Curious how the candidates’ messages, coming across through their TV ads, are affecting different kinds of Massachusetts voters? This Daily Kos diary gives one example:
I wasn’t planning to vote in the primary two weeks ago. Now I am, for Deval Patrick.
It’s this simple: Patrick’s campaign is running advertisements in which Patrick touts progressive Democratic concerns. On the other hand, Gabrieli has been running ads that argue, “It shouldn’t matter whether an idea is Democratic or Republican, as long as it works.”
That clears things up well enough for me!
The plural of “anecdote” is not “data”, so I’m relying on my general knowledge to make the educated guess that this voter is representative of a large current in Democratic politics today: People who want “real Democrats” who are boldly unafraid to state their positions; who are fed up with what sounds like mushiness or tacking to the center.
To these people, the message from the latest rounds of Gabrieli and Patrick ads may indeed be that: Patrick is the bold Democrat, Gabrieli is the one using the Kerry 2004 method.
Read the rest of the post, and recommend!
…were already planning to vote in the primary. I don’t buy that whoever this guy is he’s suddenly “interested in voting in the primary… for Deval Patrick. Right. Just woke up and smelled the coffee. Sure after the rest of us have been mainlining this stuff for a half a year or more. Right, the guy’s posting on COS AND he wasn’t planning to vote in the primary? What’s he looking on COS for Red Sox scores?
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The post referred to on Cos, is simply a “spinmaster” post, that is supposed to counter the idea that Kerry Healey is attacking Chris Gabrieli because she really wants to run against Chris Gabrieli.
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NEWS FLASH- Have you noticed it seems to be the Deval Patrick campaign that’s in a panic?
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Vote for calm, deliberate leadership. Chris Gabrieli…
How many more times is Gabrieli going to run for whatever office he can try for. Disingenuous Republican lite, thats what Gabs is. If he loses he will pull a LIEberman, just watch. Creep.
Absurd, how is someone going to get on the ballot as an unenrolled with 7 weeks, and ??
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You are confusing Connecticut State Election Laws with Massachusetts Election Laws. Nothing come close…
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Massachusetts political deadline to run as an unenrolled is LONG past along with the party registration deadlines. Besides it was an either or choice, not like Connecticut’s EITHER/OR/BOTH selection.
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Remember the deadline, where Christy Mihos had to decide IF he was going as unenrolled OR in a party? Long gone by.
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You guys are making stuff up left and right.
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Maybe you’re spending to much time on your knees to understand the reality based election laws?
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I smell real desperation in the air…
Link to another comment saying you’ll vote for Gabrieli if he wins.
Reniassance Man….I said I COULD vote for him, not that I WOULD. Good lord man, speak english please. Who reeks of desperation again? Let me guess, I work for either Tom or Deval’s campaign, all the while you are here drooling over Gabrieli.
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YAAAAAAAAAWN
Actually, with a name like “Valentine”, I think it’s more likely this “guy” is a woman. Just one of the assumptions in your comment, that suggest you may not have actually read the post 🙂
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It seems entirely genuine to me. And conflating “people who want to vote for ‘real Democrats'”, with “people who are real Democrats and would’ve already been planning to vote in the primary, dammit!” is just a way of missing the point.
How full of shite is the linked-to post? Let me count the ways.
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1. “Chris Gabrieli’s matching kamikaze dive.” True, Deval surged in these polls, but Gabrieli’s #s stayed flat, or even crept up a bit.
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2. “Patrick’s campaign is running advertisements in which Patrick touts progressive Democratic concerns.” Somone will have to point one of these out to me. All the Deval ads I’ve seen so far talk about hope and cooperation, Massachusetts getting “up off its knees” and “together we can.” Sure, these are “progressive Democratic concerns,” but only if you define them so broadly as to be the same as everyone’s (stated) concerns. His ads rarely name specific Democratic positions. Unless I’m proved wrong, the whole basis of the post is bogus.
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3.
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The author doesn’t want a raving partisan, but candidates who speak of pragmatism or nonpartisan ideas are rhetorically executed. The author never names a single issue which Gabrieli holds, but only quotes the anti-partisan line as proof he is “tacking towards the party of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush.” Beautiful logic.
