What did Steve Murphy do as Council Prez? That he couldn’t as just a member?
A lot of “progressives” are upset with Michelle Wu for giving Bill Linehan a shiny new title. They claim that this position is “very powerful”. But I think this is bs. Murph’s no progressive either, so if I’m wrong, it should be easy to prove. How did Murphy damage the city? And should progressives refuse to vote for Ayanna Pressley because she supported Murphy for Council President?
Please share widely!
Council was more or less neutered under Menino. Without Menino, the council has an opportunity to fill in part of the power vacuum while Walsh gets his feet under him.
But that’s just my take on it from across the river. Others closer to the situation might see things differently.
Weird argument, and certainly not one that Wu, or any City Councilor could make.
While it’s true the City Council is often irrelevant, it’s reasonable for progressives to be angry that the first act of someone who presented herself as a progressive is to empower (to the extent that is possible on the council) the most reactionary member over clearly more progressive ones.
And if something had happened to Menino, Murphy would have made a huge difference as the new Mayor…as would Linehan if Walsh leaves office early for any reason.
I don’t want hypotheticals. What did Murphy do?
Personally, I’d vote for Tito for Council Prez. But I can’t be upset at Wu for supporting Linehan if no one can explain why it matters.
Cause unless you can 100% guarantee Walsh will not, for any reason, leave office early- thus turning City Council Pres Linehan into Mayor Linehan, your challenge doesn’t make sense. Further, sure Murphy is a hack, but I’ve never seen anything to indicate he’s the kind of reactionary Linehan is.
You are welcome to not be upset at Wu. But, when a person runs for an office, and makes certain representations of belief, and asks people to care about the office, believe that they can make a difference in that office, and vote for them…it’s reasonable for their supporters to take the office seriously and actually care what they do.
.. is that Linehan is ‘controversial’, or ‘reactionary’. Nobody, to date, has explained these modifiers without coming dangerously close to saying “nothing good comes out of Southie…”
from Boston’s largest annual parade by making reference to the Ku Klux Klan. On that basis alone he forfeits any claim to being an advocate for equality or non-discrimination. He’s not as incendiary in his rhetoric as was his predecessor Jimmy Kelly but he sits comfortably at the far right of the City Council’s composition.
If you don’t think anyone has “explained these modifiers” re: Linehan, you’re either not paying attention or completely blind to matters of fairness and equality.
A refresher:
-He compared gay people to the KKK.
-Tried to stop the traditional host of one of the state’s biggest annual political events because of her ethnicity.
-Tried to gerrymander out Chinatown from his district, wanting to split it in half to halve their voice and vote.
-Continues to support the bigotry of the organizers of the St. Patrick’s Day parade and march in it, when nearly every other pol in Boston has rightly boycotted the event for years now.
With this one post, you have completely discredited yourself.
… voted for him. Stipulated: Linehan hates the gays. Insofar as this particular conversation goes, I still contend that many people (tho, not you, evidently) continue to flirt with the noxious “nothing good comes outta southie.” It’s entirely probable that, while Linehan is an ass, his opponents are, in general, also asses. Nothing says I have to like the enemy of my enemy.
The closer I look the more I think that Wu has Clinton level political kung-fu: either Linehan isn’t the problem that everyone thinks he is, in which case Wu steamrolls him every time, or he’s a ready-made foil for her and she’s setting him up to knock him down. Win-win for her. However, if she votes for some other progressive, who’s been on the council longer, she’s not next in line.
Bonus: she’s also, already, identified her fair weather friends.
…If I’m discredited upon such flimsy rationale, how am I to feel about your, purported, initial credit? If this is all it takes to push me into the column of discredible rabble then I probably wasn’t that far from it to begin with… Or you simply lack a sense of proportion.
It is no different with Wu. One vote, that she hasn’t even made yet, and *poof* support evaporates. Or, in the parlance of your mind: “with this one [vote], you have completely discredited yourself.” Her husband makes a comment that, more or less, says “good thing she didn’t have to rely on these unreliables to get into office…” And somehow its Wu who isn’t sufficiently progressive.
Maybe the problem isn’t Wu. Or me. Maybe the problem is you. Maybe you spend too much time and effort looking for that one thing to discredit and discount all other things? Maybe you just lack maturity?
However one spins this, Michelle Wu did not help progressives.
So I don’t where the “quotes” come from. Are you implying the real progressives just laughed this off, and everyone who complains is a phony?
Good luck on that.
Not personalities. So yes, real progressives have nothing to say about this. This is a non-story. Unless you can show me otherwise, which no one has done.
