- Today’s “Capital,” the Boston Globe’s new weekly politics section, is devoted largely to casinos. There’s lots of good reading in it, including some results from the Globe’s weekly poll showing that a bare majority (52%) of MA voters favor keeping the casino law in place, but they lack confidence in the Mass. Gaming Commission’s ability to do its job properly by a similar margin. I wouldn’t put much stock in up/down polling on ballot questions at the moment (recent polling from elsewhere showed very different numbers). Ballot questions are notoriously difficult to poll accurately, and we don’t even know whether the question will be on the ballot yet. But it does appear that public opinion is closely divided on whether casinos should come to Massachusetts, which means a big, expensive battle should the SJC allow the question on the ballot.
- As usual, I cannot resist pointing out that BMG readers like yourself already knew a good deal of what’s in the Globe’s coverage (aside from the poll, of course). One of the casino articles rhetorically asks, “Did anyone think building three resort casinos and one slot parlor, as authorized by the 2011 casino law, would be so hard?” Well, yes, as a matter of fact. Two and a half years ago, in January of 2012 (just two months after Governor Patrick signed the bill into law), our own EB3 called out the first of what would prove to be a long, painful series of blunders by Gaming Commission Chairman Steve Crosby, and concluded this way: “I don’t know how this whole casino thing will end up in a mess of lawsuits but I do know it will.” Another of the casino articles points out several ways in which the casino issue could play a big role in the 2014 elections – as I argued it would a month ago. And in a post-convention piece, the Globe notes that both Attorney General candidates, Warren Tolman and Maura Healey, had a good showing and were headed for a close race – as I said on Monday. BMG: setting the agenda. 😉
- But casinos aren’t the only bad idea clouding the horizon. Globe columnist Shirley Leung has adopted bringing the Olympics to Boston as her latest cause (the U.S. Olympic Committee recently included Boston among the finalists for the American bid for 2024), and the Globe front-paged her column today that, among other things, hypothesizes where some of the venues might end up. What remains missing is why this would be a good idea. Leung quotes local bigwig David D’Alessandro as asking, “what is wrong with wanting it?” Um … well, how about this, also from Leung’s column: “it will take billions of dollars to put on the games, and we haven’t figured out how to pay for it.” My view is this: before we even seriously consider hosting the Olympics, we should answer two big questions in detail: (1) what has been the experience and the return on investment of other American cities that have hosted the Olympics? and (2) how much will it cost, and who will pay? Those should be relatively easy questions to answer, and it’s incumbent on the D’Alessandros and John Fishes – and Shirley Leungs – of the world, who want the Olympics here, to answer them.
- This week’s Globe poll also included some horserace numbers, which, though still preliminary (only about 200 of the likely Dem primary voters were polled post-convention – this number will increase next week as the rolling poll catches up), suggest that Steve Grossman isn’t seeing much in the way of a post-convention bounce. Martha Coakley is still receiving majority (52%) support, with Grossman (19%) and Berwick (8%) still way off the pace. Even if Grossman got all the currently undecided voters (21%), he wouldn’t come close to Coakley. All the usual caveats about name recognition, early in the cycle, etc. continue to apply. Still, I noted a month ago that “the divide between Democratic party activists and likely Democratic primary voters is enormous,” and, based on comparing the convention results to the polling, that appears to remain the case. Both Steve Grossman and Don Berwick have their work cut out for them, both in terms of name recognition and in terms of changing minds, and to be honest, I’m starting to wonder whether anything other than a TV ad blitz will suffice. You’ll recall that Martha Coakley slaughtered the field of Democratic Senate candidates in 2009, despite the fact that one of them was a sitting Congressman. If Grossman and Berwick want to avoid a repeat of that, they have much to do.
- One more note from the poll: it’s got what I think has to be described as bad news for Charlie Baker. The poll asked how respondents would vote in a Coakley-Baker and Grossman-Baker general election. Coakley came out the winner (by 13%) and Grossman the loser (by 3%), but in both cases, Baker polled the same: 30%. That’s a pretty bad number for someone who has already run a high-profile statewide race, and it suggests that he hasn’t made much progress in winning over the folks he didn’t win over last time. Sure, there are lots of undecideds, and some of them will go for Baker. But for Baker to be stuck at only 30%, regardless of opponent, has got to be causing some consternation at GOP HQ.
