[We report; you decide. — Charley]
We need to address climate change! Massachusetts needs to solve it’s transportation crisis! Progressive politicians in Massachusetts have got to start acting…progressive!
These are the usual moans and groans I read here. Not only is it frustrating to read the same postings over time–it’s a sign of insanity. What is it Einstein (allegedly) said, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”.
That pretty much sums up my feelings every time I read about climate change or similar plea to change the current political status quo.
As I have argued here before (and was generally ignored) we can not achieve a single thing until the election system is reformed to weaken the special interests and the end protections of incumbency. So you can lobby, protest, blog all you want about all the issues we care about, put unless we change the rules of the game, we will continue to lose. Why would anyone expect the outcomes to be any different, if you continue to play by the same rules?
One example of the rules that Massachusetts plays by is the is “challenger repellent” rule that allows law makers to horde campaign cash overtime. Anyone even thinking of challenging an incumbent, rethinks the race when they realize the incumbent already has twice as much in the bank as needed to run a campaign. Commonwealth Magazine provides the ugly details. The incumbency protection system in Massachusetts and elsewhere is strong and, for whatever reason, is not viewed as an impediment to the very policy goals progressives want to pass. Why people ignore the structural issues that keeps kicking the tough issues down the road is beyond me.
I don’t think democratic reform is MORE important than climate change. But I do recognize that it has to get done first, so that we have a system that acts more in the public interest than the special interests funding the current status quo. So I am curious, why do people still bang there head against the wall demanding the same policy changes, year after year when you are doing nothing to change the dynamics of the system? It is the definition of political insanity.
Heh. I suppose because I am able to post diaries on BMG, and I am essentially powerless to change the dynamics you described. We do what we can.
I also feel compelled to mention that this is not the first diary I’ve seen here advocating the aggressive pursuit of “democratic reform” in Massachusetts. In my view, the diaries about climate change, transportation, and progressive policies are no less useful or valuable than this one about democratic reform.
I think that citizen and voter engagement in the political process is perhaps the most important first step towards making any of these several needed changes. I also think that diaries and exchanges on sites like BMG serve a valuable role in increasing that citizen and voter engagement.
That’s why I don’t share your perhaps sarcastic assertion that the activity here at BMG is “insane”.
So long as progressives in Massachusetts reward politicians who routinely lie to them, than I do not see this changing. Charley openly said he would not vote for his state rep, but then proceeded not to support his viable primary challenger last time. People in Cambridge complain about Decker all the time, but the only progressive brave enough to run against her, Lesley Phillips, gets no love from this online community or the Cambridge voters. Rushing and Sanchez finally got a challenger and half the commentary here defended them as ‘one of the good guys’.
Kate and Judy Meredith are rightly feted as grassroots Democratic demigods, but they routinely defend and align themselves with the same lousy incumbents. Our viable third party effort got derided here and went nowhere since this state was too afraid to even consider anyone without a D next to their name. The regressive nature of the MA Democrats is the primary reason I remain unenrolled. I know I am not alone in that regard.
Backing ranked choice voting is the single most effective political reform we can enact in the short term. Everyone who has ever complained about DeLeo here should sign off on it. It means no more crowded races where multiple progressives split the vote. It means third party votes are no longer wasted and state based political parties or progressive lists could form and become a feature of our politics like they are in NY state.
More radical reforms won’t happen. It would be nice if we could have a nonpartisan unicameral legislature like Nebraska. Nice to have real honest to god term limits. Nice to have campaign finance reform. But any of those reforms are DOA on the Hill which serves and protects its own while fleecing the rest of us. We should stop rewarding such conduct with our votes.
I’m much more receptive to ranked choice voting in state elections, at least to begin with.
I am fortunate in that my own state rep is a winner.
I think we already have term limits — every representative stands for reelection every two years. So far as I know, the residents of Mr. DeLeo’s district are very happy with him as their representative, and I don’t think he should be forced to step down because others (including me) don’t like him. I would not like to see Ms. Provost forced to step down because of some arbitrary term limit restraint.
