Gus Bickford, Chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party sent me an email today, asking for a donation. Aside from the fact that I no longer donate to the party because of a recent experience watching my donated money being used by the party against my chosen candidate in a primary, the message contained in the email sent me the message that the party and the party leaders still don’t get it. They still don’t know why Trump won, why Charlie Baker won, why Scott Brown won. More importantly, they don’t understand why they lost.
The email began with:
John,
Did you see what happened last Tuesday? Democrat Paul Feeney beat the anti-LGBTQ and anti-woman candidate in the Bristol and Norfolk State Senate special election.
And ended with :
Governor Baker can talk a good game on issues like gay marriage and women’s access to reproductive health, but the candidates he endorses to local office are not the type of candidates that Massachusetts residents want.
To the casual observer, one would assume that Democrat Paul Feeney beat the Republican (and a former Democrat running as a moderate independent) because the electorate’s number one and number two issues were gay rights and abortion rights. Feeney’s campaign was surely one that focused on these two issues and that is why he won this election in Massachusetts and it’s how we will win more elections in Massachusetts with this same message and your donation of $25 or $50 to help spread the word.
Oddly, there was no mention in this email that Democrat Paul Feeney was endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders, or the fact that one candidate (a former Democrat) ran against Feeney as an independent because “It looks like there’s a big highway in the middle for someone who is independent.” – referring to the Republican as too conservative and Feeney too progressive for Massachusetts voters. There was there also no mention of Paul Feeney’s own words explaining why he was running what his key issue was “I understand how important it is to have a voice for working families in the Bristol and Norfolk District. I will work hard to defend the values of the middle-class. ” Nope, none of that. This entire election centered on gay rights and abortion rights….and that’s how we will win the next election.
Only that’s not how we won this recent election and the chair’s reluctance to admit that is more than upsetting because it means nothing has changed and we will continue the same losing strategy, offer the same message, and expect a different result.
Like it or not, the hot-button culture war issues are proven more effective at opening wallets. Also, pretty sure it’s against party rules to use party money for a candidate in a contested primary, so I’m skeptical of your claim in the first paragraph in that regard.
I appreciate your comment. It tells me that the money is coming from a group of voters not large enough to win an election but with lots of cash and the party is focused on this group, not the sort that will deliver just $27. People who can only donate $27 are simple working class citizens, not the sort of wealthy professional class liberal (with conservative economic positions) that can shell out thousands.
How’s that working out for us?
Released Emails Suggest the D.N.C. Derided the Sanders Campaign.
I wonder if you’ve given just $27 to either Sherrod Brown or Tammy Baldwin.
Why wouldn’t I?
I’m simply giving you an opportunity to offer a positive, rather than critical, comment or diary.
I’d like to hear more about who you like and who you contribute to.
I’ve contributed time and money to many progressive candidates, mostly in Massachusetts but some out of state. Some were not as progressive as I would like, but ones that seemed open minded to the possibilities.
I’ve donated to Obama, Sanders, Warren, but not to either Clinton. I’ve donated to Sherrod but so far, not Baldwin as money is tight at the moment. I had to get two teeth extracted and am in the process of getting two implants. I am having the procedures done at Tuft’s Dental School to save a few dollars. Would you like to know which teeth are involved?
I am a monthly donor to Progressive Massachusetts and the Franklin Food Pantry.
I have a dog names Trixie. She’s eight years old.
My cousin’s husband worked for the NIH and is one of the scientists that discovered the AIDS virus. I’ve known him since I was five years old.
I can juggle.
I’ve met Marcel Marceau through a mutual friend and I have his autograph. It’s the only autograph I have ever asked for despite the fact that I have met Leonard Nimoy, Ralph Nader, and Morey Amsterdam.
I like to cook and the last thing I cooked was a Chicken Galantine or Ballotin. It was quite good.
I have an Independent Fabrication bicycle that was designed and built for me, It was made in Somerville and it valued at over $7,000 should it be stolen. It’s yellow. My wife picked out the color.
I can wiggle my ears.
“Would you like to know which teeth are involved?”
😄😄😄😄😄😄😄
I think John is right that the larger story got lost in Gus Pickford’s reductive narrative. That someone left of center beat a centrist and a right of center candidate in a non-urban district outside of Boston running on a strongly populist and progressive agenda. It shows us that Mike Connolly style insurgents can win even in “purple” districts giving lie to the trope, often cited by Christopher and other party leaders, that we need Jim Miceli’s to maintain our supermajority. We don’t. Mike Connolly/Paul Feeney style candidates can win anywhere in this state when given the resources to succeed.