Please share widely!
I agree, that is bad news for Baker. The thing about Charlie, he is a better-than-average Republican, but you have to be pretty immersed to know that. He might not play as well with Joan and John Q. Public as we usually assume.
Re: the Leung column, I saw that this morning because it was tweeted by Linda Pizzuti Henry. That might not mean anything, LPH often tweets meta-type stories … but in light of Henry’s (alleged) ambition to build a global sports marketing group, I wondered.
No one will talk about this, as usual. As to how to pay for it – I suggest a 1000% sales tax on condoms during the Games. In other words, get the athletes to pay for it.
However, in seriousness, this is an excellent question. The IOC always strikes me as painfully corrupt, and whether we want to get into bed with them is a real issue.
…figure out how to do the Olympics! It’s several years away and a lot of the improvements we might want to make we should probably make anyway. Rather than handwringing let’s give it a try!
So far, the only remotely decent pro-Olympics argument I’ve heard is that it would force us to upgrade the MBTA. Maybe. Building a big stadium in South Boston hardly strikes me as an “improvement” that “we should probably make anyway.”
More importantly, would you agree that the two questions I posed in the post should be answered before moving forward?
…but that’s no different burden than any other city that either bids or ends up getting them.
This response makes no sense. Of course we could put in a bid without answering either of those questions, especially the first one about other US cities. I’m saying that we shouldn’t. In any event, I don’t see how what “any other city” does in preparing its bid is relevant. I’m making the case for what we, in Boston, should do.
Any city thinking about bidding should answer them and I assume that somewhere along the line they come into play in one form or another. Certainly we can learn from previous hosts how to prepare to some extent.
Right, because the powers that be around here always answer all the questions that you’d expect would be answered before leaping headlong into something that, in retrospect, maybe wasn’t such a good idea.
I still don’t like the attitude of dismissing the idea out of hand though.
… just sorta leaping to an equal noxious notion: namely, that under no possible circumstances will the questions even be asked? Never mind the lack of the answers?
I mean, if you argument is, “let’s proceed carefully and wisely…” I’m with you, as are (I suspect) a great deal of people.
If, however, your argument is “Gosh, there’s no way we could proceed carefully and wisely… so let’s just throw in the towel”. I’m not sure I can get on board with that…
The day after the election ends.
Soccer fans want a soccer stadium. A stadium built for soccer.
They don’t want a football stadium and they certainly don’t want a stadium that was built for track and field.
One billion or more going into a stadium without real purpose should be criminal when we have so many other things that money should be going to.
I dearly hope Boston is thrown out of the competition in this next round to spare us the tens of millions it would cost to even make the bid!
A big stadium there would be a waste.
But, Kraft should definitely build a soccer stadium in Southie or Somerville. 15-18K seats. Preferably one outfitted with local microbrews and independent food operations.
I’d finally be interested in going to a Revs game.
Let’s just do that and then really invest in the MBTA and not waste any time with this Olympics bid.
But I’m opposed to a stadium that isn’t actually a soccer stadium, since soccer fans want something designed for them.
That’s what I meant by:
So I’m in complete agreement. Skip the $1+ billion track and field stadium that will only ever have real purpose for a couple weeks during one summer. Spend dramatically less on a really, really nice 20k stadium for soccer fans, one that’s designed for them.
And, take the rest of the billions we would have spent on the Olympics and put that into infrastructure projects, including major investments on the T and things like more dorms at UMASS Boston. We don’t need an Olympics to do any of those things — just a willingness to act.
I think a brand-spanking-new world-class soccer stadium in Somerville (I understand that Assembly Square has been mentioned) is a totally awesome idea.
I enthusiastically agree with you that the rest of the Olympic boondoggle should instead be spent on the long list of far more important local investments desperately needed and stalled because “we can’t afford it”.
Investment in improving the MBTA and commuter rail, in particular, has a much larger and far more certain payback than anything to do with the Olympics.
Freud would think I’m a weirdo, no doubt.
is that any infrastructure improvements we make, such as The “T” would turn into the same boondoggle as every other major project they or the state have undertaken. For example, refer to the story in yesterday’s news about the massive cost overruns in 3 “T” stations recently rebuilt or replaced. They just can’t seem to ever get it right. I have no confidence that this would be any different.
Those were not massive overruns. Don’t feed the trolls. The state and the MBTA are always looking for ways to improve process, and they’re doing that.
