrius Atsalis will meet with constituents Feb. 10 from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Barnstable Senior Center on Route 28 in Hyannis.

    I’m sure that Rep. Atsalis would be delighted to see you all again.

  7. I am so tired of hearing the establishment say “We’ll never see a lot of these people again”.  I hear it every election.  They said it about the people who ran as Robert Reich delegates four years ago too.  Well guess what?  WE ARE STILL HERE!  We are NOT going away.  Get USED to IT!

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