I’ve learned a lot talking politics and friendly sparring with everyone here. I’m 15 years older than when I started writing her as a teenager and have come to learn from the wisdom of others here I once fiercely disagreed with. Pablo was right that ranked choice wouldn’t work here, I recently conceded and joined his effort to pass top 2 or top 4 primaries instead. Fred and Terry were right about Biden, I now don’t see how another Democrat could win. And Joel, Mark, and a lot of others were right about Baker. He’s a Republican who consistently puts the needs of business before the needs of people.
I’ll make a confession. I like Charlie Baker personally and find him to be an affable and inoffensive guy. I even voted for him before, and while I did not in 2018, I lost no sleep over his re-election like I would have had Trump gotten a second term. He’s a slow and steady guy who follows the public on any issue. When we like trans rights, so does he. When we like school funding, so does he. Yet when it comes to the three biggest challenges of our time he has fallen woefully short.
The pandemic, fighting climate change, and racial justice. He has fallen short on all 3. He values reopening businesses over safely reopening schools. Time and time again. He mismanaged the VA in Holyoke and Chelsea. If DCF deaths can be blamed on Deval, and they were and should have been, so should the VA deaths on Baker. Hospital surges are the worst they’ve been since March and our vaccine rollout is an appalling 36th best in the country, despite having one of them invented in our own backyard. He’s also ending the moratorium on evictions and doing nothing to stop small business closures and job losses all over the area. We are now staring down one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. West Virginia Republicans are looking more responsive than this Massachusetts one, vaccinating their people and urging more not less spending on helping them dig out of this. Meanwhile he vetoed already watered down police reform and climate change bills, which even the squishy House has found the backbone to override.
Mariano has surprisingly come out swinging on those issues and I hope we can find the common ground to unite Democrats and independents to change the ship. Democrats have to be smart about who we nominate like we did with Biden. I loved Bernie and Warren, but Biden and only Biden could get the job done. Similarly, while I love Maura and Ayanna, we need a Democrat who can appeal to the centrist independents who decide our statewide elections. While we love to send liberals to Washington, we like sending moderates to Beacon Hill.
Three moderates in the House fit the bill:
Seth Moulton is a decorated marine who has built a reputation as a maverick in national politics. He swung and missed on challenging Pelosi and running for president, but his North South rail link could finally become a reality under President Biden and is the exact kind of bold project we need to push in this state. Pushing new infrastructure to make this state climate resilient can also put people back to work and make the affordable suburbs more accessible to urban dwellers which will help to desegregate them.
Jake Auchincloss casts a similar profile with a focus on bringing Green Jobs and biotech to the South Coast. The former Newton city councilor won over Fall River and New Bedford while appealing to independents. Yes he backed Baker in the past, so did 60% of Bay state voters, which makes him an even better voice to argue the case against Baker today.
Lori Trahan. She’s won over one of the swingier districts in the country while focusing on job creation and bread and butter economics. She’s a moderate voice on defense and foreign policy who’s matches the profile of her Northern Middlesex based district, the Ohio of Massachusetts politics.
Can’t risk a house seat? Joe Kennedy can run and win this race. Yes he ran against Markey and burned some bridges, but he’s an economic progressive with the name recognition to become an immediate contender. He won the communities Gonzalez lost in his primary run against Markey and could win back the Biden/Markey suburbanites in a head to head against a Republican rather than a popular Democrat.
Time to play smart. Ayanna and Maura got Senate seats waiting for them in 4 and 6 years time. A progressive can win the Mayors office. It takes a moderate Democrat to win the Corner Office and we need to elect one.
Four diaries – you must have had some free time this morning! 🙂
I remember when four diaries by various authors would be considered a light day.
Grades closed and I got my Salem State CAGS application out the door. So it felt nice to do some original writing unrelated to my job!
🙂
I spent a lot of years in sales and one of my best pitches was to tell a prospective customer this: All things are the same when they work and when they break, they’re all different. That’s when you will be thankful you bought from me. I’d go on to tell them about the reliability of my product, the availability of parts, qualified techs, and a dealership that had their back. I’d follow up with a long list of referrals. Call any of them. I made a lot of sales because I worked harder on protecting my reputation than I did trying to sell a product.
Charlie is a nice guy and when things went well in Massachusetts, he was no different than any of our good governors in recent memory. I had a hard time convincing people to vote for Jay Gonzalez in the last election because, well, there was not that much wrong with Charlie.
When everything worked in Massachusetts, Charlie was as good as the others, no different from the rest, but when it broke, we can see the difference. He blew it. He came up short. He made excuses.
Massachusetts is the home of MIT, Northeastern, Harvard….Tufts Medical, Brigham and Women’s, Beth Israel Deaconess, and when it came to rolling out a vaccine program, West Virginia left us in the dust.
Personally, I have friends, my age, in Indiana, Connecticut, California, St. Thomas, New York, and Florida who have all received their first vaccine dose. I’m 66 with asthma and high blood pressure…and I have no idea when I will be able to get my first vaccine, but thanks to Charlie Baker, I can hit the slots at the Encore from 9 AM till 9 PM. every day of the week.
I think this is a great point and one more and more public figures should be making so it sticks to him. He’s never been a leader and it’s showing.
I think Somerville’s own Joe Curtatone will be a strong candidate if he runs. I think mayoral experience is a better fit for the corner office than legislative chops. Being governor is an executive, rather than legislative, position.
I think Mr. Curtatone offers a good balance being centrist experience-tempered approaches and progressive vision motivated by traditional progressive values and priorities.
