I think there’s some truth to both of these analyses. And a lot could be said about each of them, and a lot has. I’m not going to rehash any of it. Instead, I want to mention something that I haven’t really seen talked about, but that I also think is significant, and was, I think, a structural problem with the Coakley campaign.
And before I get to it, let me lay my bona fides on the table. I didn’t support her in the primary. I supported Capuano, who I still think would have run a much better campaign, and might well have prevailed in the general election. But I did put in some serious time for Coakley, making phone calls, helping organize others to do this, and standing out with a sign in the snow for her.
The structural problem that I see is that her campaign was—in spite of what has been sometimes asserted—based largely on an appeal to the notion that it’s time for a woman. This is by no means a trivial matter, and I have a real sympathy for this argument. In fact, there are far too few women in state and national government, and we would have a much healthier political environment if more women were in public office.
Now I know that it’s been asserted that Coakley ran on all sorts of issues, and that she had positions on all sorts of things. But in fact, this really wasn’t evident. At the beginning of the primary campaign I looked at her website, and the issues that she addressed there were few in number. And even the ones she did address were not addressed forcefully. When I heard her speak, she simply didn’t have the fire in the belly that you want from a candidate who is going to fight for things.
To some extent, this simply may be who she was—a very detached and cautious person who didn’t fit in to a publicly assertive role. But I think that, whether or not that is true, the fact that her campaign was based so strongly on holding on to a significant number of women who would vote for her simply on that basis (I spoke to one woman when I was making phone calls who told me that she was voting for “the woman”—she wasn’t certain who it was) crippled her ability—whether she wanted to or not—to speak strongly to almost any position.
The fact is that women don’t hold monolithic views on anything. The one time that Coakley spoke with intensity during the primary was when she said that she would have voted against the House version of a health reform proposal because it contained the odious Stupak amendment drastically restricting access to abortions. This was without question intended to be the defining moment of her campaign. And it was a position that you might have thought would at least be a unifying one among women. Well, according to what I read, she received some pushback from women who were not at all pro-choice, and she quickly back-pedaled on her position.
The problem is that identity politics just doesn’t work. You have to stand for something. You have to believe in it. And you have to convince the voters that you believe in it.
So that’s one thing that I think went terribly wrong. I think there’s another thing, however that may be at least as significant.
Part 2
It seems to me that the election wasn’t so much a choice between Martha Coakley and Scott Brown—it was framed by the Republicans as a referendum on Obama’s first year. And I think it was seen by many voters as just that. And furthermore, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. After all, it’s what we did in the last election, framing it as a referendum on the Bush years.
And the plain fact—although we’re reticent to talk about it—is that Obama has been a tremendous disappointment. Throughout the Bush years there developed a groundswell of progressive thought that hadn’t been seen in this country in generations. By the end there was a real grassroots movement that was energizing large numbers of people who had been disconnected from politics for decades—in many cases, for their entire lives. This was a wonderful and moving thing to see. And Obama gave voice to it—albeit in a vague and diffuse way. But without a doubt “Yes we can” resonated in a deep way with a majority of the American people—enough that it would even overcome the deeply ingrained racism that ordinarily would have absolutely ruled out the possibility of a African-American getting the nomination, much less winning the election. It was a moment to savor, a moment in history.
And yet there were some warning signs. Once Obama had won the endorsement of groups like MoveOn, he told them point-blank that if they wanted to have anything to do with his campaign they had to stop any independent advocacy of their own. Although many people responded to the notion of Obama as a “community organizer”, he actually ran a very top-down campaign and worked hard to stop his supporters from speaking out on the issues that had caused them to support him in the first place.
And once he got in office, he proceeded to systematically throw his most progressive supporters under the bus. He installed as his economic advisers the same team that had been responsible for dismantling the New Deal protections that had at least stabilized some aspects of our financial system. He met with representatives of large insurance companies and immediately bargained away the notion of a single-payer health plan (which virtually every European country has, and which gives them far better health care at far less expense than we have here). And while he was at it, he also bargained away the possibility of a public option. And this happened very early in his administration.
He did push a bailout plan through Congress, but the plan rewarded the greediest and most dysfunctional financial players and did not nearly enough to support the tens of millions of Americans who were dispossessed or lost their jobs, or were in danger of one or the other.
And none of this was forced on him. He did all this at a time when he was untouchable. Obama came into office with a mandate and sense of popular urgency unseen since FDR’s first term. And he squandered it.
He’s a likable person. I like him. And he’s done some very good things. But with the exception of a few well-crafted and inspiring speeches, he spent the better part of the year letting the Republicans and the tea-baggers capture the public discourse. When they yelled—at first tentatively, and then with more and more recklessness—about the evil government taking over health care, he said nothing. When they yelled about how the problem was “illegal immigrants” and abortion on demand, he said nothing. When Rush Limbaugh said that he hoped Obama would fail, he did nothing to harvest what could have been massive popular outrage. And when his supporters desperately asked him again and again if he supported a public option, he—again and again—reluctantly said he thought it would be a nice idea, but made it very clear that it was not something he cared much about. Instead he talked, and still talks about “health insurance reform”. Even in his latest State of the Union address, when he asked rhetorically for anyone to suggest a better health care proposal, it turned out that he only meant that invitation for Republicans—he refused to meet with doctors advocating a single-payer plan, and when they tried to hold up a banner outside the Republican gathering he was speaking at, they were arrested.
And at that Republican gathering, he invited the Republicans to join him in setting up a commission to cut back on Social Security and Medicare benefits. This is something that Republicans have been drooling over
for a long time. It’s something that Bush tried really hard to do. It’s something that we as Democrats stopped him from doing. And now we have a Democratic president who is bent on the same policy.
Why is this happening? I do have some thoughts on this. Keep reading …
Part 3
Deval Patrick has been acting in an analogous way here in Massachusetts. He was elected with overwhelming popularity on a platform of combating cynicism. He’s been a very competent administrator—in many ways an excellent one. Let me just give one example which impressed me: (I’m sure I’ve got some of the details wrong, but the gist of this is correct.) When he entered office, the part of state government that was in charge of children who were for some reason wards of the state (DYS?) was doing a terrible job in educating them. Only a small fraction of these children managed to get a high-school equivalency diploma. The outgoing Romney administration had proposed to put the Department of Correction (!) in charge of educating these children. Governor Patrick realized this was nonsense. His administration looked at this situation and found that the teachers who were employed in this capacity were generally not certified. They replaced them all by certified teachers. And now the high school graduation rate is very high, as it should be.
This is absolutely wonderful, and it’s such a breath of fresh air after the narrowly punitive approach of Republican administrations.
On many of the really big issues, however, Governor Patrick has taken a pass; or worse. I’ll just mention three things:
- Casino gambling.
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I’ve written about that before, and I won’t repeat myself. But to see a man who was elected on the basis of straight talking and “we’re all in this together” and rejecting cynicism conclude that chasing after the fool’s gold of casino gambling is a feasible way to fund the state budget—a budget that has been systematically starved by tax breaks to corporations over several decades—this just took my breath away.
- Charter schools.
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Again I’m not going to repeat myself at length. But it is important to emphasize that charter schools do no better than public schools; that they subsist by cream-skimming and encouraging a very high drop-out rate; and that—despite what some (including the Governor) claim, there is not one “innovation” that has ever come from a charter school that has been proposed for adoption anywhere. They are a fraud, and I think the ultimate motives behind them are pretty ugly:
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Charter schools are a direct attack on teachers unions. Every generation, it seems, has to refight the battle for the dignity of labor. One does not have to agree with everything a union proposes to understand that they are the authentic voice of teachers, and that they are most strongly supported by the very best teachers. Public schools have been consistently underfunded for generations now, and more and more so in recent years. It is just dishonest to blame the inevitable failures on teachers and teachers unions.
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Charter schools fit in with the perennial effort to degrade public education. They are the signature issue of the right-wing Pioneer Institute. To the extent they become institutionalized, they will amount to a small private school system within a public school system, with the remainder of the public schools even less well funded than they are now. We will have arrived an an explicitly two-tiered educational system that makes even more pronounced the socio-economic divide that has grown so drastically in the last 20 years.
And it was pretty clear from the beginning that Deval was moving in this direction. In the primary he convincingly defeated Chris Gabrieli, a business man who at one point said, “You measure students at the beginning of the year, and you measure them at the end. And that’s the way you pay teachers.” But then when Deval got into office, he set up a special commission on education. Not one teacher, and especially not one teachers union leader, was asked to be in the leadership of this effort. The leaders were superintendents, a college president, a number of public policy wonks, and some business leaders, including Chris Gabrieli.
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- Teacher pensions.
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(Is this post teacher-heavy? I suppose so. I was a public schoolteacher for 16 years, and I still really care about the public schools as the foundation of our democracy.)
The governor is proposing to degrade the teacher pension plan in a couple of ways. There are some things that need to be understood here. In the first place, the reason that there even are teacher pensions in Massachusetts is that when Social Security was implemented in the New Deal, Massachusetts opted out. They established a teacher pension plan instead. So teachers don’t get Social Security. The reason the state did this was that they didn’t want to contribute up front to the Social Security fund—it was easier to defer any state contributions until the teachers retired. And so the teachers retirement program has always been virtually completely unfunded by the state. Further, the formula for determining what a retired teacher gets paid is outrageously non-linear. You really have to go the whole nine yards to get the maximum or even anywhere close to it. So while the maximum is about 80% of your final pay—which is not bad at all—very few teachers actually get that or even anything close. And finally, unlike Social Security, it basically doesn’t go up with inflation. So after 10 years, it loses much of its value. The Governor’s plan would base the starting pension on the last 5 years of pay, rather than the last 3 years, thereby lowering the base at which the pension is calculated, and it would also change the formula to require more years of service before being eligible for the maximum pension (and the striking non-linearity is still there). Neither of these changes by themselves destroy the pension plan, but rather than funding the pension plan as it should be, these changes just chip away at it. This is not a great way to treat people who are entrusted with the responsibility of passing on the most precious part of our cultural heritage. It’s not a way to attract highly competent people into the teaching profession. And it stands in some contrast to the bailouts given to much more powerful institutions.
