Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Deval

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As a new dad, I have very little time to spend thinking about politics.  However, I am leaning towards Deval in the primary. 

Call this the Howard Dean effect.  However, in the last national election, we went with electability instead of who best represents our values as democrats.  Look what it got us.  (This is not a slam against John Kerry, who I enthusiasticly supported and volunteered for) 

Even though I think the other two are more electable against Healey, I’m going with Deval as best representing Democratic values.  I know he’s going to take a hit for his stance on illegals getting in-state tuition, and his position on the tax roll-back, but screw it.

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  1. We can all feel comfortable that we voted for one of the weaker Candidates on the basis of Principle. Why be practical when we can be principled?

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    Of all three candidates, let’s support the one with the least campaign experience, because, well, what’s the difference between 16 and 20 (24?) years of Republican Corner Office Rule?

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    Question: Do you think that the fact more people will support Chris Gabrieli against incumbant Lt. Governor Kerry Healey might have anything to do with Chris Gabrieli’s experience, message and positions as they cut against Kerry Healey’s? Doesn’t that mean Chris Gabrieli is BEST positioned to assure MASSACHUSETTS moves forward? Afterall, I think what it really says is Massachusetts PREFERS Chris Gabrieli’s VISION over all others.

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    No, I guess you’re right, let’s stand and lose on principle, we’ll all feel better the morning after…

    • Let’s not buy into the same old crap about which candidate is or isn’t electable.  Remember a year ago?  Deval Patrick was almost laughed at for agreeing to run and given no chance at winning.  That alone should tell you something about the strengths of Deval.  Don’t worry, we’ll have a Democrat in the corner office.  Hopefully, it will be one who didn’t play the same old tired games to get there.

  2. I was talking to a friend from Cambridge who said his worst nightmare was a Gabrieli-Silbert ticket.  As much as he doesn’t like Kerry Healey, and he knows her first hand, he likes Gabrieli and Silbert even less.  So don’t think that everyone who voted for Deval or Reilly in the primary is going to follow along to Gabrieli in November. 

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    There is going to be a large group of people who care about things like public (not charter schools), local aid to municipalities, and the problem of funding government with the property tax who are not going to be happy with the two main candidates.

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    If Gabrieli wins, Mihos will be well poised to drain away any voter who has anguished over a local Proposition 2.5 override, and made a choice between higher property taxes and cuts in schools, police, and firefighters.

    • By the First Tuesday in November, the Mihos campaign will be pulling far more votes from Kerry Healey than Gabrieli/(Murray/Silbert/Goldberg). Get real…

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      Intellectually alone, Gabrieli will run circles around Kerry Healey. Do you give any credence to recent published reports that the Kerry Healey campaign is salivating hoping to get Deval in the General?

      • To be honest, I would rather have Kerry Healey in the corner office than to have Gabrieli as the leader of my party on Beacon Hill.  It will be much easier for the progressives in the legislature to prevail against Healey over Gabrieli.

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        Don’t take the base for granted, becuase if Gabrieli wins with 35-40% of the vote, there may be a large group of people who are going to look at him and walk. 

        • How convienent you have NO EXPLANATION for the poll that shows the OPPOSITE of what you are saying.

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          You can come to not other conclusion than this:

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          More people support Chris Gabrieli against Kerry Healey, irregardless of where you and your friend take your ball election day.

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          What you are really saying, is that there are a bunch of “Good Weather Deval Patrick” Democrats that plan to vote for Lt. Governor Kerry Healey unless Deval Patrick is the nominee?  If that is so, I’m dumbfounded on what to say next…

            1. i realize we’re not supposed to have personal attacks.  but pablo damages BMG with his extremely high Annoyingly Logic-Free Quotient (TM). 

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            it’s not his positions.  iris, for example, takes similar positions, but argues logically.  Rye, MFW among the leftmost; argue logically.  etc. 

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            pablo alone consistently simply defies all evidence and won’t even reasonably speak to it when contradicted. 

