Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Herald 2 for 2, could they be going for a hat trick?

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The Boston Herald today endorsed Martha Coakley for Attorney General.  This is the second time in as many days that the Herald has endorsed a democrat in the upcoming election.  They endorsed Ted Kennedy on Friday. The question now is will the Herald, the bastion of all things Republican, complete the hat trick and go with Deval?

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  1. I think the Herald has three play for endorsing a gubenatorial candidate:

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    Endorse Patrick, but taking a different editorial stance than the Globe.

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    A not so enthusiastic endorsement Healey, finding some, unseen angle to play up.

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    Endorse Mihos.

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    IMHO, the safe bet is on a Patrick endorsement, but I’d put my money on a Mihos endorsement as a grandstanding move to generate Buzz for the Herald.

  2. They’re going to pull the Patrick lever. Worcester did, and that paper isn’t exactly the bastion of liberaldom if I’ve heard correctly.

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    It’s pretty hard for a rational person to explain just why Kerry Healey deserves to be elected, unless they just don’t give a crap about the actual person behind the office (you know… wanted a decent human being in charge, instead of a vicious, incompetent, inexperienced hack)…

    • the party brand name trumps the track record of the individual candidate or their fitness for the office. Until fairly recently the Telegram was known for this kind of blinkered thinking (i.e. Republicans good, Democrats bad).

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      It reflected the history of the city, which was dominated by Protestant Yankee industrialists who all voted Republican, and who alternately vied with or pulled the strings of Irish Catholic pols drawn from the second wave of immigrants whom the late Robert W. Stoddard (millionaire co-founder of the John Birch Society and owner of both the Worcester Telegram and the Evening Gazette until his death in 1984 and their sale and merger into the T und G) famously and succinctly termed “the ditch-diggers.”

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      With the dying off of that Yankee millionaire class (who did their best to stall populist change in Worcester even as they gifted and – through their donations and the legacy of their charitable foundations – continue to gift the city with great treasures in art, cultural, and educational institutions), and the arrival of yet more immigrants and ethnic transplants after that first wave of Scandinavian Lutherans and Irish Catholics, the lines between the working classes and industrial millionaire classes are increasingly blurred, and that change in politics and outlook has finally been reflected in the editorial slant of the only daily in the second-largest city in NE.

  3. Don’t get carried away.  The Herald will endorse Kerry Healey.

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    They endorsed Kennedy over a nutjob and Coakley over a nobody.  They’re not going to endorse Patrick over Healey.

  4. Could be possible, but I have no idea. I’m expecting the Cape Cod Times to go Mihos, but Herald could end up “none of the above” perhaps đŸ™‚

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    ProJo did endorsemnts for MA and CT too, and endorsed Deval, the only Democrat other than the Kennedys (they endorsed Rell in CT and Chafee in RI), and I thought it was a great moderately-conservative argument made, as opposed to the almost grudgingly written endorsement of Ted Kenney (I didn’t read the Pat Kennedy one yet).

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    Some excerts (emphasis mine)

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    Mr. Patrick’s campaign has featured the loftiest use of the English language that the Bay State has heard for years. And at a time when bipartisan civility has all but vanished, Mr. Patrick seems to personify it.

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    Mrs. Healey has made much of the need for a Republican governor to restrain the excesses of an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. Mr. Patrick, for his part, shows his intellectual honesty by agreeing that, yes, that division of power has worked in the public’s favor in the recent past. The implication of such an admission is that this man of many parts — born on the South Side of Chicago; graduate of Milton Academy, Harvard and Harvard Law School; Justice Department official in the Clinton administration; corporate lawyer and executive — would govern from the center.

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    The key thing here is to say how impressed with Mr. Patrick we are. His stands have shown that he can be moderate and understanding of others’ views. Moreover, his eloquence, empathy, drive and desire to bring people together to get things done all suggest he would be a more effective leader than Mrs. Healey. We are pleased to endorse him for governor.

  5. It’s not unheard of.  The Herald can talk about her incompetence and disastrous campaign, and say that she’s unfit to be governor.  However, all the other candidates have issues, etc.

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    I think the move most in line with the paper’s culture would be to endorse Mihos and frankly that’s what I hope they’ll do (I don’t want Patrick to owe them any favors).  Among other things, a Herald endorsement could well push Mihos very close to Healey.

  6. the Herald, true to form, endorsed Healey today.  The editorial was not very well written and not at all persuasive.

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    I’d rather have the Globe’s endorsement of Deval any day…yesterday’s editorial was spectacular…it gave me goosebumps.

    • Here’s the opening line:

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      Kerry Healey is a far better candidate and a far better person than the campaign she waged.

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      Ouch!  (Healey) but thanks for the endorsement.  I think?

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