Adrian Walker’s reporting or opinion piece in the Globe today just seemed so far off-base. First, it wasn’t clear that he acutally talked with any delegates and, second, he just seemed bored and slightly irritated that he had to go to Springfield last Saturday. He talked about Warren’s overwhelming victory as due to the “party machine”. Hasn’t he ever heard of enthusiasm? Did he see or feel any enthuiasm?
And he describes the “insiders” as those who were able to “enforce party unity”. Give me a break! We are talking about democrats here. Enforcing party unity may have happened back in the 1950s but it is hardly true now. I have been to many conventions over the years and this one, like Deval’s first one, seemed to marked more by a deep and widespread enthusiasm for Elizabeth Warren that totally transcends any machine politics. And, I have seen this also at local meetings in Falmouth where hundreds have shown up more than once for Elizabeth Warren. Walker and other on the Globe staffers seemed to have completely missed out on her popularity among Democrats.
it sounds like Walker has come down with a case of high Broderism.
Masslive had a headline that included the words “reject Marisa DeFranco.” That’s putting a negative light on the vote. Ninety-six percent of the delegates voted for Elizabeth Warren.
What percentage of the Democratic vote is urban minority again? Maybe somebody faking minority status makes a difference to people who are actually supposed to benefit from affirmative action.
Walker is just late to the feast.
“Party machine” is especially sloppy, as it equates the grassroots caucus system with the smoke-filled-room cronyism it replaced.
I’m wondering if DeFranco would have gotten enough support if the delegates weren’t rallying behind Warren to say they don’t care about her claim to be a minority. Imagine that alternate reality, in which Warren had never listed herself or been touted by Harvard as a Native Indian (let’s assume she still would have been hired by Harvard, which is dubious) – in that alternate reality, DeFranco would have still gotten her signatures and called up delegates who had never heard of her until then, would some more of them have thought she should be on the ballot, or would she still have been “trounced”?
NO impact either way. But your comment is a lame attempt to pretend it might have. Nice try.
If DeFranco had done unexpectedly well, you’d be suggesting that delegates were turned off by Warren’s native heritage. Is there no lows you will not stoop to?
“let’s assume she still would have been hired by Harvard, which is dubious”
You are flippin’ hilarious. Also, moronic.
Oh come on, everyone rallied behind her to say that “it’s a non-issue” and “no one cares.” If this story hadn’t been there, there would have been no rallying together, and no hatred of DeFranco for capitalizing on the story, so I think more delegates would have voted for her.
“If DeFranco had done unexpectedly well, you’d be suggesting that delegates were turned off by Warren’s native heritage”
Wow, no, if DeFranco had done unexpectedly well, I’d be saying it was because delegates were turned off of Warren because she just might be a bad unelectable candidate due to her many lies and her entitled, self-serving character. No one cares about her ancestry, that’s a ridiculous projection. (Though I suspect people do care that she’s not a Massachusetts native, and might not even be a Celtics fan if we wind up facing the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Finals – oh God please make that happen!)
the enthusiasm for Warren has been there from the beginning. Have you gone to an event? I’ve been to several.
This was a foregone conclusion, because she already had us at “go.” She’s just a good candidate.
If anything WERE to have been affected, it would have been the other way around – dampening enthusiasm.
But you can keep faking your controversy if you want, it’s a free country I guess.
But which country? Cute says Warren was “touted by Harvard as a native Indian,” which is a whole new fantasy narrative. I think we need to see that Bangalore birth certificate.
I know the temptation is sometimes irresistible (it is for me to), but as you can see from the result, any attempt to respond only makes matters worse.
I think it’s time to simply ignore comments like this. I enthusiastically agree with your characterization as “lame”, by the way.
But it’s also hard to let stupid comments stand as the “final word” on that part of the thread. Especially mired with specious arguments.
“let’s assume she still would have been hired by Harvard, which is dubious”
Because it’s much more likely that the conservative Reagan appointee that hired her is lying to you?
