Comparing the Candidates, as I see it
Capuano/Coakley: There are a number of differences, but the big one for me is civil liberties. Coakley has lately been virtually indistinguishable from Capuano on this issue (as one can see for instance in their answers to the ACLU questionnaire). But that’s not always been the case. As recently as this September, I was at a Democratic picnic at which both of them spoke. Capuano spoke of the PATRIOT act — how he had voted against it, and how he continues to work to undo the damage of that legislation. Coakley talked about how the previous day she had been in Washington at a talk by Bob Woodward. She found this talk so compelling that she told us quite a bit about it, and clearly agreed with what he was saying, which was: the terrorists who were responsible for 9/11 did not come from Iraq or Afghanistan. They came from our country. (Well, she explained that by this she meant that they were trained here.) And while we always have to make sure that civil liberties are respected, we need better internal surveillance to be apprised of threats such as this.
I wasn’t happy to hear this. I think we have quite enough internal surveillance as it is. I think the police and federal authorities have immense powers, which are often misused. They need more oversight, in my opinion, not more leeway to engage in internal surveillance.
I think this is a real difference in outlook between the two of them. In some sense, it’s not surprising. Coakley is a career prosecutor. In general, she has been a very good one. (There are a number of members of our local Democratic Town Committee who are really upset at the role she played in some particular cases, and I think they’re right, but without a doubt, Coakley has also done some very good things in her career.) But I think that the opinions she expressed at that picnic are not unusual for a prosecutor. The thing is, she’s running for the Senate.
Capuano/Khazei: I’ll put my cards on the table here. I used to be a public school teacher. And for the last 6 years of that time I was president of my local teachers union. I see teachers unions being slammed almost daily in the Globe, as if they were the cause of poor education systems. It really makes my blood boil. In my experience (and I have written about this previously), teachers unions are supported most strongly by the very best teachers, and almost never by the weakest. I won’t bother explaining yet again why this is, but it’s so different from what is generally believed that it’s worth repeating.
The Globe is on a mission to promote charter schools. Now the most recent and very well documented study of these schools shows that the only way they appear to do well (and for the most part they don’t really do all that well anyway) is by encouraging a high drop-out rate. Over half the students who enter those schools are nowhere to be found at graduation. In spite of this, charter schools are widely touted as bringing “innovation” to education. And this is exactly what Khazei says in supporting them. I finally heard Capuano say recently what I have been waiting for someone to say for years: he has been going around the state asking people about these schools, and trying to find even one innovation that is being proposed for implementation on a large scale. He has yet to find one.
In fact, there are none. The whole charter school movement (in Massachusetts, at any rate, and probably elsewhere as well) is based on not having a teachers union. It is simply a way of having teachers work more for less pay and with inferior working conditions. This is not a way to improve education, and these schools often have a very high turnover.
I think Capuano sees this clearly.
I think the reason Khazei doesn’t is not that he is callous or uncaring. I don’t think that’s the case. Rather, it’s that he really doesn’t look at things in terms of power relations. He says, for instance, “.. we need Big Citizenship, instead of the tired debate between Big Government vs. Big Business.” Well, the last time I checked, universal health care was “Big Government”, and private health care was “Big Business”. I don’t think we can solve this problem without naming it. I don’t think this is a “tired argument”. I think that saying it’s a “tired argument” feeds into a sort of wishful thinking that says that we can all just “get along”. (I’m not saying that Khazei actually says this, but it’s widely repeated, and I think Khazei’s position doesn’t challenge it in any real sense.) There are are powerful forces in play here, and while it’s absolutely true that we need massive citizen participation in pushing forward a progressive social agenda, what we really don’t need is a diffuse notion of involvement that is vague about who holds power and what they do with it.
Two Kinds of Democrats
It’s often been remarked that there are two kinds of Democrats: those who care about “social issues” such as civil liberties, women’s rights, the environment, gay and lesbian rights, and who are very sensitive to racist innuendos; and those on the other hand who care primarily about jobs and the economy and the dignity of labor. All too often we find that people who care a lot about one of these things care little about the other. We find people who are very progressive in certain respects but really are blind to the everyday lives of working people, of whatever color. And we find people who are very narrowly concerned about short-term economic goals but are blind to the long-term social consequences of what often amounts to pandering. (We’ve often seen unions uncritically supporting military buildups because they create jobs, for instance, even though there are much more cost-effective ways of creating jobs that also actually create a healthier society. Building schools comes to mind.)