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4.
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This should ring alarm bells on two levels. First, leaving aside Deval’s electability (I agree he could beat Healey), this person would rather vote for a guaranteed LOSS than vote for Chris, despite his generally progressive positions and history of supporting the party. Second, this person believes we cannot lose to Healey no matter who we put up or what we do. Is this a credible voice to be promoting to a national web audience??
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5. Lastly, its tone is hollow and manipulative. The author wants us to believe it was the ads that made the decision. No one with such strong opinions could have been sitting there undecided and then think all that after hearing Chris’s line about ideas. Not plausible.
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Why is this shit front-paged so quickly? What’s happened to the quality of analysis by the BMG editors in the last couple of weeks? I used to rely on them to keep partisans (including me) honest by calling out bogus or factually incorrect arguments. Not any more. It’s getting excruciating to be a non-Deval person around here.
Stop whining and start your own blog. The owners of BMG don’t owe anyone anything.
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And if I’d paused and reflected before hitting “post,” I would have toned down that last paragraph. It is whiny. But as a user of the site, I don’t think it’s totally unhelpful to point out its changing tenor. It’s set up to be more like a community than a personal blog.
The post was a little harsh, but BMG, any any other blog I’ve been reading lately, could use a little criticism.
First, I have never understood how people label BMG neutral…it isn’t! Bob, Charley, and David have EXCELLENT analysis and are without question very fair on the issues but at the end of the day I have always felt each of the editors argues from a biased position if for no other reason than this is a DEMOCRATIC blog which means its biased right from the start. We seem to confuse fairness for neutrality these days.
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Second, if you want a neutral opinion why in the hell are you reading a blog? Blogs are pretty much by nature meant to convey an opinion. Again, I think the editors here treat every issue very fairly, David in particular always has excellent analysis (not to say that Bob and Charley are slouches) but ultimately David generally seems to be arguing from his position. BMG has endorsed Patrick and they have a right to push Patrick. Bob and Charley have endorsed Andrea and if Bob and Charley front page every Andrea post so be it, BMG is still a great site and still offers A LOT of non-Andrea stuff.
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So I echo Susan here, start your own blog. It’s easy, I did and I am a tech moron. To think that BMG should be the be all and end all of MA blogs is a little dangerous actually. There is huge varity of opinion out there so don’t complain like you have no other options. BMG is the best place to come for analysis but there are a lot of great voices out there, why not add yours if you feel there is a derth of Patrick blogs.
Canneo that comment isn’t directed at you, it is directed to everyone who shares your concerns for which there seem to be many lately.
Here’s some recent headlines:
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‘Swayed to Deval’
‘Patrick is Strongest Against Healey’
‘Does Healey REALLY Want to Run Against Patrick?’
‘Another Pro-Patrick Kos Diary to Recommend’
‘Bonifaz Getting Some Traction’
‘Deval is SUCH a DREAMBOAT!! LOL I LOVE HIM’
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I like BMG. Some of the people here are pretty alright guys and gals and someone is always saying something smart. But BMG is on the opposite side of the spectrum from anything resembling ‘fair.’ Come on, guys. Is everyone drinking before blogging these days?
Never thought BMG was or should be neutral, just that it has had high standards of analysis and fairness that are a big reason for its success. A recent, small change in that tenor probably has to do with this late moment in the primary season, which is infantile to complain about. That DKos post was so lousy and unfair that it just set me off.
… in the user posts. I’m not saying we’ll automatically front-page it, but if it’s really awesome, we feel like we have to. “Chris Gabrieli is a Democrat’s Democrat”, or whatever you like. Go for it.
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As far as being fair … cripes, we’ve front-paged MavDem so many times I’ve lost track. I think he’s in his own Tom Reilly bubble … but heck, he writes well and argues passionately.
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BTW, I don’t agree with a lot of the post, either; and I thought that Cos’s commentary was not necessarily a wholesale endorsement of every idea in there. I like Gabs, and will vote for him in November with a song in my heart, if that’s what it comes to. But I think he might be doing better if he had been going for a politics of contrast, which even Reilly has done in his ads.
