There is one factor that heavily favors Gabriel Gomez among some independent voters: he isn’t a Democrat. While it’s impossible for most Massachusetts Democrats to understand, there are people who are just sick of seeing us win all the time. They don’t vote for the Republican just because they believe that having another perspective, any other perspective, makes for better government (and they really do think that), they also vote for the Republican because they want the Democrat to lose.
Like watching Susan Lucci lose year after year on the Daytime Emmy Awards, they watch the Republicans lose elections. They think it just doesn’t seem fair. All those Democrats, marching in lock step. It’s the Machine!, they think. The God-damned machine has done it again!
But the Massachusetts Democrats are not some machine with a switch you can flick to elect people. If it were, Martha Coakley would be a United States Senator. Unlike the Yankees, who really do suck and who really do just buy their victories, the Massachusetts Democrats win for two reasons: we’re right on the issues, and we work harder.
We start by listening, and understanding the concerns of most Massachusetts voters, like jobs, education, health care, transportation, climate change, and campaign finance reform. Then we develop evidence-based policy to address those issues. We send our people to knock on doors armed with the facts, and explain what we stand for and how our candidates will make a difference when elected.
Gabriel Gomez hasn’t done any of that. He’s a one percenter who equates speaking English as a second language with growing up underprivileged. He thinks deregulation will create jobs, even though there is no evidence to support that, and Mitt Romney just lost big time trying to pitch that one.
But as long as the Democrats keep listening, using facts and evidence to build their case, and the Republicans don’t, we’ll keep winning even if we don’t spend the most money. Why am I not worried about giving away all the tricks of the trade to the Republicans? Because if they really listened to the voters of Massachusetts, and developed evidence-based policies to address their concerns, they’d turn into Democrats.
Mara Dolan is the host of “Twilight Talk” on WCAP and the Co-Chair of the Policy Committee of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee. Follow me on Twitter @MaraDolan
Along with listening to people’s concerns I think we need to remind people of facts like that and what Mara cited. Otherwise I fear that we end up fighting an uphill battle against false memes like “the one party state” or “Gomez is a moderate” that, as Mara said, leave voters inclined to vote against Democratic candidates. It ought to be the media’s job to debunk such false memes but I guess they need our help in this regard.
…I think 16 years of GOP Governors to “balance” an overwhelmingly Dem General Court is evidence of precisely what Mara is describing. I just wish people would realize that the Democrats in this state seem to consist of two parties under one institutional umbrella.
Matt is a long time reader and first time commenter. He also edits the Dem Dispatch with me. Welcome to our community.
I don’t think many people are making their decisions on who to vote for because they think the Mass Dems are like the Yankees. A few of them may like the idea of ‘balance’ maybe, especially in the past when it came to the Corner Office, but even that I think is overblown.
Democrats win when we’re effective at espousing our views in ways that everyone clearly understands, including those who may not be as tuned in. That’s why Liz won, that’s why Deval won and that’s what it’ll take for Markey to win.
That may sound easy, but isn’t, especially when unfettered Wall St. money is great at creating or exacerbating misconceptions and playing the middle class and all hardworking people against each other.
It’s definitely a factor in why some people people– who do care at some level that “the right guy” win– don’t feel urgency or even need to get out and vote. The kind of voter who turns out for Presidentials and not midyear elections perhaps.
“It doesn’t matter; he’ll get in. Don’t worry.” The always-winning team will always win; they don’t need to prioritize voting. “Oops, I forgot to vote. Meh, I don’t think I’ll worry about it.”
We do need to drill down and learn exactly what Gomez stands for and why his positions are terrible. And we need to not only share that with Dem supporters, but also broaden the convo and get those people who in theory care (but in practice don’t vote) to start voting.
Does the same feeling hold true for Kerry or The Kennedy clan? Why the class warfare? Want to see a pic on Markey’s home in MD?
Did Gomez come from a wealthy family? Or did he earn is money, after serving in an elite unit. From what I know, Deval is a one percenter who won his first election promising property tax relief (sounds like a Republican idea).
Gomez is a role model for not only Hispanics, but any American. I agree, we need to drill down on his ideas, but that is true of any politician.
