Lets not make the opening salvo in the Great Democratic Senatorial Primary Debate all about a traditional and very effective GOP wedge issue like the Death Penalty, shall we?
The electric chair and the gas chamber have polled pretty well down thru the years here in the Commonwealth, a one point in 1997, approval for the dealth penalty stood at 65% in Massachusetts.
Dunno what the numbers are like now, but even if they favor the dems it can't be by much.
Given the ease with which crime issues are demogogue'd by the republicans, I'd avoid deliberately giving them an issue right out of the starting gate come the general election.
Otherwise we don't wanna start that phase of the process explaining and clarifying whilst the usual a-holes in the local punditariat heckle & hoot unmercifully.
I mean, I can see it comin' guys.
Just sayin' thass all...
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
In Boston, it is still 1912
The Mayor runs for re-election of the number of pot-holes he has filled, the wedding receptions he has attended, the wakes he has gone to, the sheer dazzling increment of voters who have met him, his assiduous status as a success merchant in the economy of favors.
It is a pre-atomic mode of re-election and it occurs to me that Boston is one of the last urban communities in the West where this quaint approach still holds sway.
New York for example succumbed to celebrity politics a decade or more ago with that famously unstable camera-hound Rudy Giuliani.
Boston however holds firm in its old timey ways, and truly is there a politician in living memory better adapted to it than Tom Menino?
He is inarticulate at best, incoherent most of the time he never forgets a favor or a slight, he has been down your street, knows your state rep and has few enemies among the electorate when it comes time to open the polls.
He has no higher aspirations for office, indeed how could he? Tom Menino couldn't win office anywhere else in the country, not because he is manifestly incompetent or malevolent, far from it, he is schlumpy, mumbles too much and looks like a green-grocer from the 1930's for all his evident virtues.
So let that stand as an indictment of the current political zeitgeist in the USA, so if Menino is re-elected next month and likely he will be it is mostly because he has mastered the political arts of the pre World War One era.
It is a pre-atomic mode of re-election and it occurs to me that Boston is one of the last urban communities in the West where this quaint approach still holds sway.
New York for example succumbed to celebrity politics a decade or more ago with that famously unstable camera-hound Rudy Giuliani.
Boston however holds firm in its old timey ways, and truly is there a politician in living memory better adapted to it than Tom Menino?
He is inarticulate at best, incoherent most of the time he never forgets a favor or a slight, he has been down your street, knows your state rep and has few enemies among the electorate when it comes time to open the polls.
He has no higher aspirations for office, indeed how could he? Tom Menino couldn't win office anywhere else in the country, not because he is manifestly incompetent or malevolent, far from it, he is schlumpy, mumbles too much and looks like a green-grocer from the 1930's for all his evident virtues.
So let that stand as an indictment of the current political zeitgeist in the USA, so if Menino is re-elected next month and likely he will be it is mostly because he has mastered the political arts of the pre World War One era.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Idle political observation
Hubert Humphrey bounced back in the polls in 1968 only after he started in on Richard Nixon with commercials such as this:
Let that be an object lesson for any democrat in a tight race come next year.
Let that be an object lesson for any democrat in a tight race come next year.
Monday, October 05, 2009
Howie Carr has been playing with the whole world by
prison rules for years now, and no-one in the local punditariat has ever called him out on it.
No, even the local liberal columnistas have for the most part either enabled Howie outright or else silently passed over his increasingly gruesome tirades on the radio and in the public prints.
So of course, when a pseudononymous critic of Carr pops up on the Blue Mass Group, the Globe's own Joanie Vennochi has a problem a with Ernie Boch III's lack of a proper name.
Normally I'd snark out at Joanie's latest humorless screed, but today just once I'll merely note that the internet is essentially built one oracular call-signs, mysterious handles and odd pseudonyms. There is a difference even if it is metaphorical between someone who is anonymous and someone who is using a pseudonym. I for example use one simply because I'd always thought it cool as a writing gimmick, Ben Franklin and Ian Fleming both favored pseudonyms in their columnist days, why should Humble Elias deny himself?