Capuano, from what I’ve seen, is unusual in that he straddles this divide. He’s an uncompromising (and I use this word in a good sense) civil libertarian. His voting record on women’s issues is second to none. He really understands what’s wrong with a foreign policy driven by military contractors. And at the same time, he’s sensitive to the counterproductive, ideologically driven, often demeaning ways that even highly skilled working people are treated day after day, and has a gut reaction to the cheap way that the Globe and the Pioneer Institute blame “labor” (they don’t say “teachers”) for the defects of a society in which the really big decisions are far too often made in corporate boardrooms.
He’s been doing this for some time now, in a way that is public and often courageous. He not only talks the talk, but he walks the walk. That means a lot to me.
And that’s why I’m supporting him for Senate.
–Carl Offner
I think you have captured why so many people at BMG support Capuano.
Thank you for expressing this in a clear, thoughtful way!
This is a persuasive piece that I am going to send along to a few people I know are undecided. Great job.
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p>Also of note, I noticed a new page under the endorsers section on the Capuano site giving props to bloggers and the like. I hope they add yours quickly.
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p>This is one of the reasons I love the Capuano campaign. He and his team value what people like Kate, Carl and many on this site have done for the campaign.
I am curious if you have any links or documentation that you can point to on Charter schools, or if there’s a previous thread where your thoughts on this are made clearer. My instincts are to agree with you, but I haven’t seen all the evidence to back up your statements that over half of all who enter charter schools drop out. And while there are clearly some charter schools who have found successful formulas, sadly those formulas do seem to rely on eliminating the one organization that actually protects teachers rights.
…on charter schools that I saw was developed by the research arm of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. It’s a careful piece of research, was actually given fairly prominent coverage in the Globe for one day, and then completely ignored. As far as I know, no one has made any substantive criticism of its methods or conclusions. It’s available on-line:
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p>http://www.massteacher.org/new…
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p> Regards,
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p> Carl Offner
Did the Capuano “open mike” style of campaigning which promoted open and unscripted dialogue between voters and the candidate, transparency, and true grassroots activism factor into your thinking?
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p>By contrast, did the literal failure of Coakley to engage in any meaningful, unscripted dialogue with the electorate play a role in your decision?
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I’ve always liked Capuano, and the differing styles of campaigning between the candidates only reinforced that.
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p>Does anyone think that Coakley or Pagliuca would offer even average-quality constituent services based on how they’ve approached their campaigns?
Well Said.
the partynullnullis the comments of Democrats (We know what to expect of Republicans.) that, once against the Republican Party war, now embrace the Democratic Party war. Ah, the party-over-country crowd…
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p>Too much money still on the table in this war for the politicians to walk away.
Some have been calling us cappies (i have to admit I like the name) prickly because we are so upset that our candidate’s record of public service and achievement has been so callously thrown under the bus by the BMG editors and the supporters of our candidate’s opponents.
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p>That said I think Carl here has offered the most thoughtful and articulate, not to mention reasoned and polite, endorsement we have seen thus far.
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p>To me he sums up why Mike is the truest heir to Ted Kennedy in these two sentences:
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p>While Teddy was an Ivy League educated son of privilege he never forgot his Irish Catholic roots or the aspirations of working class Democrats throughout our state and country. In this way he was able to bridge the divide between ‘blue collars’ and ‘eggheads’ in a really effective way that pursued social as well as economic justice for all Americans. In this same vein, Capuano has a record that should make any lefty from Cambridge or Brookline happy on the hot-button litmus test issues, while also consistently fighting for Joe six pack as well. This is the rare combination that makes incredibly successful Democratic politicians and it is the primary reason, alongside his experience at delivering on both of these components, that sets him above the pack.
when I read this letter to the editor today in my local Duxbury Clipper:
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p>http://www.eduxbury.com/index….
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p>If he wants to run on being able to take over for Kennedy’s vaunted constituent services, this isn’t exactly a promising start. Anyone down in his office remember that he is running now for statewide office?
