Despite how much I hate the Herald, they have an interesting story about the Cry-Baby Lynch at Lynch slams national Democratic party for backing Markey
Why in the hell would anyone want this thin-skinned whining cry-baby as their Senator is beyond me! I cannot vote for Markey soon enough. The money quote is
U.S. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, the underdog in the Democratic special Senate election, blasted national Dems for their unfair backing of his rival U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey and for blocking donations to him,
BUT and it is a HUGE BUT: If the DNCNational Democrats waswere backing him and not Markey, would that have been “UNFAIR”?
I imagine that within the USA, we are free to do things here, BUT ONLY if it meets with the Cry-Baby’s approval first, IMHO.
Correction: I originally wrote “DNC”, it should have been National Democrats.
before backing whichever candidate made it past the gate?
So, regarding “If the DNC was backing him and not Markey, would that have been “UNFAIR”?”, it could be that Lynch believes the the DNC shouldn’t be backing either of them yet.
Where does it say “DNC”? I read “national Dems” and DSCC, but not the DNC.
I will correct the original. Sorry.
before he even declared
From January 26th
not a national party or it’s related organization.
In the Herald article, Lynch blatantly misleads:
Ed Markey has been a consistent advocate for choice for three decades. Not exactly a fly-by-night flip-flop.
Check out the ratings, courtesy of VoteSmart.org. We see perfect 100’s from NARAL and Planned Parenthood going back to 1995. And the last time Markey didn’t get a “perfect” 0 from National Right to Life was his whopping 6% in 1997-1998.
So, yeah, any suggestion from Lynch that Markey in any way flip-flops is utterly dishonest. I would have hoped that Lynch would be more honest, even in the face of tough poll numbers.
Where I couldn’t hold my nose if I had to, here’s hoping Ed knocks him out of the park and having blown his money on this race we can attract a solid primary challenger.
I am supporting Markey. I like Markey. I dislike Lynch. A lot. But…
Lynch has a point. The national Dems make their decision and bully anyone else out of the race. I give Lynch kudos for sticking it out (unlike Setti Warren, Alan Khazei and others in the last race).
It may be sour grapes, but he’s also right. The national party is pre-selecting our candidates for us. And they are good at making sure their selections win. (Unlike the GOP, where the establishment is having a… ahem… hard time controlling their fringes.)
Voters seem to have little to do with high profile Democratic primaries anymore, other than whatever they may tell pollsters. And what’s interesting to me is that so many Democratic and even progressive activists are perfectly happy about that, because the anointed candidates happen to be our favorites. Imagine if they weren’t.
I still can’t tell who exactly is doing this heinous thing of endorsing Markey in the primary. I’d certainly prefer that national party organizations not get involved in this decision.
But I have to take issue with the “pre-selection our candidates” (I also note candidates, plural). Senator Warren and Ed Markey are the peoples’ choice first and foremost.
“Imagine if they weren’t” indeed: do you seriously suggest that shadowy insiders would carry the day over the grass roots? Not in Massachusetts in 2013.
The thing I object to is the way this implicitly characterizes grass-roots activists and rank-and-file Democrats as afterthoughts and followers rather than leaders. It also fails to acknowledge the qualities that Warren and Markey bring to the race that resonates with the grass roots.
As the saying goes, if the people lead, eventually the leaders will follow.
I think that when Deval Patrick was 3% in the polls in June, 2005, when there was still a little doubt about whether Romney was running for re-election, the national leaders could have looked at the polls, looked at the resumés of the candidates, looked at the demographics of the candidates as compared to the voting population, and made a decision about who their annointed one was. They could have argued that primaries are hard on parties, would give the GOP extra time to build around their candidate, hurt fundraising, yaada yaada yaada.
Thankfully they chose not to, and the grassroots overcame the state insiders. If the national insiders had come in hard, threatened big money donors, threatened unions, pushed their weight around in 2005, the people never would have gotten an opportunity to lead in 2006.
The grassroots is powerful, but campaigns take time and money. It took a full year to get from Patrick at 3% to Patrick at 30% in those same polls, nevermind the 49% he ended up with in a 3-way primary. If the money had dried up along the way, I’m not sure the grassroots would have ever gotten their say.
It sure is easy to support these tactics when the selected candidates happen to be the ones we like. Someday this will bite us in the ass.
The DSCC has one clear goal: to keep the Senate Democratic. Period. The last time they stayed out we had terrible infighting and a really atrocious nominee who got her clock cleaned by an obscure State Senator backed by tons of right wing money.