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I hear you loud and clear about the analysis — it has changed. But like everyone else, we had to make a decision, and we’re not going to pull our punches anymore. We’re still calling it like we see it — it’s just not like you see it.
The owners of BMG can certainly run their blog as they see fit. That is presumed when we “enter” this “world”.
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I also agree that the original post was OK, but did not need to be front-paged if it were my blog. Not my call however, so who cares? It’s not that big of a deal.
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PS I was wondering Susan M if you could also drop a note to Deval and tell him to “stop whining” about having his positions picked on in the various ads up right now. Many thanks!
right around the time your candidate gets his rabies vaccine to protect himself from Deval’s “rabid” supporters. Your welcome!
than ancient convention history, a minor debate exchange, slandering the candidate (and majority of the population), and naming two objects that have not appeared anywhere in Chris’s campaign.
Number one should be:
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1. Dismissing his own party’s activists as being “out of touch”. Now that is something to complain about. How many times do the voters have to get slapped around by a politician who seems to feel superior to the actual democratic process?
I don’t have much time, so I will be as brief as possible – with one exception in #6 – with my responses to your complaints.
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1.)Not true. Deval’s email last week saying that Gabrieli was “excluding” state universities from $ for stem cell/scientific research was misleading. Gabrieli said the $would be awarded based upon merit.
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2.) Not true – where’s the evidence? And even if it were true, conventions to some extent are the epitome of deal making. There were many more “deals” to try to exclude Gabrieli from the ballot than there were to get him on it.
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3.) I think we know why that was. Did he miss the deadline to enter? No. So sorry about that.
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4.) Not true.
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5.) Please, are we in 3rd grade again now?
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6.) Not true. Gabrieli is the son of legal immigrants (i.e. folks who – you know – followed the rules & laws).
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I call Chris’ position distinguishing between legal and illegal behavior. If we just allow folks that are here illegally to receive benefits like in state tuition breaks funded with our tax $s, where is the incentive to become a legal citizen? In Deval’s world, a legal US citizen who lives one mile over the MA border has to pay a higher tuition bill than an illegal alien?
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Gabrieli is not making his distinction based upon race, it is based upon folks here via legal channels versus illegal means (i.e. Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, etc. it does not matter. If you are here legally and are a resident of our state, you get the in state tuition break. If you are not here legally, you should not get the break regardless of your ethnicity).
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Also, Gabrieli’s focus is much more on the companies who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Enforce those laws and another incentive to be illegally is removed at the same time an incentive to be here legally is created.
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That CG radio ad is really resonating with folks who care about the law being followed and their tax $ being used for other causes.
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7.) Original. It’s actually called specifics, something “you can hear the justice in his voice” occasionally lacks.
Wow. How… out-of-touch with reality. All of a sudden, Deval’s supporters look like bright people to me.
That is to say:
even the crazy off-their-rockers Deval supporters seem like bright people to me now. The others I was fine with before that comment.
At least one of Kerry’s aides came over to work for Gabs when he jumped into the race. No surprises here.
I remember when my high school US History teacher taught us that the Democratic Party was supposed to be the party of the working class. Now, people like Gabs are considered ‘Democrats’ and people like Deval are considered ‘bold Democrats.’
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How about this for an issue: labor union membership has been falling for quite some time. It’s down to 12% now- most of that in the public sector. What are ‘Democrats’ like these going to do about that? Do they know anything about it? Do they care?
What the heck are you saying? The AG who’s willing to stretch the law by playing footsies with the Killer Koke Kampaign is the champion of the people? Huh?
Is that someone like Tom Reilly knows a little more about what’s going on then Richie Rich & Gabs ‘Money Bags.’
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If you can’t follow that…
No surprises and no winning strategy. Just another play of the “electability” cannard. Uggghhhh!
a Kos quality thread.
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One hopes this is better by Wednesday.
There is no Renaissance Man. He is a creation for purposes of inciting response.
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Man, I like this blog.