I might add that the 22nd Amendment remains among the worst pieces of misguided rubbish that I can think of. It was promulgated by a GOP who hated FDR then as it does now. I can think of no examples where the 22nd Amendment improved the incoming administration, and at least two examples (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) where a third term of the incumbent would have been VASTLY preferable to what happened.
So I see no evidence that term limits help and what is for me compelling evidence that term limits hurt.
My issue with Mr. DeLeo is his elevation to Speaker, not his presence in the MA House.
I’m not a term limit fan, as you wind up with a state house where all the institutional memory (and power) is with the lobbyist who have been around forever. But RCV is but one reform. There are many others. Why should politicians be able to sit on a horde of cash to scare away challenges. CT makes politicians close their election accounts ever cycle and makes them all start at zero again. Even better, politicians have the option for public funding. Is it any surprise the CT has one of the most competitive legislative races in the country. While incumbents always will have the advantage, they have a lot less advantages in CT. Maybe even DeLeo would lose an election if he had to start at the same starting line as his opponent every election. Instead he, and all the incumbents start with an enormous head start. Until that changes, they system won’t change. And you know what? That’s insane!
Honestly you don’t think the lobbyists are writing the legislation now? At least my way the three men in a room model finally dies and progressive lobbyists also get to write the legislation. Worked just fine for CA, WA, and OR. Your reform is great and would be enforced about as earnestly as the clean elections act or the prior term limits bill the court foolishly overturned.
Well, a small but I think meaningful correction to your timeline of my actions: I made known my breakup with Sean Garballey *after* the 2018 general election — not in time for the 2018 primary obviously, but looking forward to 2020. This was not a hasty decision. We’ll see if anything comes of it.
In any event, I think the mechanism of change is the primary challenge. If the mighty Ways and Means chair can be ousted, then everyone else should be looking over their shoulder. And given the size of the putative Progressive Caucus, we need to make our legislators know that a co-sponsorship or a press release is insufficient — that we *require them* to use their leverage as a bloc; and that checking a few boxes on cheaper, easier issues doesn’t release them from addressing bigger, more complex, and yes, expensive challenges. We expect results. I do think this awareness is somewhat new since last election, and I give the supporters of Nika Elugardo and Jon Santiago huge credit for that.
Mike Connolly is also a great example of a primary challenge succeeding and leading to legislative breakthroughs. Few people are co-sponsoring his ideas today, but he’s always on the news as a drum major for them and that has shifted the conversation. You also set a good example to follow. Nobody deserves your vote, and those that don’t earn it shouldn’t get it.
Slapping around BMGers by name – bitter much?
I plead guilty to click-bait headline writing in the First Degree. But aside Conway and myself, I don’t see a lot of democratic reform discussion here. Of course “citizen and voter engagement in the political process is perhaps the most important first step towards making any of these several needed changes”.
But if the focus is on changes votes or legislators, with out changing the rules that we all play by, we will lose again. And the people that get involved for the first time, get disenchanted because “it was rigged”.
I’m just tired of 95% of the conversion being about issues we need to change that can only be addressed by deriving the system. How do change a State Senators mind when they’re sitting on a million bucks and know no one will challenge them. We need a lot more perspective as to what the real challenge is in achieving progress.
Again you two make my point. As soon as I propose the one reform that independents and Republicans can get on board with, you jump ship citing Teddy Kennedy and FDR. I’ve heard it all before. We are not talking about the presidency or even the US Congress, we are talking about Beacon freakin Hill. I am only proposing term limits for our less than august legislature. Anyone who’s failed to move upward after ten years can’t hack it nationally so they hack it up locally. Three convicted felons in a row in the Speakers chair. The Athens of America having Billy Bulger as its Demosthenes. It’s a disgrace.
WA, OR, CA are frequently cited here as ahead of us on climate and other progressive priorities. They all have hard term limits. I do not think that is a coincidence. All three states also have stronger initiative powers. All three have strong progressive Democratic governors who can actually pass their platforms. It can be a double edged sword (Prop 8 or the CA budget crisis), but for the most part they seem to do better. ME has term limits and now has IRV, and it won’t be long until they leapfrog us too.