You’re full of it and not worth any more keyst
He said he recommended her and brought her in, which I assume means he wasn’t the person who unilaterally made the decision to hire her. There were presumably other people “brought in” by other professors, all the time, and some get hired by the mysterious power that runs Harvard, and others don’t.
“Dubious” just means it’s doubt-able, I didn’t say “highly dubious” after all. I mean, she was still a woman, and that was important too. And possibly being championed by a conservative was important, maybe they wanted to diversify their image on that front too.
I know, hard for you to imagine.
really, really believe that this Native American issue is somehow important. To Democrats, it isn’t. It just isn’t. I said in the beginning that the issue was too complicated to have an effect. The only people that care are the press and the conservatives. Polls suggest it isn’t particularly important to anyone, but you guys.
Time to give it a rest. If it comes back, maybe there will be something to say. It’s dead for now.
Mark,
1. First, liked your post about that random Native American website that sprung up, what a character.
2. I disagree with your comment. Four things.
a. The polls did suggest at least a few non-conservatives care about it.
Even BMG is a proxy. A commenter like Farnkoff, who I’m guessing to be on the liberal/centrist side of things, made a number of comments that I’d interpret as, at the very least, he cares about it.
b. Even if it were true that the issue just fires up Brown’s base, that seems politically relevant, no?
More donations, volunteers, turnout.
And it seems clear the base is riled up. Political stories on the Herald that typically get 50 comments would get 500 on this matter.
c. It seems like the issue will “Come back” as an issue. Not an “if.”
Because of “a” and “b.”
My math ain’t that hot. Must be my charter school education.
Those who can count, and those who can’t.
Those who understand binary, and those who don’t…
n/t
Thanks for the laugh…
This comment rating is a 6 in base 1. Of course, it’s also a 3.
for you
A 6. And a 0.
We’ve gone way too geeky…
The rest of the comment is totally ignorable after that part. Or did you miss the actual poll numbers in the actual poll?
Hi Lynne,
Well, the actual poll numbers….let me quote Aaron Blake from today’s WaPo.
Now you may think these numbers are transitory. And I’ve noticed you’ve made many comments on each thread pertaining to this issue — upset. So it’s unlikely that this data will sway you. But I think the poll shows that, as I wrote, “at least a few non-conservatives care about the issue.”
If 72% of all voters say it doesn’t matter at all, that means a very large majority of the ones that do are likely not Warren voters to begin with and never will be. So that leaves, what, 10%? 13%? of those in an already-small subset who might be persuadable.
In other words, this issue hasn’t mattered hardly at all. If you look at the overall picture. At 72% that means a very large number of those “swing” voters are like, “meh.” A decent segment of the non-meh are like, “sorta meh” which basically means it’s not likely to be the deciding factor. That leaves, mathematically, a VERY small segment of non-meh voters for whom this will sway that are not already Brown’s base.
It is NOT going to be an issue that persuades a lot of voters one way or other.
And yes, I hate bullshit and stupidity, which is what this whole thing is. I call it out when I see it. So sue me.
31% of, say, 30% is a tiny tiny stat. Almost stupid to mention it, actually.
The issue may indeed come back. It’s going to take a smoking gun to make it effective with more than the people upset by it: conservatives, GOP and independent. At least half of independents are conservative, so I’m not surprised there.
Right now, the only people that care are the press and the conservatives. I don’t remember Farnkoff’s objection–was it a matter of handling the issue or the actual issue? There are outliers in any poll.
This is a perfect issue for the Herald types, i.e. angry white men. Affirmative action pisses them off and they don’t like women with power. Scott Brown is more than their candidate, he’s their avatar.
For now, what’s to say about it? I’m sure the Herald will have something to say everyday, but the non-tabloid media will increasingly turn to the issues and more importantly, the debates.
My (hypo)thesis is that voters concentrate on pseudo-issues when they aren’t distracted by issues. This year, we’ve got plenty of issues. Look to Warren and the DSC to retell in context the story of the last 4 years–the housing bubble popping, Wall Street melting down. Scott’s going to look weak defending his watering down of Dodd-Frank and hoping to cut taxes. Republicans are jumping ship on Grover Norquist. Where’s Scott going to stand?