If your standard is a perfect construction project that involves a dozen jurisdictions, a hundred public processes, and trying to serve more masters than there are bus routes, then yes, the MBTA will never get it right.
As far as I can tell, the standard experience is that it’s disruptive and costs enormous amounts of money that are never, ever recouped. If we needed a portfolio of high-risk investments, the Olympics might make for a fun piece of it. But it seems to be the state-level equivalent of an investment in a friend’s Broadway play: if you can lose the entire investment and smile, it can be worth doing for the sake of the ride. Otherwise you shouldn’t even be thinking about it.
I am sick of this mindless Olympics boosterism. The Olympics would be fun, but it would cost a ton of money and no one has spent a second thinking about how to pay for it without spending billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
Not only that, the money would pretty much mostly go into the pockets of construction companies. That would be great for the construction industry but would only drive up construction costs for anyone trying to build something in Boston. If we are going to spend billions of dollars to further enrich already wealthy construction executives, lets spend it *directly* on permanent infrastructure we need.
I guess they figure if we’ll swallow the former we are ripe for the latter.
… not cities.
Then the nation should decide where the Olympics should be, and target the improvement spending. So I would nominate Detroit or New Orleans.
As a Mayoral Fellow in 2009, I was part of a team trying to turn around Chicago 2016 and get the community re-engaged. One of the key reasons it failed, is that the IOC was not convinced the citizens of this city actually wanted the Olympics. The areas where the stadium would’ve been proposed-Washington Park-would’ve been significantly transformed by the event.
In many ways, this blighted community would’ve finally seen the transit and improvement investment it needed, but so much of the bid was shady-from wealthy white 2016 board members buying up abandoned row houses in the area in anticipation of future development/gentrification, and the promises of corporate funding that in the wake of the monstrous Morgan Stanley parking meter debacle, were quite suspect to say the least.
Local residents were angry, felt like they weren’t consulted, and were worried that this was a city and business backed attempt to ‘ethnically cleanse’ these southside neighborhoods of their largely poor, largely black inhabitants. I got called a lot of ugly names at these meetings, and in spite of being part of a diverse group of urban planning, social work, law, MBA and MPP students, we quickly realized that this was not gonna work. I don’t blame the opposition and we dodged a bullet. Daley demolished an airport and a hospital to make sites for the games-sites that are now vacant and purposeless white elephants. A big reason Chicago is pushing so hard for the Obama library is to re-purpose those vacant lots in Washington Park, Michael Reese, and elsewhere for actual development. The failure to get the bid, and the pushback for the parking deal are one of the big reasons Daley decided not to run again-he would’ve faced a real contest. It’s a road Boston shouldn’t go down.
And as an insider as a Boston 2004 volunteer-if we could barely handle the DNC we ain’t handling the Olympics.
A friend from that effort I described above, is now working on the DC bid which will be far more regional than ours, and utilize assets in Baltimore and Washington that already exist, including FedEx field, the Inner Harbor for sailing, and the usually vacant Pimlico Park for some events. The DC metro is a much better transit system than ours that has already expanded deep into the DC suburbs, and finding corporate cash and sponsorship won’t be hard to find, and the area is already used to the security challenges these kinds of events can pose. I don’t see how we beat them for the USOC nod. And even the planning and preparations for the event cost millions that would be better spent elsewhere.
I thought it was the case that the USOC picked a bid city to forward to IOC for consideration, at least in the final round.
Anti-corruption reforms set to be wound back after bribery scandal
The IOC’s long, dark age of abstinence from supplicant-supplied largesse is over!
Olympian Arrogance
Are you really willing to surrender what remains of your First Amendment rights in service of a corporate exhibition of sport? I’m not.
Of course, once you manage to make a winning set of bribes, your city will roll in riches, right? Well, no.
The IOC is a racket. Just because what they peddle is sports rather than drugs or prostitution is not a reason to invite their racket to set up shop here.
No agreement with NGO can override the Constitution. Was the 1st Amendment suspended in Atlanta, SLC, Lake Placid, LA, etc? As for the corruption, it’s too bad that wasn’t cleaned up after the SLC embarrassment. I’m not sure IOC representation works, but it seems that there should be pressure points or oversight somewhere to force them to clean up their act and subject them to ethics rules.