Finneran ignored term limits and campaign finance reform, and DeLeo would ignore that CT law today as well. Primary the bastards, just don’t have a conniption anytime that happens to someone you like. It’s the only way we can change the culture is by changing the membership and raising the price on the Rollover Caucus.
I thought the one reform you were proposing was ranked choice voting. I agree with that, for state elections.
We are talking about term limits. My experience is that term limits have done more harm than good. Citing WA, OR, and CA means very little to me — I don’t know who has been forced to step down because of term limits there. I don’t see CA as a positive model for much of anything; government in CA seems to be as broken or more so than government here. The most obvious fruit of the “stronger initiative model” of California is proposition 13 — after being translated to proposition 2 1/2, arguably the single most devastating change to Massachusetts law in my lifetime.
The only time I cited Ted Kennedy is in a different discussion — where you were, in fact, proposing to change the process for the Senate primary election.
Anytime a “reform” is supported by the Massachusetts GOP, I get VERY nervous.
The proposal to reset campaign accounts each year is more appealing to me than term limits. I like the idea of ranked choice voting in state-level elections.
Again, I’m not a fan of term limits. But given the advantages the rules of the current game, saying that “voters” are the way to implement “term limits” is naive. If you don’t have meaningful campaign finance reform, or independent redistricting and other changes, voters have a hard time implementing this kind of “term limits”. Heck, how many incumbents ran unchallenged last cycle in MA? The reason many ran unopposed is NOT because everyone like them, but the hurdles were so high for potential challengers, they choose not to run. We need real reforms or the status quo will prevail.
That’s entirely a decision left up to the electorate. ‘term limits’ are merely a technocratic answer to a distrust of the electorate: that the voter won’t ‘do the right thing.’ Well, guess what, sometimes they won’t do the right thing. Other times, they will. Putting a limit on the franchise is not democratic.
Except that the voters of this state already overwhelmingly approved a referendum “limiting” this franchise back in the 1990s and the polling I’ve seen on the subject confirms that it still commands huge across the board majorities. Appeals to democracy cut both ways, the legislature has consistently ignored the will of the people on clean elections, term limits, and speaker term limits and will continue to do so barring a major anti-incumbent revolt at the polls.
As for Charley’s point, I know you endorsed him with reservations, but maybe give that challenger a call or recruit another. He had a close shave last time. He’s definitely beatable.
As for Tom’s point, RCV is the only reform that will be on the ballot anytime soon and it would substantially lower the barrier to political participation. It also is better protected from a court challenge or legislative inertia on implementation.
I think term limits are a terrible idea.
I remember when the voters overwhelmingly approved proposition 2 1/2. That was and still is an utter disaster. The voters were absolutely wrong. All of us have suffered since then.
I view term limits as a comparably bad idea.
Proposition 2 1/2 and term limits (and a relatively long list of other initiative petitions) demonstrate to my satisfaction that the initiative petition process is itself a terrible substitute for a functioning legislature.
Legislating is hard work, and most voters are unwilling to do that hard work. Quick and easy bumper-sticker slogans are almost always wrong.
I wonder how much time we participants in this exchange have spent in actual live town meetings. Sitting in a town meeting — gavel to gavel — is a surprisingly good way to get an appreciation for the strengths and weaknesses of “appeals to democracy”.
Earlier you asserted that voters are the best term limits and now when they vote for term limits you question their capacity to legislate and defer to legislative expertise. The same expertise that refused to enforce public health care or clean elections law when they were passed and annually punts on raising revenue.
Perhaps my reforms will lead to bad outcomes down the road. I also don’t see anything else shaking up the entrenched establishment. Certainly not another progressive governor.
I think what Tom is saying, and I agree, is that voters cannot and should not limit the choices of other voters down the road. If voters don’t like an incumbent they can vote against that person. Just don’t deprive me of the opportunity to vote for that person if that is my choice.
