Here’s Howie Carr on what happened last night.
But Reading? Burlington? Cant people in the middle classes figure out the game here?
Why yes, Howie, yes they can. In fact, they did figure it out.* The one who didn’t, and hasn’t, and maybe never will figure it out, is you. My God, just listen to yourself – scolding the “people in the middle classes” that you claim to speak for, as if they were idiots incapable of deciding what they want in their government. Guess what: they’re not.
It’s actually quite hilarious – Howie Carr, who claims to speak for the average Joe, but who attended the high-falutin’ Deerfield Academy as a lad, and who now makes his comfy home in Wellesley (results: DP 2,798; CG 1,200; TR 547), far from the “middle classes” of Reading and Burlington (and Medford, my home town, which also went convincingly for Patrick – results were DP 4,029; CG 3,146; TR 3,084). What possible claim does Howie have to speak for “people in the middle classes”? What’s really happening here is that the pundit class, of which Howie is a charter member, is horrified at the prospect of losing whatever influence it ever had to a grassroots movement in which the people actually speak for themselves. Sorry, Howie. (Well, not really.)
The Herald’s editorial board, oddly enough, does seem to get it – if a tad grudgingly. I have no expectation that they’ll ultimately back Patrick, but here’s the last line of their editorial today:
But a governor must be more than the sum total of his or her policies. A governor must be about having a vision, a direction and about seeing it through. Thats what this state has been missing – someone who really cares about the day job and intends to work at it for four tireless years.
Not a bad assessment, especially considering the source.
*The vote in Reading: DP 1,707; CG 1,286; TR 806; the vote in Burlington: DP 1,259; CG 1,227; TR 955.
Take Howie down!
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Wouldn’t it be delicious if we ended up with a new set of pundits after all is said and done?
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(I nominate DAVID! You’re halfway there already anyway…)
Apparently, we had the same idea! LOL
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Oh, and Lynne – we’re not replacing pundits, we’re transforming them. Less and less people are reading the Herald, while more and more people are reading the blogs – clearly even at the state level.
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Howie Carr is about to become as influential in Massachusetts politics as I am.
I have no exaggerated sense of my own importance as a blogger.
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Well, occasionally I do, but I try to stop myself most of the time…
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Declining circulation aside (and I still think it’s a QUALITY issue – newspapers are still sucking and cutting investigative budgets even MORE as a result of losing people because they suck, hence sucking more, hence losing more readers…), the papers, even the Herald or the ghastly Lowell Sun, have way more influence on the debate than we probably ever will (ok. today I’m a pessimist, I guess).
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The reason they (the media) give us the time of day is because we speak to a very active, engaged, and somewhat influential narrow base (look at how many US Reps post on Kos) who are looking for alternative information you can’t get anywhere else, whether that’s breaking news, indepth coverage, investigative reporting (some blogs more among others). The media is trying to nail down the “phenom” of blogs…honestly, it’s weird. And meta. And all too self-absorbed sometimes…
Just look at Bluemassgroup – there was more people who came to this site than a lot of newspapers yesterday. We may be a “narrow base,” but we aren’t a small group of people. It’s probably 1% of the people who read the Herald daily that read BMG daily, but you take for granted the fact that everyone reads Howie Carr. I bet you bottom dollar more than half – if not 3/4s – of the Herald does not read Howie Carr every day. There are probably more people who read the sports section than the editorials/OP Eds.
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Will Lynne from Left in Lowell ever replace Howie Carr (or Ryan from Ryan’s Take for that matter)? That’s very unlikely. However, collectively we’re starting to matter more and more. It’s not about you or me… it’s about all of us. That’s why it’s a phenominon and that’s why it’s a threat to people like Howie Carr – we not only do his job for him, but we fact-check him, criticize him… and do it on an instant basis. The MSM will be fine, but columnists aren’t going to get away with their own moon-battism if they’re really the ones who are the “moonbats.”
I think you give blogs (including yours) too little credit.
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Here’s one example: An ever-growing (and continuing to grow) number of people start their pre-election candidate research not with a newspaper, not by radio, not by TV, but with Google.
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Go ahead, google Deval Patrick.
hit #3: Wikipedia
4 & #5: blog.devalpatrick.com
7: dailykos
the highest-numbered hit from a traditional paper: the Globe, at #8
12: YouTube
15: Blue Mass Group
16: Blog for America
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I bet Wikipedia and YouTube got their positions through the activity of blogs, too.
That editorial sort of bothers me too
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Doesn’t this:
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Conflict with this:
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People don’t seem to get that you need to spend money to make money. Colleges cost a lot of money, but graduates earn vastly more money over their lifetime. You can’t cut the cost of education and expect the quality of it to simultaneously go up, especially when Massachusetts already underfunds its educational system (especially higher ed, which is funded at 47th in the union).
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David, you’re right. Some people just don’t get it.
i’m not talkin about Howie
I’m not saying we’re going to win (though I think we will). I am saying that Howie doesn’t get it. And he doesn’t. He really can’t understand how someone who isn’t a “moonbat” and doesn’t have a trust fund could support Patrick. And yet, a lot of people like that do.
