According to a new poll from WBUR out yesterday, Charlie Baker has sky-high approval ratings: 69% view him favorably, and only 10% view him unfavorably. His popularity is high even among Democrats, 63% of whom view him favorably (in contrast to only 14% who view him unfavorably). His popularity among Democrats is on par with that of Elizabeth Warren.
This is a sign of complete political malpractice on the part of the state Democratic Party. When most Democrats in the state legislature happily go along with whatever Baker proposes—or barely raise a peep if they disagree—the general public (which, of course, includes plenty of Democrats) will assume he’s doing a good job and that there is no reason to complain.
When I think of Baker’s term so far, one thing that stands out most in its destructive potential is Charlie Baker’s assault on regulations. On March 31, Baker issued a sweeping executive order (No. 562) designed to roll back any state regulations that are in advance of federal regulations. Massachusetts has been a leader in environmental protection, public health, consumer safety and protection, etc. But to Baker’s business buddies, these regulations are impediments toward the achievement of greater profits with which to line their own pockets.
His executive order calls for applying cost-benefit analysis to regulations, which the conservative movement (backed by Big Business) has been pushing for decades. As the Center for Progressive Reform explains,
Big industries and conservative think tanks spent years pushing CBA. It never made sense for the public. Cost-benefit says, for example, that a polluter can’t foul a waterway and kill a couple people along the way, unless it makes a whole lot of money doing it. It pretended that the costs and benefits are being put on the same one actor (society). In reality, one party (the polluter) had already put costs on the other (the public). Regulations seek to address that, but CBA starts with the premise that the polluters have the right to inflict the costs – a convenient starting point for a bargain.
…
In truth, CBA is used selectively as a tool to block regulations that raise costs for industries, in a process that is the opposite of transparency. It is almost never used to strengthen public protections. On the occasions that it finds out what’s going on, the public is generally unimpressed; even the Bush Administration backed down when its agencies were found valuing the lives of seniors less than the lives of younger people. That practice has fallen out of favor because the public rejected it – against the recommendations of the CBA true-believers. Cost-benefit is not a science if you can just pull back on some part of the dirty math that the public finds out about, and continue with using numbers you previously said didn’t make sense.
To digress only slightly, the appalling nature of CBA for regulations becomes clear when you realize that the DOJ actually conducted a CBA of measures designed to reduce prison rape.
Back in April, a coalition of 25 environmental organizations, land use and health care advocates, consumer interest groups, and some business organization wrote to Maura Healey expressing their concerns about this assault on regulations:
The Commonwealth has benefited greatly by determining its own standards that meet our needs in healthcare, biotech, energy efficiency, environmental protection, consumer protection, among others…It would be a grave mistake to rely upon “default” federal standards that are often intended as a minimum floor, not a ceiling.
Have MA Dems been making hell over this? Of course not. If you go through the press releases on the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s website, you will find nothing. There may have once been a press release with the rather understated title “Gov. Baker exposed for misleading voters on regulatory climate,” but the link fails, and the release itself does not appear in the archive. A Google search does not yield the original (if it ever existed) either.
The MA Democratic Party criticized Charlie Baker’s budget, but the budget the MA House passed “reflected the governor’s plan pretty closely” and actually totaled to $10 million less.
Even the Democratic Party’s “Promises Watch” is a horrible frame. It implies that the promises he made were good in the first place.
The state Democratic Party’s platform is actually very progressive. And, as I noted, they have the majorities to pass things if they wanted to. They could at least use the platform to shift the terms of debate and on a few issues (I’m thinking of the push for repealing mandatory minimum sentencing) they are. But the Democrats in the legislature’s lack of interest in pursuing more revenue constrains anything they could propose if they wanted to.
Both for the party’s sake and the sake of the people of the Commonwealth, they need to start stepping up their game.
To the extent this post suggests that the aim of the Democratic Party’s efforts should be to lower Gov. Baker’s approval rating, I question its wisdom.
The high approval rating is a stark indictment that the more unseemly elements of the Baker policy agenda have gone unreported by the overly deferential press, and unremarked upon by prominent members of the state legislature.
I’m all for bipartisan cooperation as well, in a supposedly center-left state we should be passing a center-left agenda and to the extent that Baker is governing from the center, there is still a great opportunity for cooperation. The issue is that the House is governing from the center-right in lockstep with Baker. No new taxes, no new revenue, no solutions to the transit crisis other than backdoor privatization, budget cuts, and union busting. So it’s that agenda we are against, not Baker per se.