This appears to be a new enhancement thought up by the IOC, for the Good of Sports. I remind you that there is precedent. Remember the Free Speech Zones during the political conventions? I believe they were never ruled unconstitutional, and similar zones at colleges have a mixed judicial record. The IOC has certainly applied censorship of free expression in London and Moscow. Are you really OK with athletes being prohibited from religious expression?
The “free speech zones” at political conventions are a travesty, yet they seem to have become par for the course, so we can all take comfort that if we wish to exercise our rights of free expression during Boston 2024, there will be a lovely iron cage set up on one of the Harbor Islands where we can do so.
I share your distaste for free speech zones during political conventions. The very best that can be said about it is to point out the clarity and the purity of the hypocrisy.
But I think that it is distinct AND different from the ostensible, and deliberate, message of a unified, NON-political, Olympic games. I think the spirit of open competition and endeavor is meant to be held apart, that is to say not corrupted by, politics and grievances. The idea is to bring together athletes and citizens in a rules-based and completely above board competition as interactions and intimacies that are absent, hopefully above, politics. That’s the ideal, at least, and I’m well aware how often and how far individual games have fallen short of that…
The danger, as I see it, and I think you, David, touch upon it, is that an anodyne and faceless corporate mushiness is foisted upon us in lieu of the higher-minded ideals of getting together absent politics. I think that’s a danger, truly, but I think it’s different, wholly, from trying to excise political speech from an ostensibly non-political event. I would think that deliberately non-political means just that, deliberately non-political.
What else, really, are the Olympic games for?
Buffer zones are OK though.
I’m not exactly sure to what you are referring, but wouldn’t our laws override a private org’s rules? As for free speech zones, I’ve never been completely clear on the desired alternative. My understanding is that they were designated precisely so folks COULD have a place to have their say in a manner and location that did not compromise safety of participants or the operation of the event.
I have – we visited the free speech zone at the 2008 DNC in Denver. You can read Bob’s excellent report of our visit, complete with photos, at this link. It was literally an iron cage, hundreds of yards away from where anything else was happening, with heavily armed police posted directly outside the fence (and looking bored out of their minds).
In short, THEY ARE A BAD JOKE. They are not designed to allow protesters to have their say – precisely the opposite. They are designed to keep protesters out of the view of the beautiful people attending the event, so that said people needn’t get their feathers ruffled. They are directly contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment (if not the letter), and the fact that the Dems go along with them at their conventions is an embarrassment.
of our trek from the convention center to the zone, and a video tour of the zone itself, in this post.
Are too many in the party still smarting from Chicago on ’68? There must be a more reasonable way to handle this and we should be clear that the IOC doesn’t get to make our rules.
Democratic delegates and VIPs don’t want annoying protesters raining on their parade any more than Republicans do. The First Amendment, like competition, is one of those things that a lot of people say they are in favor of, but in reality they actually find really annoying and try to squelch as much as possible. And that’s true on both sides of the aisle.
That’s a pretty broad brush. If you said “many Democrats,” I’d agree (Rahm Emanuel comes to mind). But by the large, the Democratic Party is much more tolerant of dissenting voices than the GOP.
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you don’t get to host the Olympics. Full stop.That’s why I keep asking you if you’re willing to sacrifice free speech for the privilege. It’s all very well to say, yeah but the Constitution, but by the time you get a court to throw out the IOC’s rules, the Olympics are long over, and your demand to have your rights restored is moot.
When you say, “I’m not exactly sure to what you are referring, but wouldn’t our laws override a private org’s rules,” it’s apparent that you missed the quote about the IOC requiring that the host city change its laws to comply with their charter. I even bolded it. Obviously, they can’t require that the city change a state or Federal Constitution, but like I said, by the time courts sort out that conflict, it’s all over. If you’re not willing to change local laws to suit them, the IOC will simply take all the hookers & blow you give them, then let some other city have the event.
The part I wasn’t sure what you were referring to was if there had actually been an example of that taking place, though now upon rereading an earlier comment I see you quoted a general statement on IOC prohibitions. (When you referred to athletes I was thinking it was about dressing a certain way which we have I believe workplace protections for.) I think there are ways around this. Change the law on paper then as soon as we are awarded the games (which I think is usually about 7 years out) start the judicial process to overturn the restrictions. The city needs to say they will issue permits that far in advance and then deny them to give a party standing to sue. This would give the courts enough time to rule the permit must be issues, but sorry IOC, too late to yank the games. If no action can take place until the games themselves something like this should have some immediate day-of resolution. There is also the matter of higher law. Even if the city changes an ordinance they can say they complied with IOC, but state and federal law are still supreme. Finally, the prohibition you quoted applies to Olympic venues, but the streets outside of said venues are still public property.
