First of all, it’s probably already happened, but the Deval people need to tell Phil Johnston and his team to shut up and work. A unified message-delivery system is something the GOP has perfected, and we need to emulate that. The MassDems shouldn’t be the source of anything unless it’s necessary to have them deliver it to insulate Deval from making an attack. I know they all know this, but it’s worth repeating.
Second, I presume Deval will be rolling out some new policy proposals ASAP. Otherwise the “50-point plan” and “crime-immigration-taxes” will become the issues that we deal with. It doesn’t have to be this way, and we Dems have successfully redefined the debate once in recent memory: the Kerry-Weld race in 1996. Then, Weld hammered away on “Crime-Welfare-Taxes” as the issues he wanted to discuss. Kerry successfully blunted that with his vote in favor of the welfare reform bill (which he got killed for), and Kerry also got cops to endorse him publicly and also pushed education and the environment as the big issues. Weld’s message lost steam and when it came to the issues people were actually concerned about (instead of the issues Weld wanted them to be concerned about), Kerry’s message prevailed by 8 points. That year also saw a unified party-campaign effort, given that there were no other races to focus on (except the Presidential, which the party and Kerry team successfully tied into by printing a ton of “Clinton/Kerry” stickers and doing major advertising and signage of Clinton/Kerry/[congressman] that turned out voters and got the unity message acros.)
Fine, you say, Deval will do the same thing. OK, but here’s the problem: that 1996 race was about 10 months long. Weld identified those issues in the Spring of 1996, they engaged in a classic series of debates all through the summer and fall, and Kerry had more of a window to reframe the issues. Deval doesn’t have that luxury now, and I’m concerned that in the media’s eyes, the most important issues facing us are the tax cut, CORI checks and education funding for immigrants. The problem is, those are not the most important issues. We have bigger problems, like the fact that we’re down 140,000 jobs and $500 million per year in our state coffers because of that; the fact that local aid has been slashed; and the fact that we don’t know how to most effectively implement the new health care law (should we give it a shot to work, or should we further tweak before implementing? I dunno).
So, I hope that within hours of this post there are some new olicy proposals coming out, because otherwise we’re setting ourselves up to get whacked by the Rove-ian disciplined message machine the GOP has put into motion.
This is the battle plan that Cellucci used eight years ago. On the day after the Democratic primary, they came out hard to define the issues in the campaign and to define Scott Harshbarger.
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Monday’s debate is a tremendous opportunity to break that, and to turn the debate in our direction. However, it is also a risk because one of four candidates at the table won’t necessarily set the tone in the debate.
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Mihos wild card We won’t need to actually “win” the debate or set the tone to be successful. Mihos dropped a huge rock in the pond with his adult cartoon television ad. If he goes into the debate and bloodies or defines Healey, Deval can do well by just sitting back and looking positive and inspirational.
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Still, I would like to see a stronger message emerging from our side of the street. Aside from the WBZ poll, we haven’t had the momentum in the first week of the general election campaign.
Pablo, I think we’re going to end up hugging on Nov. 7th at about 11:30 p.m. at the Copley Plaza bar…because you’ve added something to my point that I omitted: the third party factor.
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While I don’t think Mihos will be a major vote-getter, he will be a major factor in the race (a la Nader ’00) because 3% away from Healey could be the difference between a win and a loss for Deval.
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In fairness to the media, Healey did “deserve” press coverage after the primary. (We got so used to only hearing ideas that we liked talked about on the radio that when conservative voices and ideas popped up, it was like fingernails on a chalkboard.)
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That said, I hope Deval comes out with a plan to actually cut the property tax, as opposed to saying “the tax we have to cut is the property tax.” Whether her gets there through a jobs initiatve, through reshuffling the budget deck to increase local aid, or some other idea, I think (but don’t know) we need something…
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But that grassroots stuff is also pretty powerful, and will carry much more weight and gives us a bit of a buffer that Harshbarger and O’Brien didn’t have coming out of their primaries.
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Also, after Chris Wallace’s hatchet job on Clinton today, I think we can all expect the debate to be heavily “Fox’d” and chock full of softballs for Healey, with undercurrents of a presumption that conservative anti-tax positions are the presumptively correct positions and anything deviating from those needs to be justified.
Hoss, I’m just a passionate advocate for my team. Now that the primary’s over, let’s have some fun!
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I don’t know if the plan for property taxes is the essential part of the debate. I think the one minute response to the tax cut in the debate is:
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Mrs. Healey, your administration came into office and immediately slashed local aid 20%. That’s a lot less cops on the streets of Massachusetts. The cuts were so devastating that towns needed to ask for overrides just to reduce the level of cuts to police departments throughout the state. We now have X fewer police officers on the state than the day you took office, and property taxes and local user fees have skyrocketed. Mrs. Healey, you know this is a shell game. The burden of balancing the budget was passed from the state to the cities and towns. It is irresponsible to cut the income tax until the we restore your cuts to police, fire, and schools.
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A lean government needs to focus on the core services. The most basic is public safety. You were cutting cops and firefighters while you were letting the Big Dig contractors run away with boatloads of our money. We can’t afford the tax cut until we dig ourselves out of the hole created by 16 years of Republican mismanagement. The state administration, through the last 16 years of massive cost overruns, has been in the hands of your party, Mrs. Healey. The only way to fix this is to put government in the hands of people who believe in government, who seek to run government well instead of seek to run for other offices.
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Kerry Healey. Big tax breaks for her husband. Big cuts for police in your hometown.
Heh heh…
I started a thread on the media. The Globe has been spinning the issues for Healy since the primary.
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http://bluemassgroup…
Ordinarily, Id be nervous, too, because you know theyre going to try to drive the discussion 24×7. All too often the Democratic candidate (or the party) gives the opponent the rope to hang him with. I just think Ive seen enough from the man and the campaign to know that this time, its different.
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I guess specific policy proposals are necessary — so the opponent can’t say you don’t have any — but they can be a trap, too. Kerry Healy knows as well as anyone in the state that a governor can’t single-handedly implement policy, so it’s the usual cynicism to pretend otherwise.
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Who’s being more honest about the role of governor, the candidate with the 50 proposals, or the one who’s prepared to “get everyone around the table and work out a solution”?
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I just think now that Patrick has proven that voters are willing to listen to the explanation behind the sound bite (e.g., taxes), and seem to have endorsed his anti-“business-as-usual” position, he should avoid the same old traps.
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On the other hand, policy proposals that make sense, actually solve a problem, and can realistically be executed, can energize voters. The traps are in proposing something you can’t get all Democrats to support during the campaign (entirely possible in the current situation) — or proposing something before you do your research and find its unworkable, based on a lousy assumption, or can’t be moved through the Legislature after you’re elected.
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That’s why “We don’t have to agree on everything before we agree on anything” is so brilliant and powerful. It somewhat reduces the necessity for putting a stake in the ground on an issue (and thereby throwing meat to your opponents and in-party foot-draggers), it gives voters a picture of his collaborative governing style, and it lays the groundwork for later, when circumstances inevitably get in the way of implementing the whole suite of policies.