I agree, the Dems in MA are like the Yankees, just as the Rep’s are in Alabama. People like an underdog, or a fresh face, who doesn’t. Give him a shot, if you don’t like him, there’s another election in 2 years, at least we will see Gomez travel back to Massachusetts when the Senate is not in session….
You can be from the top .0001% for all I care as long as you understand that not everyone is like you and many could benefit from the public good.
Those who are pro-gun are considered top 1%. Those who oppose Cap & Trade are classified at top 1%. Those who put “freedom of speech” over campaign spending caps, are one percenters. It’s preposterous, and not what Mara implied.
Oh, thanks for the positive feedback, saying you “somewhat” enjoy my comments. Email Dave, b/c if I come across as “argumentative”, I will be tossed. And I enjoy your views too, such as supporting the death penalty, especially for dirtbags. Ooops, are you in the 1%, at least on that issue? Well, I’m with you brother.
no taksies backsies.
Just another bad penny.
channel this morning. There was an hour-long episode of the habitats and behavior of trolls. Did anyone else realize that trolls hibernate after their candidates lose?
1% attitude is about economics, specifically the transfer and redistribution of wealth upward.
You can’t pin the casino bill on the Republicans. Maybe they were all for it, or would be if they had a majority – I don’t know. The way it shook out, though, the Dems own it. If they refuse to get a clue and join with the Governor in his efforts to revise the tax structure and rebuild infrastructure, people won’t lay that on the Rs, either.
If all those people elected as Democrats really were on board with the Dem platform, this place would be paradise. I think there are more Lynches than most of us know about.
Lynch won the Dem vote here, and the Rs were only 73 votes behind in the overall vote count.
Just a couple of weeks after the Yankees organization showed such solidarity with Boston a most difficult time and already you’re back to that? Good grief, give it a rest.
First I had heard of it. Good luck to him with that.
It is true there is a Yankees-ish tinge to the attitudes of many MA Republicans, but I wouldn’t describe it as more than than. Just waywardness, at worst. Most MA Republicans are Red Sox fans to the best of my knowledge.
Until you, OD, nobody here used the phrase “Yankees suck.”
The Yankees do, in fact, use their enormous sums of money to build powerful teams – even more than the Red Sox do. Fans of many less-wealthy teams don’t see a lot of difference between the two clubs.
“Unlike the Yankees, who really do suck and who really do just buy their victories …”
as sethjp notes, to read the entire post. While technically the exact phrase “Yankees suck” was not used, “Unlike the Yankees who really do suck” is close enough. Even if I haven’t seen the specific phrase “The Yankees who really do suck” on a T-shirt.
As an aside, I would agree with you about Boston also being able to buy talent more than most other teams. Which is why I find it somewhat ironic these days when Red Sox fans complain about the Yankees’ financial clout. If we’re talking about having the money to buy championships at the expense of less wealthy teams, Sox fans might want to check in with fans of the old Montreal Expos and how their team traded Pedro Martinez to the Sox because they knew they wouldn’t be able to afford him once he became a free agent.
Separately, if one thinks about it in any depth, the flip side of an owner spending lots of available funds to build a better team — something people here say they dislike — is the owner keeping all the money for himself/herself instead of using it to create a better product for fans. Is that really preferable? IMO the problem in baseball today is massive inequality of resources among the teams. You can blame wealthier owners if they block attempts to even the playing field somewhat, thinking that ruins the sport somewhat for all, but less so for properly operating within the existing system. Perhaps somewhat like the current economic inequality situation in the US, come to think of it…
I doubt too many people think the Yankees suck. They’ve a long history of being really quite good at their job. Almost none of us know them personally so can’t really answer that question. But you know that.
The organization uses legal and acceptable means to unfairly gain a competitive edge. They also recognize when a calamity befalls an American city.
Does that assuage your feeling of personal offense?
just plain tired. Tired of public discourse that stoops to the level of middle school playground taunts. I happen to find it equally tiresome whether it’s aimed at opponents in politics or opponents in sports.
I’m not surprised when drunken fans in the bleachers at Fenway yell stuff like that. I’m disappointed when an official of a major political party takes up the theme, though.