Just to be clear: I don’t think Deval Patrick is evil or a man of bad intentions. I think he means well, and often does well. But on some really big issues, including issues that cut to the core of preserving a democratic society, he’s been sleeping with the wrong people.
In general, it seems to me that when Democrats are out of power, our party leaders are happy to have us stand up and speak for progressive values. But far too many, when they get in office, are quick to ignore the people who put them there and the values that the voters were really hoping for. It’s pretty clear to me now that the attempt at the last State Democratic Convention to gut the party platform of every substantive progressive plank came from the very top of our party. Deval—unless he’s hopelessly out of touch, which I don’t believe he is at all—must have been at the center of this.
And some Democrats think this is a smart strategy. While I was standing out in the snow on election day for Coakle
y, I got into a conversation with a Coakley staffer who also came by. He told me that we had to realize that health reform was very controversial and that we needed to approach “moderate Republicans” and find some agreement with them. He made a point of assuring me that he was a “progressive”, but felt that we had to reject the “far-left” people in our party. I was curious, so I asked him who these far-left people were. He said, “Well, like Howard Dean.” Howard Dean! The man with the 50-state strategy, who more than anyone else laid the groundwork for the massive Democratic victory in 2008, and who was then abruptly shown the door by Obama. (I do know perfectly well that most Coakley supporters didn’t agree with this view. But I’ve heard this kind of thing from other Democrats as well.)
What this reflects—both at a state and national level—is the power and influence of groups like the self-appointed “Democratic Leadership Council”, a group of right-wing Democratic leaders who have been pushing for years to remake the Democratic party into a Republican Party Lite. These groups, and this group in particular, are the real obstacles to change. They talk about “progressive ideas”, and use words like “empowerment”, and then assert that we should “transcend the stale left-right debate.” (We had a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Senate just recently who said much the same thing.) And then they go on to argue against raising teacher salaries and against cutting class sizes, but instead push for charter schools and merit pay for teachers. They support “work-based welfare reform.” And rather than talking about preserving Social Security and expanding Medicare to cover everyone and reinstating a truly progressive graduated income tax, they argue for cutting taxes to encourage private savings. And this is actually pretty close to what Bush was proposing.
What’s behind this is a capitulation to the notion of the corporation as the engine of a just and productive society. This notion has failed spectacularly, as we’ve seen recently. But the ideology behind it has not been discredited. At the last Sudbury Town Meeting, the finance committee chair, who was working hard to cut benefits for teachers, presented a slide show which started out with a feel-good (but in context destructive) quote to the effect that every crisis is a great opportunity. The author of this quote, while anonymous, was stated to be the “CEO of a Boston investment firm.” Really, you’d think that such people wouldn’t be held up as authorities on economic and political issues right now, would you?.
I had not fully realized until recently just how pervasive the Democratic Leadership Council and similar groups were within our party. I now think they and their ideas need to be taken on directly if we are not to become in fact what a lot of people think we are already—a party without a soul. And when people think that, they’ll vote as we’ve just seen in this last election. It’s not a matter of redoubling our efforts and going door-to-door and all these other things. Sure, they’re important. But it’s the Democratic Party—what it stands for, as shown by what its leaders speak for and work for—that determines the environment in which people make up their minds.
Look—I’m a Democrat. I’m not leaving. [And since the matter has just come up—nor do I like splinter candidates and vanity campaigns—candidates who run without solid preparation and organization—and some experience doesn’t hurt either.] In reality, there are a lot of wonderful Democrats, at all levels, who I support whole-heartedly, and will continue to support. But I’m going to be very careful from now on about shallow appeals to “yes we can” without something substantive behind them. I’m going to look for people for whom the American dream means something more than being a well-meaning person of good will who on the big questions ignores the grass roots and takes corporate leaders and their apologists as his or her chief advisers. I’m going to look for people who see the connection between social justice and economic justice, and who are willing to stand up for it and speak for it and work for it.
—Carl Offner
And I thought it was the truck.
It will take me some time to read it, but I plan to comment, as I have thought a great deal about this in the weeks following the election.
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p>May I have an extension, Mr. Offner?
What the Republicans currently have in the form of their teabagger crackpottery is a narrative–inaccurate, flawed, and bigoted–but a narrative nonetheless. There is no question in anybody’s mind what these folks believe–even when they won’t admit to believing it.
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p>The Democrats lack a narrative. And we’re seeing this failure identified and articulated from not inside the Democratic party, but from outside it. People like Junot Diaz and Michael Sandel have identified exactly, in my view, what the problem is. The Democrats, and Barack Obama in particular, have been unwilling or unable to tell their story with the same compelling energy that the radical right has. The Democrats have been drowned about by their own conciliatory dithering. Their like a bunch of querulous elders hunched in the corner of the activity room, afraid to tell the activities director they don’t really like playing bingo.
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p>Fast forward to Ted Kennedy’s seat. Martha Coakley’s campaign was a perfect storm of paradoxical sexist arrogance, imperious entitlement, and incompetent campaigning and messaging. Wrong candidate. And yet, the Democrats in this state sat back and said, “Oh, sure, I guess. Martha Coakley. Okay. That sounds good.” Why did her potential candidacy sound good? Because the Democrats didn’t know what their candidate should be about. They haven’t thought about what their senators SHOULD be about in years. Ted Kennedy? Easy. But John Kerry? C’mon. The Democrats in this state are on auto-pilot and if they don’t wake up, they’re going to get their clocks cleaned again.
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p>Write the freakin’ narrative. Take the Republicans on–issue by issue–on their terms and make a case for what they believe. I sure know what Republicans believe, but more importantly, I know why they believe it. The Democrats cannot make the same claim. Making a case for what you believe is not the same is merely stating what you believe, but THAT is what we’ve been reduced to, both here in Massachusetts and across the nation.
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p>We need stronger Democrats who are comfortable taking on the Republicans on their own terms, and we’re not used to doing that. We better get used to doing it otherwise we’ll be consigned to becoming the punctuation party that merely takes over while the Republicans are put in a time out.
FDR had his own narrative. JFK had his own narrative. Even Lyndon Johnson in his courageous civil rights stance had his own narrative.
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p>You don’t move forward by refuting someone else’s narrative but by having your own – strong, true, rooted in the realities of today.
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p>Where is the courage to be specific, to have real proposals rooted in real problems that would attack the problems of today head on?
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p>The problems of today include, but are not limited to:
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p>1. Dwindling employment/jobs.
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p>2. Graying population.
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p>3. Extreme number of failed families.
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p>4. Globalization; no country stays top dog forever.
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p>5. Ecological [pick as many as you like – global warming, mass extinctions, degradation of farmland, cars vs. trains, more]
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p>6. Long term economic security escaping the majority of Americans.
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p>7. Charter schools as the new segregation/degradation of public education.
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p>8. The expanded muscle of oligarchy and plutocracy/see “Wall Street”, bankocracy, etc.
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p>Again, attacking the Republican narrative of fear and exclusion won’t build a future or a narrative. FDR was a master, remember, “All we have to fear is fear itself”?
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p>And the number of programs and realities we take for granted that began with FDR is huge – from social security to the SEC.
I don’t mean for us to take on their narrative. I mistyped. I mean our own narrative.
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p>Should read:
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p>
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p>Sorry. There are several typos in that comment.
The Obama Administration has also decided to do something totally incoherent regarding Afghanistan. As our diarist mentions, their economic policy is destructively wrong-headed. Without a liberal Fox News and Rovian message discipline, it is impossible to cover up for bad policy with great narrative.
I would argue that without a narrative, there is not clearly policy direction to follow. Essentially, their incoherent policy follows directly from their ill-formed narrative.
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p>Until they figure out what they believe and why they believe, they cannot develop any policy direction that seems to connect to anything.
… a typical problem of data structure design. When I’m asked to design a data structure for a database, it is really really important that I understand the real life business function that it is supposed to help with. The point is that it is a tool that has to be designed with an ‘end’ in mind. What often happens is that the business process gets explained inadequately and we are left with a decent size redesign of the data structure, which is easy if you catch it early but harder the later you catch it.
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p>Policy is just the gears utilized to crank out the ends that you want,… ends defined in a narrative of ‘what should government be doing’.
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p>The narrative isn’t simply ‘inaccurate’, but wholly duplicitous, indeed, mendacious: the pitch and the product are distinctly at odds with each other. It’s not designed (far as I can tell) to tell any kind of story, or even be coherent, but to scratch those itches you can barely get at… the racist, misogynist, what-have-you epidermal layer that resides just beneath the surface of so many people. The side effect is, for those individuals who don’t have any affinity for bigotry or misogyny, a puzzled sense of exclusion and dulled antipathy to so much sound and fury: far too many people simply wanted all the noise to be over with well over a week to go.
<
p>I don’t think that a narrative, or counter-narrative, would affect the body politick as much as being able to clearly, effectively, point out the GOP narrative is incoherent. I suppose you could, ideally, do both. Once again, I have to go back to what Bill Clinton said in 2004: “When we get people to think, we win. And [the GOP] are real good at getting people not to think.” And they are real good: the GOP/Teabagger ambush was timed masterfully for peak cognitive dissonance on election day. Our job isn’t simply to offer a competing narrative, however compelling, but to get people to take the idea of narrative seriously and critically analyze the narratives proffered. But, side by side, a straightforward narrative of honest democratic values is probably going to lose to disengenous narrative that merely riles the baser instincts of a sufficient number of people. We have to get them to think about the narratives, rather than simply accept them. That’s harder than even it sounds, and Bill Clinton wasn’t the best practitioner of it, but there it is.
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p>
Did not the Bush win reelection in 2004?
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p>Yes, in a graduate seminar it’s possible to point out how this or that might not be true or poorly sourced or subject to alternative interpretations. In a political campaign? Not so much. Except when applied to the pharmacology of baseball players, the press is loath to use the word “lie” or even endorse its use. (See yellow cake uranium, Valery Plame, location of weapons of mass destruction.)
