In today’s Globe, Stephanie Ebbert tells the kind of story we will read more and more until 2019. The people who provide childcare are absolutely essential to our economy because they let parents work without worrying about their kids. And these childcare providers are getting royally messed up by Governor Baker’s fix it scheme.
One child care provider estimates the state Department of Early Education and Care owes him $15,000 in unpaid bills. Another fears the department is going to ask him to pay back $80,000.
Day care center directors all across Massachusetts are scheduling one-on-one meetings with department officials to hash out unpaid and disputed bills from the past year.
The reason? The new technology the state launched last July to modernize its reporting and billing of day care subsidies still can’t handle the bills.
Why did this modernization of billing and reporting mess up?
Charlie Baker’s stunt of granting early retirement to get thousands of state workers off the payroll. The people in state government with the valuable knowledge of who was in the system and how the system worked were induced to retire early, thus taking the institutional knowledge away right at the time that knowledge was needed for the new system. Did Gov. Baker save the budget? Noooo…
The Globe learned, however, that the retirees included at least two senior officials integrally involved with the technology and three more employees who worked on the help desk for the new system. Two of the help desk retirees wrote the user guide for the Child Care Financial Assistance system, and the third was the help desk director. Those three were hired back after the faulty launch to help with calls from frustrated day care providers, the Globe learned.
Yes, Gov. Baker decided to put these employees on retirement, then he had to re-hire them because the job still needed to be done. In his desire to cut spending, he ended up creating even more waste.
Read the whole article. Take special care to read to the end where we see the new computer system can not account for how parents might have to send their children to one childcare place in the morning and another in the afternoon. Plenty of parents need to do that, but the system refuses to pay for it.
There are thousands upon thousands of parents in the Commonwealth who need good, affordable childcare. We could provide that, putting parents’ minds at ease, making families lives’ better… if our Governor had the vision for it.
We will see this again and again because as long as our Governor believes “we have a spending problem,” the Commonwealth will be neglecting the basic needs of our citizens: childcare, early education, K-12, public universities, transportation, mental health, and protecting the environment.
Because the Commonwealth has grown and is growing, we have a revenue problem, but our Governor has a lack of vision problem. He can not see how the Commonwealth is growing and will grow in the future. He is not taking care of the present, and therefore is undercutting our future.
Both Bush Presidents had that… and then the consequences of their decisions built up enough to be felt by middle class as well as lower income people.
This is a reality based community and the reality is nobody will beat Baker and none of the potential Democrats are going to be any more effective than Deval at enacting any of these priorities so long as we have a regressive House controlled by a regressive leadership.
All the time, money, and grassroots effort spent on nominating a progressive candidate for governor would be better spent on nominating 10-20 credible primary challengers to take out members that are part of the problem.
That’s enough to force a vote on every issues and enough to cobble together a coalition with Republicans to maneuver around the leadership and get new bills on the floor. I’ve been singing this tune since the speakership vote and will continue to do so whether my current venture is successful or not. This is the single most important political and policy change we can make in this state.
The answer is hundreds. His many buyouts and forced retirements created identical knowledge gaps. The practice of hiring back retired workers as contract employees is common, especially in human services, so they can train replacements. They have state benefits as retirees, so the state doesn’t need to keep matching benefits and increasing pension costs. Typical contracts are for 2 years
Or absolve a Republican wrong. A bigger question to ask is why our veto proof supermajority routinely chooses short sighted austerity over long term investment due to its aversion to taxation and it’s addiction to patronage and why progressives continue to tolerate that while quixotically hoping to elect the right messiah to the corner office as if he or she can change decades of calcified power entrenched in the hands of consistently corrupt and visionless Speakers?
I walked with Joel door to door on the Deval campaign, but I would take ten to twenty more Provosts or Hechts in the house over another ineffective liberal in the Corner Office. Pursuing that goal is a waste of political capital and a waste of political talent for our rising bench. Who wants to be the next Mark Roosevelt? Especially when the real power rests with the Littlefinger of Winthrop?
The state in recent years passed a law extending rights to homecare workers. The Speaker was persuaded about this. He can see the way people with low incomes have it tough. The Speaker has raised taxes (such as the gas tax) and the minimum wage.
It’s not so clear to me that Charlie Baker, the founder of the Pioneer Institute, can be persuaded.
