One of my rants holds that the brightest future for the Republican party here is in turning DINO voters and pols. I’ll paste a post here I just made on Marry in Massachusetts. I’d love to get BMG community comments.
We haven’t even been able to get GOP party chairs to come on Left Ahead. Granted, we are small, if long-lived, internet radio show, but you’d suppose they’d take their publicity when it comes calling.
Saddle up your swayback horses with cliché tack. The MA governor’s race will be the wheezing GOP-for-balance one.
Lordy, that’s tired and stupid!
Do-nothing state rep and senator, then fizzling firecracker fill-in US Senator Scott Brown said he would not run for MA governor next year. At least this time he seems to have finally learned not to jerk his party around until it was too late for other candidates to raise money.
That likely was a race he might have won. He hasn’t failed at this race. His probable Dem opponent, Steve Grossman or a slimmer chance of Juliette Kayyem, face the dual disadvantages of that one-party paranoia and less celebrity glow.
The badly aging former teen model suffers from his own dual problems brought by ego and vanity. Someone he trusts needs to alert him to the reality that he is already making more money than he deserves to and that his occasional appearances on TV and in other media let him pretend to be wise and observant — traits he has never shown. He can play that online and on air without challenge.
Now the empty-bench MA GOP turns over in their political bed back to their old companion, Charles D. Baker Jr. Supposition, already in the Boston tabloid, is that the nomination for next year’s race is his already.
I have to agree that’s almost certain.
Oddly, there may be other, better candidates, but they are hiding as Dems. The fairy tale here is that progressive, very left Dems dominate the politics, indeed the whole world of the Bay State.
If you are simpleminded and literal enough, sure, you can make that case. Both houses of the legislature are rife with Dems and have only a few Republicans. You can point to an over 3-to-1 party enrollment among voters as well.
Yet, numbers as well as even cursory analysis show a different reality. Consider that party registration is 35.7% Dem and 11.1% GOP, with a half percent Green-Rainbow and political designations (not officially parties but still a voter registration choice). Wait, you say, that’s less than half. Sure enough, over half the MA voters do not choose a party — 52.6%.
The unenrolled as the official term has it regularly vote Democratic Party but have their pretense. They love literally to shout at polling places that they are “not unenrolled. I”m independent!” It’s sort of silly but not too bad as adult foibles go.I’ve written on this before.
The One-Party Game
The game we play here is pin the governor on the statehouse. We’ve had up to 18 running years with Republican governors, while we vote solidly for Dem presidential candidates and keep that Dem balance on Beacon Hill otherwise.
The unproven, unprovable fantasy is that if we have a one-party system both legislative and executive branches, something terrible will happen. Specifically, voters across parties are wont to tell pollsters that Dems will ride the state with their spurs digging in, implementing all manner of extreme left-wing laws and expenditures. Voters are apt to chant, “It’s only common sense.”
That phrase is a verbal and political tic. Almost invariably that and “let’s not reinvent the wheel” mean “I got nothing. I’m about to make wild, unsupported assertions and don’t expect to have to justify them.”
Back to reality, both major parties here are full of moderates and wishy-washy liberals. A few Republican legislators over the years have been nutty anti-choice types and such, but not many.Moreover, former Gov. Willard Mitt Romney constantly had to dance around his leadership in implementing universal health care for us while he was in office, arguably the most liberal act of any MA gov.
I contend that most Republican voters hide in the unenrolled ranks. Likewise, I contend that most Republican legislators hide as Democrats. There’s general truth to the idea that except for governor or legislature from very conservative districts, you need a D next to your name for election.
That written, Left Ahead co-host Ryan Adams and I are among the legion lefties who want a more vibrant MA GOP. We end up speaking in political and economic code here instead of having substantial discourse and debate, both in campaigns and in the statehouse.
Guts, Anyone?
Lackaday, we seem to have a courage deficit here. Many Dem pols are willing to say they are fiscally or socially conservative but none switches to the GOP. For the Republicans, I can’t even get a state party chair to chat it up with us on Left Ahead.
I had hopes for Jennifer Nassour. Three times when we met, she said how much she looked forward to coming on the show. Twice she asked for my card, took it and swore she’d make it happen. She never returned calls or email afterward.
Now I’ve tried the current one, Kristen Hughes. As close as I’ve gotten was to her scheduler guy. I called repeatedly to get him. I admit it was amusing when he heard the name of the show and asked whether we were left-wing. I told him both Ryan and I were progressive sorts, but that we let guests speak their piece without badgering them, pulling out surprise adversaries or using trick questions. He swore he’d get back with me but never has. No guts, those elephants.
I’d very much like to ask Hughes what chance she has of flipping conservative voters from unenrolled and conservative pols from Democratic. I do see that as the positive future of the GOP here. Then again, that would require both insight and courage.
~Mike
is the heart of the matter. I’ve said many times that more progressive policy results might well come from a legislature less “Democratic,” as leadership would be chosen by a more left-leaning group and would not constantly be working to cover the flanks of “Democrats” who, in Connecticut or New York or New Jersey, would be Republicans.
Jenn Nassour never did live down the constant shit she had to take for (gasp!) giving an interview to Bay Windows. Then, she left to have her baby and spend time with her girls who were often puzzled by the nasty public vilification of Mom by the right and left. Can’t blame her.
Instead of having the guts to say, ‘Screw you, losers!’ to the REAL Republicans, the MA GOP staff took the lesson that a party official must never be seen to talk to a progressive outlet, and they are bombing Hughes with that advice.
Since MA GOP has not had a Chair with personal political experience since Peter Torkildson, the chairs have been overly reliant on staff who often have their own agenda, like getting friends jobs.