Gov. Baker is more than welcome to use his sky high popularity-especially among Democrats-to advance tough but necessary reforms that sustainably fund state services. I have yet to see him do this, especially on transit.
n/t
There is no deferential press; there is just an impoverished one. You want them to cover something else? Give them something to cover. Hold a hearing or something. Sell something.
To the extent it assumes the aim of many Democratic “leaders” is anything other than keeping support for Baker and his agenda high. It’s not malpractice when the results achieved are the desired results.
That makes a big difference. And all eyes will be increasingly focused on 2016, which will give Baker a lot of opportunities to distance himself from the national GOP while distracting local activists focused on the presidential primaries.
While opposition to the Olympics is cross partisan, I also think many activists have been focused so much on that and pressuring Walsh that Baker has gotten a pass on some of these things. Denise Provost has done a great job bringing attention to the environmental consequences of the anti-regulation agenda, but I know she is a House outlier. Curtatone has been a similar drum major on transit reform.
But, it’s our house and it’s really up to us to make it better, blow up phones, run primary challengers, and continue the grassroots fight. Waiting for the state party is sorta like waiting for godot.
And all eyes will be increasingly focused on 2016, which will give Baker a lot of opportunities to distance himself from the national GOP while distracting local activists focused on the presidential primaries.
If Christie enters the race he has to pay Christie back for the RGA support, right?
Would in many respects be distancing himself from the national party. Though Christie’s been plenty far to the right on a lot of important issues he has the appearance of being the northeastern “moderate” Republican compared to some of these other people.
…that the legislative caucus and the institutional party are two different animals, despite the insistence by some that they are attached at the hip.
They aren’t that different if a legislator is leading the State Party, where’s Tom McGee on these issues? When was the last time McGee posted here? Where are the communiques and emails to the grassroots letting them know whose phones to call and how to coordinate action that defeats the disagreeable elements of the Baker agenda? What use is the vaunted supermajority if all it’s going to do is play dead, roll over, or plat fetch when Bobby throws a bone?
I think a big reason he has the high approval rating is that no one prominent with a D next to their name is out there calling him out, proposing an alternative, or organizing the opposition.
You know, the one you use to vote
meanwhile continues to make Baker look better and better:
–Lobbying for Boston 2024 for $7500 a day until caught.
–Joining Bain Capital.
–Spending $1.35 million on foreign travel
The first two of these are embarrassing for Democrats. The last is very concerning, if not scandalous.
The biggest promise of Deval was that he brought with him an unprecedented and unparalleled grassroots organization, even Dukakis’ couldn’t match Deval’s. And then, he did absolutely nothing with it for 8 years. No pressuring legislators, no working with allies in the legislature, and no mustering the foot soldiers who would’ve been happy to do battle on behalf of his agenda. Nothing.
And after he and Walsh left state politics, we see that organization wither on the vine while he goes back to being a corporate sellout. A really sad state of affairs.
There was nothing stopping his organization, or DFA, or OFA, from becoming the kind of left wing pressure group the state needs. We need a farm team, like the right has YAF and CPAC nationally, and ALEC statewide. Progressive Massachusetts has the ambition and leadership to be that organization, it’s just lacking in money and resources. But this agenda can happen, it’s absolutely vital to get good legislative candidates for the 2016 cycle.
It was fairly clear right from the word go that Governor Patrick did not enjoy much in the way of support from the Legislature– certainly nothing like the support that Gov. Baker now enjoys.
It is silly to blame a center-left occupant of a weak-by-design governor’s chair for not “pressuring legislators” and “doing nothing.” No governor can do that because there is no support for that in the state, at all. None. Zero.
The few times he tried, he got humiliated by the legislature, and in return the “institutional party” (i) complained about Republicans; (ii) complained that Patrick didn’t “do enough;” and (iii) re-elected the Legislature because “elections are binary” or something.
I just can’t get over how persistent the denial is. You guys nominate and elect conservatives. Then, when they govern as conservatives, you complain (i) about Republicans in Washington, for “setting a hostile tone;” (ii) about the Republican governor, who at least had the decency not to pretend he is a liberal (unlike your guys in the Leg); and (iii) about the actual center-left governor, for “not pressuring legislators.”