N/T
…how Massachusetts is a Democratic stronghold? We’re a Democratic stronghold with a few minorities in a few major metros and wealthy Dems in the burbs with progressive social values (but only those that will not affect their earnings). The canary in the coal mine is not dead, but he’s gasping for air and like it or note, he’s not turning blue.
An all-Dem Congressional delegation (possibly largest one-party delegation in the country)
Overwhelming majorities in the State Legislature
Dem for POTUS in every election since 1988
Majorities of constitutional officers and Governor’s Councilors
Much better luck than the GOP getting people to run
We are no longer leading the nation in health care reform, as we once did. We have one of the highest rates of wealth disparity in the nation. 641,000 families living in poverty. Do I need to talk about our crumbling infrastructure as it relates to transportation for the poor? How about the Internet available to our citizens in the western part of the state? With this many “Democrats” in office, we ought to be able to accomplish almost anything. What’s the holdup?
Hypocrisy? Promising things that you know are not affordable or sustainable, and then demonizing local opponents by saying they are JUST LIKE national boogeymen to duck accountability?
N/T
The Democratic party contains multitudes in factions and all fractious. Indeed, it is even worse than that for –in the context of streamlined, lockstep, unthinking, unbending, unflinching and simpleminded Republican groupthink — one would expect an even wider spectrum than would otherwise obtain in the Democratic fold as reasonable members on the right are turned away by the sheer ‘fuck you’ of today’s Republican party. And so it is.
it is only the fevered dreams of Republicans, and ex-Republicans, who believe that Democrats, and indeed democracy itself, should meet the requirements of streamlined and efficient machinery.
The Republican party lockstep, and their resulting success in thwarting the will of most everybody, has given the false impression that political thuggery, ratfucking and simpleminded groupthink excess are wholly legitimate as tactics and strategy, leading the less sophisticated to ask simpleminded questions like, ‘what’s the holdup?’ as though Democrats should be like them.
Of, put another way, if the Republican party offered a legitimate alternative (as it did in years past) many of the people in todays Massachusetts Democratic party, likely including the present Speaker of the House, would adopt that alternative… So you and I are in a sort of agreement: when the immoral took over the Republican party, that left a lot of wiggle room for the amoral to work in the Democratic party. And, so here we are…
The only thing that makes the MA Democratic Party what it is is the MA Democratic Party.
… that “amoral” is not a phrase to use lightly.
… ‘lightly’?
… How is this saying anything other that, “it is what it is”…?
Of course the MA Democratic Party makes the MA Democratic party. And if there are amoral people in the MA Democratic Party it will, in part, be driven by amoral people. If there are good people in the Democratic party, it will be driven, in part, by good people. And if relatively sane conservatives have no sane alternative then they, too, will, in part, drive the party. And the ugliness and lack of lustre to it, is a function of, at the least, the struggle betwixt and between them.
Duh.
As someone told me, no one can take advantage of you without your permission. Yeah, I hear you and I agree. How do we go after the amoral and get rid of them?
It might surprise you to know that I don’t particularly believe this. I could not, for example, be able to enjoy sports to the extent that I do, if I believed that. And, in fact, giving someone permission to take advantage, at least in sports, is a form of ‘cheating’. One of the sublime joys of watching, for example, a football game (real football, sometimes called ‘soccer’, not the American version of over-engineered meatpacking where a foot rarely, if ever, touches a ball) is to see two teams attacking each other with will and ferocity and one gaining advantage through effort and skill.
Yeah, politics is different from sports, mainly in the notion that in politics participants have to agree to the rules as they go along and efforts may be either penalized or rewarded when breaking them. A meta-sport, if you will.
I know we can go after them. I don’t know that we can, per se, get rid of them… I do know that, sooner or later, the amoral will break the rules and the more they break the rules the closer they get to breaking the law. It appears to happen pretty regularly in the Massachusetts State house… When the rules and the law are trampled a choice is presented to the remainder, who see it. At the present, the House appears to be predominantly seated with wholesale cowards who’ve made their choice. So the only choice you or I really have is to vote against any incumbent… even the apparently clean ones. Anybody who has let the transparently corrupt Robert DeLeo remain without speaking up is not, in fact, clean. And I use that word, ‘corrupt’, in it’s broadest sense: where promise is altered and inverted and is turned upon itself in service to the selfish and the venal.
