Don’t.
You don’t have to be Nostradamus to figure out the results of John Silber Martha Coakley in the general. So if you want to see your future with a Berwick vote here it is:
…and the one not Charlie will likely be sitting in on the Governor’s Council tie break votes. Charlie might be busy, or you know throw a bone at the Republicans once in a while.
Don’t kid yourself, this is a two person race and Berwick with his anemic support should have dropped out, the fault and poor decision making is squarely his.
So I ask that you think about your vote on Tuesday.
Let the hate begin. But you know I’m right.
Please share widely!
The most recent poll, with leaners, shows:
Coakley – 47%
Grossman – 25%
Berwick – 13%
Undecided – 14%
So, all of Berwick’s supporters and almost all undecideds would have to switch to Grossman. That won’t happen. This race is not close and the result will not be close (unless the polls are all out of whack).
It’s definitely not so close that this Nader-type bullshit makes any sense.
If Grossman wants that support he should have run a better campaign and been a better candidate. A statewide elected candidate who is that well-known and well-funded and who has not been able to show much upward momentum in polls, especially after winning at the convention, “with his anemic support should have dropped out, the fault and poor decision making is squarely his.”
This is a Democratic primary. Vote for who you want to be Governor. Period.
Never has. As if there aren’t consequences. As if Democratic primary candidates are simultaneously so different that people absolutely must “vote their heart” and so similar that it’s no biggie who wins.
Everyone is voting their heart at this point.
Never would have figured from the recent comments. A lot of people whose complaints about Martha Coakley I ain’t gonna be listening to.
The decision to vote strategic isn’t as simple as you make it out to be. There are a few calculations involved. If the spread in quality between one’s favorite candidate and second-favorite is narrow compared to the spread between choice #2 and the front-runner, it makes sense (obviously, one has to throw in calculations about the odds of #1 and #2 winning) If someone truly dislikes both #1 and #2, then it makes sense to vote for one’s favorite. If it’s a narrow difference, then it doesn’t. That’s how I ended up backing Hillary instead of Richardson by the time it got to Massachusetts, he had no chance of winning, and they had a lot in common.
I don’t expect Don to win on Tuesday. I don’t expect Steve to win on Tuesday. But the difference between the two of them is vast. To the point where, especially after his embarrassing final debate, it’s getting harder and harder for me to care who wins. Why would vote for someone who’s #1 argument seem to be “I’m not Martha”?
I’m voting Berwick. I’m not throwing the vote away — I’m making clear that there is a large number of people in the Democratic Party who see unapologetic defense of our community values as important, more than a record of decades doing things in certain jobs.
I was a Richardson backer who switched to Obama a lot earlier-now I wonder if he’d have been a better president. But, it’s clear in this case Baker or Coakley will be our next Governor, it’s been clear for awhile. At this point the protest vote for Berwick is even more valuable precisely since Coakley is going to win.
BECAUSE there are consequences, and because it is a biggie who wins.
As striker observes downthread, a big Berwick vote in a certain person’s district might make that person think more about his issues.
The type of strategic voting you allude to just makes you miserable.
I think the idea you’ll see different votes out a legislator whose district had a decent showing for Berwick in a primary he loses by 30 points is, to say the least, not compelling.
What makes me miserable is seeing a train wreck of a likely nominee, whom I don’t want as governor, and thinking I’d eliminated the slight remaining possibility of thwarting that by voting for my hopeless vanity candidate because casinos. Which will still be coming. I don’t wake up September 10 feeling noble or satisfied over that.
Not writing anymore with hopes of changing anyone’s vote but just really dissatisfied with this primary season.
I join you in being really dissatisfied with this primary season. I disagree with you that voting against your heart will or would have changed anything. As I alluded to in another thread, the only viable alternative to Martha Coakley was Tim Murray, and she made sure he was taken out of the race early on.
I’m voting for Don Berwick because he is the only candidate whom I think would be preferable to Charlie Baker as governor.
“Your candidate is hopeless, so you should vote for mine” isn’t really proving to be a winning argument around here.
Grossman polls about as poorly against Baker as Berwick does.
If you wanted to vote for general electability-vote Coakley since she is the only nominee who has maintained consistent, though shrinking, leads in the polls. Since she will win the nomination whether you vote for her or not-I suggest voting your conscience.
Maybe if Grossman reached out to Berwick supporters instead of belittling their signature issue as a magic wand he wouldn’t be where he is.
Grossman and Berwick lost a winnable race all on their own, as will Coakley in November.
by the RGA and other super pacs along with Grossman’s super pac and she has still maintained a lead in the general election. She will be a strong nominee fully capable of beating Baker in November. I’m not conceding the final in any way.