Somerville is enormously improved on his watch, and I think the same will be true of the state as a whole if we someday welcome Governor Joe Curtatone.
Also a good choice and I forgot he was interested in running. I’ve heard some criticism from Somerville progressives I’m friends with, but I’m beginning to think they are nationalizing local politics to a degree that is Tea Party-esque. Like Kennedy, he’s a good balance between the centrist and progressive wings of the party. Also a Beacon Hill outsider which is always a strong suit.
The complaints I hear from those neighbors who are unhappy with him is that he is too close to various developers. I haven’t seen anyone produce any credible evidence to support that charge, so I’m ignoring him.
I haven’t heard any complaints about his progressive views.
I assume you meant “…so I’m ignoring THEM”, i. e. your neighbors unhappy that he is allegedly close to developers?
Yes, that’s what I meant. I was distracted by my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter 🙂
FWIW, there are currently two Democrats officially (as in they filed with OCPF) exploring candidacies for Governor – Danielle Allen and Scott Khourie. I get nervous when people I never heard of shoot that high on the political ladder.
“When we like trans rights, so does he.”
That, to me, is the damning phrase here (understanding that JC isn’t mounting a defense of Gov. Baker’s positions). It sums up the kind of weak and ultimately dangerous leadership we get when we tolerate a Governor who lacks convictions entirely and is content sitting just a bit behind public sentiment instead of getting out in front of issues that matter to people.
I hope whoever runs for Governor in 2022 makes that argument — which is neither “progressive” or “moderate” — front and center.
Perhaps.
This sentiment is great for bumperstickers and perhaps interest-group organizing. It is terrible politics, especially if we want governance that actually changes society in desired ways.
I submit that demanding ideologues who make their fame “getting out in front of issues that matter to people” is precisely the formula for elevating the “ultimately dangerous leadership” of people like Donald Trump and Marjorie Greene.
Politics is a lagging, not leading, indicator. The purpose of elected officials in a representative democracy like our own is to REPRESENT the electorate. That is fundamentally different from leading.
Leaders who get out in front of issues that matter to people are vitally important for social movements, religious organizations, and similar activist entities.
I suggest that men and women who recognize and speak to matters that already concern the electorate — men and women like Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren — are better suited for the corner office.
Bumper stickers work. How else could Scott Brown win without his barn jacket and pickup truck? How else could Trump win without MAGA?
I agree that it is a sad commentary that bumper stickers work and that men and women who speak to matters that concern the electorate are often portrayed as “elitists'” but that is a reality in American politics.
As I discussed a few years ago with a good friend over lunch while we were on the subject, Democrats run candidates with excellent resumes but voters are more interested in cover letters.
John’s got a good point. I think a key selling point for Warren when she ran for Senate was that she had the backs of ordinary people, I think she lost that narrative in all the 12 point plans she ran on in 2020. Markey had a great ad that really encapsulated his career legacy and reapplied it to today’s challenges. ‘Ask what your country can do for you?’ had real resonance amid Covid and climate challenges. Even Build Back Better worked.
Massachusetts First, Not Last could work. Especially as we’re 46th in vaccine rollout, have one of the worst public transit systems and worst traffic in America, have a very high unemployment rate and sky high income inequality. All presided over by the do nothing Baker and his weather vane approach to leadership*.
*same can be said for the legislature but Mariano is making surprisingly progressive moves on climate, police reform, and housing equity.
Deval Patrick didn’t do much more than Charlie Baker, in terms of actual policy.
There is a middle ground between “do nothing” and “getting out in front of issues”. I enthusiastically agree that we need to field candidates who name, recognize, and build on movements that have already happened in the electorate.
That is different from using elected office to “lead” the electorate with an ideology that only a selected few “truly understand” — that formula has, sadly, been the hallmark of all too many activist groups.
Are you suggesting that our elected leaders should NOT lead from the front?
I’m saying effective political leadership leads by following — generally by being early to recognize and name an emerging movement.
It’s a bit like understanding the meaning of the classic Episcopalian understanding of “sacrament” — “the outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible change”. The sacrament recognizes something that has already happened.
The (Episcopal) priest who performs a marriage does not “cause” the god-driven union — the marriage has already happened between the people, and the priest recognizes, blesses, and publicly confirms an event that has already occurred.
“There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.”
This strikes me as the opposite of leadership. I think leadership means identifying an issue and persuading others to follow your lead and see things your way.
Can you offer some examples of successful governors or presidents who succeeded at what you describe?
FDR and Reagan come most immediately to mind, albeit from opposite sides of the political spectrum.
FDR is one of my favorite examples as well. FDR had overwhelming popular support for his proposals at day 1 of his presidency.
I know of no time during his first term — and perhaps even during his entire presidency — when his proposals were ahead of the electorate or the congress.
It was FDR, in fact, who famously told Democrats who thought he wasn’t moving fast enough to “Make me do it”. FDR was anything but a prophet leading his people. And yet he is surely among America’s greatest presidential leaders.
Ronald Reagan had similar status by the time he was elected for the first time. He was correctly called a reactionary because virtually all of his policy proposals were enthusiastically supported by voters who were tired of being stretched by “liberal” Jimmy Carter. A leader of a reactionary movement, by construction, cannot be ahead of its followers.
I contrast these two presidents with leaders like MLK, any of the leaders of the feminist movement, or the many “peace” and “green” leaders who have come and gone. Those leaders have been, at best, marginal political successes.