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p>Your suggestions sound like things the political director of the Dukakis Administration made in 1986.
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p>Oh wait.
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p>… and I did note that ‘[the GOP] are real good at getting people not to think’.
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p>I repeat: our job is harder. And I elaborate: it’s orders of magnitude harder. It’s not like we just have to replicate what the Republicans do, only better, and without the nasty bits… No. We have to get people to think. We have to do the opposite of what they are doing, which is get people all riled up and not thinking. There’s no real counter-narrative to “get your steenking government hands off my medicare,” other than to point out the sheer absurdity of it.
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p>When they think, we win. And, bonus points, they win too… It might be hard to credit, but I even want JohnD to win.
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p>
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p>*oof* Ouch. Below the belt, that…
The point of my below-the-belt comment is that you seem to be proposing more of the same, that a heavily rationalist approach is how Democrats have run for decades now. I’m even reminded of Carter being thoughtful and all in his pronouncements. It presumes a certain model of human rationality that doesn’t particularly fit the facts.
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p>Think of the global warming deniers.
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p>The bulk of them seem convinced that this is a huge fraud being palmed off by greedy scientists, Al Gore, and alarmist moonbats. Consequently, they run around looking for rationalizations for their view. The narrative came first; the elaborate logic later. That’s why you’ll see a whole parade of different “refutations” of global warming. (Martian climate anyone?) You can refute their logic all you want but, if they still believe in the underlying fraud narrative, they’re not going to budge.
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p>…I say that they are unthinking and you say they are irrational. I say “don’t proffer a counter-narrative” and you say “you can’t refute their narrative.” Can’t we just get along!
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p>A psychotherapist doesn’t argue with a psychosis and/or a neurosis. This is basically what you are saying. But a psychotherapist will move the patient to qualitative analysis of the thoughts that they have, good and bad, and the reinforcement of good thoughts and the diminishment of bad thoughts. Which is what I’m saying. I do not argue that we should wrestle with their deceptions in order to get them to think a specific thought… which is what I think you think I’m saying…
She was too liberal.
Of course, a conservative is going to be predisposed to think she was too liberal. We knew that Seascraper. Tell us something we don’t know.
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p>Have you even a shred of polling or evidence to prove that compared to the other hypotheses being discussed? That would be worth discussing.
that they’re confused when asked to back up their statements with facts.
Krugman on Monday:
If the national Democratic Party had been doing its job, the meme of Republican obstructionism and nihilism would have crushed Mr. Brown’s attempts. Instead, it was left as an issue we had to bring up locally — if at all.
While the Democrats will fight for nothing.
Both national parties consider Massachusetts a given democratic state. It just turned out that they know nothing. Scott Brown won because all of the Republican galvanized behind him, while Coakley sat on her throne waiting for the annointing smoke from the Vatican. Umm, we don’t work that way. You democrats blew the safest electoral position in history! Let that be her legacy. Our 10% beat your 40%. Wow.
that independent, more accurately unenrolled voters are not solidly behind one party or the other. Your 10% 40 % line might be something very different historically, as a practical matter once regular voting patterns are factored in.
Krugman today
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p>
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p>”A breathtaking act of staggering hypocrisy” went right to the top of my comment grading book beating out “Schadenfreude Alert”.
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p>If only I could pronounce Schadenfreude …………
With a song. Who knew.
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p>Thanks stomv– a thousand blessings on your head.
Many are trying to understand here what they don’t get… and not succeeding. Here’s a glaring example in the first few words of lightiris’s comments…
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p>
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p>Why can’t many of you get past the fact that not all Tea Party protestors are crackpots? I saw the depictions on TV of the Tea Party rallies and read the MSM’s reports. Then I went and participated in the Worcester Tea Party rally and tried to talk to as many of them as I could. They were for the most part, regular people, angry and protesting the feeling that the government was taking over everything. AND that the government was going to be running things which are really important and the government really sucks at running most things. The narrative of “do you want the people from the RMV running your healthcare” is a striking charge which sinks in to many people.
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p>But stigmatizing that “all” these protestors are crack pots is an example of what the Democrats are doing wrong and sounds like the “Obama is a communist” type of cry. On a national level, I have started to see many moderate and some liberals starting to acknowledge this and they are shifting their invective from “tea-baggers are crack pots” to “these Tea Party protestors are regular Americans who are very scared and angry” (with a group of loonies/birthers… on the fringe).
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p>I disagree about “taking on” the Republicans. The country is a middle/centrist country and likes to be governed from the center. The hyperbole out there now from the left saying Americans are angry because we aren’t going “left enough” is absurd! Successful Democrats will be the ones smart enough to moderate their leftist views and give the center what they want.
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p>Stop calling Republicans the party of “NO” which is a poor narrative. Start singling out specific acts or people which are totally obstructionist acts and make them defend themselves. Don’t write bills which are good bills but then lace them with pork or ideology and give Republicans a “reason” to vote against it. If you continue along the lines of much of this thread, you will get your asses severely kicked in November. I can see the posts now reminiscent of the Coakley loss… “How did we lose the Senate?… How did Patrick lose?… Let’s filibuster the Republican Majority in the Senate…”
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p>Wake up call time!!!!
Let’s not fall into the same trap the Republicans have, thinking that this election has all sorts of lessons for us. Brown didn’t win because of dissatisfaction with Obama or Deval Patrick. He didn’t even win because of the health care debate or sexism. He won because he campaigned hard and Martha Coakley didn’t show up. She disappeared from the radar, failed to define the race and got out-maneuvered.
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p>I say this as someone who supported her in the primary, and who will still support her for A.G. because she does that job very well. But I will admit now that Capuano was the better choice for Senate. He would have beaten Brown, because he would have actually campaigned.
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p>Any attempt to find another explanation for what happened is worse than a waste of time — it will lead to counterproductive pessimism and navel-gazing. Let’s move on and make sure that in the run up to November none of our Representatives make the same mistakes our A.G. did.
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p>Stupid is as stupid does. To be brutally frank, you’ve spouted more than your share of crackpottery here. I wish there was a way to say that that wasn’t so brutal, but there isn’t. It is what it is. To be further frank, Scott Brown was an abysmally poor candidate with a wildly inconsistent and stunningly incoherent message. I’m sure that you can explain his victory without help from mental health professionals. My point exactly.
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p>
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p>It’s a stupid charge, no more valid than asking “do you want the people from the RMV running your medicar?” You cannot make the charge, or take it at face value, without being a crackpot. I wish I could tell you that in a way that didn’t hurt your feelings, but your too far down the road for that.
The discussion of the Coakley defeat is too interesting to worry about Republicans moonlighting as Democratic consultants.
And the would be the historically wildly successful Republicans in Massachusetts moonlighting as Democratic consultants in Massachusetts.
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p>Would want to shortchange JohnD on any credibility owed him.
I feel like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in the Land of Misfit Toys. You are all well-meaning, intelligent folks but it wouldn’t hurt to talk with people who don’t share your idealogy once in a while. Then you might learn how to win elections.
Dude, we just did!
But this being BLUE Mass Group, typically we expect that we will be discussing issues with people who SHARE our beliefs, which, by the way, aren’t in lockstep, as witnessed by many heated discussions and disagreements among progressives and Democrats on BMG.
assumes we’re in lockstep here, and that could not be further from the truth. 🙂
and you’re in lockstep on gay marriage and insulting the other side’s intelligence and values. Every time someone says “teabaggers” as if it was a funny inside joke shared by all liberals, or “crackpots” or “stupid”, it only further strengthens the belief by the majority that the liberals really don’t get it, that the defining characteristic of liberals is their lockstep rudeness and inability to get it.
Since when are facts ‘insults’? You guys take your ball and go home when we dare to provide links that contradict your assertions, and then you pout and label us meanies. BTW it was the movement itself that coined the term Teabagger. When your team stops erroneously labeling all Democrats as socialists, looney fringe lefties, etc., then maybe we’ll retire the Teabagger term. It is more fitting anyway, since most of the members of that movement have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was or symbolizes anyway.
You are wrong about the origin of the term teabagger, and wrong about its effect on the electorate. You don’t get it. Maybe wikipedia can help you understand, maybe it’s simply that you never knew the origins and thought you were using their term.
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p>But no, because you say “it is more fitting”, and that is obviously supposed to be insulting, ironically using as an insult a term that you supposedly don’t think is an insult when applied properly, you might as well call them “gay” and snicker at that. You are implying that the conservatives and men at these rallies, and the majority who voted for Brown, are actually repressed homosexuals, ha ha isn’t it funny, and they won’t even get the joke, and showing your elitist anti-heterosexual male wares, which aren’t really selling well if you haven’t noticed.
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p>You know what you need to see, Kathy? Check out Roissy in DC so you can begin to understand the sea change going on around you.
You have quite an imagination.
I recommend against taking dcsurfer’s advice: don’t read Roissy’s blog. It’s a hideous cesspit of seething hatred for women.
I’ll temporarily allow that “We don’t get it”, “it” being (presumably) the irresistable appeal of and/or fundamental principles of the Tea Party.
Care to clarify these, dcsurfer? What is “it”?
I guess “it” is that there has been a rejection of techno-liberalism and feminism and elitism, and voters (men and women both) now vote for the affirmation of traditional values whenever the choice is presented to them that way.
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p>The day after the election, the beleaguered guys in the local pub were talking about how it was a rare good day to be a heterosexual male. We came out in droves to repudiate and reject Coakley and her elitist “allies.” We didn’t vote for a truck, the truck was a solid anti-Coakley metaphor, an anti-feminist metaphor, a “what is she talking about?” beer commercial metaphor. It didn’t need to make sense, it just needed to confound feminists and remind everyone that men still had a pulse and could still vote.
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p>And what Kathy doesn’t get is that Peak Feminism was April 5, 1994, and that continuing to assume she’s in the majority with her teabagger insults is going to only speed us along the curve even faster.
