If you want to see People Powered Forums this August rather than just old style debates, here’s your chance!
With less than 8 weeks to go till the September 16th vote between John Kerry and Ed O’Reilly there really needs to be some discussion and dates set now.
Yesterday, July 24th, O’Reilly called on John Kerry to set up such forums and debates:
With the September 16th Primary less than eight weeks away, I believe it is time for us to schedule debates and other forums so that the voters of Massachusetts will have the ability to participate in democracy to its fullest extent.
You can read the full letter here.
The people are still waiting to hear back. Now is the critical time to call John Kerry’s campaign office and let him know that we want to hear from both candidates at forums across the state.
You can call Kerry’s campaign office at: 617-227-1460 for open forums
And please note that the Senate will not be in session for the whole month of August so there should be no reason that he can’t make time to speak with the people in such forums. (Well, he will be at the National Convention the last week in August, but all the more reason to plan now and make dates for the other 3 weeks!)
As a party we have made such strides for inclusion of the people and I hope we continue on with that process.
And lastly what are some issues and concerns you will bring up at the forums for both Kerry and O’Reilly?
Kerry:
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p>1. I have had a lot of problems with his constituency services and I hear this time and time again from others. What will he do to improve this in concrete terms? Will he be willing to set aside a certain amount of money to improve it? Re-training courses? New people? Something, anything!
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p>2. Marriage equality. See my previous post on this. The main points are that the Senator has no logical, rationale, or political reasoning to not support marriage equality and he should change his stance.
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p>3. Voted to authorize the war in Iraq. Need I say more?
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p>4. Does he support HR 676, single payer health care? There’s actually a health care dialogue going on at Faneuil Hall on 7/25 that perhaps we could ask him then.
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p>O’Reilly:
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p>1. I think many people really like his ideas. However, what can he tell us more about his experience to show us that he would be ready for the Senate and able to lead?
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p>2. In response to his critiquing of Kerry not be accessible to the people of Massachusetts, would O’Reilly be willing to say that he would meet with us every x amount of time (ex. every month or every 3 months) in a different district? Same goes to Kerry, but I’m kind of skeptical he would do something like that while a challenger may be willing to do so.
I agree with you that marriage should be for all, but that will not come to the Senate as a whole for decades, no matter who the Senator from MA is. You, in fact, acknowledge that when you give Obama a pass on it – as you did for Kerry in 2004. Although a lot of you think civil unions don’t go far enough, Kerry has a clearly more liberal position than most of the rest of the Senators. It would not now be possible even to repeal DOMA.
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p>It would seem you might want to assess where he stands in pushing to rectify some of the inequity. In 2004, he spoke of wanting, as President, to get equal federal rights for civil unions – and when asked how it could be done, he gave an example of pushing for legislation to change the tax code to treat people in civil unions as people who are married are. One debate question might be whether, if Obama is elected and willing to sign and back it, would he as a member of the Finance community lead the effort to get those changes. This would help even those married in MA, I assume.) The others on
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p>That is a real action that could be initiated, even if it is not successful the first time. That would be of far more benefit than a more overt statement that he now backs gay marriage and is consistent with all of his positions on equality.
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p>Kerry is likely to be an ally in passing the healthcare plan that Obama, as President and Kennedy (I hope), as Chair of HELP want – and from comments of all three – it will not be single payer. It is not because all three don’t understand the benefits of single payer – it is because it would’t pass. Would you rather the other MA Senator work with Kennedy (where Kerry would be more helpful given his seat on the Finance committee’s health subcommittee) or stand nearly alone with a single payer bill that will not get support?
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p>Obama’s plan includes Kerry’s idea for re-insurance for catastrophic costs. I think that part of the plan is single payer. If so, it could provide the transition to single payer. If it works well in cutting costs, the threshold could be lowered.
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p>That doesn’t address the issue of whether Senator Kerry should support marriage equality or not. Also, if we don’t support it now then it’ll take that much longer to become legal. Sen. Kerry represents Massachusetts where we’re ahead of the curve, and proud of it, and he should be representing that.
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p>That’s right and John Kerry is no longer running for President and thus has no political reason to move to the center.
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p>He has also stated on the topic of abortion that he shouldn’t impose his own “personal views” on others, but rather stick to the constitutional arguments when it comes to law. He’s holding marriage equality to a different standard and has no logical or constitutional argument against it.
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p>Once again, this sidesteps the issue of whether Sen. Kerry should support marriage equality. The question isn’t whether we should be content with his views because they’re better than Senators from Alabama and South Carolina.
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p>Again, he’s not running for President and is running to represent the people from Massachusetts. In our Democratic Party Platform, we do indeed support marriage equality.