” Finally, the prohibition you quoted applies to Olympic venues, but the streets outside of said venues are still public property.”
Just what does it mean when the IOC insists that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”? Vancouver decided that “other areas” includes even private property, and wrote their law to allow removal of signs from same. At the very least, this set a precedent, which the IOC will no doubt expect all future host cities to follow.
Again – if you don’t play by their rules, you don’t get to host. If they became aware of your scheme to circumvent their suppression of speech (and how could you keep it secret?), they’d surely pass your city over in favor of some place that didn’t care so much about free speech. Personally, I would rather live in a place that still at least pretends to care about it than one that will give it up for a sports exhibition. Speaking of precedents, how is it even remotely a good idea to give other authorities the idea that we’d give up our rights so easily?
Plus I think private property is held as more sacrosanct here than other places. If this is really free speech or nothing then we have a bigger problem. By this standard no US city should or would get to host, but unfortunately there are plenty of places which would have no problem making this sacrifice. I’m not sure my scheme would actually work as I was thinking out loud, but if I were Mayor of Boston by the time of the Games I would leak word through the ranks just beforehand not to enforce where public safety doesn’t require it. On the one hand it seems like the US should have enough influence to force a change, but I’m concerned that if we boycott the attitude will just be more medals for the rest of us.
any local business, from restaurants to florists to bakery shops, that think they could have a “Olympic Special” or Olympic themed cookies or bouquets better think again.
The IOC will threaten to sue them.
And you better not sell french fries at the Olympics… because McDonald’s is an Olympic sponsor and the IOC won’t have one of their sponsors upset.
http://www2.canada.com/story.html?id=6978198
The IOC even went after a bakery called “Olympic Bakery” that existed since 1968 because it had Olympic in the name and happened to be in a city getting the Olympics. Because apparently only the IOC can own a word associated with a famous greek mountain and pantheon of gods.
Would Olympic Pizza in Hyde Park be forced to change its name? What about Olympic Pizza in Arlington? Olympic Pizza in Westport? Olympic Pizza in Tyngsboro? Williamstown? (We have a lot of Greek pizza places.) Just how far would the IOC vampire squid’s tentacles reach?
Out in here in the Midwest I can’t get any Greek pizza-Olympic in Arlington could always be counted on for a good slice. Not as good as Cambridge House-but pretty solid 😉
I’d like to think (and love to see) local judges side with the local businesses. There’s no international civil court, right? I’m admittedly being a bit mischievous, but I think if all the right people locally are on the same page we could beat the IOC at its own game.
Among other reasons, the simple fact of going to court at all is cripplingly expensive for ordinary citizens, but is a trifle for a wealthy outfit like the IOC.
The entire point of a demonstration is to “compromise … the operation of the event” — to force people to hear speech that they would prefer to ignore. That’s why demonstrators gather. That’s why police bust heads.
This, in turn, is the entire point of the First Amendment.
You have the right to speak, but not necessarily to be heard. People have a right peaceably to assemble which I see as by definition not disruptive.
If people want to “assemble” without being disrupted by people inconveniently expressing their First Amendment rights, they can do so in private property.
In my view, the First Amendment grants me the right to be as disruptive as I choose in a public place like a convention center. Lots of people have spilled a lot of blood establishing this right, and the last time I checked the Supreme Court does not share your interpretation of the First Amendment.
Makes life harder for the IOC, but my own view is that there is not a first amendment right to be rude. Remember those “Town Hells” with Congress members a few summers ago regarding the ACA? It was always my view that security can and should throw out the disrupters, but they would be free to scream their lungs out outside of the venue.
Getting thrown out of the venue is the point, as is getting arrested — preferably in time for the prime-time newscast.
Of course security can throw out the disrupters. The story, for days, would then be about the crushing of First Amendment rights.
The point you seem to avoid is that the entire purpose of a demonstration or other civil disobedience action is to get attention. An organization that wants to expose a brutal and vicious police force does so by providing an opportunity for that policy force to show its true colors.