I have never once brought up feminism-so it’s pretty obvious that you have a problem with women (and gays) by the tone of your posts. You wouldn’t be bemoaning the attacks on heterosexual males if I had a gender-neutral user name, so it’s obvious that your problem is with women in general and not the content of my posts. There’s help available for your issues-and I mean that sincerely, not dissing you. You seriously need to find some, because you must be a very sad and angry person to post these kind of things on a public message board.
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p>
You have GOT to be joking.
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p>Thanks for boiling the election down to “Brown is a man. Coakley isn’t. Deal.”
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p>Sickening.
And I’m telling the truth, there was a palpable jubilation in the air that day, and that guy wasn’t afraid to say it, at least, once he got into a safe space with other heterosexuals.
Coakley isn’t heterosexual? Does her husband know?
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p>So this “safe space” – just a couple of guys, no women, right? Relaxing, comfortable, maybe a few beers….
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p>Interesting… tell me more.
ROFL!
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p>I don’t know what she ever said against men. She and I met at the Lowell caucus this morning. I can assure you she approached ME to greet me and I am observably male. You make it sound like she would try to avoid me on that basis alone.
The site you reference is mostly about putting women back in their place. Sample titles:
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p>”Dating Market Value Test For Women”
“Is College Poon Nirvana?”
“The Sixteen Commandments Of Poon”
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p>Example prose:
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p>
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p>For the record, college boys have been writing this kind of crap for generations.
Truly moronic.
“Tea Party” rally attendees started calling themselves “teabaggers” before liberals ever did. Remember the “mail tea bags to your Representative” stunt? Remember the “Tea Bag The Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You” sign?
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p>Ideas routinely espoused – and loudly cheered – at “Tea Party” rallies include that Barack Obama is not a citizen, is secretly a Kenyan Muslim, and is a radical socialist who is attempting to destroy American democracy. Those are stupid, crackpot ideas (and are hardly the only ones popular among the “tea party movement”).
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p>You want rudeness? Liberals aren’t the ones calling their political opponents traitors, or praying for their deaths.
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p>As for same-sex marriage: yeah, OK, I’ll cop to being “in lockstep” on the idea that all citizens have the right to equal treatment and dignity under the law.
BMG should just change “Excellent” to “Lockstep cluelessness”.
they ‘0’ or ‘3’ our posts. You get a ‘0’ for an insult, which is funny because that’s what you came here to complain about. And you never have contributed anything intelligent to the discussions here-do you plan on doing that anytime soon, or are you here to whine?
No, read the wiki I linked to above. And when you realize you were mistaken, come back and read my comment again and try again to understand. “Teabagger” is used routinely by people in everyday conversation, and I don’t think people realize that it not only preaches only to the choir, but offends enough members of the choir that it winds up the size of a barbershop quartet.
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p>And remember that Obama and Biden are not with the posters here on same-sex marriage, they’re with Brown and virtually every election winner around the country.
I do, in fact, know about the history of the term “teabag” as slang. From the Wikipedia article you linked:
By my math, March 14th is about a month before April 13th.
and then he hurls insults at BMGers, though as a rightie he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s posting on a progressive blog. There are many civilized and well-informed folks on the right, however, none of them post here.
I would say that some of our differently-winged friends who read and post here are civil – even friendly! – and do engage, good-naturedly and in good faith, in debate with us, though sometimes even the best of them (and they would no doubt deny this, and say instead that it’s we liberals who exhibit this behavior) have particular idées fixes that no amount of evidence can dislodge.
SSM is one of his hot buttons. He usually includes it as part of his periodic anti-gay rants.
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p>In this case, I think he just threw it in as a bonus dig.
Labeling me ‘elitist anti-heterosexual male’ and linking to a misogynist website. I wonder if I had a neutral-gender user name if he would have used the same smears?
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p>
It was about mailing a tea bag, and he wasn’t calling himself or the movement “teabaggers”. The insult began on MSNBC and liberal blogs as an inside joke that only reveals the left’s perversion fixation. No Tea Party group calls itself that or ever has.
Keep digging…
Differently winged visitors there are arrested and tried for treason.
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p>EaBo usually claims “blog owner rights” on the execution but Electric Strawberry is always right in there with him.
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p>You’re correct that, after the kill, the RMG denizens return to playing “everyone else is a RINO.”
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p>No wonder you folks keep creeping over here.
I’m not on their all-time favorite list either.
I have never, ever written a post to garner ratings. If I did, my feelings would have been crushed a long time ago. I only rate when you and “huh” (never a more apt handle) start whining about it. And join in your mutual admiration society (membership 2). You don’t like bad news: don’t watch, listen, or read. Yeah zip this too.
Hint: it’s not your politics and they can’t see you, so it’s not your appearance.
I believe our political system should be a free and open exchange of ideas. Some good, some not so good. But everyone should at least have the right to speak. I reorganized my town RTC which had lain dormant for 8 years. My town RTC represents 1.1% of registered Republicans in town. Our democratic TC can’t touch that for representation of its members. I have the numbers if you desire citation, but you definitely won’t like what it says. It might make you think.
…the majority of posters on BMG and RMG really dislike you.
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p>You’re the great uniter, but I wouldn’t be bragging on it.
In lieu of facts, toss insults. Don’t wake up folks.
So the RMG folks dislike you because they’re democrats?
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p>Interesting….
Given the long history of Democratic losses in Massachusetts, you’d think we’d be a little more open to listening to the winning formula the Republicans so carefully crafted over the last 20 years.
It’s JohnD’s puffery people are objecting to. If you have something to say, go ahead and join in.
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p>Let’s hear it: why do you think Martha lost?
2) His response to David Gergen that he was running, not for the Kennedy seat but for the people’s seat (This item, popularized on YouTube, was totally ignored on this blog, I think)
3)General overkill by the democratic advertising re the “Kennedy legacy” the “Kennedy dying wish for health care reform, etc.,etc.
4)Martha Coakley in her ads saying the a vote for Brown would be a vote to kill the health care bill–she was actually telling people to vote for Brown. The left just won’t admit how unpopular that twisted piece of legislation had become. Who the hell was the media consultant for the Democrat party?
5)Those robo calls were pathetic; bad enough from Joe Biden, Vickie Kennedy, etc. but little old ladies from California? (My wife and I have since removed our names as registered Democrats at Town Hall)
6)With the recession more and more voters are questioning the status quo, particularly when it comes to public sector spending on perks and pensions. There is a general resentment towards the majority democrat party right now (reflected to some extent even on this blog)
Huh, before you leap on me, I mention #1 only as an impression because I am old enough to remember JFK and how attractive he was in comparison to Nixon in 1960. Also, I actually like Martha Coakley and intend to vote for her in the Attorney General race. All said and done, she is my kind of Democrat.
I’m too busy to look it up, but Presidents tend to be tall — like over 6’2″. Attraction is a big part of politics.
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p>Conversely, I’ve heard several comments that Martha reminded people of their ex-wives and/or a nun. Horrible, but there it is.
…to find a POTUS under six feet. It’s often commented that in today’s televised world, many of our first generation of Presidents probably wouldn’t be elected.
We we’re getting them for both campaigns, to the point we stopped answering the phone. One might have been a good reminder. 20, not so much.
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p>Can anyone explain the thinking behind them?
We don’t need no steeenkeeng THINKEEENG, this is Massachusetts.
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p>I think the entire CAMPAIGN was on autopilot, and the robocalls fit right in. No doubt the real-time feed from the automated calls drove the real-time call-frequency knob of the dialing robot.
They pounce on the slice of my remarks like I am whining but I “isn’t”. I am telling them how THEY FUCKED UP but all I can think of is “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.
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p>They have summarily dismissed any blame for the Scott Brown win as anything “but” a chage in attitude of voters. They do this at their own peril and maybe that’s just the way t will go. I’ll sleep well at night with this failed plan of theirs. Shit, I sleep well no matter what!
Because the people at these rallies ARE nonpartisan, if not apolitical. And your sneering belittlement just really wins friends and influences people.
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p>If you need help making up slurs, please let me know!
…I do not think it means what you think it means.
Democrats and Republicans are both inherently corrupt, and go through the charade of pretending to switch power to distract the people – who are inherently CONSERVATIVE, NOT Republican – from their true shared goal: a government that takes and spends on their pet ideas instead of leaving us alone. Sometimes liberal ideas, sometimes conservative – but always THEIR ideas, and they just hope it’s enough misdirection to prevent us from tossing them all by doing something once in a blue moon that we might like in order to placate us. If anything, Republicans are worse because they pretend to share our ideals.
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p>I would call that non-partisan – despising both organized parties.
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p>Oh, and Audit the Fed!
I know that ‘baggers claim to “despis[e] both organized parties,” to think both Republicans and Democrats are equally corrupt, but they just don’t. It isn’t true. They espouse the same positions as Republicans, they invite Republicans to speak at their rallies, and when the time comes to pull the lever, they pull it for Republicans. They might vote for a third-party candidate, they might grumble about the Republican party, but they would never vote for a Democrat.
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p>That is partisan.
I would venture to guess that you have never spoken to a participant, or attneded a rally or meeting.
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p>I rarely reveal myself as a registered Republican at gatherings of fiscal conservatives. I assure you that they DO despise the Republicans.
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p>A campaign manager for Gerry Dembrowsi (when he was running for Gov. rather than Congress) told me about how Gerry would ‘assume the dead husk of the Republicans to get on the ballot and elected, and THEN cast the whole thing aside and reveal himself as a Liberty Caucus member’. Of course, then somebody told him about the 15% rule, and he changed races.
If I need to personally attend a movement’s rallies and carry on in-depth interviews with its attendees in order to understand what they’re about – if merely seeing the way the movement presents itself publicly, how it looks to people who aren’t already committed to its ideology, gives me a misleading or incorrect understanding of its members beliefs – then that movement has completely failed to communicate its message in any remotely coherent way.
