I have just learned that the 2015 Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Awardees are Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and Congresswoman Katherine Clark (D-Melrose, 5th District).
Congratulations to them both for championing the populist, progressive causes that define the heart and soul of the Democratic Party.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Campaign Chair, Clark for Congress Committee
Please share widely!
I really don’t like it when the Roosevelt awards go to elected officials. I think it’s much better when the awards are used to acknowledge activists and volunteers. In this state, we have so many individuals who are unsung heros for our party. We should be acknowledging them.
does nothing but diminish the award.
Walsh doesn’t need help getting into the papers. He can always fire another part-time worker for protesting on his or her own time.
Meant to downrate, care to link to those charges?
…it was the name-calling that earned him the downrate from me.
She called out to go a-protestin’. At a hearing today her contract was canceled.
http://www.necn.com/news/new-england/Report-Boston-City-Worker-Fired-for-Role-in-Protest-288917591.html
She just got named Assistant Minority Whip too.
she was appointed by Steny Hoyer, the most conservative member of the Democratic House leadership and a certain candidate to replace Pelosi as leader of the Dems. I cringed when I heard the news on the radio that she had chosen Hoyer as her mentor.
…that Hoyer “he most conservative member of the Democratic House leadership”. And Kevin McCarthy is the most liberal member of the GOP House leadership.
Relatively speaking, these two statements say absolutely nothing, other than the obvious that someone in both leadership teams have to be less “pure” than the others on the team.
And why do you stope to the guilt by association? One of the lower forms of political attacks? (OK, I’ll answer that…it is usually the most effective.)
The Pelosi-Hoyer relationship is very important as it has been a testy one for more than a decade. One recent example is that Pelosi and a majority of House Democrats opposed the “cromnibus” appropriations bill with its assault on Dodd-Frank and the enormous increase in political contributions by wealthy donors, while Hoyer backed it, bringing 32 Democrats with him.
Since Hoyer appointed Clark it is important for us to know if she will whip votes for him, including when he takes the conservative position on issues against the majority of Democrats in the House. There is no answer to be found before there is an actual record but it is is very much worth noting and watching for. This is not guilt by association. It is open government and the right to raise issues about our elected officials.
I personally like Clark and respect her professionally but your comments are just poor form. Really, really poor form.
Hoyer is a moderate, not a conservative. And I might not that Jack Murtha was Pelosi’s preferred choice and he was legitimately a conservative Dem and had a cloudy ethics record. It shows that in a short amount of time Clark has gotten recognition as an effective bipartisan legislator-which she will continue to need to be until we can take Congress back. Let the Republicans throw bombs-Clark and Warren pass bills.
Clark is a good person and has great possibility, but you miss the point. She is whipping votes for Hoyer. She will need to make choices when Hoyer and the Democratic majority disagree. I don’t know where she will land but we ought to keep watch. I saw good progressives like Charlotte Golar Ritchie and Susan Tracy beat the tar out of liberal Dems in the MA House when they joined Team Finneran. I now see the progressives in the MA House who used to stand up for progressive policies, switch their votes to support, for one example, DeLeo’s insistence on casinos in MA.
Clearly, you have never worked in a legislative body. Don’t call me “not very informed.” Your headline is pure bull shit.
Hoyer led the attack of the renegade Democrats in one of the worst setbacks against a progressive agenda in this past year, giving Wall Street its biggest victory and giving the wealthy their biggest opportunity to wreck our electoral system. Please go back and re-read what I actually wrote, that there is no record for Clark’s efforts as a whip for Hoyer but we should all watch. Unless you have decided that all elected officials should get a free ride.
Tell us again that the most prominent Democrat in the House who fucked the very modest reforms of Dodd-Frank is a moderate.
It would seem to me that whichever side is being whipped for is by definition the official stance of the party caucus. If he’s going rogue can’t and shouldn’t the party remove the whip?
It is very rare for a party caucus to remove someone so high as the number two position. Once a party chooses its leadership team they tend to stick with it, even if a member goes rogue. Once there is a political investment in a leader, members tend to either want to avoid a confrontation or fear for their own place if there is a battle. Look at the GOP House caucus, which is sticking with Louisiana’s Scalise despite the revelation about him addressing the David Duke neo-Nazi arm. Internal party purges are ugly events which is why they are so rare.
Hoyer frequently goes rogue and will not be removed. I am not urging that. The point I made is that we should watch for whether Clark whips for the Hoyer agenda or the more progressive Democratic agenda. It is no criticism, just a cause for heightened attention.
please tell us what bills Clark has “passed”, as you stated in your post. In a democracy, legislators don’t “pass bills”, a phrase that has always galled me when they and their supporters so claim. The best legislators build majorities that pass bills. Don’t set Clark up with claims that cannot be documented because you make it harder for her to live up to false expectations.
At least one of her bills got passed by the House, added to a Senate bill, and sent to the Presidents desk. Do a google news search and you see a new major bill every month or so, many of them with Republican co-sponsors.
And for what it’s worth, Clark voted against Hoyer on that bill. So no evidence she is his lapdog like you keep implying.
You question Clark’s values and judgement because of her association with Steny Hoyer, I point out that amounts to “guilt by association” and you accuse me a “poor form”? That is rather thinned skinned of you.
Actually, in reading the subsequent threads, you tie yourself into a contradictory knot that undermines your entire point of view.