Bickford also curiously is focusing on two issues where at least 40 House representatives and 4 state senators are totally out of touch.
We’ve already gone round and round about whether DNC staffers actually helped Clinton beyond just not being able to keep their opinions to themselves in what were supposed to be private emails anyway. However, since you open with a reference to the state party, I assumed you still meant the state party in your next sentence about giving to candidates.
And only a very naive person would think that with so many people on staff at the DNC with the same “opinions” including Debbie….that there would not be some fire beneath all that smoke.
Until or unless the state party take a stand with me on the aforementioned national party, I will assume they too approve of such things.
You have no basis for any of that. I’ve said before show me where money changed hands; don’t assume and please don’t imply I am naïve when it comes to how parties work. The state and national parties are separate entities with separate accounts. Neither controls how the other spend its money.
But you are, at least in this case. The Democrats really messed up with this one and should have known better, but apparently were afraid of the “Clinton Machine”. The results speak for themselves..
Discussion of the DNC is not germane to this thread since the MDP is a totally different entity. I think Gus Bickford has been a far more involved chair with the grassroots than Tom McGee was. I also think he missed the mark with this email-and it helps to be constructively critical of how he could do better. He will listen.
Party leadership is party leadership, state, local, federal.
I am not aware of how involved Gus has been, His email is all I have to go on and it did not give me the impression that he or the party has any intention of taking on the message that we are the party of the working class. Paul Feeney was not the candidate that the party leaders wanted in the primary, from what I understand and not that he has won, it’s clear to me that party leaders are trying to downplay why he won so as not to make waves with pseudo Democrats who are not at all interested in helping the working class.
In other words “I’ve already made up my mind”.
Doesn’t know who the leadership is. Doesn’t care. Doesn’t want to know. Has no interest in constructive change.
“Clarity” is so much easier in the absence of knowledge, facts, or interest.
Easier, and so very wrong.
`Nope, in other words, state and federal leadership has remained hostile to working class interests focusing instead on social liberal issues that enjoy strong support from the liberal professional class. It’s in the email Tom.
Interesting that, even though your candidate won (with Mr. Bickford’s support), you’re still unhappy because Mr. Bickford’s post-victory fund-raising email didn’t mention your particular chosen issue.
You write, yourself, that you’re “unaware of how involved Gus has been”. Your commentary leaves the distinct impression that you’re far more interested in bashing some scapegoat than in actually DOING something constructive.
I appears that rather than offer even a slightly positive comment about the victory of your chosen candidate, you’ve instead chosen to again bash the party that candidate is affiliated with and that supported that candidate in an election you claim to care about.
Actually, if did not mention the candidates issue but inserted another. Don’t you think that was odd?
Projection Tom….projection again…
Feeney was the only candidate I heard much about in the primary. While the party can’t endorse pre-primary as an institution my guess is most leaders were in fact rooting for him. Gus is about as solid a party leader as they come.
Donna Brazile has been a Clinton loyalist since Day 1. Her piece in Politico released today shows just how much of a cluster-fuck DWS turned the party into, and how HRC stripped the party of money as far back as August 2015. See https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774
LOL. She comes off as a hot mess in this, trying to make everything so salacious so that you’ll buy her book. It’s a shame because I always liked her prior and figured she was more independent minded and didn’t go along with the typical slimy Dem Party hack antics. TBH, I thought early on that she was leaning a little bit towards Bernie, or at least thought that appreciated that he was speaking some truths that the Party would prefer weren’t said about it and the Clintons.
All of that sentiment was met by a rude awakening that she slipped the question by an audience member to the Clinton camp. And, then for her to go on about how it couldn’t be trusted because the Russians were probably lying in the emails and framing her, up until she eventually realized she couldn’t deny it anymore. As the record shows, this culminated with her losing her spot on CNN but not from the Dem Party. She was recently appointed to something after Perez’ shakeup at the DNC.
It’s kind of sad that she would release this book but also predictable, given how many people are out to cash in on their own self-serving narratives post-failure of the Dems to beat the most despised candidate when they had nearly the whole establishment at their disposal and had their candidate spend more than twice as much money on her campaign than Trump did on his.