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p>Maybe the folks at these rallies truly do despise the Republican party, as you say. I’ll reiterate my argument from a previous comment thread that they very clearly do not despise the Republicans as much, or in the same way, as they do the Democrats. They believe the Democrats are deliberately, consciously trying to literally destroy America, and yes, I claim to know they think this, because they say so. They oppose government regulation of markets, taxes on corporations, taxes on rich people, taxes on anyone, the idea that even poor people should get to have health care, the idea that women are human beings with the right to bodily autonomy, the idea that GLBTQI people are human beings with the right to equal protection of the law, etc., etc.; and even though they believe self-evidently stupid, absurd things, I’m sure that on average they are not actually stupid people. So of course when they vote they overwhelmingly vote Republican: not being stupid, when given the choice of a candidate who either personally supports, or belongs to a party that supports, things the oppose and hate; or a candidate who opposes the same things they oppose, they’ll choose the Republican almost every time.
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p>I’ll say again, because apparently it needs repeating: an organization that overwhelmingly breaks to one political party instead of the other, no matter its formal associations or lack thereof, is not by any reasonable, practical definition “nonpartisan.”
WHERE WERE THEY WHEN BUSH WAS POTUS AND THE GOP CONTROLLED CONGRESS! Spending was out of control then too largely on wars, at least one of which was completely optional on our part. That single factor for me gives lie to this “hate them all equally” baloney.
Again I think that the central narrative of the tea party movement is that elites have taken over America and turned into unAmerica. One might imagine that the Republican Party contains an elite or two, e.g., the people who chose Scozzafava in New York or the consultants in McCain’s campaign who were not in awe of Sarah Palin’s American values.
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p>For this reason, I think, they imagine themselves to be independent of the Republican Party. There are some suggestions that racism is at play in their movement too, and a party headed by Michael Steele won’t be a cozy place for your crypto-racist. (The polling on this is unclear. So I offer this suggestion hypothetically.)
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p>We liberal political junkies tend to think in terms of policies, positions, stands, platforms, etc. If you think in those terms, yes, it is difficult to distinguish the tea party enthusiasts from the Republicans.
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p>However, tea partiers clearly don’t think in these terms. Remember, after all, that the recent Tea Party Convention was stocked with people who’d never been politically active before. Possibly these are fired up low information voters unused to thinking about policies, issues, positions, stands, and platforms. You know, they want to keep the government’s hands off Medicare.
especially in the last 30 years, but not so much to the supporters.
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p>When asked in a manner that does not push a party affiliation, most Americans are more liberal than their self-identification would suggest. They like Social Security and Medicare, for example. They like safe products and clean air and water.
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p>I met a health care protester who was on Medicare and insisted she did not want the government to have anything to do with her health plan.
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p>I agree with you that the Fed should be audited. It’s our money. We should know how it is being used and what the results are.
Socialists, far-left, Nazis – these are the slurs I hear over and over from people in your camp. They are not at all accurate and I think you know that, unless the new definition of socialist is someone who believes that government is necessary to protect us from abuse by corporations.
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p>Unless you condemn the use of these inaccurate names, it’s hypocritical to criticize the use of a name (teabaggers) that people coined for themselves.
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p>If there is a new name that the crowds formerly known as teabaggers would like to use for themselves, what is it? Tea partyers? Freedom fighters? Friends of Rush?
are not entirely inaccurate. I know democrats like to stereotype.
what does that even mean?
I like getting high ratings and all, so don’t think I’m not appreciative, and that was a serious question – I do want to know what billxi means by that, because on its face it doesn’t make much sense to me – but it didn’t really contribute a lot to the discussion on its own, didn’t contain any insightful or interesting writing, didn’t raise any salient issues. It didn’t deserve 6s.
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p>From a community perspective, ratings shouldn’t be votes on “I agree”/”I disagree” or “I like this person”/”I don’t like this person,” because the idea of ratings is to encourage thoughtful and interesting discussions instead of knee-jerk reactions, me-tooism and sniping. And I know that billxi, JohnD, maybe some others do go around throwing zeroes at anything they disagree with, but just doing the same thing isn’t going to help matters.
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p>From a selfish perspective, it gives me an ego boost to see that my comments have been highly rated: it makes me think people find my writing worth reading, and my arguments compelling (or at least competently delivered). Getting 6s for semi-snarky one-liners undermines that ego boost, because it’s clear those aren’t the reasons for the high ratings: it’s not necessarily that people think I’m arguing well, it might just be that they basically agree with my position no matter how well I expressed it, or even that they disagree with, or dislike, whoever I’m arguing with. “People like me for saying things they already agree with” is a much less satisfying ego boost than “people like me for writing well and making cogent arguments even if they don’t agree.”
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p>I don’t know – maybe this plea is futile? Maybe I’m just shaking my cane, yelling at you kids with your newfangled zeroes-and-sixes rating scheme to get offa my lawn? But it really seems to me that a few years ago, there were a lot more threes, fours and fives being given out, and folks tended to consider the quality of the comment more heavily than the ideological alignment of its author.
They are limited by Soapblox.
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p>I guess that we feel compelled to ‘6’ people whose posts will get downrated by our right-wing visitors, who not only don’t contribute anything substantive to the conversation, but are downright disruptive. I really wish there were conservatives here who could provide meaningful discourse, but even the few who are reasonable descend into poutrage or yell ‘ACORN! SOCIALISM!’ when their posts are challenged with facts.
I know it probably seemed otherwise, but I wasn’t trying to criticize you personally; just lamenting the way (it seems to me, at least) the dynamic of discussion around here has changed.
Fauxtrage is a good term-I will have to use it more often. 🙂 Poutrage reflects the childish nature of their arguments-they often take their ball and go home when they’ve been debated into the ground.
I do try to high rate folks I disagree with, but who I think make good arguments, either blue or red. And I agree that the rating system has become distorted under recent usage.
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p>That said, in this case, I was agreeing with the question. Sixing it was easier than saying “hear, hear.”
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p>I’ve no idea what billxi is ranting about, either, and am genuinely curious. My guess it’s just more of his generic democrat bashing.
Your writing is worth reading.
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p>A visit to your blog confirmed.
As for ratings, I am expressing the opinion that I think a Certain Party should not have an account here because it lowers the level of discussion.
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p>Generally, I avoid downratings altogether but I have decided to express this opinion through ratings. Perhaps 7 others will join me at some point since the Editors will not.
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p>billxi has been throwing around zeros for a very long time.
I do understand that, and I didn’t mean to come off so much as criticizing individuals.
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p>Thank you for your kind words about my writing, but of course that wasn’t really the point of my complaint either 🙂
JohnD/other rightwing visitor makes stupid statement-BMGer asks for for evidence
JohnD/other rightwing visitor resorts to histrionics, insults, ACORN, SOCIALISM, yadda yadda-Wash, rinse, repeat
I rarely rate pots. Unless someone brings up the subject.
also tut-tutted the heck out of us for saying mean, nasty things about Sarah Palin. Why McCain was going to win if we kept it up! Yes, those Republican consultants to Democratic campaigns were certain that was the way to go.
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p>Only it wasn’t.
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p>Palin’s negatives were decisive in sinking the McCain candidacy. They even sewed discontent within the upper echelons of his own campaign.
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p>So maybe we should, you know, not take campaign advice from our political adversaries and scoff at them when they try to offer it.
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p>They’re never right.
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p>It would be better if they helped us analyze polling data and the like rather than pretended they know things they so clearly don’t.
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p>Come on, PP, tell us about Lamont again and how you guys won in 2006 on account of it.
Was still waiting for exit polling data five days after the election. He’s still waiting. Hint to Mr. Walsh: There was no exit polling data. There is no exit polling data.
Which bings us to one of two conclusions:
1. Mr. Walsh is way out of touch.
Or:
2. He’s lying.
Neither one is good.
Since Baker declares “I absolutely am not smart enough” to answer basic questions about climate change why would he blame the climate for anything?
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p>Why is it acceptable to support any candidate from either party who claims that he or she is not able to describe climate change as real, especially when that claim is quite likely untrue?
such as using good government to promote the general welfare
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p>vs the ideology of the center-right that uses government solely for the benefit of corporations in the hope that the benefits will trickle down
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p>I would give the center-right kudos for their sales job except the following polls, all done within the last 6 months, do not support your statement that this is what most people want.
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p>A Quinnipiac survey from December 2009 showed a majority “mostly disapproved” the Senate bill and a majority did not want reform if it would increase the deficit. (It is not an accident that deficit concerns have been trumpeted by the same corporate forces that have a vested interest in the status quo.) Still, a majority approved a public option (56%) and expansion of Medicare (64%).
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p>Similar support for a public option was seen in an October 2009 Washington Post poll: http://voices.washingtonpost.c…
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p>An NBC/WSJ poll (Oct 2009) showed a plurality favoring a public option: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com…
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p>The only survey of Massachusetts voters who supported Obama and who either switched to Brown or stayed home from the special election showed paradoxically that they wanted health care reforms to go further than the Senate bill. Link: http://pol.moveon.org/brownpol…
The thoughful post lists many possible variables:some of them may have played an important role. The problem in analyzing the defeat and finding lessons is that it’s difficult to weigh these other variables when the Coakley campaign ran the worst campaign I can ever remember.
Exactly. She just doesn’t have what it takes. There is literally no fight in her. The only reason she won the primary was a very early and aggressive entrapment of the standard political activists by semi-sweet phonebankers before any other candidates had declared. Did you get one or more of those early calls for support? Did you relent? Did you feel trapped?
All that other crap is what the talking heads make their lunch out of.
“As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?” – Jan. 1, 2010
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p>It was in this moment that people started paying attention.
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p>It was in this moment Martha Coakley defined herself (unfairly or not) as an elitist, ivory tower politician who couldn’t stoop to shaking hands with the common folk on a cold day.
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p>It was because of this moment that the Unenrolleds of this state — the ones who complain at the bar, but then don’t show up at the polls — vowed to show up and actually vote. and they did. And they overwhelmingly voted for Brown.