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p>Once again, that’s a smokescreen (do we see a pattern forming here?). Also, we’re going to vote for a senator for the next 4 years and within that time frame it will indeed be feasible to repeal DOMA especially with Obama as President.
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p>We can have both. You see, politics is the art of the possible and so if all that is achievable is civil unions then that’s fine because civil rights is incremental. However, he should support marriage equality and that is what he should be working towards. He has no logical or constitutional argument against it and he represents the people of Massachusetts.
You also didn’t answer my question from my previous post of whether or not you were associated with the Kerry campaign? Please don’t feel it’s a “witch hunt” or anything of the sort, but would like all disclosures made and I’ve listed my reasons below as to why I have my suspicions.
I would ask Mr. Kerry why he didn’t see fit to attend, so VP Dick Cheney could cast the deciding NO vote. I thought Democrats were supposed to be FOR the working men and women.
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p>There will be a funeral in Lawerence, Mass., on Saturday for Army Staff Sgt. Alex Jimenez. Notwithstanding our thoghts on policy, we should honor the ultimate sacrifice made by Alex Jimenez.
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p>Please spend a moment of silent reflection!
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p>Democrats, and Barack Obama, are strong on national security and defense. The Republicans will try to scare people, but we must stand tall!
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Lawrence, Mass.
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p>It was fitting that John Kerry attended the wake on Friday evening and then went back for a rare Saturday session.
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p>Governor Deval Patrick, Lt. Governor Tim Murray, and Congresswoman Nikki Tsongas attended the ceremony on Saturday.
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should vote for him over Kerry, at a time when we are almost certain to lose our other senior senator within 1-2 years. Without Kerry’s seniority in the senate, we would go from having two senators with tremendous seniority to having two with little to none. I don’t think we have the luxury of replacing Senator Kerry this year.
He is totally lacking in constituent service, which is the mainstay of any office holder. He cares NOTHING about the working men and women of his state, or the nation for that matter. We gotta dump this goober.
I think Ted has another ten years left. And if Ted would not work with Jeff Beatty, our next senator, then we’ll have to dump Ted too.
I want progress, not partisan ideology!
His prognosis is not good, and if he does live another ten years, most of that will be spent in a well-earned retirement. As for Kerry being a goober, it would seem you haven’t met Ed O’Reilly yet…
Senator Kerry has been a leader on the development of the Iraq exit plan that most Democrats, including Obama, espouse. Last week, he also was the leader of a group of Senators, including Feingold, Leahy and Levin, who have recommended that Bush establish a diplomatic presence in Iran. http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl… There is no way that either challenger will come close to Kerry’s stature in foreign policy.
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p>One of Beatty’s assertions is that he is an expert fighting terror. Kerry was the author of the legislation that provided the tools to fight international money laundering that are now used to follow the money with terrorists. In addition, by 2006, even people like George Will were admitting that Kerry was right in 2004. So, you would be replacing a real leader here, one of the few who took non-state terrorism seriously in teh 1990s, with someone who claims he will be one.
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p>Senator Kerry has led on the various issues involving corruption, including his recent bill with Obama that dealt with KBR 9Halliburton) cheating workers by claiming they were incorportated in the Cayman Islands. Watch this Finance committee hearing and you will see that Kerry is among those working for transparency in international banking to prevent companies like UBS from helping wealthy people cheat on taxes. He’s fought for this since he was the only one to stand against BCCI. http://finance.senate.gov/site…
(click where indicated to see the 7/24 session) There is no one better on this issue.
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p>On global warming, Kerry, called the go-to person on this by Senator Boxer, won praise even from the Bush administration for his work before and at Bali. One official team member went as far as saying to a SFRC that there would not have been a treaty coming out of it if it were not for Kerry’s night and day negotiating with other delegations.
http://www.kerryvision.net/200…
Kerry was the only person from Congress to attend Bali – even though to avoid missing votes, it meant 40 hours of commercial flights to spend 36 hours in Bali. (and O’Reilly quit his School board position because it was too much work.)
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p>A Kerry/Snowe bill that was the basis for the affordable Housing Fund in the current Housing bill. This was just one of four Kerry provisions added – all of which deal with helping home owners.
as a reason to vote for him (as he did in his speech at the State Convention and as you use as a point above). He voted to get us in there in the first place when he was trying to seem tough on defense.
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p>And just curious, for disclosure purposes, are you affiliated with kerryvision as well? Thought I would ask since most of your comments revolve around Senator Kerry, you post a link from kerryvision, and your post here is pretty much a praise piece when this post is all about issues/concerns/questions that we have for the candidates.
and John Kerry hasn’t used his seniority in any significant way. Can you name anything that MA has received as a result of Kerry’s exercising of his seniority? There’s nothing to lose by dumping him and lots to gain by electing a real grass-roots candidate, Ed O’Reilly.
not 14 — that’s pushing it (based on my growing annoyance with the 20 or so presidential primary debates we sat through in ’07 & ’08, I think most would agree 14 debates in 8 weeks is ridiculous).