We might not be there yet, but the times they are a changin’.
1. Would voters care about this less in this election (plenty of issues) vs other elections (2010, 2008, 2006, etc).
I don’t know.
Always seems like a “plenty of issues” election. For us folks who care about issues.
2. Agree that non-conservative media (Atlantic, Politico, NY Times, etc) that have covered this flap will subside.
The Globe? Don’t know.
They did hole up in the Harvard Library and advance the story.
McGrory – remember he was Metro editor before returning to column – seemed skeptical of his 30 min interview last week.
Globe did run the black ministers “skeptical” story today, even as they went big with Brown on Frank-Dodd.
I don’t think the Globe is done with this topic. You?
with will depend on subsequent events. In my opinion, they take themselves too seriously to ignore the Wall Street issues when they come up. I don’t think they are going to keep beating a dead horse. The story will have to rise from the grave and go zombie before they do anything serious. Whether or not they are doing research that will reanimate it is just speculation.
In terms of issues, I guess what I mean is that we’re not in an election cycle in which superficialities matter more than deep-rooted problems. Remember when Gore was gored by meaningless, distorted crap in 2000? When Ralph Nader said there was no difference between Democrats and Republicans? That was an election cycle where that stuff matters more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNyg1ftMIU
It’s a really disconcerting experience to read/hear the media “report” the convention story as a machine driven win. My experience:
There were no speeches in my ward 22 caucus so neither campaign would have known who was supporting which candidate. I was elected as an alternate and it was someone from the Warren campaign who let me know I was a delegate. Not the ward committee, not the Democratic Party, the Warren campaign. I received no calls or emails from the DeFranco campaign nor did anyone I know. If a machine was at work, it was faulty.
Funny that Adrian Walker thinks: “Marisa DeFranco gave it her best shot during her moment in the spotlight, but by the time she took the convention stage Saturday afternoon, she and everyone else in the Mass Mutual Center knew that she was enjoying the high point of her quixotic run for the US Senate.”
I think that Defranco had her best shot to salvage a political future at the convention and could have done so with a short gracious speech about Democratic values and the importance of winning the seat away from Scott Wall St. Brown, ending with a concession and whole-hearted support for Elizabeth Warren. Instead, as has been noted, she gave a weak speech, made us sit through at least two extra hours in the hall even though most of us faced a long rainy ride home and couldn’t find it in herself to endorse the candidate that almost everyone wanted. It’s really too bad for her.
She wasn’t crushed like a bug. She acted like a bug with a deathwish. Elizabeth had hit it out of the park with her speech and DeFranco could have shared some of the glory, but didn’t have the wisdom or perspective to do so.
I really wonder what’s bugging Adrian Walker that in the wake of a record-setting convention he’s stuck on old news and a conspiracy theory.
The last impression I’d like to share here is that on the EW Whistle Stop Train ride, which I feel so lucky to have been on, at the Friday night festivities and at the convention itself the crowd was more diverse than almost any event I’ve been to in many decades of life in Massachusetts. And that was wonderful.
OK, now really the last. On the train ride Elizabeth walked up and down the aisle, chatting with people and seeming so down-to-earth and connected she felt like a cousin I hadn’t see in a while. When I realized that other people were having their picture taken with her I asked one of the very nice guys from ward 5 to take one of E and me. She put her arm around me, pulled me close and after Jim took the picture she said, “Take another one. Women always like two.”
Gotta love her.
Warren’s campaign is a genuine grassroots affair. They didn’t even really organize the caucuses. Her supporters just showed up. (Really, I was delegate because my wife encouraged us to go and I walked on as a delegate without so much as a question about who I supported.) They were better organized than the convention was by far. I have rarely felt such solidarity in a Democratic Convention.