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p>If there is one thing Massachusetts voters don’t tolerate are politicians who take the voters for granted. This is a state all about retail politics. It’s why state reps can vote for DiMasi, support the hack culture, defend bloated pensions, but get re-elected easily. They take care of business back home.
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p>Coakley did not take care of business. She held phony media-friendly events. She sneered at working-class Boston sports fans.
Brown’s ad of him outside of Fenway was a stark contrast. Her comment about Curt Schilling put the nail in the coffin. Joke or not, it was tone deaf.
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p>Others have commented on her letting the “JFK ad” run unchallenged for a week. In this household, her vacation and her trip to Washington were just as bad.
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p>All of it sealed her image as aloof and arrogant. There’s just no defense.
A friend of mine wrote a piece on the election’s outcome, noting that while there were a lot of underlying issues for the Democrats, Brown’s rapid rise in the polls can be pegged to a particular moment – the Rasmussen poll – and exhibits the characteristics of a classic speculative bubble.
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p>A major part of why Coakley lost is that her campaign failed to recognize what the hype building around Brown meant, and didn’t bother trying to find a way to deflate that bubble before it got too big.
Analysis. And to compound her elitism, she then went on vacation.
I do not agree with your stances (I actually helped found a charter school, and sent my son there), but I read your piece as political strategy. I wondered at the time why Dean was tossed, as he had OBVIOUSLY ben effective!
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p>Two observations – I’ve said before that Obama was a tabula rasa where people could project their own agenda and think he was with them. His eloquent and nonspecific style truly did allow him to be all things to all people. But campaigning isn’t governing, and when he bagan to make decisions, he had to reveal actual stands. I remeber a gay activist wailing that he couldn’t believe what Obama was doing (actually, failing to do), and I thought – but he never said he was with you on that; if anything, he stated DIDN’T agree – but you were so swept away that your wished his agreement into reality. I think that phenomenon, which was a type of magical thinking, accounts for the bitterness of many supporters.
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p>Also – about the pensions – the state DID have a chance in the 80’s to make Mass. a contributory state, like over 40 other states. It isn’t just teachers, it’s all state workers that are in a state defined benefit plan with no Social Security. But as in the 30’s, the state didn’t want to have to pay their 7 percent share as an employer, and instead began to charge higher percentages for contribution. The 5 percent is now 11 percent, which is (ironically) more than a person would PAY into Social Security, with FICA now charged in the bargain. Instead, they opted to keep the current system – which is now unaffordable due to increases in the aging population, overly generous age and vesting requirements, etc.
This whole post indicates a continued shock. All the comments, analysis and relentless handwringing have, as their center of gravity, this shock and incomprehension, this one vividly clear context: she was not supposed to lose… or, put another way, as many (including myself) were wont to put it I can’t see any scenario in which she loses. Democratic State? Check. Ted Kennedy’s seat? Check. Health Care Debate raging? Check. Decisive primary victory? Check. Weak opponent (and lets be honest here, folks…)? Check.
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p>Nobody thought she would lose, including Scott Brown. His acceptance speech was a study in paradigmatic dumbfoundedness: I’ve seen deer in headlights better prepared to deal with what was coming at ’em.
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p>And, of course, since she was not supposed to lose it must mean that it is her, only, at fault. It’s not even termed ‘our loss’. No, it’s ‘Martha Coakley lost’, as tho’ we could distance ourselves from it. It might be true… but I’m not buying it. I think this whole discussion is just an attempt to sort out the anger and the frustration, none of which is properly understood.
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p>To put it bluntly we, not just Martha Coakley, expected better from our fellow citizens. This expectation is a good thing. It’s not arrogance or entitlement, either on our part, or the part of Martha Coakley, as some have termed it. It’s not arrogant to expect our fellow citizens to see Scott Brown for what he is and what he stands for, and for them to see the huge yawning gap between what he his and what he says he stands for…
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p>Consider for a second: if Coakley was a poor candidate, what does that say about the other candidates she beat? She was the clear choice of the Democrats in the Democratic Commonwealth. The CommonWealth that had the Kennedys, Mike Dukakis, Gerry Studds and which didn’t vote Nixon. The Commonwealth that has Barney Frank, near universal health care and only the second African American Governor in US history. I could go on… So let’s examine that… What part of this meta and context would change? Nothing. If Mike Capuano had bested her in the primary, that exact context would be his: Democratic State? Check. Ted Kennedy’s seat? Check. Health Care Debate raging? Check. Decisive primary victory? Check. Weak opponent? Check.
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p>GOP/Teabaggers ambush that nobody saw coming, masterfully timed and calculated for peak impact on election day… Oops.
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p>It is clear that Capuano could have done things differently but not at all clear that he, of a necessity, would would have done anything different: he would have had the same context, which, at the time, seemed a boon, and now seems a bane. And it’s only clear in hindsight what Martha Coakley should have done differently. I’m not sold on the concept that Capuano, or indeed anyone, would have taken Scott Brown all that much more seriously in December of 2009… It’s nice to think that somebody would have done so… had to have done so… but maybe the truth is simply that we Democrats, for all our smarts, compassion and political savvy, all of us and not just Martha Coakley, dropped the ball. Personally, I find comfort in the fact that we once expected more from fellow voters: I miss Massachusetts circa Dec 2009… the place where I thought much more highly of my fellow citizens than I do now.
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p>That’s why we lost.
The arrogance of the Coakley campaign is only surpassed by the arrogance of your post.
Or are you just sniping today?
I do not think less of my fellow citizens. They made a choice. Yes it was the wrong choice but I respect the vote they made and the reasons why they made it.
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p>I suppose, if you squint and tilt your head slightly, you can get this grandiloquence on your part to resemble something like arrogance on my part… but it’s a tight squint, to be sure.
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p>I fail, utterly, to understand (and therefore to respect) either the choice that was made nor the reasons for making it. It is an incomprehensible choice. It is a bizarre choice. By any and every objective measure and many explicit prior votes of Mass citizens on health care, Deval Patrick and Barack Obama, amongst other distinct choices, a Scott Brown victory was statistically overwhelmingly unlikely regardless of whom it was he was up against. On top of that he ran a whiny, petty campaign in which inconsistency was matched by a complete lack of substance and both wholly outdone by incoherence. I looked at the Brown campaign closely for several months and completely failed to see what was good, in any way, about it, either in execution, message or, indeed, simple coherence. It was an alien thing: wholly apart and irreconcilable to me. I still don’t get how anybody could vote ‘for’ it… I would be only slightly more dumbfounded if the citizens went and actually wrote-in the pickup truck as a candidate and it won. I suppose that’s the arrogance one has when they go through life expecting that the junior Senator from Massachusetts isn’t going to be a pickup truck… or that the votes that put him in place be at least somewhat correlated with previous votes.
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p>I mean, honestly now, would you still respect the choice of the voters if the GOP had, on a lark, actually nominated the pickup truck? And it won! What would you say about the choice then? In terms of message coherence and issues the campaign was actually not at all really that different. People may have, in fact, voted for the truck. I suppose it would still be solely Martha Coakleys fault…
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p>I think you also missed the point about how we’re talking about the loss: uncritically accepting it to be ‘Martha Coakleys loss’ doesn’t give you the cover you want of it. You want to distance yourself from Martha Coakley and absolve yourself of involvement in any ‘wrong choice,’ without critically analyzing what happened, and that’s your right, but don’t go telling me that’s not arrogant.
noun- offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.
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p>You own it my friend
Thank you for explaining to us what’s what GraySky. Is there anything else we should know? (Everyone take out your notebooks, Gray Sky is about to speak!)
How is a comment that boils down to “We share the blame too” at all arrogant?
It comes off as more condescending. Unintentional tone, as it were.
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p>But unintentional – if you MEANT it that way, THAT would be arrogant, and I don’t THINK you did…
And this is categorically not true:
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p>
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p>The warning signs were there if people cared to look for them. I did. As a town committee chair, we could not get a single blessed person to pay attention to us. Nothing. Nada. Khazei’s people came to see us, and so did Capuano’s. Coakley? Not a single shred of paperf from Coakley’s campaign and not a single call.
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p>And I tell you what: my experience was duplicated around this state one hundred times or more. And I also tell you this: this has never happened to us before. We were a bit stunned–and that quickly turned to concern. So claiming people didn’t know this campaign was in trouble is simply false. Martha Coakley refused to campaign. And if you don’t campaign, you can’t win. The boots-on-the-ground people know this–you should, too.
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p>As to the rest of your point, Martha Coakley won the primary because she was the only candidate with state-wide name recognition going in. People bought her without a test drive. It’s exactly as I said earlier–“Coakley? Oh, sure, she’s a headliner, rising star. State-wide name recog, too, that’s good. Liberal on the issues. Sure. Let’s do it.” Except that candidate never showed up anywhere. That historic candidate never made a transition to present candidate and future senator. When your opposition makes 66 campaign appearances to your 19, something is amiss. When don’t call the mayor of your largest city for support and help until three days before the election, something is amiss. When you think it’s a good idea to shun the “machinery” in current elected Democrats and eschew the “emotional attachment” to the Kennedys by ignoring Vicky Kennedy, something is amiss. And that something is this: humility, heart, energy, desire, diligence, and most important, political instinct.
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p>There’s no guarantee that Coakley would have lost to Capuano had the campaign been longer. The Dem faithful seemed to buy the Coakley vehicle without bothering with a test drive, and nothing short of a major crash was going to shake them in their faith that she was the best vehicle available. After all, she was the AG, right? She’d won state-wide election before, right? Here’s what we learn from that experience: the candidate needs to match the office. What works well for an AG doesn’t necessarily translate well for a U.S. Senator.