First you say that Clark will be beholden to Hoyer and he’ll make her whip votes for him, even in rogue attempts to get votes for positions the overall leadership opposes. Then, in response to the question, “why don’t the Dems get rid of Hoyer?” your response it…we don’t dump leadership people. OK, if that is the case, then Clark has nothing to worry about–now that she is in a leadership role–if she bucks Hoyer in an internal power struggle with the rest of the leadership. Just because Hoyer breaks with the rest of the leadership, Clark doesn’t have to break with him, because, as you pointed out, members of the leadership are seldom dumped once in place.
Sorry you think my comments are in “really, really poor form”. But I can’t help it if you don’t liked to be challenged when you cast aspersions on someone based on their relationship with someone else.
I have repeatedly written here that I like Clark personally (yes, I have known her for almost a decade) and respect her professionally but think that we need to watch whose agenda she whips for now. I cast no aspersions on her, merely noted my concern about choosing to make a close association with Hoyer. If you, jconway and her campaign chairman think she should not be watched then we will not agree on how to keep democracy honest. Otherwise, let’s just elect Democrats and ignore how they behave.
I do agree with you that Hoyer will not mount a challenge to Pelosi. He is not stupid. He is, however, the leading candidate to replace her in two years when she will likely retire. I would hate to see her siding with him when the progressive candidate emerges.
By the way, nobody asked and I certainly did not answer any question about dumping Hoyer. Please stick to the facts and not fabricate comments that you attribute to me. You are usually much much better than that and I mean that very sincerely.
OTOH, jconway proves himself to be the self-righteous scold of BMG while he claims that he only downgrades people for uncivil behavior. Calling someone “not very informed” without offering any facts is pretty, ahh, not very informed. As noted previously, if you have not ever worked at a serious level in a legislative body it is hard to understand the dynamics but easy to write like an idiot.
Finally, I am glad to be challenged on the facts and even the opinions but not by people who claim I wrote things that are provably wrong. Your latest post is an example. As noted previously, really, really poor form.
A gentler style of disagreeing would be much easier to read. Without disagreements, BMG would be pretty dull. So I’m no advocate for unanimity.
Furthermore, it is perhaps completely beside any substantive point anyone should care about as to whether jconway and pogo have displayed poor form, really poor form, or — to use the most recent formulation — really, really poor form. Yawn.
labeling my very legitimate points “not very informed.” It is easy for someone to throw a stone and then hide claiming that somebody else is at fault. You are right. Yawn. But it is still really really poor form.
BTW, there are large substantive points backed by facts that I made, which were then attacked. Please direct your post at the skunks at this garden party.
First off, I don’t regard jconway, with whom I’ve been virtually conversing these many years as a “skunk”.
So here, even when I agree with you in this exchange, I’m unwilling to uprate your comments.
I think that’s really really really really really atrociously badly poor terrible form on your part.
but I am baffled by people who think that waging verbal war against somebody who has in the past supported Clark think they are doing something good for her. I reserve the right to continue to say we all should watch her relationship with Hoyer. I also reserve the right to say that she is ill served by people who assault supporters who ask questions about where she might go in her new role.
That is why. You claim that Hoyer is the worst Democrat in leadership since he backed Cromnibus, and in her new role Clark will be made to vote like he did. I then point out to you that on Cromnibus she voted against Hoyer, that on other issues, the air strikes in Syria for instance, she still voted against not only Hoyer but the White House itself. And that she has consistently gotten bills sponsored, bills passed, that are progressive but also plausible to pass.
It is not just our progressive ideology but the very fact that the part of government wants to govern that sets us apart from Ted Cruz. Warren is not a left wing Ted Cruz precisely since she sponsors bills with Corker and Vitter that are boldly progressive but have conservative buy in. Clark is following her lead in the House. Cruz would be afraid to even sit next to a ‘librul demicrat’ if it offended his extremist supporters. Clark will is willing to play softball and hardball with Republicans to advance progressive legislation.
Passing legislation that advances progressive principles should always be the first goal of anyone we send to Congress. Clark has sponsored those bills, advanced those bills, and voted the right way on all of our issues. We should be hopeful that it is she, not Hoyer, who will be dictating the agenda as she moves up the ranks in leadership. If she fails to do so, we should be vigilant to remind her who elected her. But to presume she has already sold out when there is no evidence to the contrary is unfair. I say this as a proud Sciortino supporter during the CD-5 race, but she has done nothing but impress me since she’s been elected.
I NEVER said she “will be made to vote like” like Hoyer. Please do not put words in my mouth. In every single post I have simply said we need to watch which side of issues she whips that are contested within the left v. right divide within the party. That does not seem like too much to ask. I am not even saying, as you did, that “we have to be vigilant to remind her who elected her.” I am starting from the much easier standard of saying “let’s watch .”
I would say ‘choosing Hoyer’ as a mentor and cringing because of it implies a sort of disdain and certainly a dig at Clark for that choice. It is a far more negative sentiment than simply ‘let’s wait and see’, which I agree is a reasonable thing to do.
In either case, I think we can part ways agreeing that you view her selection glass half empty, I view it as glass half full, but at the end of the day there is objectively half a glass of water at the table so let’s see what she chooses to do with it.
someone I like appears to be heading on a bad path. I did not imply a “disdain or certainly a dig” at Clark as you wrote. Quite to the contrary, hearing the announcement was a moment that caused me discomfort because I know she can be a good member of Congress, but it is hard for her to do so as one of the most junior members in a chamber controlled by the GOP.
Again, even though you keep attributing things to me that I have neither written nor believe, I do not see her as a glass that is half empty. She is one hell of a lot better than that. Jconway, you are much better when you write about your own thoughts than when you try to impose your mind map upon me. Please think twice before you do it again.