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            is this a personal attack?  pablo is undoubtedly a nice guy.  it just seems that among frequent commenters, he drives down debate quality to such a large extent as to implicitly violate the rules of the road.  after many (though not all) of his comments, i feel like duck in the Aflack commercial after Yogi Berra talks….

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            2. pablo, fwiw, kerry healey supports charter public schools, and wants to lift the cap on charters in low-performing districts like boston, springfield, etc. 

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            i think christy mihos is your guy.  or maybe grace ross. 

            • Without a polling firm, I can’t query the electorate on their attitudes.  I also can’t project into the Mihos or Healy playbook.

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              However, the way I look at the argument of the Gabrieli people is this:

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              Our candidate is to the right of Deval.  If we want to win the election, we need to move to the right and try to pry away the Republican-leaning unenrolled.  This operates under the assumption that us folks on the left would blindly follow and vote for Gabriel just because of the D after his name.

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              I am saying that math doesn’t necessarily work.  I am saying that, for strategic reasons, progressives may look at the final election and determine that their interests would best be served if Gabrieli doesn’t win.  Would you say that progressives wouldn’t vote for Finneran if he was the party nominee?  Did you see what happened when Weld ran against Silber and progressives went with the Republican?  Could progressives come to the conclusion that their best interests would be served by a weak Kerry Healy?

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              Can Mihos use education as a wedge issue and pry away the Democratic vote from Gabrieli? 

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              When I watch the Gabrieli campaign, I see the Romney campaign from four years ago.  Venture capital,  businessman, gets things done.  No Olympics rescue for Gabrieli, but it’s really the same melody.  Maybe it will work for a second time, but maybe not.

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              And, Goldstein, the only people I have heard describe those preferred private providers in the charter voucher scheme as “charter public schools” are lobbyists from the charter school industry.  Don’t duck the issue.  Are you bashing me and my candidates because you want the election to have two major candidates supporting the privatization of our public schools?

              • Occupation:
                Venture capital

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                Claim to public good:
                Creates jobs, builds businesses

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                Prevailing theme:
                Gets results

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                Front and center issue:
                Roll back taxes to 5%

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                Elected office:
                None, but lost prior race statewide

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                And, if Silbert gets the LG nomination, you get the loyal party fundraiser and policy wonk who has never won elective office. 

    • Remember what happened to everyone elses supporters four years ago when they could not even stomach voting for Shannon because of how awful and miserable her people were.  Well, guess what? Most of those SAME people are working tirelessly for Deval… Could be same effect.  I am not sure about party rules for supporting an independant.  A lot of people may go to Mihos over Deval!!! 

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      Any one know the party rules about publicly supporting an Independant???

      • If a Democrat publicly supports a candidate who is running in opposition to a nominee of the Democratic Party, you lose some privileges, such as the ability to attend the convention as a delegate.  If they quietly vote for the opponent, obviously there is no sanction.  Only public support is verboten.

    • Look what you’ve started now…

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      How do we know you’re not an Agent Provocateur?

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      I’ll take the pledge right now.

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      No matter who wins the Democratic Primary, I’ll be endorsing them the next day and will attend the unity breakfast, lunch or dinner, whereever it is.

       

      • “I agree wholeheartedly with Renaissance Man.”  đŸ˜‰

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        Sing me up for the pledge, RM. In a little more than a week we will unite against the Republicans. And if you raise questions about Kerry Healey’s finances or her husband’s business dealings, I’ll be right there with ya, my man. 

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        Hey, David, Bob, and Charley: you guys are going to have to bring in trained animal acts or Paris Hilton or something to keep BMG lively when we’re all holding hands and singing Kumbaya.

  3. That a vote for Gabs is not a vote for guaranteeing the corner office. Polls in August, pre-primary, about who people will support in November aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.

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    I say vote with your principals. Don’t let the Gabby fans tear you apart for that, it’s your vote after all.

    • I think voting with you principals would mean voting for Gabrieli. He had that commercial with a principal in it at least….

