Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Quick Thought

By

Our Senate special election is WAY, WAY more important than NY-23 was in November. It’s also, as far as I know, the only election in the country right now.

But because a Democratic victory is guaranteed, there is no “referendum” angle.

Why doesn’t the opposite angle kick in? The one where a slow news time inflates a story?

Can’t the national political press do anything without Glenn Beck or She Who Sells a Book Full of Lies telling them to cover it?

 

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. Can’t the national political press do anything without Glenn Beck or She Who Sells a Book Full of Lies telling them to cover it?

    <

    p>… not unless the globe or the times attaches a hot button controversial narrative to the race.  

    • …there is the whole Stupak thing and how candidates have to balance priorities as well as bargaining positions.  Few things are as hot-botton as abortion.

      • or “no” but for reasons other than the ones I stated? More to the point, why is the national news not interested and can it do anything without Glenn Beck or She Who Sells a Book Full of Lies telling them to cover it?  

        • …about a race for Senate in a state other than their own.  After all, most are not political diehards like we are.  I was just pointing out that the juxtaposition of this race with the health reform plus Stupak debate means that there IS a hot-button issue that could be of national interest.

    • Was BMG the only place where the was such a bruhaha over how “StuPitts” would affect their respective votes on health reform?

    • The story will be Martha Coakley, after she is elected.

      <

      p>Martha Coakley indicted Richard Vitale — and not Sal DiMasi or Thomas Petrolati. She let the feds do that, just like she let the feds indict Ms. Wilkerson and Mr. Turner.

      <

      p>Ms. Coakley does consider “private” emails relevant in her case against Mr. Vitale — and we learn today that the Court agrees with her. Yet she dismisses the wholesale and apparently illegal destruction of similar emails as a campaign shenanigan when those emails point towards the corruption of Mayor Menino’s City Hall machine.

      <

      p>The pattern is clear enough. When the apparently corrupt official is someone she likes and/or needs the support of, she finds a way to let somebody else do the dirty work. When she is finally forced to do something, she targets the smallest fish she can find — a Richard Vitale, instead of the machine he supported. A $500M settlement from the smallest of the Big Dig contractors (after an innocent woman dies from their negligence), on a project where the largest contractors pocketed more than ten times that.

      <

      p>The venal corruption in the Beacon Hill and City Hall machines is pervasive, flagrant, and apparent — just as the moral corruption in the Boston Archdiocese was pervasive, flagrant and apparent. Martha Coakley has been a follower, rather than a leader, in attacking that corruption — yet she trumpets her actions as the centerpiece of her campaign.

      <

      p>There is an old marketing rule of thumb — focus your marketing on the weakest aspects of your product, because the strongest aspects sell themselves. We can see, from Martha Coakley’s campaign focus, which aspects she considers her weak spots.

      <

      p>THAT is the story, and it will be national if she is our next Senator when it explodes.

      • Yet she dismisses the wholesale and apparently illegal destruction of similar emails as a campaign shenanigan when those emails point towards the corruption of Mayor Menino’s City Hall machine.

        <

        p>She is investigating this now, after stalling since the beginning of September,

        <

        p>- despite an transparently insufficient FOIA document production for the Globe,
        – despite three written requests to investigate, one from a former DA
        – despite an incomplete document production in a Federal corruption case,
        – despite the target of the investigation admitting his pattern of operation did in fact destroy records of official correspondence so they could not be recovered,

        <

        p>until late in October a few weeks before the Boston Mayoral election.  Her statement was that the investigation will not be complete by the election.  

        • You’re absolutely correct about the legal steps she has taken to delay the investigation while preserving her “plausable deniability”.

          <

          p>I was characterizing her political stance when the story broke in September.

Archives