The dino-media doesn't get any of this, Joan Vennochi certainly doesn't get it, in part because the internet seems outside her experience and also because an attack on Howie is somehow also an attack on Joanie, she must protect her own in the end.
Of course, if the Scot LeHigh's and Joanie Vennochi's of this world had done their jobs vis a vis Howie's Neronian excesses there would be no need for Ernie Boch III or Humble Elias for that matter.
But they shuck and jive when it comes to Howie Carr and therefore into the breach charges the bloggers for better or worse.
No, even the local liberal columnistas have for the most part either enabled Howie outright or else silently passed over his increasingly gruesome tirades on the radio and in the public prints.
So of course, when a pseudononymous critic of Carr pops up on the Blue Mass Group, the Globe's own Joanie Vennochi has a problem a with Ernie Boch III's lack of a proper name.
Normally I'd snark out at Joanie's latest humorless screed, but today just once I'll merely note that the internet is essentially built one oracular call-signs, mysterious handles and odd pseudonyms. There is a difference even if it is metaphorical between someone who is anonymous and someone who is using a pseudonym. I for example use one simply because I'd always thought it cool as a writing gimmick, Ben Franklin and Ian Fleming both favored pseudonyms in their columnist days, why should Humble Elias deny himself?
The dino-media doesn't get any of this, Joan Vennochi certainly doesn't get it, in part because the internet seems outside her experience and also because an attack on Howie is somehow also an attack on Joanie, she must protect her own in the end.
Of course, if the Scot LeHigh's and Joanie Vennochi's of this world had done their jobs vis a vis Howie's Neronian excesses there would be no need for Ernie Boch III or Humble Elias for that matter.
But they shuck and jive when it comes to Howie Carr and therefore into the breach charges the bloggers for better or worse.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Capuano in Menotomy
At the home of a very very very good democrat indeed Congressman Mike Capuano held a well attended meet-n-greet. Mike was funny, well informed, passionate articulate. He is clearly running as a sort of left wing "Rocky Balboa" citing himself with his blue collar background as "the guy who wasn't supposed to win".
It is a very persuasive message when yoked to his message of health care for all, civil and human rights and a stern stewardship over issues of war and peace.
When the time comes, he will debate extremely well indeed, I expect at the least he will have Steve Pagliuca for breakfast, Martha Coakley and Alan Khazei should take note.
Steve Pagliuca's TV commercials BTW are an embarrassment to the trade, they are whiny and seem to be saying "Just tell me what to think and I will think puh-leeeez??!!"
Not an auspicious start.
Anyway, back to Capuano, he is gonna run as a boot strap walk the walk liberal and that is fine by me. If Mike has a problem it is existential and a common one to politicians on the rise; on the one hand he trumpets his effectiveness on the other hand he wants to come across as a steel ribbed Man of Principle.
Those are contradictory notions, akin to Richard Nixon's mania for a quaint 19th century dignity chained to pathological desire to drink the blood of virgin cheerleaders from Moline Ill on live TV all in a bid to rebuke his liberal critics.
Truly Mike Capuano can't run as the world's most effective incorrigible can he?
Maybe he can, worse candidates have reconciled contradictions twice as daunting...
As for Capuano's audience it was mostly composed of Menotomy's most active and irredeemable progressives, although it is interesting to note that only one elected officer of the Town Democratic Committee was in attendance. Of the local machers State Representative Will Brownsberger, Senator Ken Donnelly and Menotomy Selectperson Clarissa Rowe were the apex standouts in the aud.
What this sez is, that despite a strong profile in town, local democrats are not fully united behind their earstwhile neighbor Martha Coakley.
Anyhow the game is afoot.
It is a very persuasive message when yoked to his message of health care for all, civil and human rights and a stern stewardship over issues of war and peace.
When the time comes, he will debate extremely well indeed, I expect at the least he will have Steve Pagliuca for breakfast, Martha Coakley and Alan Khazei should take note.
Steve Pagliuca's TV commercials BTW are an embarrassment to the trade, they are whiny and seem to be saying "Just tell me what to think and I will think puh-leeeez??!!"
Not an auspicious start.
