The print edition of this week's Phoenix sports this teaser for Adam Reilly's otherwise very fine story on Gov. Patrick: “GIVE ME NO LIP: Patrick blows off grassroots allies and the press.”
Hrmm… sounds a little out of date, doesn't it? Adam (who didn't write the teaser) correctly tells us not to accept the “poetry-vs.-prose” dichotomy of campaigning vs. governing. And he asks some good questions in his story — like, why didn't the happen earlier? And our own David Kravitz is quoted that “the whole civic engagement aspect of his governorship has been slow to take off.”
But actually, this month has been the start of not blowing off the grassroots. (The press, I can't speak to.) As far as we're concerned, we just met with the Governor a couple of weeks ago; the Gov's chief of staff has been all over this site, and showed up at the bloggy shindig in Lowell last Saturday; and there seems to genuinely be a change in strategy towards reaching out to the grassroots — and hopefully even to folks who can't be categorized as plugged-in activists. That might have been an interesting teaser, too: “PATRICK CHECKS BACK IN”; and it happens to be true, from what I can tell. (It doesn't hurt that the new proposals are much more to our liking than the casino bill.)
While noting much of this, the article's tone is still critical and fairly backward-looking. I suppose that's understandable, and it's indicative of how much heavy lifting is involved in changing a media narrative. But it does seem to be criticizing Patrick for actually doing something right — even after he's tried the alternatives to doing it right.
Patrick mentioned to us how he is “fed” by interacting with the public (ie. beyond “moonbat duty” with the progs n' blogs); one hopes that he will indeed enter into a genuine conversation with the public about our priorities as a state. Some town-hall events a la Bernie Sanders would be most welcome, and Patrick would absolutely excel.
In the Phoenix print article, Jim Braude flatters us, but also mentions our inherent limitations:
“I love Blue Mass. Group”, says Braude. “But as a person who's organized most of the my lfe, the written word never organizes one-thousandth of the people that the spoken word does[*] … The more the public hears from [Patrick's] lips, the better he does.”
Patrick has the ability to genuinely change the political atmosphere; to listen, to set priorities and galvanize public support. Let's hope this is the genuine beginning of the new approach; which is, after all, the old approach that got him elected.
*[I might add that this applies to the individuals of the BMG community as well; meeting in person is powerful, and a way to further real action. Thanks again, Lynne and Ryan, and let's keep talking.]
to stop the House from putting the “loophole” back in the MA tax package. The worst of it is, it favors those corporations that offshore work.
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Blog posts and meetings are not “wins”. After a year of big misses and deserved negative press, Patrick needs to rack up some successes, not just dialogue, before he or his supporters can expect positive coverage.
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p>Charlie, you’d be wiser to demand those successes, rather than carry Patrick’s water before he’s earned it.
Patience. Remember — the legislative session is a 2-year session. It ends in July, and most of the big stuff doesn’t roll out until shortly before the end. My prediction is that, when the session is over, suddenly Governor Patrick will have a pretty solid record of achievement.
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p>These things do take time. My other quote in Adam’s article:
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p>I’ll stand by that. Let’s reconvene this discussion at the end of July.
I mean, come on. Anyone who knows anything about the legislative session in MA knows to wait until July of the second year before making any assessments.
Knows where to aim their tomatoes. With a legislature packed “gimme mine” local officials, its no wonder little gets done. Its all fine and good to blame the Governor but don’t forget all politics is local. Look at who you elected from your town and you’ll probably find a better target for your tomato
I am not throwing tomatoes, in any of my comments upthread. All I did was rein Charlie in, from his position describing a modicum of outreach in the wake of several public fiascos as a “win”, which it is not.
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p>Then you misinterpreted and said I was judging events too quickly, when in fact I was simply holding Charlie back from doing the same.
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p>Then I clarified…and you made the same misinterpretation again…and here we are.
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p>I hope that you will soon have a moment to re-read my posts with this exposition in mind.
But you’re still wrong, because you still didn’t address my comments.
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p>On an aside, I find it funny how I ended up wrangling with you about Charlie’s (ill-founded) post…
I’m late to this … but you put the word “wins” in quotes. Not only did I not use that word, as you’re implying. My language throughout the post is qualified and, I think, cautious. The article focuses in part on Patrick’s relationship with the grassroots. My point — made pretty clear, I think — is that that seems to be changing for the better as of late. For what it’s worth.