Do you agree with Linehan on the issues? If the answer is no, why would you want him to lead the council?
We could argue endlessly about the importance of the Council presidency, but the question of who holds it is not a “personality” question. This isn’t a beauty pageant.
Would this make me write off Wu completely? Certainly not. Question her judgment? Maybe. I could be swayed by a good argument (from her). Question her loyalty to progressive causes? Absolutely.
All that said, part of the problem is compromise fatigue. I have (almost) no dog in this fight, but I am SO tired of hearing how we have to help the right to boost the left. It aint working.
Letting Wu vote as she sees fit is different from “want[ing] him to lead the council”. One is letting a councilor be a councilor the other is fighting for a partisan outcome.
If you want to apologize for Wu, that’s your right.
This is about the inexplicable behaviour of so-called ‘progressives’ who throw a tantrum at the faintest whiff of the first sign of the merest hint of insufficient purity.
Waaahh…
And “so-called”
I’m reminded of a famous lone from Simone de Beauvoir. I am doing this from memory and probably paraphrasing:
So I guess when progressives try to push a progressive agenda, they are accused of being phony.
… than when progressives fail the purity-tests.
To me, a progressive is someone who votes for RFK after JFK was shot and who continued to march AFTER MLK and Medgar Evars were shot and who votes for McGovern after RFK was shot and for other progressives after McGovern went down in flames. In short, someone who gets up again and again after being knocked down again and again. Progressive, to me at least, calls to mind an intellectual toughness and a loyalty to the struggle and to forward motion and an innate resistance to hysterical panic.
A progressive, to me, is someone who’s experience real betrayal and still continues on.
That’s progressive… to me, at least. So, yeah, that precludes hysterical ninnies who think one vote is the end of the Republic.
Why are you so eager to defend Wu and throw those who are annoyed at her under the bus? There’s no hysterical panic, and there are no ninnies. We’re calling BS.
Defend her, fine, but what’s the point of the insults thrown the other way?
She had to know this vote would be highly visible, and she had to know people would be disappointed. I’m starting to wonder if this was a calculated gamble. If so, I think she lost.
You asked, and then you answered…
If this is ‘calculated gamble’ then we won’t know, indeed cannot know, until the gamble is played out. If Linehan becomes beholden to Wu for continued support, then she’s got him by the short hairs. Win for Wu. If Linehan proves to be a better politician then she’s been outmaneuvered. Lose for Wu. It may be a lose, but there is…
Absolutely
No
Way
To
Know
That
At
All.
You have proven my point: you’ve already concluded that she’s lost: without so much as seeing the consequences of the ‘calculated gamble’ pay off. So what if a bunch of hysterical ninnies are pissed off…. If they truly are this fickle then the next time she does something with which they approve, she’s all good again.
You’re getting yourself dizzy. Goodnight.
anything other than blind loyalty?
We’re not supposed to blindly support politicians. We’re supposed to question their decisions, criticize them — including vehemently — if we don’t like their decisions, or praise them and help them when we’re on board.
We should never be afraid to tell an ally we’ve worked to get elected that they’re wrong.
That’s how an engaged citizenry works. That’s how our system is supposed to work. Otherwise, we’re electing people who think the voters owe them something — and not the other way around.
… your criticism to have any affect whatsoever.
When you vote for someone to represent you you are saying, in word and deed, “vote as you see fit’. You don’t vote a list of priorities or poliicies. You’d cannot attach a rider to your vote for them. The vote is for them to act, unconditionally, on your behalf. You are not being blindly loyal or disloyal since, after your vote, you have no legal say in the process until the next vote.
It’s nice, and all, that they sometimes do listen to you. But you are neither entitled to a hearing after the vote nor are they obliged, in the least, to listen. Sure, it’s good for them to do so, if they want more than one term, but they are neither legally or politically bound to so much as acknowledge your, or my, particular existence whatsoever. Terribly surprising that this comes as a surprise to you.
is that you’re so apparently willing to accept being ignored by politicians for whom you’ve worked or volunteered or even just voted. Obviously there is no guarantee that pols will listen to feedback once they are in office. But the good ones do listen and engage with their constituents. And the ones that don’t often get voted out. I really don’t understand where you’re going with this comment.
… you are taking the wrong thing seriously? It’s entirely possible that Michelle Wu can give the middle finger to all the progressives in Boston and then go out and be the most progressive City Councilor the city has ever seen. Not listening to constituents isn’t a guarantee of doing a poor job and listening to constituents isn’t a guarantee of doing a good job. One vote isn’t a test of her purity and those screaming now for her head have neither reason nor right to raise their voice. Add to that the speed from which they go from support to opposition, without analysis or contemplation, makes me question their initial support… as well as their basic motor skills.