Voting against the incumbents won’t get us what we want nor what the CommonWealth needs… So, I guess this is scant advice… but there you have it.
We can also pressure those in office, but that takes constant effort, not just casting a ballot in November. I fear that if we just vote against incumbents, we’ll empower the few who do not get voted out of office. There is also the reality that newly elected reps don’t get much say for the first two years and two years is enough time for them to be swayed to the dark side.
Every single football game begins when a foot touches the ball. Every. Single. One. It seems to me that you could make your point about politics without broadsiding a uniquely American sport.
… and I’ll stick by ‘rarely’ and call you out on ‘uniquely’ (since soccer begat rugby and rugby begat… American… ‘football’)
which make it unwatchable for me. Some studies have shown there are only about 11 minutes when the ball is actually in play during an American football game. That leaves plenty of time for ads. On the other hand, I get 2, 45 minute periods, of uninterrupted action with international football. Sorry to drift off topic, so, well, um… maybe the Governor should do something about it.
It helps we are blessed with a good Pats squad which we didn’t have when I was a kid or when my dad went to Schaffer for “a fin” and his personal highlight was “the time I saw Broadway Joe kill us”. He was a lifetime fan and so am I. Only sport we ever watch(ed) together. My wife is a huge Bears fan and we devour every NFL game during the season. Best sport on tv, and it’s pretty good live too.
As the effects of CTE become clearer. I am not sure that “uninterrupted action” is truth in advertising when it comes to soccer. I watch a lot more than I once did now that you can get Premier League matches on TV here, and am no hater, but truth be told, I often wind up watching the more exciting bits on replay, because I dozed off.
I doze off watching baseball and golf as well, but would never pretend that those have uninterrupted action.
Of course, as they draw close, they just change is rules. Ask Term Limited Speaker DeLeo.
And since their job is making the law, they can just fix that too.
… where I noted that all participants have to agree to the rules and decide whether to reward or penalize for the breaking (or the changing) of them.
Not facing down DeLeo when he attempts to change the rules is acquiescing to his rule change. Not acquiescing to his rules change requires that you face him down. That’s how the ‘game’ is played. DeLeo isn’t strong enough to do things on his own, he needs enablers and he has plenty, and to spare.
I agree that, at least for now, our national figures are genuine Democrats from the Democratic wing of our Party.
The same is not true for our local officials. The “overwhelming majorities” in the State legislature have accomplished NO progress on the relatively long list of urgent priorities that face us. On the most important issues of public transportation infrastructure, wealth and income concentration, regressive government funding (gambling revenue), local aid and public education, privacy, and the militarization of our police, our “Democratic” policy has been to ignore reality and adopt policies that are more Republican than Democratic. In a state with an actual state GOP that was actually alive, our local government would be much more evenly split. Our prior Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) was either a no-show or an ally of the other side for each of those key issues.
Those who must traverse I-93 at morning drive time know that the ten mile long parking lot between rt 128 and Boston on I-93 south causes a miles long traffic jam on I-93 NORTH, even though the traffic is much lighter, because the south-bound traffic jam blocks traffic from 128-S from entering the south-bound I-93. That traffic jam in turn stops traffic exiting from I-93 north to 128-S. That, in turn, blocks I-93 north. The consequence of the daily southbound failure is a daily northbound failure.
In an analogous way, the state GOP died decades ago. A candidate of ANY political persuasion who actually wants to be elected and serve MUST run as a Democrat, because affiliation with the GOP means certain defeat. The Massachusetts Democratic Party is powerless and therefore irrelevant to this phenomena — the “D” after a candidates name means absolutely nothing in this state.
The electoral results may speak for themselves, but I fear their message is very different from what you imply.
A huge number of our local Democrats are counterfeit. On the issues that matter, Massachusetts is not nearly as “Democratic” as the statistics you cite suggest.
…but I took his question very literally about what makes us a Dem stronghold and just pointed to the stats. I have also been known to caution others (You listening, jconway?) that not every district is ever going to send the kind of Democrat that some of us might prefer.
I haven’t been this guy’s biggest fan, but I think his point is that the Democratic stronghold and a dollar will get you on the subway.
Great metaphor.