A lot of people who voted in the Democratic primary did.
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It remains to be seen if everyone else will, as well.
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I voted for DP, even though I suspect he stands quite a bit to my left, because I followed the advice on this site and went to see him speak. It is absoulutely true that he has a certain something and clear, after hearing him, why you are all so excited. So, apparently like many others, I’m willing to trust the man despite his failure to align to each of my policy preferences.
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An interesting thing that may have been observed by regular readers of this site during the last few months is that strategies, arguments, and responses were, at least to an extent, tested here before they moved to the actual campaigns. Perhaps that is because of your connectedness, or that of some of the posters.
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So it is more than a little bit worrisome to see the manner in which potentially major wedge issues have been dismissed with “he/she/they just don’t get it.” Or with a ten point plan on why taxes should remain high, etc.
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Republicans had the same pitch in 1990, 1994, 1998, and 2002. In each instance, they hit the pitch a country mile. I see no reason why this time should be different.
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“well, this time its different” sounds to me too much like whistling past the graveyard.
I shudder to see BMG start gloating over the same claims of “influence” and “relevance” that have become the biggest vanity of national blogs like DKos:
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Talk like that is absurd (Howie is against people speaking for themselves? What?? He’s a talk show host for goodness sake!) as well as simply unattractive and vain. I hope the editors take a deep breath before they continue this tired way of framing the various forms of political dialogue here in MA.
you’ll see that NOWHERE do I claim any “influence” or “relevance” for BMG. The grassroots movement I’m talking about is the one that won the primary last night – Deval Patrick’s. That’s the one Howie can’t understand.
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To me, what’s “absurd” is Howie being so befuddled by middle-class people supporting a candidate like Patrick. And to read his column, he’s actually angry at them for not understanding why he’s so obviously right.
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You want “tired”? That’s tired.
How can Howie Carr get away with telling blatant lies in his op-ed column?
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People are already repeating this and are outraged. They say “my kid doesn’t get free tuition, why are illegal aliens getting it?”
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It’s a lie designed to make the public react in a knee-jerk way. It’s hard to explain away too.
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I know that op-ed columns aren’t about reporting facts, but they should be held to a standard when it comes to absolutely blatant lying.
June 2, 2006, before the Democratic convention vote:
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Oops.
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(not on the Herald public site that I could find, but there’s a reference to it on the conservative blog Hub Politics, and I’ve researched the full quote, it’s accurate)
Deep in his tiny heart, Howie Carr, pines for a Deval victory. A DP victory will give him 4 years of material for his banal “articles.”
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Howie knows the history of Boston politics and the mob better than anyone else on the scene. His institutional memory is a wonderful thing. He has become, however, the moonbat mezzo-soprano of the far right wing of Massachusetts politics. The only things more daffy than Howie are his insipid callers with their personal anecdotes of Welfare queens buying jumbo shrimp and lobster savannah then driving away in a Maybach.
I gotta get me one of those, I will have my wife drive as I luxuriate in the spacious rear seat.
Unfortunately the “sports” guys over at WEEI seem to be taking this to a whole new level with some of the nonsense they are spewing. Did you know Deval is going to free criminals and make Massachusetts a “social petri dish” with bans on heterosexuals and Priuses for everyone?
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The difference is that Howie’s audience is full of knuckleheads that already believe this stuff, where WEEI listeners tend to be relatively apolitical and this may be the only exposure they get the to the issues.
That should get a lot of votes! 🙂
you can take my prius if I can have the Maybach, so long as someone else pays the insurance.
… I was listening to the Sox on ‘EEI. That was a few months ago. (Around the Convention, maybe?)
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Too bad the Sox decided to stay with them for the radio broadcasts; I was ready for FM, personally.
is nothing but a hypocritical crank. His shtick is to peddle manufactured pique–irrespective of facts, merits, or common sense–for those who are addicted to the stuff. He appeals to the pathologically negative and cynical. Blecch.
that sounds like me.
What irks me most of all is how some pundits can be, at best, silent, at worst complicit, in the face of Republicans bamboozling the electorate (Hello!?!? Earth to Howie?!?! Reagan? ‘compassionate conservative’? Florida recounts? Ohio?) but let a progressive win on substance and organization and they are the very first to use this very argument. It’s beyond hypocritical and into deeply Freudian territory, methings…
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I’m from Burlington and we certainly get it!
I am so very proud to claim some of the responsibility for ruffling dear Howie’s feathers. I just happen to be Deval’s Town Coordinator for Reading. Over the last few months, I, my wife (who is higher up in the volunteer chain-of-command of the Patrick campaign), and a small task force of motivated Reading volunteers did what needed to be done. We canvassed. We phoned. We persuaded! We ID’d voters. We were visible. On primary day we were ready. We made reminder calls. We smiled and waved. We had fun. We voted. We won. There was nothing complicated or abnormal going on here in Reading, Howie. In fact, it is really quite simple: The votes of our intelligent electorate were based on real values, not those pseudo-issues made up by the old pundit-ocracy.
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Yes, Howie, it’s just old-fashioned (but web-based — thanks Charles) grassroots. Just look at what we’ve grown!