Instead of being in a position to say ‘Fool me twice’ the DSCC went out of its way to select a candidate who could raise a ton of money nationwide from the base like Brown did with his AND who had the passion of the statewide grassroots behind her. No mistake about it if they had anointed Markey and run him against Warren we’d have still picked Warren and she’d have still won. In a really tiny campaign window of a special election instead of the two year window Deval had we couldn’t risk a competitive primary so the DSCC choose the strongest candidate available. You honestly think Lynch is stronger you are free to vote for him. They didn’t eliminate the primary ballot, and Lynch outraised Markey at the beginning of the cycle and was the first to air ads. He will lose for the same reason Warren won: the grassroots. In a post-Deval era it is us who control the process, not DC.
I was using it as an example. If instead of Patrick v. Reilly for governor it was Patrick v. Reilly for senator, what do you think would have happened?
The tiny campaign window does not explain why donors dried up for the other US Senate challengers when Warren got in a year before the election.
I suppose it’s a lot easier to continue to pretend what I’m saying isn’t relevant or true. I’ll shut up and go away.
Who is threatening big money donors, threatening unions? When are you saying this happened?
Honestly, I do not follow you.
Patrick’s grass-root 2006 victory another example of the people leading, imho.
…you get me just fine
It doesn’t seem at all outlandish to complain that the DSCC endorsed Markey before the primary. In the 2002, 2004, and 2006 campaign cycles, national Democratic party organizations had a decided tilt toward “moderate” Democrats. Ned Lamont did not exactly have national support in his primary challenge to the dreadful Lieber Person.
*
In other parts of the article, Lynch complains that national Democrats are supporting Markey and not him. Given his vote on the ACA and his, at best, unproven change on social issues, this should not be a surprise. What did he expect?
Furthermore, donors supporting Markey are of course going to discourage other donors from supporting Lynch. It’s ridiculous to expect otherwise.
The first thing out of Lynch’s mouth in the debate last week was that he wasn’t going to vote like a Democrat. He can’t then complain that certain Democratic organizations aren’t particularly interested in having him win the primary.
I really hope Lynch is not attempting to pull a Lieberman and run on the “Massachusetts for Lynch Party” afterwards. We should force the debate moderator to get him to pledge to support the Democratic nominee. With his polling as bad as it is for the primary and the GOP doing as badly as expected its not out of the question, of course the Cahill example shows its not always a good idea.
Mr. Lynch has been running against the Democratic Party and Massachusetts democrats his entire career. He was anti-choice while his party was loudly and proudly pro-choice. He launched his career bashing the gay/lesbian community while his party was embracing them. He opposed the most important Democratic Party initiative in a generation (the ACA). He has, from the beginning, run as a Democrat because aligning himself (on paper) with any other party is political suicide in Massachusetts (especially for a politician with limited political chops), and he’s doing that in this campaign.
He has been running against his party all along — he should stop whining his party takes him at his word.
There are many reasons, imo, not to support Lynch — but this one is #1. He so clearly WANTS to be a contrarian, center of attention, member of some fantasy Gang of whatever to make Harry Reid’s and Obama’s and every other Democrat he has a grudge against lives difficult on issue after issue. He’d be Scott Brown with a (D) after his name.
No thank you. We can do so much better.
And on the flip side, I thought Markey was a real statesman in the debate, spoke well on a wide range of issues, showed that sometimes you have to make tough difficult calls and then defend them, and he was even generous to Lynch (asking to question about veterans). Not a home run performance, I thought, but super solid. Made me proud to be a supporter and an active volunteer. And to keep working like crazy until April 30th 🙂
this gem, in which Lynch insults Elizabeth Warren:
Yeah, Steve, it is. At least as much “work” as pushing papers around on Beacon Hill and Capitol Hill for two decades. For which you were more than happy to throw iron work over the side.
Some people were getting upset with the number of times I was calling Lynch the “Pathetic DINO Looser Lynch”, so I have tried to cut back. I think, in part, I was only looking at the parts of the story that made Lynch appear as though he was flipping off the entire Democrat Party. Thank you for the opportunity to dust off that old chestnut.
maybe you could dislodge that extra ‘o’.
Lynch is more relaxed than Joe Lieberman, who until 2006 was well known as the Tighter DINO. After 2006, Lieberman became known as the D-NEIN, which stands both for “Democrat Not Even In Name” and his habit of voting “nein” on Democratic proposals.
Schooled.