I do not know Hughes beyond the tremendously bad convention that she ran, but she has no long term presence in MA politics and no experience to test advice against.
I used to be close to a MA GOP state party official, but they were never invited.
or maybe she thought she would get something out of a Romney win.
seems like a pretty good example of
…with the Dems, eh? Phil Johnston and John Walsh had and have no fear of even the most viscous right-wing media.
I can’t decide if your use of “viscous” is a typo for “vicious,” or if you meant it the way you typed it … either way, well played. 😉
Don’t be thick.
I confess, it was a pun, with thickness written, knowing that nastiness would be inferred.
I should restrain myself, but nice you noticed.
Are you talking about the RNC summer convention or something else? Appeared to be run ok to me.
The delegate lists with some people on there three times and other delegates not at all. The alternates who were allowed to vote IN ADDITION TO the full slate. The bollixed computer registration with the long lines trying to sign in at the beginning, with about half of those lost registrations not on the delegate lists for voting. The insistence that ‘neighborhoods’ had legal committees – like the Beacon Hill Town Committee or the Hyannis Town Committee, with that paperwork not in the right packet for voting.
Stuff like that – and Ms.Hughes in charge of all those things.
Our leg is run by hacky DINOs, I’d much rather Weld Republicans than Finneran Democrats, but I would most prefer Sciortino Democrats to either. Progressive MA, will, can, and must run locally and get some of these deadbeats primaried so we can actually pass progressive legislation with a progressive Governor. Similarly, the GOP can’t simply ‘start at the top’ and go all in on Governor without building from the bottom up. They have failed to do this time and time again. The Greens could be the progressive alternative but refuse to form alliances, coalitions, or be pragmatic about which races are winnable and which ones are not. A Green could beat Toomey, a Green could beat Stan Rosenberg, a Green could beat Galvin. These are the races they need to run, start local and build your way up.
Tip O’Neil said all politics is local, and his greatest and proudest achievement was taking back the MA Statehouse after nearly 30 years of GOP dominance in 1952. Sure having Jack at the top of the ticket helped, but Ike was on the top (and carried MA) for their side and Lodge was no slouch. They really had to get all the local voters to the polls for the local pols and thats how they won. To undue the supermajority either from the right or left will require similar action.
This may be one of the most informative books on Massachusetts politics you could read.
It seems to me that the class warfare being waged by BOTH parties has continued unabated for decades, regardless of the political affiliation of the various candidates. Massachusetts is no exception.
We progressives and liberals have, in my view, been too quick ignore the pervasive role that economic status plays in the day-to-day lives of voters — and have therefore been too quick to cede the populist ground to right-wing ideologues of either party. “Populist” does not have to be synonymous with “conservative”.
Tax policy that slashes spending for higher education in order to “balance the budget” hits UMass first — and the majority of those hurt by the cuts are those at the bottom of the wealth distribution. That segment is also those who are least able to choose an alternative. The same is true for the bulk of the remaining cuts. When we “balance the budget”, we do so on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable around us. “Balancing the budget”, “reducing government waste”, and similar slogans are euphemisms for “take more from the poor”.
In my view, the Greens will never be a viable alternative because, as important as environmental issues are, they are simply too far removed from pocketbook issues to motivate very many voters.
The Occupy Everything movement was, in my view, the most promising development in this direction I’ve seen in the forty years I’ve lived here. Sadly, that movement — for whatever purposes — has chosen to avoid political involvement.
I’d like to see the more politically aware participants and leaders of the Occupy movement either get that movement active in politics or clone a political action group that can focus the Occupy Everything energy on political change.
In my view, the best way to accomplish the long-lasting generational change that you allude to in your last paragraph is to recapture a portion of the wealth that is currently so obscenely concentrated at the extreme top (one-half to one percent) of the wealth distribution in Massachusetts.
Until we do that, our politics is just an amusing distraction that keeps us occupied in trivial spats with each other while that one-half percent continues to plunder us.
I think the Greens will continue to do a bad job if they get the Naders, Emma Goodmans, and Jill Steins of the world to speak on their behalf. I just saw Urbanized, a great documentary, and was inspired by the Green mayor of Bogata who said, you know what, if we want the barrios to become middle class they have to have good transit connections to downtown jobs, good schools to train good workers, and access to healthier and more livable communities to improve health outcomes. He was an eco-populist, and such a thing can exist. And they built a middle class. They did it by soaking the rich and spending tons of money on infrastructure improvements, building a new rapid bus line, building new schools, connecting the poor to broadband, and building health clinics in communities. All that building created thousands of good construction jobs (the blue collar alliance), while building more sustainable (green) but livable (blue) communities. Linking smart growth to economic security and job creation is the way for that to work. And I will agree as long as that movement is small and narrowly focused on a holier than thou approach to the environment, it fails.
The NPR set needs to stop assuming the hard hats hate gays and women, stop looking down on people who shop at Wal-Mart (most of whom are too poor to shop anywhere else) or eat at McDonalds, and bring immigrants and labor together. If we can do that we can revive the FDR majority and permanently govern this country. I don’t know about you, but I come from a blue collar background but got a great white collar education, and feel I can be a bridge between these groups. Fenway, Striker, and others can to. I think we all get the bigger picture.
So let’s organize and back candidates that can do this. Wolf was one of those candidates, but Curtatone or Capuano could do an even better job in his absence. Curtatone in particular, has the youth, the local accent and a record of bringing working class and hipster Somerville together around smart growth. I’ve heard from more than one source (including you) though that there could be some shadiness that could blow up, which is the only thing I’m leery about. You know how I felt about Tim Murray doing the same thing, but again, he got torpedoed and the same could happen to Curtatone. Capuano has a clean record, but he just needs to become an aspirational rather than angry populist, and he has to get it in now.