  4. Plus, we’ve already been through this four years ago. We nominated O’Brien and Gabrieli — the supposedly “most electable” if you believe the so-called strategists — and we lost. The truth is that in order to win an election, you need to present a coherent vision and philosophy that people can respond to. A laundry list of policies and verbal committment to “results” is not a winning strategy. It will not motivate your base, and it doesn’t give undecideds any real sense of how you would act on issues that aren’t on your laundry list.

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    This is one of the key reasons Democrats have lost in recent years. Republicans present a philosophy of goverment, and Democrats strive for “electability” and show a grab-bag of policies. But what good is electability if it doesn’t get you elected? If you pit a vision against a list of policies, voters will choose the vision every time, but if you pit a Democratic vision against a Republican vision — that’s when Democrats will win.

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    So you should stick with your instincts on this one and vote for Deval.

  5. However, in the last national election, we went with electability instead of who best represents our values as democrats.

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    I suppose that’s true if you were looking at only Dean and Kerry.  On electability alone, it was Edwards.  I’d argue he had the values, too.

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    I don’t think you can discout electability altogether.  Afterall, it’s the November election you really care about.  But the question it seems you should be asking is between Gabrielli and Patrick who has the optimal balance of values and electability. 

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    What is the optimal balance?  Elections are funny… if someone could reliably predict the outcome, they’d be rich or powerful or both.  So, we’re all guessing, although some perhaps better than others.  But values — I think you know your own values, so the question of the optimal balance is an individual one.

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    Were I still enrolled as a Democrat, I’d be voting for Gabrielli on the 19th.  I won’t do so now because I know that I’ll be voting for Healey in November, so to vote in the primary seems more than a bit disingenuous.  But, as a conservative, I’d view a Healey – Gabrielli competition as a choice between two great candidates.  I’d be voting for someone as opposed to choosing the lesser of two evils.  I can certainly understand why a Patrick supporter would want to vote for their candidate on the 19th.

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    • The guy voting for Healey feels that Gabrieli is the next best choice.  Remember Rove wanting Dean to be the nominee?  We got Kerry because of those ad naseum lectures about “electability”.  Stop the insanity!!  Learn from mistakes!!!! 

    • dweir is very politically aware, and I admire her integrity for not pulling a Democratic ballot because she intends to vote for Kerry Healy.

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      She also raises an critical issue.

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      Conservatives have little incentive to enroll as Republicans.  They  just don’t have many fun primaries.  They can hang out as unenrolled voters.  If the Republicans have a fun primary, they can dive right in.  When Democrats have the primary,  they can wander in and select the most conservative nominee.  Then they get TWO great candidates, and I have someone with my party label who doesn’t reflect my values.

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      The kicker comes when it comes time to elect a governor.  The Republicans always come up with the same line – we need a Republican in the corner office to keep tabs of all those awful Demorats who are running the legislature.  But look seriously at the relationship between the legislature and the long string of Republican governors.

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      While the Republicans had a lock on the corner office, and Finneran had a lock on the House of Representatives, the people locked out of power were the progressives.

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      What I want is a choice.  When dweir thinks she has two great candidates, I am the one with no choice. 

    • As someone who has studied Edwards, I would not say a 1 term Senator who couldn’t even win reelection to the Senate in his own state was the most electable candidate. In fact, I’d say he was less electable, on his own merits, than Kerry, Clark and even Lieberman.

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      On logic alone, you could have made that argument for a guy like Clark – after all, this country has a history of electing high-ranking generals to our Presidential office… and maybe even Kerry, because of his veteran status… but it just goes to show you that voting based on electability is a real, significant trap. The truth is you can’t know who’s electable until the day of the election, with minor exceptions (ie scandals a candidate is involved in, etc). If Clark had gained traction and won, I bet he would have been handicapped by a lot of the same things that Kerry got caught up in – especially given his DLC friends.