Where am I going with this: listing to constituents is entirely optional, entirely orthogonal and entirely distracting. She hasn’t even taken office yet. Getting voted back in certainly isn’t the goal. It’s not a reward. It’s not even something that should be on the table before day one.
Instead, everybody acts like they are entitled to her head because she made a decision they don’t like. It doesn’t work that way. It has NEVER worked that way. When, and if, it ever DOES work that way, I’m going to live somewhere else.
I think questioning basic motor skills is going a little bit too far. You can get in trouble with that one.
Who do you think these people work for? And why shouldn’t people who worked hard to elect a particular person, having been persuaded by that person’s campaign rhetoric that she held a particular set of beliefs, be surprised, and, yes, angered when that person makes a move that seems directly contrary to everything she said on the campaign trail?
A lot of what you’re saying is technically accurate. (E.g., “Not listening to constituents isn’t a guarantee of doing a poor job and listening to constituents isn’t a guarantee of doing a good job.”) But it’s also basically irrelevant. Constituents – especially those who worked on a campaign – are perfectly entitled to make their voices heard. Entitled to her head? Of course not. Entitled to make a lot of noise? You betcha.
Seriously? Why have representation at all? Let’s just ‘make a lot of noise’ and make policy that way…. Won’t that be fun?
You don’t have a veto. You, in fact, don’t have a voice. The candidate is your voice. Why?
Because otherwise anger and surprise are the loudest voices and we descend into some gelid maelstrom where emotion and excess rule. Because the term “engaged citizen’ is just thinly veiled enraged criticism. This very diary proves it. Most of the people who are now against Wu are mad, crazy mad as well as angry, because some obscure feeling they can’t even articulate got smushed: they want blood because the feel betrayed. She went from “councillor-elect” to “vile betrayor” within a span of time that was far too short to allow adequate and thoughtful analysis: policy, pollity, indeed even democracy itself be damned… they want blood. I say the response is disproportionate.
This is your gig, David, so you should be aware of what goes on, but I’ll give you a refresher just in case. In the past week alone we’ve had some interesting posts:
4 separate diaries about Michelle Wu and her husband all of which contained posts questioning her progressive bona fides.
A diary entitled “Liberals who hate poor people” that twisted a story about Brookline school administrators into some half formed theory of liberal monstrosity.
A post from Jason Lewis introducing himself. He posted at 10:03. AT 1:17 EB3 replied with vicious invective, incoherent accusations and generally obnoxious gibberish that was followed by some 10 or 15 posts politely hinting that he ought to STFU or that the editors should do it for him.
A post, later turned into a diary, by dermotyair that accused, without much supporting argumentation, the same Jason Lewis of having giant gonads and snubbing Representative-elect Clark. All, apparently, so that the poster could put “hypocrisy” and “Jason Lewis” together.
What do all these posts have in common? Reflexive and thoughtless sniping between progressives and liberals, that’s what. A constant drumbeat of unsupported allegation of insufficient leftwardness and impurity. One or two instances of it can be dismissed as hyperbole…. but when it piles up and up and happens again and again and again… A pattern emerges.
The whole kerfuffle with Wu is, here and elsewhere, merely an advanced form of this habitual sneering between progressives. It happened so fast, so disproportionately and so furiously, without the least amount of introspective analysis, that there is no way the proximate cause, support for Linehan, was the true impetus behind it.
I now, truly, think that those so called progressives who voted for Michelle Wu did so in the hopes that she would be either rubber stamp or amplifier for their anger… not because they were seeking representation. And this hope that, by raising their hackles and hissing at her, they can exercise a veto is proof positive.
So, I ask again, what good is representation if you’re not going to let it happen? Let’s all just make a bunch of noise and make policy that way…
This discussion seems to go between do what your base demands and ignoring them entirely, neither of which seems appropriate. My philosophy of representation has always been very Burkean, as in Edmund Burke who said that a representative must use his own judgement and not sacrifice it to popular opinion, BUT even he said that a representative owes his constituents a fair hearing. Some are reacting as if Wu broke a specific promise. I did not follow the City Council race very closely, but I suspect she never said, “I will not support Bill Linehan for President,” or, “If elected I pledge to vote for (O’Malley/Jackson) for President.” So, if you are concerned about a vote by all means speak up, but don’t treat her like a traitor before she’s even sworn in.