Perhaps the winter of our Massachusetts political subway is approaching. The two have a lot in common:
– Collapsing infrastructure
– Built a century ago
– No significant changes in a century
– No political will to change
You seem to have the opposite loyalty which is to be expected for a state committee member and I genuinely admire that institutional loyalty. I can’t get excited about this supermajority if it doesn’t pass progressive legislation. I’ve said repeatedly to you that I concede your point and would prefer Dracut elect a Republican instead of Garry, would prefer Wilimington send a Republican instead of Miceli. A smaller but purer majority would actually pass more progressive legislation!
Then there are districts that are progressive on paper where women, students and people of color don’t vote in these low turnout primaries and special elections (looking at you First Suffolk and Middlesex!) The UIP is a disruptive and potentially game changing way around that, if it can stay on the ballot and get the funding to continue this work and if the progressives getting screwed by the low turnout wake up to the opportunity.
You are uncomfortable with this route since it you perceive it as a threat to the Democrats, which is fine. Hold the legislative primaries with the presidential primary and you get your turnout. Make them all open and you get your turnout. These reforms make the process more democratic and make our local democrats more progressive, I have no idea why you oppose them.
Throwing up our hands isn’t an option anymore, not if we do want the Corner Office back and want public officials who can effect progressive change locally as well as the national figures like Warren we all admire.
Don’t forget I’ve pretty much wished Garry good riddance after she sponsored what I think of as Jim Crow for the transgendered population. How progressive a candidate is in the primary is one, but not only factor I use in determining my support. I went very progressive in the CD-5 2007 special (Eldridge) and 2008 Senate (O’Reilly), but trend more mainstream in presidentials (Kerry, Clinton in ’08 and ’16) and gubernatorial (Grossman), though I was with Patrick in 2006. It just depends. I do strongly believe that party primaries should be for party members, but welcome more people to become members.
As a historical aside I also have this fantasy about Dems beating the record for near unanimity set by the Know-Nothings in 1854. They took the whole congressional delegation, all the statewide offices, all the Governor’s Council, and all but three state house seats. If that’s going to happen you can’t also insist on dogmatic lockstep.
…it seems to me that in the years we have both been BMG regulars you have moved from my right on the political spectrum to my left. I’ve been looking back at comments going back a few years recently and am reminded in particular of your having identified as a pro-life progressive, but your attitudes seemed more moderate on other things as well. I don’t think I’m the one who has moved; if anything I tend to move left on an issue myself the more I learn about it in most cases. Do you think this is a fair assessment, and if so, did anything in particular cause your leftward shift?
I was to my contemporary left back then and openly calling for primaries against Kerry over the war vote and being a wishy washy centrist nominee. I too voted for Ed O’Reilly who is apparently one of the 13 people running for sheriff up here in Essex County these days. Those were my Nader, Moore and Chomsky fanboy days.
Then 2008-2010 I came back to the Catholic Church around the same time I got introduced to intelligent conservatives and libertarians at U of C who pushed my views on abortion to what I percieved to be the middle and helped me become a devout free trader, charter booster and union skeptic. A Democrst but one who spouted the Economist editorial page as scripture.
By 2010-2013 I worked at the largest bankruptcy firm in the Midwest which paralleled the rise of Elizabeth Warren and realizsd that the game was rigged and saw the first hand evils of our modern banking system. We were hardly a union shop and I realized how important those were and when I got laid off by my next job and had to rely on unemployment and Obamacare for insurance I became populist again.
These days I am a bit more centrist on certain foreign policy questions and I’m less convinced protectionism could work because of automation. I’m a lot more hawkish on terrorism than I would’ve been pre-Paris and certainly pre-Orlando. I’m also a realist.
I want to ban AR-15s but I’m convinced other measures could save more lives if we spent the capital on them now. I am certainly a lot further to the left now than I was in high school on racial issues and gender equality (including abortion) due to the influence of my wife. I always supported marriage equality but was more skeptical of transgender rights in those days and I’m a big supporter now.
I want to spend more money on transit, education and healthcare but recognize the voters of this state see averse to raising taxes and we have to meet them where they are. And I no longer believe single payer is viable in the United States though I’ll still vote for it and support it-as a past and present user or Obamacare I think it’s pretty damn good. I’m voting for Hillary which is not something I would’ve been mature enough to do in 2008.