And then, in a year and a half, you will go support them again, because Rick Perry said something stupid and offensive in the Pres. campaign.
[needle skip]
We have consistently complained about our state leaders-good luck finding a single DeLeo supporter here.
Nobody connected Rick Perry or blamed national Republicans for the local conservative embarrassments running our legislative delegation in the House.
Deval had allies in the legislature he consistently blind sided and failed to work with, Paul Simmons, hesterpryne, Mark Bail, Judy Meredith, and Best Defense (not my biggest fan I might add but his inside baseball seems solid) have consistently discussed this. As do some of those progressive legislators off the record. Nobody wants to be put in a corner like Hecht, who will be unlikely to pull a Markey and use it to his advantage in the future.
And as you readily concede, our party leadership was waiting for Weld redux so DeLeo can play the Billy Bulger part-so how is your support of Baker helping? Sure your hands are clean from supporting a shitty dem like Coakley, but your complaints always seem to descend into Broderisms about both parties being equally bad. The Democratic Party in this state-the real grassroots activists like Kate and so many others here- put Warren in the Senate, Deval in the Corner office and Walsh in city hall. The latter two are
Mixed bags at best at this point, but Warren is great, and Provost and other progressives are doing the best they can. They need allies. And that’s where we have done a lousy job and need to turn our attention. I think that’s even covered to death here, but if Frank could do it in the 70s we can do it now with online infrastructure and a greater activated progressive donor base.
BMG and progressive mass are part of the solution, decisively not part of the problem. I’ve never pulled my wrist for a DINO. Never voted for Galvin, never voted for De Nucci. I happen to have lived in Hecht’s and Jehlen’s district so my hands are clean there. Maybe the Cambridge diaspora will have the ancillary effect of making other cities more progressive.
is vastly different than campaigning against. So long as liberal Democrats refuse to campaign AGAINST a Democrat, even if the Democrat is actually a Republican, they will be weak and ineffective. But their hands will be clean, so there’s that.
I don’t see anything inherently wrong with those, though the second one admittedly makes me cringe a bit. Whose money is he spending on travel?
And they were taxpayer dollars, which he used secretly.
https://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_politics/2015/06/hidden_junket_funds_how_deval_patrick_secretly_diverted_millions
is “secretly.” Raises a question as to why it was done secretly. I still want to know what other governors did in this regard, if anything.
Seems public money should only be used for its appropriated purpose. Trade missions are legit gubernatorial business, but should have been funded as such. However, a Herald “investigation” that makes a progressive Democrat look bad by definition calls for a second source IMO.
…without the quotation marks.
The House Post Audit and Oversight Committee is already gathering information:
Blaming the messenger, however satisfying, won’t cut it; the Herald did a good job of shoe-leather journalism here.
It’s become an essential economic tool in policy making; since when has it become a dirty word?
On paper it sounds great, let’s free businesses from overly burdensome regulations that cost their bottom line and make the state a more attractive place to do business. That’s a worthy goal-one I support. But tegulations are supposed to protect the public from corporate malfeasance, corner cutting, and unsafe products and working environments.
Applying a CBA to every regulation essentially places the burden of proof away from the corporation and back onto the public. We now have to prove that the regulation won’t be burdensome to the business, and that paradigm leads to situations where the bare minimum is done for product liability, consumer safety, and risk analysis. And it shifts the costs of any defect back onto the public.
Ted Kennedy was the Liberal Lion of the senate. Elizabeth Warren ran full speed against the pseudo populist campaign of Scott Brown by being bold, outspoken and un-apologetically committed to fighting for labor. So what choice did the Massachusetts voters in the last election for governor? In my outspoken opinion, they had two choices that seemed to be fighting about who was more like the other, all in an effort to win the win the independent vote and with it, the corner office on Beacon Hill.
I’ll say it again, Democrats can win if we run and support bold candidates. Sheepish campaigns that fail to emphasize a bold initiative and instead hide behind a false image that masques an ulterior motive may for for the Republicans, but it won’t win in Massachusetts for a Democrat.
is Gov. Baker’s most obvious lurch to the right. The order itself is one of the brainchildren of the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the specific prohibition against any state regulation that “exceeds federal standards” was added at the request of our state’s biggest trade group, Associated Industries of Massachusetts.