What part of ‘voters sometimes make the wrong decisions’ means we have to live, in perpetuity with that wrong decision???
I vaguely recall voters wanting to limit federal terms, but that was overturned by SCOTUS on the grounds that only the federal Constitution could do that. If they had approved state term limits that would be in the state Constitution and could not simply be overturned or ignored by the legislature.
You and Tom constantly harp on the voters for failing to do the right thing. Tom actually rebuts my appeal to statewide voters enacting term limits by attacking them for supporting Prop 2 1/2. I think they are a means of ensuring new blood comes into the legislature and destroying the entrenched power of the speaker that everyone here conceded is an impediment to progress. Seems a lot easier to win a statewide ballot intiative than winning 140 primary challenges.
But what if we don’t want to win 140 primary challenges? The voters in each district considering each incumbent ought to have the opportunity to vote for or against that incumbent on an ad hoc basis.
But you ignore the inherent advantages the current system gives incumbents: Among them, they can horde a massive campaign fund to scare opponents away. Keeping the current rules in place make’s it very hard to have a “natural democracy” where incumbents have to actually defend their records every two years. But based on past comments, you seem to think everything is fine with the rules of the system (you also oppose public financing of campaigns based on past comments) and you blame the lack of progress on “the voters”. That is a cop out…much like blaming the victim. Do you support any kind of reform, or do you think the status quo is fine?
I would love to have public financing (not sure how you got the impression otherwise since that is a long-held opinion on my part), or failing that at least restricting donations to individuals rather than PACs. I’ve also considered the idea of turning excess cash over to another entity such as a charity, the party, or even the public.
I love the idea of turning unspent campaign contributions over to the general fund of the state every two years.
I based the on you lack of support for public financing in this exchange awhile back. http://bluemassgroup.com/2018/05/ma-democrats-are-ignoring-money-in-politics-as-issue/
I don’t see the inconsistency. I would prefer public financing, but given that we allow contributions I do think our limits are pretty low and I think some of the restrictions on public employees based on interpretations I’ve heard in trainings on this subject are ridiculous.
BTW … ” don’t have a conniption anytime that happens to someone you like” …
Now that Ms. Pressley has been our rep for a few months, do you think she’s doing more or less in the current environment than Mr. Capuano would have done? When you enumerate the issues before Congress that matter to you, do you think the change so far has been positive or negative?
Just wondering.
She’s been a far more visible progressive ally. Her, AOC, Talib, and Omar are making huge waves. I don’t recall Capuano for all his virtues proposing something as bold as the Green New Deal. It is doubtful a longtime pol like Markey would’ve been so eager to join a freshmen house member in sponsoring it were it not for that challenge. I saw Mike several weeks ago coming out of a BU building and he had a big smile on his face, a nice suit, and a brand new car. He waved back at me and seems to be doing just fine.
I’m specifically referring to Ms. Pressley, not AOC. The Green New Deal initiative was rolled out by AOC and Mr. Markey.
I’m really not trying to criticize Ms. Pressley. I’m saying instead that I don’t see much happening from her. When I google her, I find that I agree with her stances on most issues — that was also true of Mr. Capuano.
I’m waiting to see leadership from her on any of the following (in no particular order):
– Impeachment hearings
– Taxation
– Transportation infrastructure
– Health care
– Social Security/Medicare stabilization
One more comment …
If you are tired of me railing about climate, you have no idea how sick I am of doing it. For years I have felt like no one, including progressives, actually seemed to care that much: Something to pat you on the head for; but not pressing, like, say health care.
But I have decided that this is my beat (as health care once was), and have gone under the assumption that “when you’ve said something so often you’re sick of saying it, most people are just hearing it for the first time.” I am glad it seems to be finding some purchase on the left; I am horrified that it has taken this long.
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/22/18510953/climate-change-2020-bernie-sanders-donald-trump-harvard-poll
So if there is content you would like to see on BMG, a perspective you think is important: Show don’t tell. Write it yourself. Lead the way.