I reject your color blind liberalism as outdated along with your stances on pot, but we are largely in alignment on all the major issues. I’ll defend a voting record like Jim Manchin and Joe Donnelly to create a Senate majority, but there is no reason to defend similar records at the statehouse since that majority is unending no matter what it does. In this one party state a smaller tent does more good than our big one.
…since in my view that has yet to be the prevailing attitude on either the left or right (At least, I interpret outdated to mean a thing of the past, but I don’t see that in our past.), but I see it as the future we should be striving for.
It’s definitely the future to strive for, we just need to be hyper aware that racial disparities continue and while white and non-white have always been equal in the eyes of God, and equal in the eyes of the law for the last four decades, they are not yet fully equal in the broader society due to overt and covert biases and disparities that still linger. That’s why we can’t yet be truly blind to color, because far too many Americans aren’t and continue to oppress and discriminate.
I don’t want to be blind to the differences between cultures. On the contrary, even in our Utopian future where a person’s race or ethnicity doesn’t come with pre-judging, I still want to celebrate the richness that American subcultures have to offer. I certainly don’t want to be blind to it.
…when we associate goodness with any particular “race or ethnicity” we acknowledge it, celebrate it, speak out loud about it, but if we associate any badness with any particular “race or ethnicity” we are accused of stereotyping and discouraged from even mentioning such things. It’s an area of discussion that I just try to avoid with some people because of this.
I also would prefer to celebrate everything as opposed to celebrating nothing. I do not want to be blind to the rich tapestry of culture that makes our country what it is. However, I want to get to where in our routine dealings with others in contexts that do not involve cultural traditions a difference of skin color is no more significant than a difference in eye or hair color.
In my view we MUST INSIST on forcing color-blindness as a way to get to the point where people will not oppress and discriminate against that which they don’t “see”. The way to start is with our own personal attitudes, and from there both preach and lead by example.
Even a blind pig will find an acorn….
And remember your compatriots would argue you’re the loony liberal RINO 😉
And was surprised that put me in the minority here.
Almost every regular supported Coakley in the last general election.
You have to follow methuenprogressives weighted voting: somervilletom got 1,000 votes, everyone else got 0.1 vote. So it was 1000 to 20.
While I don’t want to rehash the last election, I see no evidence that the Democratic nominee in the last election would have governed any differently than Mr. Baker on any of these issues. Many of the issues cited in the thread-starter are the direct consequence of our failure to raise taxes on our most prosperous residents — Deval Patrick showed that being a Democrat didn’t amount to a bucket of spit for that issue, and our nominee showed NO evidence of having any willingness AT ALL to drive that issue.
In my view, the thread-starter misses the mark — whatever “vision problem” we have is irrelevant, because Massachusetts has a CRUSHING revenue problem that we refuse to acknowledge. Our Democratic nominee kept her hands firmly over her eyes, ears, and mouth regarding our revenue problems during the entire campaign. “Vision” is an irrelevant distraction in the absence of revenue to fund whatever governance that vision implies.
The pain and suffering we are experiencing is the DIRECT result of our refusal pay taxes. Our last Democratic nominee would not have changed that. Our current overwhelmingly Democratic legislature (at least in name) refuses to even admit the situation, never mind address it.
We do NOT have “Charlie Baker problem”. We have a revenue problem.
Just curious, you say we have a crushing problem… where do we fall compared to other states? Last time I looked we were in the top 10 states in revenue per capita.
Per capita, Massachusetts still ranks relatively high, usually listed at around state #10, as here: http://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-much-does-your-state-collect-taxes-capita
BUT, taxes per capita is a misleading statistic that inherently adopts the conservative “flat tax” idea that the progressivity doesn’t matter or is even a negative feature of a state’s tax systems.
A better measure, which sees progressivity as a positive, is to look a taxes as a share of personal income. Looking at income tax rates, for example, under this measure shows that Massachusetts “tax burden” is not nearly as high relative to other states as the per-capita measure would suggest. Because our average personal income is on the higher side, it is nearly inevitable that even a flat rate sate income tax (as we have) will appear to be a bigger than average burden from a dollars per-capita perspective.
Looking at Massachusetts from a “taxes as a share of income” perspective shows that the state ranks right in the middle of all states, with a tax burden slightly lower than the national average. 24 states have higher tax burdens from this perspective: http://www.massbudget.org/report_window.php?loc=Massachusetts_Ranks_in_Middle_for_Taxes_in_FY2013.html
Per capita is not a misleading statistic. You are saying our taxes should be higher because we can afford to pay more? Sorry, but I do not buy that when we collect in the top 20% of the states.