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p>I do indeed expect results, and legislative victories. So we agree on something, Will.
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p>It never ceases to amaze me how much people are ready to call us BIG DEVAL SHILLS at the slightest provocation. We support him and say nice things when we think he’s right. We say he’s wrong when we think he’s wrong. It’s really not very hard to figure out. That we agree with him on Issue X or Strategy Y is not evidence that we’ve decided to jettison our critical thinking. And I think our record reflects that.
It was very interesting meeting, I can say it meant a lot for him to show up in North Central Mass (During election night converage Keller was shocked that Patrick was winning here).
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p>It was great, he talked about the need to move forward on revenue proposals and listened to concerns of the city (we have a five million dollar budget shortfall). Seems to have a good working relationship with our rep DiNatale and brought a lot of people into the conversation, other city leaders and students from Fitchburg State College.
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p>I agree with David that by the end of the session we are going to see a lot has been accomplished.
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p>Removing the outdated Telecom immunity might be one area to push, It was discussed at the meeting. As I said there were students from FSC there who were unfamiliiar with the issue and Patrick did an excellent job in presenting the arguments.
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p>We face a lot of challenges in Fitchburg (don’t get me started on Unitil – our power company), but we just elected an new mayor who is ready to move forward and our reps (in Fitchburg and Lemonister) are anxious to work with the Governor to move our city (and the state) forward.
Not to File: If anyone criticizes the administration or suggests how we can do something better, savagely attack them!
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p>If only we had re-education camps. It would be so much easier if Deval could make everyone think correctly.
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How is writing a blog post a “save attack” or even in the same universe as “re-education camp.”
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p>Someone wrote an article, Charley read it and presented arguments as to why he disagree with it. Where I come from that is also called criticism. Tolerating criticism is actually a two way street. The BMG thought police are not racing to the Phoenix to drag Mr. Reilly away.
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p>People do have a right to criticize the adminstration, you are correct, but they don’t have a right to expect that no one can respond.
In case anyone couldn’t figure that out.
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p>oh… I don’t know about that… Last I checked the Declaration of Independence was an example of the written word… and one that has organized many over the course of a span several times the length of Braudes’ life.
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p>I can’t tell if this is an implicit criticism of our education system or an implicit pat on the back for Braude and his (apparent) life-long exploitation of our education system.
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BMG to the Declaration of Independence?
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p>petr, you’re my new best friend.
The Internet is great in bringing together like minded people to share thoughts and ideas via a site such as Blue Mass Group. HOWEVER, the Internet also lets folks find their own little comfortable niche amid these same like minded people. “Preaching to the Choir”, although well pre-dating BBN’s work on Arpanet and Tim Berners-Lee, is still very appropriate here. That is the point that Braude is trying to get at with his comment IMHO.
I’ve read the Declaration of Independence and while powerful much less so than MLK’s I have a dream speech. While both present the similar ideas, I have to believe that the spoken word is more powerful than the written word, no matter how elegant…
that this isn’t the time to remember that the Declaration was read out loud to the masses after it was adopted by the Continental Congress.
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p>MLK’s speeches (most of those that I’ve read and heard, at least) are themselves a derivative of the written word and, when spoken, (at least as regards me…) gets crammed into my already quite full brain alongside typesetting like the Gospels, Melville, Euclid, Voltaire, Tennyson, Descartes, Freud, The Federalist Papers and MAD magazine, among others… Once in there, it gets churned around until I’ve digested, compared, belched and scratched, analyzed and thought through to a conclusion that makes sense to me in the context of every other thing I’ve ever heard and or read. How do you learn?
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p>MLK agrees with me. From a speech:
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p>MLK is quoting the written word: Carlyle, Bryant and Lowell were all long dead ere MLK was born… I’ll leave it as an excercise to the reader to discover John of Patmos.
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p>My point, however, has less to do with the relative merits of reading versus listening, and much more to do with the implicit pat on the back that Braude gives himself for his exploitation of the fact that not a lot of people read… That he twists it to say that’s the natural, or even desirable, state doesn’t give you an excuse to fall for it.
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Lynne and I have kept ourselves busy since last Saturday. I’ll post some news soon.