In this post it was an attempt at humor, touching upon something that brings many residents of Massachusetts together. As for the offending phrase, I have yelled it in the Fenway bleachers and had fun doing it, because people here have endured decades of torment at the hands of that team and, more specifically, its fans. Not your thing, fine. But if you want my view on why some people don’t like Democrats, this kind of high-minded humorlessness is high on the list.
You want intelligent public discourse? People like me try to provide it every day. But I’m not going to stop saying our opponents suck until they stop sucking. Because, when you distill all the words I might right about this or that Republican policy, the most succinct summary is: Republicans suck. At this point in history we do a serious disservice in pretending otherwise. They are not well-intentioned people with whom we have disagreements on the details. On issue after issue, they want to take us back to 1889, if not 1829. There are not enough bad words available to describe today’s Republican Party.
“The words I might *WRITE about this or that Republican policy.”
and have not been a member of the party for some time, for several reasons that are important to me. Despite periodic pressure from people who claim not enrolling as a Democrat somehow means I’m helping the current incarnation of the Republican party.
A piece of unsolicited advice for party activists who might be reading: That line of argument (“if you’re not a Democrat, you’re helping Republicans!”) is not appreciated, and it’s not going to change my mind. Come up with good candidates who are working towards issues I care about and fear not, I’ll vote, donate and volunteer.
But to get back to my original point: whatever I say or post here shouldn’t reflect on “Democrats.”
But I forgot that was in there, so I searched for the classic phrase, which isn’t. My badness.
and
Don’t *quite* add up. There are a lot of pereniall bottom dwellers that don’t even try to field good teams, because they’re happy to push out a really crappy products and profit not off selling seats at the stadium, but instead taking money from the MLB’s collection of luxury taxes.
It’s essentially a private system of corporate welfare, and the MLB has done nothing to crack down on it.
If you look at teams like the Twins, Athletics and even the Brewers, it’s entirely possible for “small market” clubs to excel by building up great farm systems for several years, then opening themselves up windows to go after a championship.
The Athletics have even managed to field competitive teams year after year, skipping that whole ‘waiting a few years’ thing, by being willing to trade away guys in their prime for the chips necessary to quickly rebuild a team (often in a year or less).
So, while I somewhat agree that there is a problem of inequality in the league, I think there’s an even bigger problem of bad ownership — with baseball’s versions of slum landlords owning teams like the Marlins and the Astros, deciding to take the MLB’s free money instead of trying to field competitive teams, and knowing there’s little the ‘renters’ — in this case their fans — can do about it, because their fans don’t factor into the team’s ability to profit.
Heck, in the case of the Astros, it’s not even a small market team… there’s no reason why Houston, one of the nation’s largest cities (and a prosperous one at that), couldn’t afford a payroll of $100m or more and field competitive teams year after year…. except the laziest kind of greed.
MLB revenue sharing is nowhere near large enough to explain why some teams skate at the bottom. Furthermore, MLB revenue sharing is fairly new, and there’s been perennial bottom dwellers for a hundred years.
Winning a championship costs $100M in wages, +/-. If your salary is about $50M, the question is: if you spend another $50M in wages, will you bring in another $50M in revenue? For many clubs, the answer is: nope. There just isn’t another $50M in gate or in merch. And, if you spend that money and your ace gets a dead arm or your center fielder goes into a funk, you’ll be out those wages without the added revenue.
Revenue sharing is necessary but not sufficient to have competitive MLB.
Anyone should have come to this 1 conclusion:
If the Yankees suck, so do we. The only difference between the two teams for some years now is tribalism.
Even this year, while the Sox put together a much more likeable team, they did so by dumping mostly malcontents and picking up quality “character guys.”
Those quality character guys added this off season may not be household name superstars, but still have a combined yearly salary somewhere north of the Houston Astros. (Which, for the record, is as much an indictment on that ownership group as ours.)
We’re still the Yankees, even if the Sox ownership realized the downside to hiring obnoxious a-holes at tens of million a year, because we’re still employing their longstanding practice of mostly hiring expensive free agents to field competitive ball clubs.
All of that is a long way of saying I agree with you, Ocean. I roll my eyes at people who still say “Yankees Suck!” and are over the ages of 18. Whatever grain of truth once existed in that statement has long since been reduced to a tribal epithet, at least for my fellow members of the Red Sox Nation.