It wasn’t even close to a contest or a challenge. I might have been sympathetic to the idea of a primary challenge if DeFranco’s campaign wasn’t completely clueless. Had she showed some modicum of organization or awareness of the convention’s mood she might have been able to garner some respect for future runs, but she got completely smoked and will likely never be a serious candidate again.
of the media campaign against Warren, of DeFranco’s somewhat bizarre claims against her not being progressive enough, and the whole suggestion that A) she somehow gained advantage from a heritage she very likely has given the family stories but is plain did not USE to gain her jobs, and B) that she is somehow lying about it (this has never been proven either) – all this is to accumulate a tarnish on her reputation. You see, she has this shiny reputation from her years in the spotlight highlighting middle class issues, her books, her work on the Consumer Protection Agency. Tarnish this, allow people to question her character and her motivations and soon, you start to drive her negatives up and maybe people start jumping ship from supporting her.
I can feel it happening…sometimes I find myself start to wonder, “is she as progressive as I think she is?” and then I stop myself…I go back and listen to ANY interview she’s ever given, her books, her work at the federal level, and remember, YES SHE IS. She will NOT fall prey like Hillary Clinton to the enticements of the financial sector’s donations (Warren herself saw this happen and remarks on it in her book “The Two-Income Trap.” To be fair to Hillary, and Warren is fair too, Hillary’s constituency does include nearly the entire American financial sector, since they are in NYC.)
She is what she appeared to be the first time I ever saw her in a speech on YouTube visiting some university, the woman I saw on Bill Maher telling it like it is, the woman who Jon Stewart wants to make out with.
To top that off she is personable as you say, able to connect, to listen, and to speak NOT down to you, but TO you. Between her integrity and smarts, and her intrapersonal skills, I’d say she is a rare bird and we are lucky to have her running.
Before she got railroaded into being a Democratic Senate candidate, she was an advocate for some very conservative ideas, or at least ideas that resonated with social conservatives. Mother Jones interviewed the co-author who sort of quashed that thought:
I say “sort of” because it’s only the idea of “turning back the clock to 1950” that is absurd, not the idea of mothers returning home, single income families, healthy marriages, one car, local sustainable living, etc. It’s unsustainable to try to keep the clock stuck on 1972, and time to set it to 2012.
and actually says the opposite. Good god. Get a life, troll.
advocating for the conservative position that women should stop being in the workplace.
That is a conservative position? Is it a liberal position that all wpmen should work, full time?
that the choice should be up to the individual, man OR woman.
However, it IS a conservative viewpoint in many circles that women should have NO choice, not about their healthcare and not about careers.
It’s Warren’s supposition in the book that most women (and men) DON’T have a choice with regards to working…most have to, in order to afford the inflated cost of housing in districts with “good” schools. Her position isn’t that women should not work or we should go backwards, it’s her position we should stop having such a disparity in schools such that we have such a disparity in home prices and competition for them, among other solutions. Then women could really choose to work, or not work, and so could men.
but rich neighborhoods will still be coveted by parents just because they’re rich “better” neighborhoods, and dual income families will bid the price up just as much I think. But sure, yeah, there should be less disparity in schools, for the kids sake, perhaps taxing the amount above average that rich cities spend on their school systems and using it to subsidize other cities. So if Newton wants a palatial high school, OK, but they’d have to make a huge contribution to a state fund to lessen the disparity, or else not make such a palatial school.
I also like her idea of subsidizing stay at home parents, or I think just single income marriages (why penalize the childless) to make that choice to marry and have one income more attractive. It shouldn’t be seen as lazy or undignified or 1950’s, it should be normal and acceptable and expected.
I didn’t get to meet her one on one, but saw her for at a very brief appearance. She’s very appealing, down to earth, and candid. Much like Deval Patrick in person.
She’s great at retail politics. We’ll see how she plays at wholesale politics and the filter of the press. I’m optimistic.
Anyone who underestimates Democratic enthusiasm for Elizabeth Warren is pathetically mistaken.