I don’t think that is true. It was not winnable. Coakley is absolute teflon in a Dem primary.
I know whom I blame.
Maybe it’s all the US open coverage I’ve been watching, but you cannot be serious.
because I am saying this as a Coakley supporter – I totally agree with jimc. It’s a Democratic Primary. It’s the opportunity to send a policy message to elected Democrats. If the issues that Dr. Berwick has stated as priorities are important to you then abandoning his candidacy on Election Day means putting those issues on the back shelf for 4-years.
A respectable Berwick vote, say in certain State Rep and State Senate District, is a notice to those elected officials they ignore those issues at a future cost.
I’d be voting for Martha Coakley if she were running third in the polls.
Perhaps unjustifiably so. But who stands to gain the most from that? Your preferred candidate.
cyni
What I was trying to say before I hit send too soon was I understand that reaction to my comment. Coakley does benefit by some measure by Treasurer Grossman and Dr. Berwick splitting votes but it wasn’t the motivation for my comment. I was being sincere about voting heart and issues as opposed to voting to “stop” another candidate.
However, neither candidate has come close to her in the polling and IMO, neither has the GOTV operation to match her. So, whatever small benefit might come from splitting vote I will dismiss with a quote from Mr. Spock -“a difference that makes no difference is no difference”
She happens to be my third choice out of three by default and probably would have still been my third out of four or five, but I will be perfectly content with her as the nominee and have no motive to stop her.
We have three candidates who in my opinion could each beat Charlie Baker. She is also my third choice, but many people whose opinion I trust are supporting her and if she becomes the nominee I will join them. It’s that simple.
to question your sincerity. You might think of it as a complement – things are often said in politics for strategic reasons and you’re savvy enough to be savvy.
whatever her shortcomings.
Get real.
Yes they are different, but being the non Silber is no guarantee in itself. Silber’s old base of support in the Dem party may even be completely disjoint from Coakley’s.
On electability? Let’s just say, if she wins on Tuesday as we expect, she better bring it in a way she hasn’t to date. I agree with johnk: she’ll be in big trouble.
But your guy hasn’t been giving it his A game either. Awhile back when Wolf dropped out, someone said we were stuck with the b team of candidates. Hard to argue that now.
Mock Berwick all you want, Grossman has been on the stage much longer, has win a statewide race, and is still down 20% with high “no opinions” and “unfavorables”. Grossman and his supporters had to do more than cry Nader to win over Berwick supporters when he’s down in the polls.
Wolf had the private sector experience and a really attractive record in the Legislature. I suspect he’d have leapfrogged Grossman at the very least. If Curtatone had run he just opened the first new T station in forever, he’s one of the folks leading the charge against casinos, Somerville has the lowest unemployment rate of any city in MA and its schools have improved by a huge amount under his watch. He’d look like the next big thing (though maybe his calculation was he can take out Baker in 2018). Capuano apparently didn’t want to leave his current sure thing for a highly unsure thing. I think he’s gotten too grumpy to win a governor’s race, but he’d have made the campaign interesting.
Ultimately we got two leftovers (Coakley and Grossman), two admins (Berwick and Kayyem) and a selectman who leaned right in terms of state politics. Better, more dynamic choices just never emerged. I fear all three of the remaining choices in a general election. Hard to make a horse race argument with this stable. What the Dems needed were better horses.
Grossman has run a good campaign. I agree with you there. I do think he would he a very good governor and that the Berwick crowd has done as much of a job on him as the Nader crowd did on Al Gore, with less justification. My overwhelming feeling this week is of sadness.
It’s like exactly the same thing as what Nader did. Grossman and Baker running neck-to-neck, and Berwick running as a 3rd party candidate in battleground precincts. Berwick is such a spoiler!!
exactly like Nader in every single respect. I’m saying his supporters have this self-righteous fantasy world in which Steve Grossman and Charlie Freaking Baker are Tweedledee and Tweedledum. A 40-year career is reduced to “Grossman promoted the lottery because it’s in his job description and that’s totally evil even though it never would have occurred to me until this year, when the casino issue swallowed the entire political universe.”
I’ll have more to say on the spoiler thing later.
How did Steve run a “good” campaign when he offered no real alternative to the front runner? On health care and casinos, he and Coakley and Baker are three peas in a pod.
He ran a good campaign for the convention, and that’s where it ended. He’s had so little traction over the summer.
The pitch of “I’m a better manager and jobs creator” as the only distinction didn’t catch too many people.