You will likely never see me setting myself up to get arrested – too many variables for my taste. You can have this – I’ll just write my elected officials. I guess the phrase here is YMMV.
Nobody suggests forcing you to participate. If you don’t like the theater, don’t demonstrate.
You, however, proposed to crush the ABILITY for these demonstrations to happen. You actually wrote “there is not a First Amendment right to be rude”. That standard literally guts the First Amendment — for everybody.
There are plenty of ways to express your opinion without being rude, and yes, I stand by it. My read of history (and this is an area I’m pretty well versed in if I do say so myself) is that the founding generation wanted to open the marketplace of ideas so that everyone could participate in rigorous debate, but do so as enlightened citizens who would not shout each other down. They wanted to unleash the press to compete for public opinion and make sure the public had the info for an informed decision or opinion of their own. I try to be civil and in so doing have never felt censored by my own unwillingness to be rude.
There are two glaring omissions in the D’Alessandro section.
Why the change?
Full disclosure: I’ve met David, and I’m sure he said that with a flourish that made it SOUND final. But it’s self-evident what might be wrong with it — the enormous cost. And he doesn’t answer why the cost is worth it.
The last two Olympics that were profitable for the host cities were in the US. They were also widely criticized for being overly commercialized. No accident there.
I’m glad that Boston made the final four, but there’s no way it makes it as the USOC bid. The hotel rooms, transportation infrastructure, commercial backing aren’t there. It’s going to be LA.
First, an observation with respect to those who think that nominating Coakley will end up resulting in a repeat of 2002. I think the circumstances this year are much different. In 2002 we were coming to the end of 12 straight years of Republican control of the Governer’s office. We needed to make the case for why it was time to make a change, and if people didn’t see a great distinction between the two candidates it was easy to stick with the status quo. This year, however, we’ve had 8 years of total Democratic control of the State House and I think we’ve got a strong record to run on (economy strong, nearly universal health coverage, highest bond rating in history, rainy day fund solid, strong student test scores, etc.) Charlie Baker now needs to make the case for why we should put a Republican back in charge. It should be a very tough sell, unless we as Democrats blow it. Here are some of the things that worry me:
Choosing the ideologically pure over the electable (Going Tea Party) – I read with great interest Sen. Eldridge’s description of what he’s looking for in a Governor. While we will probably argue all summer over which of our three candidates best fit that model, I can almost guarantee that you’ll get no help from Charlie Baker. So priority 1, 2, and 3 has to be winning in November. I’ll buy the name recognition argument for why Coakley has such a big lead for now, but if we start getting into August and the other two candidates still trail Baker in the polls we’ll all have some hard decisions to make.
Going Hard Negative in the Primary – We’ll have plenty of debates, TV ads, etc. between now and September. I just beg the campaigns to keep it clean, don’t get overly personal, and don’t leave the primary winner so damaged that they can’t recover during the short general election campaign.
Getting Overconfident – Massachusetts Democrats have been on quite a winning streak post Scott Brown 2010. Let’s not take Charlie Baker for granted as I’m sure he’ll run a better campaign this time around than he did in 2010. It will be especially important that we all come together after the primary.
Sorry for the long comment, this is stuff I’ve been tossing around in my head since well before the convention.
Are you arguing that electing Berwick is the progressive equivalent of voting for a Mourdock? I take great issue with that and think he is actually the most electable of the three since he is an outsider and is proposing the boldest ideas. Same formula that elected Patrick and Warren if you ask me.
If that wasn’t your intent-then I totally agree with your other points. It’s nc incumbent we have a positive primary and that there is enough money left over for a general.
Mourdock, Aiken, etc. are morons, all of our candidates are fine public servants with distinguished records and constructive ideas. Look I’m a big fan of single payer. I rallied for it in 2009 and still think it’s the best way to bring our country’s health care costs in line with the rest of the developed countries. My comment wasn’t directed at any candidate, but rather at people who claim Coakley can’t win because she’s not progressive enough. David pointed out at that right now there’s a disconnect between Dem activists and primary voters. Based on my conversations with friends whose political views aren’t nearly as progressive as mine that disconnect carries over to the folks who will vote in the general election. Nothing would make me happier than to see all of our candidates pull ahead of Baker in the polls but I need to see it first