Something curious that may be reveals or one may want to be cautious about not reading too much into is when Brazile refers to the emails as leaked rather than hacked. Using the word “leak” is a big no-no when Dems speaks about this publicly, as it’s supposed to be Russians who broke into all these accounts rather than an insider who found the collusion with the Clinton camp nauseating.
Outside of that, the few parts worth reading which will likely be passed around on blogs are at the end:
and
Yup, looks like Ms. Brazile joins a long list of us with “CDS”(Clinton Derangement Syndrome). She must have made all this up, all the numbers, the accounting…Clinton defenders will attack this as “fake news” no doubt.
Her criticism of DWS is a lot harsher. I do not se CDS on Brazile’s part in this article.
And you think that DWS acted on her own, not under the direction of……someone else?
Regardless of whose advice she may have been taking, the buck stops (or should have) with her.
Just thing. In the fever pitch leading up to the election, both camps were calling the other one’s candidate a rapist or a direct enabler of a rapist.
Now, they’ll be moving on to which one was the biggest money launderer. 😷😂
No, that article says the Clinton campaign propped up the DNC with money, not stripped them of it.
Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races.
The article says that the Clinton camp was bringing in the money, so they would have to have control over various aspects of DNC, and they’d then take out the money that they wanted for their uses.
Not the leaked/hacked emails, but this more than anything – if true – established that the DNC wasn’t just tilting the narrative and biased towards Clinton, but that they served in some capacity as more of a subsidiary or extension of the Clinton campaign during the whole primary season – before even a single vote was cast.
It *does* validate what Clinton said in her book about the DNC being broke when her people first took a look at their finances. So, even though Clinton and Brazile are throwing mud at each other, at least here, they don’t appear to be making up fibs out of whole cloth and just miraculously make an identical claim.
Check out what you results you find from top mainstream news websites and magazines if you simply google “Democratic primary” today.
Oh shihhhhhhhh
Wash Po: “Elizabeth Warren and Donna Brazile both now agree the 2016 Democratic primary was rigged”
“Elizabeth Warren” trending on Twitter. Google her name also today.
None of this new stuff leads to a rigged primary, at least the way I define rigged. As far as I can tell supporters of both candidates had an equal opportunity to cast their votes and there has been no allegation of tampering with vote counts.
Yeah, no vote tampering allegations that I know of – at least not any allegations worth any merit. There have been, however, quite a few places where because of superdelegates, Hillary Clinton would wind up coming out with more delegates even in states where Bernie had won.
And, then there’s a case of over the NYC Board of Elections having purged over 200,000 people from the voting rolls, majority of which appear to have been in Brooklyn.http://nypost.com/2017/10/25/nyc-elections-board-admits-to-purging-voters-from-rolls/
Per usual though, the bleating is that there’s not been any definitive proof here or there – no proof of votes being flipped. No proof of then Sec. Clinton having done anything at State as result of donations to the Clinton Foundation of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of dollars to her husband.
In all due respect, if that’s the position that Dems take when confronted with what appears to be something really concerning, then hopefully they can understand why so few are contributing to the DNC today, and their cash on hand has been plummeting. Imagine that. Everyday Americans do not want to donate to an org that is supposed to be the ethical one but doesn’t seem to have any higher moral convictions than its main opponent.
I think it is past time to move beyond the Clintons. I voted for one or the other of them at every opportunity to do so. I don’t regret any one of those votes, for reasons that have been reviewed and re-reviewed on this site to the point of killing the site.
But it is definitely time to acknowledge, again, their unique and unparalleled skill in handing their opponents pointless propaganda victories. The stupid Goldman Sachs speech is one of these; now it appears that sponsoring the Trump pee-pee dossier is yet another. It is also time to acknowledge that the political reality of the 1990s is vastly different than it is today.
As to the point of this post: my dad paid union dues for nearly 60 years, and if someone opined to him that singling out his child, and my brother, for government persecution is somehow not a “working class” issue, he would break that someone’s jaw..
JTM is a single-issue voter. This is something that Democrats have very long experience with. When they know you are interested in XYZ, that’s what they talk to you about.
The thing that is odd is that JTM doesn’t really care to do anything at all about his single issue. Many, many kilobytes of data have been spent here suggesting this group or that, each of which is an interest group aligned with his stated preferences.. Were he to do that, he would receive communication about just such things, and would doubtless be joyful. But he doesn’t do any of that, so he doesn’t, and instead complains.