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p>For Sen. Kerry:
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p>In 2006 you came up with an Iraq plan, later called the Kerry/Feingold amendment, which set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq in 1 year. Given that the Maliki government has now endorsed the latest version of the plan (16 month withdrawal), it appears that it will be executed starting in 2009. How do you see this withdrawal taking place, and what does that mean for our interests in the Middle East going forward?
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p>Back in 2004, you spoke out for Energy Independence, and that we could not drill our way out of our problems with foreign dependency on oil. In the same year you were smeared by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, funded by big donors like oil billionaire T Boone Pickens who forked out $1.5 million. Now in 2008, he has decided against funding 527s against Obama, and in stead is spending money running ads that calls to an end our dependency on foreign oil, and that we “cannot drill our way out of the energy crisis”. What is going on here, and what is your take on Pickens’ suddenly funding ads that undermines McCain’s and the RNC’s push for offshore drilling?
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p>Now that you are no longer part of a national campaign and are running for office once again in Mass., would you consider at this time backing gay marriage, not just civil unions, since that is the law of the land in Mass.?
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However, as to the topic of the number of forums I think 14 of them, 1 for each county, is completely called for. It gives a chance to the voters to air their concerns and issues directly with the candidates and 1 or 2 weeks of meetings and speaking with the people I don’t think is too much to ask.
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p>And I doubt all of those forums would be televised. The statewide media would probably hold off for the formal debates rather than the informal process of a forum so we wouldn’t have a ridiculous amount of televised appearances as in the Presidential race.
to discuss foreign, domestic, and local issues. JMHO, of course.
but I don’t think it’s about going through and simply covering the issues. Heck, that’s what the issues page on their websites are for.
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p>Rather, it’s about going out there and speaking with your constituents who very rarely have a chance for direct input/questions/comments. It’s about going out there and getting people actively engaged in the political process. And for that I think a couple weeks every 4 years is not too much to ask.
I mean, let’s face it: Kerry has the star power; barely anyone has heard of O’Reilly. That would be equivalent to Obama accepting McCain’s offer of meeting all the time at town hall debates; it was simply a way for McCain to be able to face big crowds he can’t garner on his own, and to get free publicity. It’s just bad campaign form to let a weaker challenger to dictate the terms, and to relinquish one’s advantage. Politics 101.
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p>I do wholeheartedly agree, however, that the candidates should travel around Mass., meeting with voters. But instead of debating all the time, they should be listening to what the voters think.
and holding forums while O’Reilly wants as many as possible. It’s in their political interests to do so.
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p>Regardless of their political interests, the interests of the people are such that they want to get involved and hear from the candidates. They want to know their positions on issues, differences between them, bring up concerns they have, and know why they should vote for one over the other.
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p>You say:
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p>Well, I think it would be better to have both of them present so we could get the differing views and it makes it easier for the people to contrast the two. This isn’t about politics to help out one candidate or the other. It’s about creating a dialogue with the citizens of Massachusetts, hearing their concerns and issues, and showing the contrast between the two candidates.
that no matter what they do, it is largely to Kerry’s advantages. He is a fine debater after all, and would whip O’Reilly 23 times, if it came to it:
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p>Yes, O’Reilly has absurdly now called for 23 debates.
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p>But let’s talk about the voters. I think they would probably like to see a couple of debates, but no more. Then it gets dull, and is too much (sorry, but that’s the average attitude). But what I think voters really, really like is to have time to actually see and speak to their Senator. That is why I am in favor of lots of appearances throughout Mass. by our current U.S. Senator, so that people can give him feedback — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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p>I think overall that is a far better use of the Senator’s and Massachusetts voters’ time than 23 debates. Lots of campaigning and meeting voters coupled with 2 or 3 debates is really pretty darn good.
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p>But, I guess we can agree to disagree. The point is there will be a mix of debates and lots of campaign stops in August. That, is, IF the Senate does have the promised August recess.
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a little is a good thing, but too much goes right to your a$$.
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p>So I agree with you maybe 2 debates is good.
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p>BTW…good questions.
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p>I didn’t know about either situation… but it makes me suspicious of the media coverage of both.
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p>My question is more general to both candidates…
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p>Why is sirrus and xm going to be allowed to merge after we already have clear proof that media conglomerates do not care about democracy?!
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p>What can be done to stop it and what will you do to stop it in 09?