“Three peas in a pod.” Yeah, Steve Grossman and Charlie Baker are the exact same thing. Sure.
I suggest you reread the comment – I said “I don’t think Grossman’s run a good campaign.” The “I don’t think” was in the comment header, so sorry for any confusion.
On two of the most important issues in the campaign there is not a ton of daylight.
Overall there is, but not on health care and casinos.
First, what constitutes an important issue. Casinos have become huge in the campaign, which I’ve disputed from day one. I don’t think they’re a huge issue for the next governor, which is what we’re choosing. The repeal question’s on the ballot and I’ll vote to repeal, but it looks like the casinos are coming, Don Berwick or no Don Berwick. In any event, Grossman said he’d respect a vote to repeal. Not so for Coakley or Baker.
Not seeing healthcare as a worthy huge issue. It’s an important one but I’ve already written at length about how I’m don’t believe for one moment Don Berwick would get single payer through this legislature when we haven’t even seen how the ACA pans out here. We couldn’t get an indexed minimum wage. I continue not to see much daylight between Don Berwick’s exploratory commission going to Beacon Hill to die and Steve Grossman’s “conversation” about healthcare options, including single payer.
I know this is Berwick Mass Group (and now officially so) and practically nobody agrees with me, but it hardly matters since tomorrow night we’ll be watching Martha Coakley not inspire us.
I think there are a lot of vocal supporters of all three candidates, and if we were to do a BMG poll it would almost even out. There are probably slightly less Grossman supporters, but I would hardly say that this has been the Pravda of the Berwick organization. With the exception of harmony and johntmay, who as canvassers, have to stay excited and positive, most of us don’t believe in miracles. In hindsight, Coakley won this the moment she announced, and I just don’t think Steve really planned well for a competitive primary. I honestly think he thought he’d just waltz into the nomination and that she wouldn’t run.
The only way to beat her was to run as an insurgent and he ran a frontrunners campaign while being behind 30% in the polls. That’s all on him, not on Berwick, BMG, or his supporters.
because I’m sad about the course of the election? That’s lame.
Grossman bears some blame and I said so. But I’ve seen enough comments saying Grossman’s “the same as” Coakley, or even Charlie Baker. That’s absurd but it’s not surprising given how campaign dynamics work. People get pulled into their “team” and other candidates become positively villainous.
But call bullshit on the Nader accusation. Instead of ever really attacking the front runner where she is vulnerable, Grossman went after her on an issue they don’t really disagree on that is maybe no. 10 on the list of voter priorities (guns). He called single payer a magic wand which lost him any hope of siphoning votes away from Berwick. He has a great left of center record on economics and social issues , but ran as the socially moderate fiscal conservative. He surrendered his own record on choice and equality to Coakley and his record on economic justice to Berwick. I was lean Grossman for a time, but he never had a narrative or rationale for his candidacy . Coakley’s is “girl power” and “taking on the man” and it resonates with seniors and women who are big bases in our party. Berwick’s was single payer which got him a small but passionate base but also boxed him in from being competitive. Grossman never had that other than “businessman” and “the more electable ‘not Coakley'”.
All of us Coakley critics will have to come to grips with the fact that she is an incredibly popular democrat in our state party, and likely of the three, the best general election candidate. I still think the general leans Baker and agree she has numerous flaws-but I have to concede neither of or guys ever presented much of a challenge. Blaming Berwick for Grossman’s incompetence is an unnecessary exercise.
I am already mentally preparing myself to support Healey, Coakley, and Moulton and the rest of us should as well.
on the NRA silliness. I don’t absolve Grossman of anything in this campaign. I still think – for the reasons of Coakley’s popularity as you stated – that Grossman’s goose was cooked the minute Berwick made the ballot.
My Nader remark, if people read the word, relates to tone of certain comments by Berwick supporters about the interchangeability of all candidates not named Don Berwick.
On the tweedle dee/tweedle dum comparisons.
I would argue it’d have been cooked even if Berwick hadn’t made the ballot. I am now confident that Berwick would be at 15% whether Grossman was with him or not, and likewise, Grossman would be at around 25-35%. Berwick has never been a real threat, and Steve would’ve been just as inept at a two person race as he has been at a three person race.
I am saying we both backed good candidates who ran terrible campaigns, I won’t blame yours for mine’s defeat, and I likewise would encourage you to look at it the same way. If I was in Boston I’d be buying Grossman supporters as many beers as I hoped they’d buy me as we drowned our sorrows collectively.
Vote your preference on September 9th.
Vote Democrat on November 4th.