He isn’t interested in what communications he receives; he is interested in what communications everyone else receives. He isn’t interested in promoting his issue, but rather in excluding others. His primary objective is to make sure no one ever discusses anything that is not of direct and personal interest to him.
Editors, it has been well over 18 months of this exact conversation, repeated, re-repeated, and re-re-repeated, ad nauseum, ad infinitum. It has utterly degraded the quality, and certainly the variety, of discussion on this site.
If the objective is to bridge the divides in the party that were exposed last year, the means to that end do not include yelling “fuck you” again and again and again to the other side. That is, essentially, all this site now does, It is a shame, and a loss.
I wouldn’t put this all on one person; it seems to me that general participation is down, way down. Maybe everyone went to Twitter?
That’s a rather odd remark, unless you have hired a private detective and have a dossier on me.
Well, no. That’s not true. There are two issues that I care about above all others. One is an economy where the wealth is more equitably shared by all citizens. Another is health care; taking it out of the private sector and bringing it into the public sector.
So why am I addressing yours?
I’d call this a classic case of projection. Your post is all about me, not an issue we might discuss.
Appreciate the comment, and yes, I completely agree that the 2016 rehashing is, like weeds, indeed choking out more fruitful and timely discussion.
I’d like to strongly recommend to everyone this analysis of the left/liberal divide at the Guardian. It’s a very useful thing to try to fairly and accurately summarize opinions that you don’t necessarily share.
That being said, I’m not about to censor discussion that falls within the rules. I take your comment as a challenge to create more and better content, especially on the front page , which I surely should do more of.
For years, probably concurrent with the advent of Twitter and Facebook, I’ve found that I seem to have less interesting to say. The thing is that *the very process of writing creates the interesting things to say*, not necessarily the inspiration to do so.
In any event there’s still a place for the brief essay or rant — idiosyncratic and informative. The historian Timothy Snyder recommends –
Anyway, this is a note to self and anyone else who cares to help us follow suit here.
@ Choking out weeds:
I understand your desire to moderate with a light hand. I do my best to “create more and better content, especially on the front page”. At the same time, the editors do exercise editorial control over the content here.
Nevertheless, the “Recent Comments” section is still dominated by yet more Clinton-bashing, while rehashing events that were already reported and discussed when they happened well over a year ago. Discussing novel, factual, and relevant new information is part of every healthy blog. Endlessly repeating tired, false, and immaterial canards is not. In my opinion, BMG has too little of the former and too much of the latter today.
I think the last two paragraphs of CMD’s comment express my feelings very well indeed. The web is chock-full of attacks on Bill and Hillary Clinton. That’s not what drew me to BMG more than ten years ago.
Seeing these “weeds” take over BMG is, for me, watching a lovely home fall into ruins.
Gus Bickford is a vapid, opportunistic buffoon.
Shortly after Baker vetoed funding for a variety of much needed programs last year, I received an email – through a Google Alert – that Bickford had a statement. The statement in full was posted on the massdems.org, which has apparently since then been removed.
It was 2 short paragraphs where it was obvious that Bickford was ecstatic that there was finally something the Dem Party could be self-righteous and accusatory about. I want to make clear that it was quite apparent that Bickford was more concerned about how the Dems might be able to score some points against Baker than about people in the Commonwealth who rely on the programs that had their budgets slashed.
Bickford called for the full reinstatement of funding to 2 areas: The fight against the opiate crisis, and the MA tourism industry. The first is understandable, but there was something quite fishy about the latter. Of all the issues that Bickford wanted to prioritize as most critical, including a list of programs that included helping the homeless, Bickford argued that the MA tourism industry should be most immediately completely funded.
When Bickford was here in Medford in January, I asked him about this. He started by saying that there was more to his statement further than what I read. I had just read the content directly from the massdems.org site, stated as much, and that nothing else was included beyond that. He also countered that he said that other programs should be funded at other times. When I pressed for his rationale for why it was the tourism office that Baker must most immediately fund, he said that it was because Baker won in towns that rely on tourism revenue.
It’s just so craven and slimy. It’s not that Bickford really believes anything about what he declares. It’s that he believes that he can get a Dem elected by knocking Baker down a few points through posturing and hoping some Republicans or dissatisfied Dems hear him.