Seems to be what bmg convos degrade to pretty regularly.
, with some interesting and productive conversation peppered in.
I suspect your objection is less with Progressives who are working to make a responsive democracy than with the specific tenor you see here. Which is colored by your notion that what happens on a blog is the same as what happens in real life, and by generalized irritation at irritating tendencies in this community [for example, unproductive bickering].
As I tell my kids, your feelings of frustration and irritation are legitimate. But you can only control your own behavior and actions.
You’re mad at others’ choices and are trying to change their minds by describing all the bad things that come of it. Just as people get mad at their electeds’ choices and try to change their minds by describing the bad consequences that will come of it.
At some point the other has heard or ignored your case , and a window of change opportunity closes. That can be clear when there are deadlines, or sometimes it’s more arbitrary and unclear what natural deadlines are (like in a blog).
And you have to decide whether you’re wasting your time, change your goals etc. Or keep festering. It’s everyone’s individual call.
Forget about it, Jake. It’s bmg.
Unless you can show me otherwise. It looks pretty damn meaningless to me.
of this guy?
If Wu votes Linehan for CP during Walsh’s second term, I’ll be pissed. But thanks to term limits, voting for him now makes that basically impossible. So maybe this does progressives a big favor when Walsh is ready to leave. If we’re going to throw out hypotheticals, my scenario is more likely than yours.
N/t
nt
You asked for proof that the Council Presidency matters. I offered some, in the person of the longest-serving mayor in Boston history.
I would argue that no political post is meaningless. Some mean more than others, even among Council presidencies. I’m afraid I don’t follow Boston politics closely enough to really kBnow.
But people have argued that the post doesn’t matter, and therefore the vote doesn’t matter. They’ve also argued that Wu saw an opportunity to build a bridge to Linehan.
I’d like to hear more from her on this. She may be limited in what she can say, especially if she was currying favor with the Council President-elect.
tBypo.
Similarly: you don’t to decide if this is a real story.
Similarly: you don’t get to dismiss the very real examples people have made here and elsewhere about the potential dangers of a Council President Linehan. People have shown you otherwise already, up to and including the fact that Linehan would potentially be next in line for Mayor.
If her base abandons her and her path toward reelection becomes a much more difficult one, then yeah… it’s a story.
If we see more examples by Wu and her family that they don’t respect the people who got them there, then it’s not only a story… it’s a story won’t go away.
So far, the arguments are much more persuasive that Linehan shouldn’t be Council President than the other way around, so I would argue those who are upset with this decision have far more cause and reason than those who are supporting it.
It’s about issues for the opponents too.
The whole problem people have is that the council president has latitude to assign bills to committees where they will languish, etc. Essentially you’re asking people to come back in one or two years and point out which bills didn’t happen because of Linehan. How the hell is anyone supposed to do that right now?
Which should be doable if he actually did anything as CP. If Murphy couldn’t successfully advance his conservative agenda, what makes Linehan different?
It’s not just about “advanc[ing] a conservative agenda,” it’s about quietly blocking a progressive one. I don’t know what Murphy did or didn’t kill. We’re also looking at a whole new era with a new mayor. It might take Walsh a while to establish an iron grip like Menino’s had.
Any idiot will have that under our strong mayor system. It shouldn’t be hard to prove what Murphy did if he actually did anything bad. Show me the progressive votes he blocked. This “impossible to know” line doesn’t. It’s also “impossible to know” what progressive legislative Linehan may support in exchange for Wu’s support. It’s also “impossible to know” about the benefits progressives derive from him marching in the parade. With his constituency, it might not be possible to win as a progressive. So perhaps the homophobic symbolism enables him to have political capital with his base that allows him to vote more progressively and still win. See, two can play this game. Show me something to prove this isn’t a beauty pageant.
What I dislike about the arguments that the Wu defenders keep making is hoe inconsistent they are. Either she is the next coming of Lincoln for bringing a rival to the table, it’s the best progressives could hope for (which has been woefully disproven time and time again with no real rebuttal from the Wu camp), or the presidency has less relevance than dog catcher so we should get over it. All three of these arguments contradict one another and contradict the basic facts of the story.
At the end of the day it looks like we could’ve had Tito but she had long planned on backing Linehan. So far we have yet to hear a compelling rationale from Wu or her supporters defending this decision beyond “get over it” “it’s not a big deal” or “it’s an arcane power play laymen don’t understand”. All of these explanations are kind of condescending and avoid a straight answer-and that’s not the way to interact with a core constituency in my opinion.