What no one is reporting is that Marisa DeFranco and her campaign bear the most responsibility for what happened on Saturday. Had she and her campaign geared up for the caucuses in February and secured enough dedicated delegates to get her 15%, she’d be on the ballot. Why didn’t that happen? Why doesn’t some reporter ask her that question?
I’ve been thinking about this since yesterday when I responded to some tweets between Joan Vennochi & BMG. I think what has sent Vennochi and Walker to their fainting couches is not necessarily that the ‘Democratic Machine’ muscled DeFranco off the ballot, but that said machine didn’t use its muscle to get her on the ballot. The Dem establishment did the latter for Gabrielli in 2006, after all, so Vennochi and Walker assume they can do the same for any Tom, Dick or Marisa.
I haven’t heard it explained to me why John Walsh should have been doing the DeFranco campaign’s work for them. DeFranco seems like a nice enough person but she couldn’t get much more than 150 Democratic activists to support her. That’s on her, not on the Party.
even within the Democratic Party, did not know who DeFranco was.
She made some appearances at very tangential events, events not covered by the press. Until the the convention neared, she got no ink. She didn’t shake many hands out in Western Mass. My small caucus was enthusiastically for Warren and hadn’t heard of Marisa DeFranco.
Sco is right on the money.
It’s a sco!! Hiya!
Brilliant post, Sco. We miss you, brother.
Let me add to the Gabrielli piece. Anyone remember their cool baseball t-shirts at the convention? Hell, I wanted one, and I was for someone else. They had a ton of supporters and volunteers making their presence felt. Gabrielli worked the delegate add-on process because he got in after the caucuses were mostly underway. He called delegates to ask for their support. He picked off Patrick and Reilly supporters. He learned the rules and figured out how to play by them enough that when it came down to it, nobody wanted him to be off the ballot by 1 or 2 percent.
He actually had a strategy for winning that wasn’t just “I’m a Democrat, and I deserve to be on the ballot.”
Is there a reason to discuss a change in the rules? Sure, there’s a reason, though not a very good one. Your campaign should know the rules and not be so arrogant as to think somehow they won’t apply to you.
I really do like Marissa’s politics. I really do hope she runs and wins for some office and learns from this experience. But there’s an aspect to this entire thing that leaves a bad taste for me — an aspect of our somehow “owing” her this spot, rather than her “owing” us a real plan for how she was going to get 15%. That she couldn’t even break 5% is a truly shocking circumstance that has nothing to do with insiders and everything to do with her campaign.
I didn’t realize that candidates for party primaries needed to secure dedicated delegates at the caucuses, maybe she didn’t either. That is a really really tall order for lesser-known candidates, because who is going to commit to someone they’ve never heard of, before the campaign has begun, before the media has focused on any candidates. Was it back in February when Khazei and Setti Warren dropped out? Was that because they couldn’t secure delegates? Who are these delegates that wield all this power, and how are they chosen? Are they committed before they even decide to be delegates, does the candidate have to convince people to be a delegate, or just convince a delegate to commit to them? I thought the delegates were supposed to be uncommitted and were elected to go convene at the convention, and delegate their support amongst the candidates that were credible serious candidates, after listening to speeches and pleas for support.
My that would be shockingly incompetent. I’d be surprised if MDF didn’t know. It’s all that much more damning because I’m sure she knew (what kind of strategist are you to not know the rules?), yet didn’t do the legwork and instead cried foul.
Yet Deval (very much ‘lesser-known’) did exactly this. The model that has been proven to work is that if they don’t know you, you need to get the leg work done early. A shame DeFranco didn’t learn the lesson.
And it seems like all the delegates were in the bag for Warren right from the get go, and weren’t interested in listening to anyone call them about wanting a primary. Or does the candidate have to find their own volunteers to be delegates?
I think Patrick wasn’t up against a single front runner that the netroots could agree on, so it was relatively expected that the netroots would look for a candidate to support instead of Reilly, and then generate some buzz to get people to do what they had to do to be delegates for him. And it’s possible that because there was going to be a primary, Gabrielli was elected to the ballot by Reilly supporters hoping he’d split the progressive vote with Patrick. So that’s very different from this election where there was no one from the old guard so the netroots chose Warren right from the start.