Anyway, back to Capuano, he is gonna run as a boot strap walk the walk liberal and that is fine by me. If Mike has a problem it is existential and a common one to politicians on the rise; on the one hand he trumpets his effectiveness on the other hand he wants to come across as a steel ribbed Man of Principle.
Those are contradictory notions, akin to Richard Nixon's mania for a quaint 19th century dignity chained to pathological desire to drink the blood of virgin cheerleaders from Moline Ill on live TV all in a bid to rebuke his liberal critics.
Truly Mike Capuano can't run as the world's most effective incorrigible can he?
Maybe he can, worse candidates have reconciled contradictions twice as daunting...
As for Capuano's audience it was mostly composed of Menotomy's most active and irredeemable progressives, although it is interesting to note that only one elected officer of the Town Democratic Committee was in attendance. Of the local machers State Representative Will Brownsberger, Senator Ken Donnelly and Menotomy Selectperson Clarissa Rowe were the apex standouts in the aud.
What this sez is, that despite a strong profile in town, local democrats are not fully united behind their earstwhile neighbor Martha Coakley.
Anyhow the game is afoot.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Go Ernie GO!!!
Kick Howie Carr's teeth in, thass all I can say!
From the looks of Howie's column today I'd say the whole campaign to boycott his radio advertisers seems to be getting under his skin...I mean the damn thing is nothing but a autistic litany of his favorite insults and put-downs "Dukakoids, Moonbats" etc etc.
Sad, Howie was once a local colossus now look at him tangling with a blogger like a mid-carder with a blown out back.
No it isn't sad it's delicious gimme more sez Humble Elias.
From the looks of Howie's column today I'd say the whole campaign to boycott his radio advertisers seems to be getting under his skin...I mean the damn thing is nothing but a autistic litany of his favorite insults and put-downs "Dukakoids, Moonbats" etc etc.
Sad, Howie was once a local colossus now look at him tangling with a blogger like a mid-carder with a blown out back.
No it isn't sad it's delicious gimme more sez Humble Elias.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
"A Military Coup has been Long Overdue"
So sang Ray Davies in far palmier times, but this would also be The Bright New Idea earnestly espoused by wingnut columnist John Perry over on the conservative Newsmax site.
Y' know what?
I sympathize, when you are unpopular and out of ideas radical armed action sounds very seductive.
Hey man, I've been there.
After all on this very blog i once joked about deposing Governor Romney via judicial fiat and some mock scary videos being sent to then Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey.
The point is, Humble Elias was kidding, this poor raving dupe is serious.
Sad really.
Coming during a week when Facebook had to delete a "Should Obama be shot" poll then you have to wonder if movement conservatism (having lost everything eighteen months ago) can find any hope or long term security in moving even further to the right into the land of armed dementia?
Right now, movement conservative is sitting in a corner, muttering curses to itself, sucking it's thumb and stroking a toy pistol...This is in a word the "loyal" opposition the people President Obama is supposed to be negotiating with over health care, defense policy, treasury matters etc.
Frankly all Mr. Perry's column really tells me is that Barack Obama's summer long bid to conciliate the GOP has been a failure as across the table from him are nothing butguys in Brooks Brothers straitjackets.
Y' know what?
I sympathize, when you are unpopular and out of ideas radical armed action sounds very seductive.
Hey man, I've been there.
After all on this very blog i once joked about deposing Governor Romney via judicial fiat and some mock scary videos being sent to then Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey.
The point is, Humble Elias was kidding, this poor raving dupe is serious.
Sad really.
Coming during a week when Facebook had to delete a "Should Obama be shot" poll then you have to wonder if movement conservatism (having lost everything eighteen months ago) can find any hope or long term security in moving even further to the right into the land of armed dementia?
Right now, movement conservative is sitting in a corner, muttering curses to itself, sucking it's thumb and stroking a toy pistol...This is in a word the "loyal" opposition the people President Obama is supposed to be negotiating with over health care, defense policy, treasury matters etc.
Frankly all Mr. Perry's column really tells me is that Barack Obama's summer long bid to conciliate the GOP has been a failure as across the table from him are nothing butguys in Brooks Brothers straitjackets.
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