The BMG hive discussed it back in April (charley-on-the-MTA memorably described it as a “full-blown booty-call to every well-capitalized corporation”).
I am also disappointed that the majority party has not been more openly critical of the premises behind the order (“we need a state government that gets out of the way” — Baker campaign slogan). But we don’t know any specifics yet — the Baker administration has had nothing more to say about the order since announcing it two months ago.
To quote charley again, “this is to be watched like a hawk.”
This just KILLS me … I’ve never seen our party look so pathetic in all my life. Talk about pathetic.
Pathetic pathetic pathetic.
The nomination of Martha Coakley, the profound lack of enthusiasm generated by that nomination, the treatment of those of us who disagreed, and the astoundingly tepid campaign that followed was a precursor to this unfortunate result.
The second count of the “political malpractice” indictment is the silence of the Massachusetts Democratic Party about Bob DeLeo and his successful power grab.
For better or worse, we Democrats have had overwhelming control of Massachusetts government for the eight years of the Patrick administration. That government was astoundingly tone-deaf to all but party insiders. The defense of flagrantly corrupt practices like those on display in the never-ending saga of indictments, convictions, and scandals alienated Democrats, Republicans, and un-enrolled voters alike.
The very fact that the Massachusetts Democratic Party actually nominated the Attorney General who did so little to even acknowledge, never mind address, the pervasive culture of corruption in the Democrat-dominated state (and Boston) government is itself a symptom.
We are reaping the seeds that have been sown for the past eight years.
What amazes me is that so many are not. Baker wouldn’t have had a prayer if the less involved swing voters hadn’t been upset about a long string of scandals and the nonchalant attitude about them among those in charge of the government.
Regarding Coakley the party is responsible for organizing a fair nomination process, which she happened to win. The convention of activists did NOT endorse her, but the nomination goes to whomever wins the primary notwithstanding the convention endorsement. Every registered Democrat or unenrolled voter can vote in the primary and she got the most votes. The party can only penalize if she endorsed a GOP nominee recently, which she had not and I’m pretty sure she even agrees with the platform more than not. Ultimately, it is not “the party’s” fault she was the nominee.
Regarding Deleo I don’t know that the party has a position on leadership term limits. To condemn this, however, would involve throwing a good chunk of the House caucus under the bus, which I don’t think it is appropriate for the party to do.
I suspect a Grossman or Berwick would’ve been just as hand tied by the legislature if they had been elected, Berwick in particular. I also suspect both would’ve had a hard time beating Baker who was a much better candidate the second time around, possibly a harder time considering they failed to beat Coakley it’s hard to argue they would’ve done better against Baker.
Berwick’s campaign was the right message with the wrong messenger. We need people with his commitment to progressive policies but with greater direct political experience enacting them. I think looking at strong progressive Mayors like Curtatone or Driscoll is a must, along with state legislators doing the best they can. Eldridge, Chang-Diaz, and Lewis have all been quite impressive.
But frankly, all of them would still probably lose to Baker if the election were held today. Beating Baker is an ancillary goal so long as the House is run in such a conservative fashion. It’s far more important to start a left wing insurgency against the DINOs in the House, especially for the 16 cycle’ when minorities and young people vote in higher numbers, and women may be voting at historic levels for the first female President.
I’m inclined to agree that this would have been a hard election for ANY Democratic nominee to win. In some sense, I think that’s the point, though.
I’m not interested in re-litigating Coakley as I am in relentlessly examining the processes that brought about her nomination. That examination should, in my view, include polling data before, during, and after the election.
More importantly, this thread started with an observation of Mr. Baker’s popularity today. I suggest that if we Democrats had nominated a passionate progressive who gave barn-burner speeches about the topics that people in Massachusetts care about:
– Income and wealth concentration
– The destruction and plundering of our middle class
– The spiraling corruption and scandals of state government, squandering the tax revenues that are already dis-proportionately borne by the 99%
– The utter and complete dysfunction of so many vital government services — the drug lab scandal, the compounding scandal, the MBTA and commuter rail, our physical infrastructure, too many of our housing authorities
then even if that candidate had lost, I think the mere discussion of those issues during the campaign might have dramatically changed today’s poll numbers about Governor Baker.