MA is, to all intents and purposes, a one-party state but it is the Democratic Party of Will Rogers: “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”(http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/willrogers122697.html#iGWLjVjPWL58RKmO.99
Those who vote for a Repug just because they can’t stand another, any other Dim, should remember our spate of Republican Governors, a history that doesn’t bode well for the future of the Republican Party in the Commonwealth.
Incidentally, I’d love to see a politician who ran based upon an understanding and practice of a Commonwealth.
Brimfield, Hampden, Wilbraham, Douglas, Boxford, East Brookfield, Tolland, Wrentham, Wareham, Northbridge, Granville, Southwick, Cohasset and Norfolk were the only communities with more Republican votes than Dems.
Cohasset, in recent general elections, has been a fairly even town. This time it’s the Republican nominee’s home, so I expect he’d bring out a lot of primary voters and carry the town in June.
But when you look at the maps for those recent general elections, there are a lot more than 14 towns going Republican. Scott Brown won more towns than Warren, even in a losing cause. Even Romney took about 90 towns. In a general election, we are losing among some combination of Democratic primary voters and independents who don’t vote in either primary.
I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other about the post — except to say that I’m weary of Red Sox references in politics. I guess it’s just part of process, like rubber chicken banquets.
Certainly the Massachusetts Democratic Party has its problems. In my view, they pale in comparison to the Massachusetts GOP. Chief among those problems of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, in my view, is the overly strong influence of participants who, if the Massachusetts GOP were not a dead and stinking corpse, would call themselves “Republican”.
I think we should be looking at the number of voters and how they split, rather than how the towns line up. I wish I had time to put together an electoral map of recent elections (including the most recent primary) with the colors weighted by the number of voters.
It does strike me as curious that the GOP chose the most Democratic-leaning candidate of the bunch. I think one learning is that Massachusetts voters remain more sympathetic to the agenda of the Democratic Party than the GOP. I also suspect there were more crossover voters backing Mr. Lynch than their blue counterparts — our Walthamite is, I suspect, not alone in that regard. Had those voters participated in the GOP primary, it might have had a different outcome (but maybe not — the Gomez margin was impressive).
I think the best strategy for Ed Markey is to remain steadfast and true to the Democratic Party principles and agenda that he has fought for and advanced for decades. I hope that he (or others) tells the truth about Mr. Gomez — something along the lines of “why choose an bad imitation Democrat over the real thing?”
According the Boston.com election results, a total of 188,824 people voted in the GOP primary, as compared to 539,827 in the Democratic primary. That’s nearly three Democratic primary voters for every GOP primary voter (2.86 to be precise).
The spread between Mr. Markey and Mr. Lynch was 79,881 votes. On the GOP side, the margin of Mr. Gomez over his nearest (and far more right-wing) rival was 28,358. Suppose that 12.4% of the voters for Mr. Lynch were crossover voters who voted against Mr. Markey in the primary in order to derail the Democratic agenda. Had those voters instead voted for Mr. Sullivan (the most right-leaning of the GOP candidates), then Mr. Sullivan would be the GOP nominee instead of Mr. Gomez.
In order for Mr. Gomez to win, he needs to peel off most of Mr. Lynch’s votes and a good piece of Mr. Sullivan’s votes. I expect him, therefore, to aggressively pander to the right — I think he’s very unlikely to take many votes from Mr. Markey directly.
I think, therefore, that Mr. Markey should, as I wrote above, emphasis his commitment to the Democratic Party principles and agenda, while simultaneously telling the truth about Mr. Gomez’s inevitable rightward shift.
Left-leaning voters will vote for Mr. Markey over Mr. Gomez if Mr. Markey pursues this strategy. There aren’t enough right-leaning voters to tip the balance towards Mr. Gomez, even if he gets most or all of them.
Re the GOP primary: The Globe reported that Gomez was “the only Republican with a significant television ad campaign, an advantage that may have proved crucial in helping him to victory.” So was Gomez’s win really an expression of the will of the GOP or merely another instance of big money buying an election? I think his refusal to agree to “the people’s pledge” going forward is evidence that he believes his primary win was due to the money much more than anything he personally said or did and that he needs to do the same against Ed to win in June.