I know the DeFranco campaign had the delegate list because they called me.
If the delegates were ‘in the bag’ for Warren, it’s because the Warren campaign organized around the local caucuses in February (which anyone registered Dem as of 12/31 of the previous year can attend).
… the local level to get supporters. You organize those supporters to show up during the local caucuses where they elect delegates. Getting a delegate that supports you elected is a matter of making sure your people show up, just like any election. If you can ID supporters early enough, getting them to show up isn’t that hard a pitch because showing up for the caucuses isn’t much work to ask them, compared to other campaign activities.
It may not be in the public’s radar, but certainly any candidate knows about recruiting delegates, and I’m sure DeFranco was no exception. If you are running a top-ticket race (or only in terms of this year’s Senate) you recruit people to run for delegate and those who run need to recruit others to vote for them at caucus, sometimes just to do a friend a favor. Nobody knew who Deval Patrick was either, but his campaign mastered the art of getting people to caucus for him so by the time of convention getting the endorsement was no surprise. Some do run uncommitted and sometimes that works if no candidate fielded a strong slate. If the Governor is contested those candidates do most of the recruiting and the lesser statewide candidates try to persuade delegates who were elected by committing to gubernatorial candidates to vote for them as well. There are also add-on delegates to enhance representation among the youth, minority, and disabled population. These are chosen by the State Committee, maybe with some factor of whom they might support if known and if a contest, but they are largely free agents who campaigns work hard to persuade.
…or you don’t.
If you don’t understand the rules, you probably shouldn’t be playing the game.
Well said, Christopher
Adrian Walker’s column perfectly encapsulates the default position of the political press: brain dead cynicism and jaded world-weariness.
Nothing can ever be just what it appears to be. There always has to be some kind of rot or infestation that makes things worse than they seem:
Elizabeth Warren won 96% of delegates’ votes at the convention because she ran a superior grassroots campaign? Well, that can’t be because it must be the Democratic machine “strong-arming” people.
Marisa DeFranco failed to garner the votes at the convention because she fundamentally misread the temperature and enthusiasm of Democratic delegates at every stage of this election? Well, that can’t be because the Warren campaign had to have manipulated the vote.
Elizabeth Warren has generated unprecedented excitement in the Democratic grassroots and motivated thousands of voters to participate earlier and more vociferously than any election before? Well, that can’t be as these are just the kind of moon-eyed activists that always jump in early and there’s nothing special here.
Elizabeth Warren is fusing together elements of the Democratic Party — new left reformers and labor, most notably — that haven’t agreed on just about anything since Bobby Kennedy died? Well, that can’t be because, because, because…
Reading the press cover this Senate election is like being locked in a room with Gene Kelly’s H.L. Mencken character from “Inherit the Wind,” except infinitely more suffocating. There is no reporting whatsoever in Walker’s column. There’s nothing to support the idea that the “machine” churned out Elizabeth’s 96% result. He talked to no one. It’s painfully obvious. He could just as well have stayed on Morrissey Boulevard and written this piece. For all I know, that’s precisely what he did.
This tendency toward the relentless cynicism and jadedness is why the press is so fascinated with this silly-ass Native American story: A young woman pulls herself up from nothing in Oklahoma City through sheer intelligence, pluck, determination, and making the most of opportunities in public higher education to become one of the nation’s leading law professors and advocates for the middles class? Well, that can’t be because she must have exploited her Native American background to get ahead.
It’s all so tiresome. The media’s unremitting need to prove that every one and every thing is a fraud, a rube, a joke or something more sinister than it seems is just so damaging.
You should turn this into its own post Lou.
The remarkable thing about Warren is that she is the rare candidate that the party Pooh-Bahs and the party grassroots agree on. That almost never happens – and that’s why what happened at the convention is so mysterious to experienced observers who therefore assume that skullduggery was afoot. But I think they simply don’t appreciate just how enthusiastic the grassroots are about Warren.
.