You emailed his Congressional District and you used the tool called email your congressman or whatever it is called. This does a zip code filter and automatically filters it for each member of congress. It is a tool provided by the house or so it would seem. Why don’t you try this site?
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The letter you are quoting is obfuscating the truth. Please verify info next time. It took me three minutes to figure it out.
is this said congressman also running for statewide office right now? If so, someone should have thought at the very least to have turned off that filtering device (can’t be that hard, and evidently this oversight ticked someone off enough to write a letter that got published; if I’m Capuano or with his campaign staff, I’m livid at someone for this oversight – I don’t think this guy who wrote the letter was the only one getting this canned response).
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p>I don’t have a bone to pick in the Democratic primary, being a Republican, but pretty telling that that was the only political letter run in the paper the week before the primary. Seems the tone of your responses is trying to slam me; if I were you, I’d think this through and realize that this oversight is probably turning off quite a few voters potentially interested in your candidate who reside outside his district. I don’t think I’m the one you should be mad at; might want to point this out to someone in his office.
For the dense man from Norwell.
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p>1. Write your rep is provided by the house. Not each member.
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p>2. See above. The house doesn’t care that CONGRESSMAN Capuano is running for Senate.
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p>3. Why you ask? See above, why would they want to spend federal dollars helping a campaign. That would be a violation of a number of laws
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p>4. This is what campaign websites are for.
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p>5. Please go to teaparty.com and wax poetic about Hannity or Beck.
Sport, your candidate just got blasted and evidently ticked off someone to a degree to make it public; if you want to call this interested voter who wrote the letter a moron (and there aren’t a ton of morons down in a town like Duxbury by the way), please feel free. Always a great strategy in a tight race to piss off potential supporters.
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p>Not a teaparty guy or a Fox guy, but with this type of crap in your response may have to reconsider…
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p>I didn’t write that letter, just reported what was in my local paper. Dense, my ass.
Just went to Capuano’s website to see if I could send him an e-mail (and didn’t select the “Write Your Rep” option, selected the option on his website to contact him directly (again, not “Write Your Rep”) to send him an e-mail, and was met with the stone wall of
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p>”Your zip code indicates that you are outside of the 8th District of Massachusetts.
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p>Regrettably, I am unable to reply to any email from constituents outside of the 8th District of Massachusetts.
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p>Click here to return to Congressman Capuano’s home page. “
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p>So yes, I must be dense (and the letter writer) as well as anyone else in this state who was trying to contact Capuano at his House Web Site who doesn’t live in his district. What up with that?
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p>So let’s say I’m trying to contact a congressman about legislation but he’s not my congressman. I’m a pension actuary, so say I wanted to bring something to Rangel’s attention about pension reform legislation. But I can’t e-mail him because I’m not a resident of his district?
That aliens landed on the moon. I don’t take it as a fact. You did no critical analysis or investigation of what was written and instead just posted it as a fact which it most certainly is not.
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p>Please get facts straight before posting. It is a responsibilty of everyone here to be ‘reality based’.
that that letter ran in today’s Duxbury Clipper (I did post the link if you checked – didn’t want anyone thinking I’m posting random stuff). Whether the original letter writer is a “moron” for not figuring out how to contact Capuano w/o getting a bounce back is beside the point: the point is that everyone in Duxbury is reading that letter. Why is that? And don’t get in such a huff since it’s clearly your dog in the hunt who got criticized.
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p>So tell me, how exactly does one contact a congressman via e-mail without living in their district (or lying about their zip code)?
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p>And I did go to his site after you called me “dense” to figure out how one outside his district could actually contact Capuano; fact is, you can’t through his house website. If I’m trying to contact a Rep on a national issue, I can’t? How does that make sense?
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p>Not sure what you’re getting at here. If you are trying to blame this oversight on the guy who wrote the letter or some other person attempting to contact Capuano through his website, by all means do. Not exactly consumer friendly though. I don’t work for a campaign, not a democrat, just reporting what I saw today in my local paper (and believe it or not, there are a ton of liberal dems down in Deluxebury who do read this paper). Don’t kill the messenger for an elementary screwup on his staff’s part. At the least, someone should have thought to have changed the filtering rules once he declared for Senate.