Stop wringing your hands over electability lest it become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
bu my strategic sense tells me it won’t matter.
What would this campaign have been like if Tim Murray had been one of the candidates?
Just saying….
Coakley would have wiped the floor with him, too.
In my view, Tim Murray would have done many things differently from Mr. Berwick or Mr. Grossman. Here are some of them:
– He already had a large grass-roots organization and would have expanded it.
– He already enjoyed widespread recognition and popularity in Western MA and would have expanded it
– He already enjoyed the support of Governor Patrick and would have leveraged it
– He already held public office (Lt. Governor) and would have used it persuasively
– He had a strong and positive record on public transportation and would have skewered Ms. Coakley’s empty posturing about it.
– He understands Massachusetts politics, and does so from the perspective of ACTUALLY DOING THINGS, as opposed to Ms. Coakley.
– I’m not sure Martha Coakley would have even made the ballot had Tim Murray been in the race during the convention.
Even if Ms. Coakley made the ballot (an outcome that I find unlikely given the above), I think Tim Murray would have defeated both Ms. Coakley in the primary and Mr. Baker in the general. I think neither Don Berwick nor Steve Grossman would have entered the race had Tim Murray been a candidate.
Martha Coakley’s cynical and callous elimination of a worthy opponent is a major component of my visceral contempt for her.
Tim Murray is just not as well-liked statewide as Coakley is. She crushed him in early polling. I think what’s becoming clear is that Coakley has always had enough support to win, and for anyone to beat her they would have had to taken people already in her camp. The anti-Coakley voters and undecideds aren’t enough to win. To peel supporters away, a challenger would have to give a lot of middle-aged women a reason not to support someone who they like, who most resembles them, and who would be the first elected female Dem governor. That’s a tall order. I don’t think anyone could do that – save someone like Elizabeth Warren running.
For however hard it is to understand (I still don’t get it), people really like Coakley. Enough people made their choice early and haven’t even been considering an alternative. Her polling numbers have shown enough support to win since before she even announced.
I also don’t think Murray would have energized the further left wing of the party at all, especially given his hardcore insider (and, frankly, sketchy) past. The old boys network ads would have been all too easy to write.
For Murray to succeed in keeping Coakley off the ballot, he would have had to put on a masterful display of insider dealing, which I think would have turned off a lot of people. Coakley barely put in an effort this year and easily made the ballot. If that result was in any doubt, her team definitely would have made it happen.
Seeing the cold reception Michael Sullivan is getting here, I don’t think Murray would’ve had the left as much as you think Tom. Especially since if the Patrick, Obama, Khazei, and Berwick endorsements can indicate-they love outsiders and hate backing any kind of old school pol. They had it out for Galluccio too, and backed Khazei over the imminently more progressive and more qualified Capuano. There was never a groundswell for Peter K.
Bingo. That base was way bigger than any of us who can trace our activism back to the Reich campaign. Possibly insurmountable.
While BMG endorsed Ryan, I’ve seen mostly Sullivan support, especially if you discount the press release-like posts about Ryan endorsements from non-regulars.
…Coakley would not have made the ballot. Being an incumbent constitutional officer by itself would have gotten her to 15% and it has been shown that she is quite popular. I’m glad you describe your attitude as visceral contempt. Frankly it’s been pretty out of line IMO and though she happens to be my third choice out of three mostly by default, I don’t think she deserves that.
My bottom line is that in my view she abused the powers of her office in order to get Mr. Murray out of the race, and it’s not the first time she’s taken that route.
If her prospects were all that rosy, it makes her actions even more contemptible because, according to the arguments made here, they were unnecessary.
I think Ms. Coakley is a toxic force in our government.
Have very, very different positions on a number of key issues.
Coakley and Grossman are pretty similar.
I don’t think anyone telling a Berwick supporter to vote for Grossman because of Martha Coakley is going to have much, if any, success.
Grossman is going to lose this in part because he didn’t try to be an ideological opponent of Martha Coakley. Had he done so, he’d have the entire base behind him and Don Berwick would not even be on the ballot Tuesday.
Folks are running around here saying that Berwick brainwashed people to believe there were no differences between Coakley and Grossman. I don’t even want to think about how much worse this primary season would have been if it were just Grossman and Coakley to listen to giving talking points and arguing over the scant differences between them and who she didn’t sufficiently prosecute. Since they have so little difference in policy positions, what content would they possibly talk about to draw distinctions other than character attacks?
Would Berwick’s absence have forced one of them to advocate for single payer, the homeless, or against casinos?
His presence certainly didn’t either. :p
This sore winner ish is really * unbecoming *.