Missed this editorial yesterday…food for thought…
Boston Herald Editorial: “A REAL CHOICE FOR DEMOCRATS”
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
“It takes a rare kind of courage in this state to take on an entrenched Democratic incumbent. It shouldn’t, but it does.
“So maybe it does take a former Marine like Seth Moulton who completed four tours of duty in Iraq in five years to go up against the utterly reprehensible John Tierney, who long ago overstayed his welcome in Congress.
“In Moulton, Democratic voters in the 6th District would actually have a congressional candidate they could be proud to support.
“Moulton, a native of Marblehead and resident of Salem, grew up on the North Shore and knows its issues and its problems well — from the regulatory system that fails at every level to meet the needs of its fishing industry to the very different but nonetheless challenging needs of a city like Lynn.
“I look at what [the late U.S. Sen.] Paul Tsongas was able to do for Lowell,” he said during an interview at the Herald. “We need to do that for Lynn.”
“Moulton is a well-honed blend of the kind of smarts you pick up at Harvard (he has a bachelor’s, an MPA and an MBA from there) and the kind you acquire on the battlefield at Najaf. Add in a stint as managing director of the Texas Central Railway during the planning stages of a high-speed rail link between Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston and you have a candidate with a range of experience difficult to duplicate.
“On immigration — he does support a path to citizenship for those here illegally — he learned first hand how “impossible” the bureaucracy was as he worked to get his interpreter out of Iraq to safety here.
““There are still people I’m helping to get out of Iraq,” he added. “They’re the real heroes.”
“That too speaks to his character and character is what this race is all about.
“Tierney continues to run his stealth campaign and we continue to be amazed that anyone would vote for him when there exists in Seth Moulton a smart, fresh-faced alternative.”
The Boston Herald endorsed against a Congressman who votes the opposite of their editorial positions on every issue. A Herald endorsement of Moulton is enough reason to vote for John Tierney.
What are Moulton’s positions on the issues?
Does he favor expanding Social Security as John Tierney does, or would he support cutting it for the sake of the Fix the Debt crowd?
How would he have voted on the Iraq war? Would he favor ground troops to rescue the ‘heroes’ he speaks of who are still over there? Would he favor expanding the war to Syria, allying with Assad or Tehran as some have proposed? We need to know.
Does he favor single payer? Does he favor gun control? Does he favor the right to organize and will he fight for it?
Moulton’s strategy thus far seems to run as a clean slate with a military background against a ‘damaged’ incumbent like Tierney. Yet, by failing to engage Tierney on the issues his only path to victory is the character contrast route, something that will likely damage Tierney were he to continue to the general, or, damage Moulton by dividing the party against a unified Republican assault.
Moulton needs to tell us more than just who he is, he needs to tell us what he stands for, and the Herald abrogates it’s duty by refusing to ask that.
I don’t care much about any endorsement coming from the Globe, either.
Newspaper endorsements are meaningless relics of the past.
And the Herald is one of the worst of them all — not something to tout here.
Moulton is a joke, btw. Running for office without a reason, with no care to explain how he feels on any particular issue. He’s a wannabe Scott Brown, but less charming.