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p>As for the voters of Massachusetts, they revealed a media-driven drift to the right, but they also revealed a flaw: they are not as thoughtful as we had believed them to be. They revealed that they don’t care as much about facts as we thought, they don’t care as much about policy as we thought, and they don’t care as much about Democratic principles as we thought. Here’s the bad news: the people of Massachusetts are not as sophisticated as previously thought. And that’s what creates the narrative dilemma we face. If we’ve lost Ted Kennedy’s seat to a rube from Wrentham, we lost it because a) we fielded the wrong candidate and b) any narrative or vision Kennedy left behind has been lost in translation. The narrative must be re-established; otherwise, we’ll see more losses like the Brown fiasco we just endured.
I would love to be able to put the blame for this solely at the feet of Martha Coakley. It’s easier… seductively so… But what was, is and had to be, what it was. We do ourselves a disservice calling it something else. The pattern has repeated itself so so many times before; Dukakis loses to Bush, it’s Dukakis’ fault; Al Gore loses to Dubya and it’s Gore’s fault… Bill Bradley woulda been better; Kerry loses to Dubya it’s Kerry’s fault… Dean woulda been better. Always, it seems, there’s somebody better… whoever we run, when they lose, it’s their fault and why didn’t we pick the other guy??
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p>So how does Coakley go from winning nearly 50% of the primary vote in a 4 way race, running a campaign of which was said, “they’re going to study this one at Kennedy School of Government”(as one of the NECN commentators, I forget whom, said on primary night) to being the “worst. candidate. evah.” Surely you’re not going to hang your hat on the canard that the voters didn’t get a ‘test drive’? Surely you’re not going to posit Scott Brown as some sort of campaign genius. He’s not that good a candidate and even he was as surprised as the rest of us, if not more so… In a sane world, a random eighth grader, on a paper-route budget, should’ve cleaned Browns clock.
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p>How does that happen? How does Coakley ride high and then lay low? The differences in primary and general, in so compressed a time frame couldn’t, have been THAT distinct? It beggars the imagination to think on’t. That’s my point: We’re all standing around kinda shell-shocked and dazed from the sheer overwhelming improbability of it all trying to piece together what exactly happened. But the sheer magnitude of it, especially when contrasted with the context and the demonstratively poor candidate in opposition, as I’ve tried to do, exposes the well-nigh used up excuse of ‘bad candidate, shoulda voted for the other fellow’ hollow and insufficient.
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p>This is unworthy of you-and intellectually lazy. Somebody always loses an election-sometimes the loser is a Democrat. Having said that, are you really suggesting that there is some overarching excuse, perhaps The Big Excuse, that is employed every time? C’mon. That’s something JohnD would do. Every election is a unique period of time, with unique players, circumstances, and conditions. Dukakis? Allowed himself to be defined and lost control of his gravitas. Gore? Robbed by the Supreme Court, but did run a fairly crappy campaign and had a terrible running mate. Kerry? Wrong candidate. Dean would have been better, but he had amassed the media against him. All different scenarios. Here’s another one: Coakley? Wrong candidate, crappy campaign.
I don’t know who the nitwit was who claimed that, but NECN commentators aren’t the arbiters of truth and efficacy in campaigning. I could have told that person s/he was wrong-and guess what? I’d be right.
You consistently fail to acknowledge that Coakley didn’t campaign. You assiduously avoid the major mistakes she made, so I’ll enumerate them again:
1. Refused to engage in retail politics. Indeed, she demonstrated disdain for retain politics, thus sending the message that voters were the unwashed masses.
2. Refused to reach out to Mayor Menino. ’nuff said. Machinery in idle never gets switched on.
3. Refused to accept Vicky Kennedy’s help in any way. Tried to distance herself from the Kennedys when the legacy seemed inconvenient but invoked the Kennedys when needed. At any rate, turned down the Kennedys’ help.
4. Refused to accept the help of the elected delegation from Massachusetts-who, btw, had been calling the voice their concern when she went MIA after the primary.
5. Vacations in the middle of a short-window election cycle.
I just did. No one pays attention to AG contests, and let’s face it: Coakley’s last race was hardly a nail-biter. I am saying people went with her name recognition, the fact that she was an attractive female, knowing little about her. If they knew more about her, they may (or may not) have chosen someone else. We’ll never know.
I just characterized Brown as a rube. Please don’t ascribe opinions to me that I did not articulate.
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p>Brown engaged in retail politics. He had a clear theme and a well-crafted image (albeit a false one). The world is not insane; it’s lazy. Had this been a real election cycle, Scott Brown would have gotten his clock cleaned, but, unfortunately, the confluence of events precluded that from happening.
Coakley stays home, goes on vacation, refuses to shake hands, and projects an image of imperious entitlement, that’s how. You mistake “riding high” for a name-recognition primary win. Once the voters got to know her better, they drifted away-towards the other, regular guy in the truck.
No, not at all, and I really don’t know how you could reach that conclusion given the facts of this campaign.
50% of 15% turnout equals 7.5%. Wow I’d ride those numbers right into the Senate chamber!
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p>… your point is?
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p>My point, which you’ve skated right past, was that nearly 50% of a four way race, whatever the turnout, is decisive. Bill Clinton ‘won’ a three way race in 1992 (vs Bush 41 and Perot) by getting 42%. Nixon won a three way race in ’68 with similar percentages.
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p>Getting nearly 50% of people to vote for you when they have three other choices is rarely done. It’s considered, among people who regularly ‘do the math’, quite the thing.
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p>Whatever else you might wish to think about Martha Coakley and the race in general, she was the clear pick of the dominant party in the Commonwealth. That’s the answer I get after doing the math.
But while I want to believe that Capuano could have won if the Primary was longer, but I’m not totally convinced. He was terrific when you saw him in person, but on TV he came off as smarmy and at times angry. I, as a partisan activist, loved his passion, but others didn’t. I spoke to many friends who didn’t vote for him for ridiculous reasons (they didn’t want to go through another special election and see more ads, or they didn’t like the way he spoke). It seems to me that Dems like to vote for people with the best story and ability to connect, they couldn’t connect with Cap, so they went with the “historic” choice, who would break barriers. Primary voters never considered the fact that Coakley was one of the worst campaigners in the history of politics, or she was snubbing the electorate by not holding public events, or even eviscerating her ability to have a power base as a senator by running a horrible field program. Voters just don’t pay attention to that stuff. They pay attention to message and appeal. Coakley never made a compelling case for herself, and we all suffered the consequences.
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p>I believe we can win this seat back in a few years, and whether it’s with elizabeth Warren or capuano, we will be better off. Coakley would have been an awful Senator. A reliable vote, yes, but not one really interested in engagement with her constituents, and a MA staff without any real connections to the populace (as her campaign staff would have just moved over to the MA office, they couldn’t even reach out during the election, how could they have done the same while in office). Of course this means that we are all going to have to work really hard this midterm to get things back on track. We have a lot of local races and open seats in the state house, maybe it’s time some qualified and progressive individuals run.
the accent? I heard that one a few times. Testimony to the corrupting influence of television.
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p>I think you are right, too, in that voters might have been unable to connect with Cap and opted instead for what looked tantatlizing like “progress.” The gods know the Coakley-Is-Woman contingent here was vociferous and dedicated.
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p>I believe we can win it back, too. Elizabeth Warren is a true rising star and Capuano may be able to file the edges off his persona to appeal to the increasingly homogenized Commonwealth voter.
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p>Time will tell….
a great deal of enthusiasm. We must get her to run. How do we get her to run in the next Senate election?
“As for the voters of Massachusetts, they revealed a media-driven drift to the right, but they also revealed a flaw: they are not as thoughtful as we had believed them to be. They revealed that they don’t care as much about facts as we thought, they don’t care as much about policy as we thought, and they don’t care as much about Democratic principles as we thought. Here’s the bad news: the people of Massachusetts are not as sophisticated as previously thought. And that’s what creates the narrative dilemma we face. If we’ve lost Ted Kennedy’s seat to a rube from Wrentham, we lost it because a) we fielded the wrong candidate and b) any narrative or vision Kennedy left behind has been lost in translation. The narrative must be re-established; otherwise, we’ll see more losses like the Brown fiasco we just endured.” Gee, it’s all the fault of those stupid Massachusetts’ voters. Thanks, lightiris, for enlightening me.
I don’t for a second believe that the majority of people who voted for Scott Brown subscribe to his brand of politics. Scott Brown does not have a single piece of meaningful legislation to call his own. He’s a joke in the state senate, in case you didn’t know that–pretty boy Brown. He gets elected on his persona, not his intellectual chops. And I give him credit—he’s used that persona to good advantage (except when he’s dropping F bombs on high school kids).
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p>There’s no reason to believe (any longer) that the voters of Massachusetts are any more informed than their national counterparts given this election result. People bought the Fox Fair and Balanced candidate hook, line, and sinker. Now you tell ME who’s a bigger dope?
But when you are talking about intellectual chops, you have to recognize that the republicans don’t have a monopoly on dim-wittedness. (nor on good looks). Maybe not germane to this discussion, but John Edwards was an empty pretty boy, much as Joe Biden is dumb as a stump. Fair is fair, and I think voters everywhere can be taken in by politicians at one time or another.
Completely. Agree. So, we’re not so far off, then, in principle. Short version: there are a lot of dumb shits in the Democratic party, too.
But Edgarthearmenian, it is surely not unreasonable for us Democrats to think that electing a 41st vote for filibustering the Senate into inactivity was stupid. It’s not even unreasonable for us to have discussions where we don’t argue for that point.
from people – regular voters, not activists – who sense that the Democratic Party has changed and there is no ‘place’ or Party for them- working class, middle class, anymore.
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p>The DLC broke the Democratic Party and instituted a Party of individual candidates trotted out every 4 years with focused group sayings whose ONLY object is to get lected and re-elected.
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p>Governance?
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p>What’s that?
Beyond the reasons related to Coakley/Brown as candidates and their campaigns, I would very much like to see a discussion of how satisfied readers of this site are with the Democrats in Washington, now that they have had extraordinary power for over a year.
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p>I share Carl’s disappointment with the Obama presidency. Even as I was skeptical of what “hope and change” would really translate to, my head has been splitting over the opportunities lost, the concessions made to corporations, and the snubs and insults inflicted on progressives by the White House, the Blue Dogs, and Harry Reid.