I think that if the dire state of the MBTA and commuter rail had been a major topic of debate and exchange during the campaign — with Charlie Baker claiming “everything’s fine” and a Democratic candidate saying “the system is on the brink of collapse”, then when the system DID collapse in the following winter, it would have been MUCH more difficult to skate through it the way he did.
Bob DeLeo had the audacity to claim, in an interview I believe I published here, that the MBTA was “not even on” his list of priorities in early January, before the collapse. If the MBTA had been hotly debated during last year’s campaign, it would have been FAR more difficult for Mr. DeLeo to make that claim.
I agree with you that beating Baker is irrelevant if our strategy for doing so is to offer yet another candidate who declines to challenge 90% of what Mr. Baker proposes. I agree with you that we need to start an insurgency against the DINOs in the House.
I don’t think that’s necessarily a LEFT wing insurgency. I think the plundering of the 99% by the 1% breaks out of the left/right spectrum. I think that’s why Elizabeth Warren is so popular, and I think that’s why she represents such a threat to the elites who control both parties (this is why the behavior of Deval Patrick after stepping down is so devastating).
I think that a “populist progressive” — some blend of Elizabeth Warren and Mike Capuano — is the prescription for the transformation we each seek.
Particularly the frame that these are actually issues where 60-70% of the voting public is outraged and concerned, so it’s not exclusively in the left’s wheelhouse. To the extent that the right wing if the party controls the House , I was arguing a left wing takeover would be appropriate. But I’ve long thought that agreeing and keeping promises on speaker and maybe even chair term limits, and expanding the role of the minority might be a way to entice the GOP to join a progressive rebellion.
Hypothetically, if the 40 or so progressive caucus members and the 35 Republicans could vote in lockstep on term limits and an alternative to DeLeo-he would be gone, that’s a supermajority. Other issues like killing the film credit to expand EITC and reforming committee structures with the Senate are areas where they could co-opt the existing leadership. I might add that the GOP has doubled it’s share of the House since 2008, a sign that opposing DeLeo is growing in popularity and having ancillary benefits to the GOP legislative caucus.
I suspect that kind of outside the box thinking won’t be viable until some DINO scalps are claimed-it might not take money. Sciortino winning his race against an anti-LGBT DINO incumbent sent a clear signal that marriage equality was here to stay. A similar race could do the same on transit reform or income inequality.
Forty-something plus 35 gets you just about to the halfway point of 160 House members, not a supermajority.
I conflated the Dem supermajority of 125 with the total # for the House, 160. The Progressive Caucus, which hasn’t even voted in lockstep on issues that Progressive Mass is scoring them on, isn’t even a majority of the majority. Lotta no name backbenchers we could look to target I’m sure.
I listen to you all talk about the progressive agenda and how you haven’t touted that enough. You re-hash the last elections and say participants weren’t progressive enough. If we turn x number of districts we can get the outcome we want, etc. From the “outside the 495 loop” the reason that Baker is so popular is that he (like Don Quixote) is going to Beacon Hill to battle against the entrenched, corrupt, inefficient government we have had for so long. The scandals emerging about Deval put him in the same category as Billy Bulger. All we want is some honesty however inefficient he may be, if we can find someone to fight the ” Great White Whale” of Mass corruption we’ll back him to the hilt.
Even in the worst days of Finneran, when progressives had none of the leadership positions that buy loyalty, there were not a reliable 40 Democratic opposition votes, usually only 27. Almost all of those Democratic opposition reps have either retired or joined DeLeo’s team.
This whole thread is degenerating into pipe dreams. The Dem Party (and the GOP, likewise) will never act against their own members. It is not their job. Neither political party has meant much except when the Duke used it after he was elected, and Deval transformed HIS political operation into the Party.
I am hard pressed to identify any time in the past half century when either party, in MA or at the national level, did anything other than act as a conduit for money in one direction, and the muscle of the Pres or a governor in the other direction. Don’t wait for the Democratic Party do do anything. It can’t and it won’t.
I’m not going to claim that it would suddenly undermine Baker’s numbers, but the state Democratic Party has said almost nothing about Baker’s attempt to slow the growth of solar power in the state. The lack of imagination and courage of many or our state reps is almost beyond comprehension. The treat their position as something so precious that it justifies a career without ever taking any risks or showing any leadership. The review of the Opiate crisis is another case of stunning lack of imagination by state legislators. We’re going to be told this is all the result of some Docs over-prescribing pain-killers. Really?