Arguing that the tax payments should be more progressive would be a positive is a different argument.
…part of me wants to say that if we don’t have enough money to pay for what we need then by definition we have a revenue problem. Instead of first deciding how much revenue we will limit ourselves to and see what we can pay for with that, we should first decide how much money we need for what services and do all we can to raise that amount.
As I recall, with the exception of a few Democratic buzz word talking points, the web sites of the Coakley and Baker were eerily similar. “Jobs and the Economy” and “Greater Transparency in Health Care” and so on. Both were in favor of the casinos. Both would have governed as Baker is doing now.
Our revenue problem is not a perilous as it is in Republican controlled states where the school year is shortened as the money runs out, but we are no doubt on the same road, just not as far down it. Our direction is the same.
Who knows where this begins to change? Maybe the Millionaire’s Tax is the start? At our town committee meeting last month, we discussed the tax. It would affect about 50 our our town’s residents (out of a 32,000 total).
Ironically, our monthly meeting is tonight and our guest speaker is from our local food pantry. My guess is that it serves more than 50 people in our town.
…that a Coakley administration would be the same as a Baker administration. I doubt Coakley would wow anybody, but I also doubt she would “start with the premise that people are already taxed too much.”
I don’t think had Coakley tacked to the left she would’ve performed better electorally. Trust in government is incredibly low and people want to see their money spent wisely before they agree to tax increases. That said, policy wise she there are a lot of regulatory areas and probably an approach to the T that might’ve been better under her.
She lost and her career is over and it’s unlikely the next nominee will win. So let’s focus on something far more important to the long term health of progressive democracy in Massachusetts: the House.
I’ve always wondered about that. Trust in government is low but that’s a tangled web. Where is trust high in the USA? When was the last time we had a tax increase in Massachusetts?
My hunch is that the “moderate” Democrats are the infamous “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” crowd. In other words, when it comes to LGBT issues, women’s reproduction, and minority rights, they are on board but once it even comes close to affecting their wallet, even if it helps their fellow citizens, they push back. So in my knee jerk black & white world, a “moderate” is simply a wealthy Democrat who wants to maintain the economic status quo while being able to boost their self esteem and wave their Democrat credentials because of their stand on pet issues. I’d say they are winning and have done so in the commonwealth and the USA for quite some time.
Though I do think based on the ballot questions that the voters themselves do not have an appetite for the fiscal policies many of us here would want to enact. Could be an issue with the Raise Up campaign, which is why I’m glad to see them really go door to door as they are doing to educate people.
Liberals fail when we go into hostile or agnostic territory with the attitude we have all the answers and proscriptions. But when we go into communities and ask what they need from government we can then identify touch points that people like and use those points as justification for more revenue.
But better management goes hand in hand with more revenue, and I don’t think I’m alone in arguing that Baker has managed departments and achieved accountability in a better manner than his predecessor. I constantly criticize his vision and prioritization, but he has managed what we do have considerably well, part of his popularity stems from that.
Ms. Coakley served as AG for a long time, and her stance on the issues we’re discussing seems clear. I give her credit for not pretending to be something she wasn’t.
I also agree with you that simply “tacking to the left” would not have helped. Ms. Coakley served as AG from 2007 through 2015 — eight years. She served as the DA of Middlesex County for eight years before that.
Sixteen years as a high-level state law enforcement official, eight at the top of the state law enforcement agency. Sixteen years with scandals right and left, multiple successive leaders of the House guilty of corruption, multiple examples of flagrant corruption — NONE of which she showed any appetite to pursue AT ALL.
Martha Coakley was, rightly or wrongly, a poster-child for “hear-no-evil see-no-evil” Democratic corruption enablers. It is therefore no wonder that Massachusetts voters who don’t trust government wanted no part of her as Governor.
For a voter who cared about corruption and cared about government using its powers wisely, Martha Coakley was at the bottom of that voter’s list of desirable gubernatorial candidates. The surprise is not that she did not win, but that she did as well as she did.
No political positioning could have changed the impression she created in her sixteen years as DA and then AG.
…drop the attitude so early that the Dem candidate is unlikely to win? That kind of pessimism is the definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy!