Prior to answering my question, he had boasted in his pitch for himself of his work in lowering Baker’s approval numbers and implied that this would make the difference in the election for governor 22 months later. During the Q&A section, an elder woman said that she was very concerned about a recent poll that had come out showing Sen. Warren with a lower than expected approval rating – esp., should she consider running against Baker for governor. Naturally, to this, Bickford flippantly assured her that a lot could happen since then to bring approval ratings back up, and that she shouldn’t be concerned about Sen Warren’s approval rating at the current moment.
Ah. Found it.
https://massdems.org/media/press-releases/518-massachusetts-democratic-party-chair-calls-on-charlie-baker-to-restore-cuts-to-critical-programs-and-services
The ad hominem name calling is completely uncalled for. Some of us are glad we finally have a party chair willing to take it to Baker and Bickford’s experience and record are such that we could hardly ask for a better one.
@Christopher, was your response supposed to be somehow related to the actual content of what I wrote?
Yes, you called Bickford a vapid opportunistic buffoon, hence my complaint about ad hominem name calling. You also characterized his response as craven and slimy, also not the stuff of civil discussion. You criticized him for being critical of Baker and I pushed back by saying that’s exactly what the party chair needs to do.
OK. Looks like we have to review the fundamentals, as you apparently do not understand them. If I say that someone is a liar, and then illustrate how they have lied, it’s hardly an ad hominem as much as it’s a thesis. If I had instead said, “Gus Bickford is an untrustworthy douche bag,” and left it simply there in order to attempt to discredit something he had said, then this claim of ad hominems being utilized would have had some merit.
Your argument that something is not “civil” is additionally meaningless and irrelevant about the content of what I wrote. So, you were personally offended that someone you highly value was criticized. That has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not what I saw was true.
And, please stop with the bullshit that I was simply critical of him for criticizing Baker. It was all elaborated there that Bickford called for immediately fully funding tourism and prioritized it above other programs that were cut not based on any other criteria other than that he thought it would dampen support for Baker in towns that he had won. I think that prioritizing that as more critical than so many other programs that people directly rely on to survive is disgusting.
Not only that, but Bickford flippantly tried to assure an elder woman that her concerns were unwarranted while arguing the exact opposite when he was bragging about his work to bring down Baker’s approval rating.
So, which is it? Approval ratings twenty months before an election are relevant or they are not? No, saying that you were offended is not an answer.
Mm, I’m gonna take jotaemei’s side on whether there was enough substance to the comment. Not pure ad hominem. I think we’d prefer avoiding the insulting language — Mr Bickford is a human being with feelings — but at the same time, politics ain’t beanbag.
To Tom’s comment below – Yeah, there were some nice features to the old site, but customization is expensive and we are now on the cheap. If anyone wants to shop WordPress plug-ins and find one that looks good for comments, I’ll consider. I’ve looked at Disqus, Facebook comments (nah), etc. And sometimes plugins just flat out don’t work with the site. So believe me I would love all the things that folks miss, but I’m not going to get a whole bunch of new custom work done on it.
I have zero tolerance for name-calling, especially against someone I know. I don’t care how backed up it is. Liar might be a bit different because it is a very specific accusation that can be demonstrated, or at least elaborated upon. Then again, for me you pretty much have to prove that the person making the false statement knew it to be false at the time it was made.
This is the kind of commentary that I think CMD was talking about upthread:
This comment would be VASTLY improved by removing the “fuck you” comments about Mr. Bickford (and the several participants here who know and like him). Whatever substance is in this comment is far more persuasive without the boorish taunts. If jotaemi thinks that other state programs deserve more attention than tourism, he can just say so.
When I first joined BMG, it was possible for the community to suppress offensive commentary by giving a certain number of extreme downvotes. The absence of that mechanism puts a much greater burden on already overworked editors.
I wonder what it could cost, in actual dollars and cents, to re-introduce on this platform. I would happily contribute to a targeted “pledge drive” (perhaps with a cute thermometer) to pay for such an improvement.
And, I would happily contribute to the purchase of your fainting couch if you could point out where I said “‘“fuck you’ comments about Mr. Bickford.”
Start with the first sentence of your comment. Or “It’s just so craven and slimy”, and the rest of the paragraph that follows. Would you say either of those to Mr. Bickford in person?
Yup, I’d love to be able to vote such commentary off this site.
“Would you say either of those to Mr. Bickford in person?”
I think that is exactly what the standard should be, and one I try my best to adhere to.
Today’s commentary demonstrates that undiagnosed and untreated CDS (Clinton Derangement Syndrome) continues to run rampant here at BMG.