Re Gomez’s purported Democratic leanings: The Springfield Republican/MassLive.com quoted Gomez as saying about his donation to Obama: “I didn’t care who won the primary on the Democratic side. I was for … McCain the whole way.” And while he gave a donation to Khazei the paper reported: “Gomez disagrees with his politics” and quoted him as saying: “Obviously, I voted for … Scott Brown.”
So to me Gomez’s donating to Obama and Khazei’s primary campaigns seems more like a cynical ploy by a lifelong Republican to extend those contests and thus weaken the eventual Democratic nominees, whom he had no intention of ever supporting. But the donations are the gifts that keep giving, as he is now trying to use the “I supported Obama” (ditto for Khazei) line to con us into thinking, as the MassLive.com headline said, his “views don’t line up with any one party.”
I definitely agree that Markey should remain steadfast and true to Dem Party principles. But I believe the evidence shows the choice is between a true Democrat and a One-percenter Republican, and that’s a contest we can win.
I think the best way to resist Gomez’s attempt to spin his resume is to over and over remind the people we talk to and especially the mass media of facts like these and other untruths that are being ferreted out on BMG and elsewhere. Perhaps we can change the media’s take on Gomez from “thinks outside the box” to the more accurate “thinks outside the truth.”
That’s a great and succinct distillation.
Yes, it’s true that there were nearly 3 Democratic voters for every GOP voter in last week’s primary, but I’m not sure how significant it is.
In the 2009 special primary, the ratio was even more skewed: there were more than 4 Democratic voters (4.09, to be precise) for every Republican. (That’s because Democratic turnout was actually a little higher in 2009 than 2013, while GOP turnout was lower.) And in a crowded primary field, Martha Coakley got slightly more votes (310,827) than Ed Markey did with just one opponent (309,854).
The point is, Martha Coakley’s problems weren’t apparent from the 2009 primary results, and Ed Markey’s solid showing doesn’t tell us much, either.
I’m confident that Markey is going to win next month. He seems energized, Democrats are motivated, we have a great grassroots organization, and we have the lessons of 2010 to keep us going. On top of that, we just got a useful wake-up call in the form of that PPP poll. But I don’t think the lopsided primary turnout tells us very much, one way or the other.
Did Mr. Capuano, Mr. Khazei, or Mr. Pagliuca run to the right of Martha Coakley? Perhaps Mr. Pagliuca, surely not either of the other two. She even failed to win the support of a majority of Democratic Primary voters. Her primary campaign was lackluster at best. Meanwhile, Scott Brown had no primary opponent. Ms. Coakley had (and has) no legislative experience and therefore could not run on her record or promise influence if elected. I suggest, therefore, that the dynamics of the 2009 primary were different enough from 2013 that direct comparisons are unenlightening.
I agree that we cannot afford to coast, and I agree that there were many lessons in the 2010 defeat. It appears to me that we learned a great many of them — Elizabeth Warren certainly trounced the incumbent Scott Brown (although it is perfectly fair to observe that Mr. Brown defeated himself with his combination of singular incompetence while in office and a desperate campaign driven by the overwhelming superiority of Elizabeth Warren).
Ed Markey is a fine legislator with a sterling record who makes Mr. Gomez pale in comparison in any issues-based campaign. Presumably, this means that Mr. Gomez, like virtually all modern Republicans, will run away from the issues.
In my view, the most recent Democratic primary shows that we have selected a candidate who is head-and-shoulders above the GOP contender. The election is therefore ours to lose.
While we must avoid overconfidence, I think we must also avoid being unnecessarily distracted by overstating the influence of right-wing Massachusetts voters.
If we play to the heart of the Democratic agenda, we will do fine — we will also send a clear message to the national organization that we expect the Democratic party to advance the Democratic agenda.
At least as concerns the Republicans. Scott Brown was running only against Jack E. Robinson in 2009. There was no mystery about the outcome going in. Brown won with 90%. He took every town but one small town in Western Mass. which he lost by 3 votes. He got more than 2/3 of the vote virtually everywhere from Pittsfield to P’town.
This year the GOP had three candidates and it was tough to tell who was going to win. Until a few days before the vote, it looked like Sullivan and on election day there were plenty of people who still expected him to pull it out. Not surprising the turnout was a bit higher.