      • I meant to say studied campaign, not Edwards. I studied the 2004 campaigns; I’m not an expert on Edwards as a candidate. However, I do know enough about politics to say that, without some statistical justifications I’m not aware of, it seems silly to say that Edwards was any more electable than any of the other candidates. If he was that electable, he would have pushed John Kerry over the edge and helped win the race. As it stands, he didn’t.

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        He had great populace rhetoric, but was a DLC-esque candidate who I wouldn’t even trust on issues like health care. His consultants were also just as calculating as Kerry’s campaign was, which made him seem just as wishy washy. As much as I hate to say it – and I NEVER would have said it back then – I really think Dean was probably the most electable candidate. He had a driven base, was raising a lot of cash and actually presented voters with a true difference from Bush’s position in Iraq. Furthermore, he was ahead of the curve on the Iraq issue and – going toe to toe with Bush – may have been able to help convince the country of his Iraq stance at the time, after all, it wasn’t long after when a majority of the country was against the war.

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        Mind you, I never supported Howard Dean and never joined the Dean train… I thought he was “unelectable” and I was loyally supporting my Senator.

  6. Sorry, but if I din’t think Patrick was going to clean Healey’s clock in November I’d have a Gabrieli sign in my yard.

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    If Patrick wins the primary, we will have a talented, inspirational candidate running against someone who twice couldn’t get elected state rep. He will have his current army of supporters plus a whole lot of new volunteers and contributors coming over from Gabs and Reilly. The party’s money will carry him for one week, and national money will flow into Massachusetts in torrents. It’s shaping up to be a miserable year for Republicans nationally. There are still three times as many D’s as R’s in this state, and not all the I’s are alike. Lots of them voted for Bill Clinton against Bob Dole. Clinton will almost certainly come to town and appear in TV ads for Patrick.

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    I also suspect, but don’t know, that most polling models are not taking enough account of the likelyhood of substatially increased minority turnout this year (both in September and November, BTW). We have never had an African-American candidate on the verge of becoming Governor of Massachusetts. We have such a candidate now, with a campaign that is focused on the grassroots.

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    Don’t believe the people who tell you that:

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    a) November’s a referendum on taxes. (It’s an issue, but not the only issue.)

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    b) We need a really, really rich guy who can self-finance to compete with the R’s. (The same wise guys were with Reilly a year ago and sniffed that Patrick would fade when he couldn’t raise the dough. Wrong.)

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    Either Deval or Chris is going to win the primary. The one who does will be the favorite to get sworn in next January. If you like one guy better than the other, vote for him. Then let’s get together behind the winner and throw the R’s out. 

    • I have heard a lot of operatives say that they don’t want to and probably will not work for Deval. Very similar situation as four years ago when people really did not want to work for Shannon.  See where that got Shannon. Before the primary the wispers of the other peoples people was that they would be happy with anyone but Shannon.  A lot of people stayed home in the general last year, or very unwillingly went to vote – but only god knows how those people voted.

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      I don’t think it is a forgone conclusion that a lot of party operatives with the Gabrieli or Reily camp will be rushing to help out Deval after the way his campaign has handled themselves at and since the Convention. 

      • And I think you’re wrong: most of us Dems believe any of the three are far preferable to four more miserable years of Republican rule.

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        But wouldn’t it be ironic if the people who have been telling us how important it is that we elect a Democrat this time, when they thought it suited their candidates’ argument of “electability,” would sit on their hands if Deval was the nominee? Especially since Deval’s the only one who hasn’t run ads criticizing the other two.

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        As for those operatives, I hope few, who really don’t want change on Beacon Hill, who are happier with ineffectual Republican governors facing lopsided but unimaginative Democratic majorities in the legislature: stay the #@%& home. We’ll win without you.  

        • The same thing goes for you “purist” Deval supporters who want to take your Kool Aide and go home if Chris or Tom wins the primary.

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          Suck it up and help elect someone who may not be your dream candidate but who will improve life for lots of people, take better care of the environment, and truly give a damn about working families. If instead you choose to stay home muttering about insiders and such, fine. We’ll win without you, too.

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