I see the real long term self defeating attitude as “Dracut wouldn’t elect a progressive so Garry is as good as we’ll get” or “DeLeo isn’t really that bad” or the worst one “remember how great DiMasi was?”.
Either let those districts elect an actual Republican if they are so conservative or run a progressive and see if they can compete there, as John points out below, by being twice as responsive to their community and it’s needs as their challenger. I think the real self defeating cycle is continually pumping up mediocrities like Coakley as the second coming or promoting outsiders with no experience dealing with the legislature to the Corner Office where their agenda always dies on the hill.
I’m not even trying to be a jerk here, I honestly think you care deeply and are very thoughtful about many of these issues and you’d do a better job than anyone in your local delegation and have been encouraging you to run for many years now. I’d rather you be part of the change than waive away the problems and hope a white knight Governor can save the party from itself.
My policy dream is a progressive house, I worked to elect a progressive Governor and was disappointed in how little he managed to accomplish.
I don’t recall that being anyone’s attitude. What I do recall by way of example is the number of Dems who took a pass on the 1992 presidential race thinking that Poppy Bush’s numbers were untouchable after the Gulf War. Yet, a year and a half later Democratic nominee Bill Clinton defeated him (and no, I don’t think Perot caused that) due to tanking numbers on the economy. All I’m saying is it is way too early for Dems to sound like they have given up on the state’s highest office. We have no idea what might happen, who may come along, or how progressive our nominee will be.
Maybe the Attorney General could run against Governor Baker, but other than her, it doesn’t seem as if there are many prominent Democrats ready to run. Beating Baker would require either a cataclysmic failure on his part or a candidate of powerful charisma and persuasiveness on ours. At least that’s how it looks now.
So that suggests, following jconway, that changing the Legislature might be the most productive use of progressive energy.
I don’t think the AG wants it and still suspect that the only reason she got into electoral politics at all is the wanted the internal promotion in the AGO and the way you become AG in this state is to be elected. I would support her as the nominee and I suppose I could imagine scenarios in which might support her in a primary depending on who else is in. However, my gut reaction to her gubernatorial candidacy is we’ve seen this movie where AG runs for Gov. and we know how it ends (Harshbarger, Reilly, Coakley).
She has no reason to risk it on a mission like this. I’m not arguing we should vote for Baker or give up running a credible opponent, I strongly
believe every seat in government should be vigorously contested at the primary and general level. He should at least be taken to task for the bad decisions Joel rightly calls him out on in this post.
What I’m not falling for again is the delusion I had ten years ago that the right progressive in the Corner Office will make all the difference. Wolf looks like he will run and I like him in the primary. My mayor and the mayor of Somerville would be strong nominees. I’ll vote for any of them over Baker, but the reality is Baker will probably win and if they pull an upset Speaker DeLeo isn’t going anywhere. And he will still call all the shots unless we organize to take back the House.
The problem I had with Coakley’s campaign generally is that it lacked a narrative. Baker came to the table with a clear narrative: “I can fix things. Look there are things I’ve fixed and I have the necessary competence.”
Similarly, the Democrats lacked a clear, ringing narrative in 2004 and, if it weren’t for Ned Lamont, they would have contested 2006 without one either. We humans think in stories. If you don’t tell us a story, you have to rely on our very poor memory and understanding of all the positions you’ve staked out.
There is a fairly liberal state legislator whose district is more “Scott Brown” than “Elizabeth Warren”, but he does well on election day. I also spoke with a state senator who is a very progressive type but by looking at the map, the towns represented do not jump to the front of my list as progressive. So how does this happen? In both cases, the individuals are quite enthusiastic and active in their communities. In other words, they get to know their constituents on a face to face level. I asked one how they were able to be so progressive in an area that was not and the reply I got was “If people know you and like you, they trust you and vote for you”. I have to agree. Way back in my dark ages when I was a Rush Limbaugh type, I voted for my rep who was a Democrat simply because he stopped by my home and we chatted for a while. He seemed like a nice man AND his opposition never bothered to stop by.
Josh Cutler. He is in a red part of the state that votes for the elephants. But he works hard, is attentive to his district, and is doing a hero’s job of representing a modern progressive point of view to his constituents.
…but I would include Barbara L’Italien and Mark Falzone as Representatives who were themselves progressive, but held on to more conservative districts.
For a fine comment!