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p>I share one view with some of the Brown voters: frustration with the failure of Democrats in Washington to act more strongly on behalf of the average citizen. I share their outrage over the few-strings-attached bank bailouts.
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p>Obama is not acting nearly enough in the interests of the people who knocked on doors for him and made small contributions. He is acting on behalf of his big donors. The interests of these two groups often conflict. Obama has clearly shown which group he favors.
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p>I hope he gets primaried by a progressive in 2012.
…and Elizabeth Warren and every other American with a pulse…that people responsible–politicians and Wall Street types that created this mess have either not been held accountable, or even more unbelievably–got even richer.
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p>And that is what seems to be missing in the analysis and discussion here (although at this point, I did a lot of skimming). We are all angry and the angry liberals stay home or reluctantly voted and the angry moderates and conservatives stormed the ballot box and voted NO, which was Scott Brown. (And the other factor…we had what turned out to be the worst candidate in the world).
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p>The political elites (both in the final Bush month and now Obama year) choose to “fix and stabilize” the system using the people who broke it and now where the bombs are. History may prove them right (or show that we set ourselves up for an even worse beating–as Elizabeth Warren thinks), but for now the average American–across all ideologies are just planned pissed and that does not bode well for those in power and right now that is us.
Martha Coakley lost. You can’t discount the people who voted for Brown, and they weren’t just teabggers. You can’t discount the incompetence of the federal Democratic Party and our tone deaf President. I have no direct knowledge of our state DNC, but they deserve some blame for not protecting the brand. You can’t discount Brown and his campaign. They did a good job.
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p>The Coakley campaign, however, really sucked. The mis-steps and flaws with candidate Coakley herself have already been pointed out, but her campaign’s overall strategy is interesting for its intellectual slovenliness and general obsolescence.
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p>The people who ran the Coakley campaign–about 20 years out of date on campaigning–followed a sort of demographic strategy: I am a woman; women vote for women; there are more women than men; I will appeal to women and win.
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p>It also reminds me of the Bob Shrum school of campaigning: start with greeting card populism, respond slowly to the opponent, and a lack of coherent narrative.
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p>Last semester, I was teaching audience analysis to my high school students and worked up a lesson using Brown’s and Coakley’s commercials. Brown’s commercials were infinitely more appealing to voters, addressing voter anger at Washington and portraying Brown as a regular guy. Coakley’s commercials, completely out of step with the times, were clearly directed at women, focusing on families and taking care of people, and clearly out of step with the frustration people feel.
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p>Her campaign manager was Kevin Conroy, who evidently wasn’t up to the job.
of what you say except the part about “us” having power. Progressive Democrats do not have the ear or respect of the White House.
with what Democrats have accomplished and how they have not fought for us, is one thing, but setting up a dynamic where Republicans gain power accomplishes what for us? That seems to be turning back in the wrong direction instead of pulling us in the direction we thought we voted for in the last presidential cycle. I’m concerned that widespread attack from the left will result in a Republican majority or presidency, a situation I cannot tolerate after the last 8 years of Bush and his monolithic Republican majority. What’s the answer?
from my earlier post on this diary here: http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/v…
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p>People want reform, the tea party people (or whatever they call themselves now) notwithstanding.
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p>This is not about just the next election cycle. We have a basic conflict within the Democratic party between the corporations who want to own it and its core constituency of working people.
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p>See this video for some elaboration on this point. Link: http://therealnews.com/t2/inde…
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p>What to do now? An interviewee in the linked video posits that it is not rocket science. In addition to supporting a challenge to Obama from the left, I vote for doing all we can for progressive down ballot and local candidates. The idea is to build a progressive farm team and to achieve a critical mass of progressives in the state lege and in Congress. The more local the candidates, the greater the influence of residents of their districts.
If Obama wins the primary, we should rally behind him and against the much worse Republicans.
http://therealnews.com/t2/inde…
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p>I agree with their assessment that while most of the Democratic leadership is corporatist (and useless), the Republicans are downright dangerous and need to be stopped.
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p>The key is not to drop out in the general elections, but to get involved earlier, i.e. in the primaries.
Ran as woman: bad
Also, Obama is meek, and
Carl’s mad at Deval
You completely lost me with the teacher pension argument. Governor Patrick’s proposal caps pensions at $85,000. Less then 1% of public retirees get that amount. To get an $85,000 pension, you’d have to earn, for your 3 highest years of service, $106,250. How many teachers do you know who earn that kind of salary? And, that pension cap, under Gov. Patrick’s proposal, will go up each year.
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p>And, to be clear, Gov. Patrick’s proposal affects all public employees, not just teachers. There is nothing in the proposal that is specific to teachers. Did you read the same piece of legistation that I read?
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p>And you should know that teachers have a special retirement formula, I think it’s called RetirementPlus, that allows them to reach the 80% pension benefit several years before other public employees. It’s not as lucrative as pensions for Group 2, 3, and 4 public employees, but it’s a special benefit that the Mass. Teachers’ Association fought long and hard for.
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p>In short, you don’t know what you are talking about regarding teacher pensions, and, for me, that undermines just about everything else you have to say in your piece.
Perhaps I didn’t express myself clearly enough. An $85,000 cap on starting teacher pensions would be quite reasonable right now — in fact, I doubt any public school teacher makes enough to get more than that. The point I was trying to make is that since that cap will not be adjusted for inflation, its value will decrease steadily as the years go on until teacher pensions become pretty worthless (i.e., as inflation goes up, as it historically has).
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p>The other point I was making was that due to the strikingly nonlinear formula for determining a teacher’s starting pension, very few retiring teachers get anywhere near the allowable starting pension — and what they do get basically doesn’t go up with inflation (as Social Security does), so as the years go by, it loses value dramatically.
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p>I hope that clarifies what I was trying to say.
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p> –Carl Offner
I’m sorry; I just noticed that you asserted that the starting pension cap would be adjusted for inflation. The original legislation that I was aware of did not provide for that. So if that is now part of what the Governor is indeed proposing, that would alleviate my concern about that particular issue — though not about the matter that pensions themselves don’t get indexed for inflation and so lose value pretty quickly.
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p>I think it’s also fair to say that if indeed this change has been made in the Governor’s proposal it’s only due to effective representation on the part of the two main teachers unions in this state. Which is yet another reason why I see any attempt to bust teachers unions as fundamentally irresponsible.
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p> –Carl Offner
Have you ever read Governor Patrick’s proposal. He made one proposal, filed one piece of legislation, and stands behind that legislation. It would only affect public employees — not just teachers, all public employees – hired after the legislation is enacted. And the cap on pensions — $85,000 — would be adjusted for inflation over time. But keep in mind, anyone entitled to an $85,000 pension today would have had to have worked for over 30 years and have had a highest 3-year-average salary of $106,250. How many teachers make that much?
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p>As for the issue of pensions not being indexed for inflation, I agree that it a problem, but the outstanding pension liability for public employee pensions in Massachusetts is already mega billions of dollars, without indexing. Indexing pension benefits to inflation would bankrupt the Commonwealth. The public retirees association has been trying for years to increase the annual COLA, which is based on something like only the first $12,000 of pension benefits, to something like $15,000, but the cost is enormous. But you want to index the whole thing for everyone, including Billy Bulger? Good luck with that. What else would you cut from the budget to pay for your proposal to index all public employee pensions to inflation? And if you would raise taxes to pay for that, how would you explain to other worthy interest groups — like legal immigrants who should get health insurance like all other Massachusetts residents — that they should step aside for public employees.
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p>If you look at my prior posts on public employee pensions, you will recognize that I am a strong supporter of the present system, with reforms, instead of ditching the system and moving to Social Security, which will cost the Commonwealth way more than fully funding our present retirement system. If you are going to pontificate about pension issues, you should do a little homework first.
Not wanting to be a pontificator(?) The question of who proposed what when is at this point pretty murky and it is indeed true that the Governor’s proposal does not include a fixed unchangeable cap. I have edited that paragraph to reflect this. It was, however, the Governor who raised the whole issue of teacher pensions in a way that the pensions for ordinary teachers were framed as needing to be adjusted downward in the context of a few cases of egregious abuse by much more highly paid people.
This op-ed is so frightfully uninformed and naive and is indicative of how perverse the moonbat hold is on our state Dem party. I am a liberal and progresive but I’m also a pragmatist, and I’d rather have a liberal-moderate Dem governor that I can work with to get 50% of my liberal and progressive agenda, than a liberal Dem governor who is an “all or nothing” ideologue who can’t deliver on any of the agenda.
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p>Coakley ran a poor campaign. She also had campaign staff ill-suited to strategizing a statewide Senate race in a year in which the Dem lure for moderate independents was waning. But the reality is that she did not define Brown before Brown defined her. Had she the skilled operatives who have done U.S. Senate races and gubernatorial races, rather than what appears to be minor leaguers, she would have won.
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p>The worst mistake Coakley made throughout the whole campaign was the morning AFTER the primary when the Dem machine should have had woman and elderly protesting outside of Brown HQ’s slamming him on state senate votes. That would’ve been the radio and TV coverage that day, putting Brown — on a day when he was supposed to be celebrating — on the defensive the first time he was truly introduced statewide to the voters.
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p>But you keep fooling yourselves that this was about gender or Obama or whatever. Yes, all of those issues probably did have a place in the overall outcome. But framing the race, as Brown did, put Coakley on the defensive first, and from that point — the morning after the primary — her ability to redefine the race evaporated.
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p>So you keep up this ridiculous anti-casino, anti-DLC spin that forges an ideological rift within our party ranks and you’ll be looking at a Repub governor in November. None of us want that, so stop this mindless bickering. Every time we let the moonbats get control of party direction, we end up on the outside looking in. After 16 years of Republican mismanagement in the governor’s office, you want to give the corner office back to them after just four years of a Dem governor? Come on, smarten up. One Balaclava in a lifetime is enough.
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p>