I have to assume you know I used “BlueMass Group” and the general issue of climate change as metaphors for the larger issue in MA and national progressive politics. And the is we need to recognized that the big issues like climate change won’t get addressed, unless the less sexy and wonkish issue of democratic reforms are addressed.
So don’t stop writing about the climate. But in your “solutions” bag, democratic reforms have got to be on the top three on your list (I’d argue at the top of the list). The problem with arguing we need to change our politicians to address climate change or more people have to get politically involved to address climate change or true only in theory. The reality is the rules are so much in their favor (the entrenched politicians) that efforts to change our politicians are nearly impossible.
We need a political environment where voters ousting a powerful legislative chairman is the norm and not a isolated example of “change”.
Thanks. It’s my intention to let House progressives know that their votes on supposedly insider-y, abstruse process matters, like rules and leadership, are not free votes with no consequences. As Judy Meredith says, elected officials act differently when they know someone’s paying attention.
I love what you’re doing man! It’s also polls better with swing voters than any other issue, including gun control and health care. I really think people are begging for bold national leadership on this issue.
Thx bro (high five)
One minor campaign finance rule change could be that money raised for one political office could not be used by the candidate to run for a different political office.
For example, let’s say that I’m a state rep. I run for several years unopposed, and accumulate $100k in the bank. Then a state senate seat opens up. We could prevent me from using that $100k to run for the state senate seat. I would have to raise funds from scratch just like all other candidates. I would still have an advantage due to my political connections, but I would at least not have a $100k head start on fundraising.
If you want to get even more aggressive, require all war chests in place on Jan 1 following an election to be given to charity or surrendered to the state.
Or even better–like Connecticut–why not require all campaign funds be spent in the election year in question and you have to start your fundraising from ZERO for your next campaign. So under your example, I run for state rep and win. I have to close down the campaign account for this election–either returning contributions to donors, donating to charity or give the funds to the pubic campaign financing program.
So when I run for reelection, I start at the same fundraising point as my challenger in the next cycle. Given the culture in MA politics–where the first thing a new elected learns from lobbyists and entrenched incumbents, is to raise twice what you need to scare off potential opponents–that sounds like a pipe dream. Yet it is done in other states. So why can’t we do it here??? (Answer, citizens sit on there hands and many activists would want to upset their “friend”, their local politician that always says the right thing, even though they often vote wrong.)
As Senator Wolf said to us in the audience at the State Party Convention a few years ago during a break out session on wealth disparity, “nothing is going to change until you send different people to Beacon Hill.”
I’ve taken a brief vacation from banging my head against the wall, with the exception of working for the Warren 2020 campaign. Maybe a break from it all will clear my head?
And my question to Sen. Wolf would have been, “How do we send different people to Beacon Hill when incumbents have so many advantages built into the rues of the game?”
The incumbents make the rules. Maybe we just withdraw and let the Republicans take over and re-start with actual pro-working class Democrats?
Perhaps we follow the Donald Trump playbook and accomplish a hostile takeover of the Massachusetts GOP.
I’m not entirely facetious. The Massachusetts GOP is dead, and the Massachusetts Democratic Party is an irrelevant anachronism.
It would make for an interesting movie script. I like the concept.
Ballot petitions…and then we don’t sit back and watch the legislators repeal a law passed by the citizens…like what they did in 1998 with public campaign funding.
Electoral reform is important, but baldly asserting that “not a single thing” can be achieved until that happens is flat-out reductionist and I urge you to walk that back.
Political change is complex; maybe ranting about climate change is a precondition to achieving electoral reform. (Don’t ask me how.)
The problems we face are not only related to the formal rules of interest articulation. They run much deeper than that, and are overdetermined.
Politics is the art of the possible. When I think of all the things I “know” must be done, it becomes impossible. A little humility however goes a long way.
So far I don’t see evidence of the linear path we are on creating nearly the level of change required to confront the issues before us. So without a shift in thinking (fact the rigged system) I see no progress.
BTW, can you give me an example of any mainstream political debate that is not reductionist? Given the complexity of many issues, all public policy issues debated is done in a reductionist manner.