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It's Sen.-elect Markey now
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So we replaced John Kerry
So we replaced John Kerry with a slightly taller version of himself.
no replaced John Kerry
with another old fart instead of a young guy with some good ideas and energy behind them. As ever.
Who was that guy? Was he in
Who was that guy? Was he in the primary? He certainly wasn't in the election.
A genuine legislator
We elected a genuine climate hero, and a genuine legislator to the United States Senate. Globe’s Jim O’Sullivan gets it right away
Because young people know everything
Ask any teenager
Good ideas? It's all relative.
Great ideas like taking us back to the Guilded Age? Taking away a woman's right to make informed decisions with her own damned body? By letting nutters own assault weapons?
This guy is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican and if that's your thing, go for it. But to pretend he has anything to offer but a slightly nuanced version of the GOP's party line is just plain lying.
I'm just glad we narrowly avoided having another Private Equity millionaire in Washington. Washington doesn't need more crooks subsidizing "private industry" at the expense of the middle class to fatten their own wallets.
You do know...
That there's already an assault weapons ban right? And that nobody has talked about repealing that ban?
So you'd rather have a political millionaire than a private equity millionaire? Do you know exactly what type of private equity deals Gomez did? Not all of it is evil....lots of biotech companies started with PE investments. Zipcar, Uber, Facebook....all use(d) private equity money to get started.
Guilded age
You know, I for one would like to see a return to the days when vocational education wasn't a dirty word.
What were we thinking?
Electing an experienced legislator and not the latest flash-in-the-pan.
The only thing Markey's too
The only thing Markey's too old for is moronic political theater.
So we replaced John Kerry
with another tired old party hack that hasn't had an original thought in 37 years. Here's hoping he'll be as ineffectual in the Senate as he's been in the House.
towering...
...boredom. Is Markey taller than 6'4"? Kerry is pretty Lurch-like in his height. That'd be one tall ass ice cream man.
It's now about officially impossible to elect a Mass Republican
I mean seriously - if Gomez changes his opinion on gun control, he's a fiscally conservative Democrat. If he can't get elected, I don't see any Republican getting elected any time in the near future unless they put a D after their name.
Michael Sullivan would have
Michael Sullivan would have had a better shot and possibly could have won.
heh
AH!
Funnyjunk?! I want to see the photo here! :(
Just Bender Bending
Just Bender Bending Rodríguez. Laughing at the hard, far right that thinks if they click their heels and clap their hands Massachusetts will just see things through their delusional viewpoint.
Whats in a name?
Most Republicans became Conservative Dem's in the state a long, long time ago. Whats left is a prelude to whats happening on the national level outside of the deep, red south. An insane base, driving the party to the right and inelectability.
Gomez was all over the map, and tried courting them and placating them way too much. Not only was it not going to work, but it soured the few people in the middle paying attention.
The other thing of note is the spread between Gomez and Brown. I highly doubt the difference is the "base" of the Mass GOP sitting home (5%...?). Brown won Marlboro both elections and Markey took it from the GOP tonight.
The real question is why it's so hard to re-do what Brown made look simple in 2010. Even Brown couldn't figure it out. Which is also interesting because Markey couldn't even pull in Coakley numbers tonight.
Tonight was ripe for a 2010 repeat, and it just didn't happen. Personally, I believe it's because people saw Gomezes antics and aligned them right with the national GOP, and the base in this state that apparently doesn't care to move out of being 11%'ers.
It would help...
...if the party nationally wasn't controlled by the bat-shit insane wing. Gomez didn't handle the abortion or gun control issues very adeptly either. And his entire platform seemed to be "I was a navy seal." I thought he had a good chance of following a Brown trajectory when he first started but the campaign was just sort of lackluster. And that's comparing it to Markey, which is saying something.
We're obviously able to elect Republican Governors. I think we could elect more Republican reps and senators if it weren't for the fact that they belong to a party that increasingly does not believe in science. I mean you can be cynical and feel that there really isn't much of a difference between the parties, but there is sort of a line there that is hard to deal with if you're a New Englander and bible-thumping freaks get in your face. If the pragmatists got back in control of the party I think we could easily have a GOP Senator or Rep.
Here's how
Massachusetts has a long history of electing Republicans for Governor in the post World War II era. John Volpe, Frank Sargent, Bill Weld, Paul Celluci, Mitt Romney.
Here's how a Republican win in statewide Massachusetts.
The Mass GOP needs to develop a farm system where candidates can learn their craft. Too often their candidates parachute into races they are not ready for. Gomez is the perfect example of this - one failed Selectmen's race doesn't but it.
Volpe, Sargent and Celluci were experienced candidates when they ran for the corner office. Weld and Romney were steeped in politics as well - Weld as U.S. Attorney and Romney watching his Dad.
In this sense, Dan Winslow would have been a stronger candidate.
The Mass GOP has to have a serious talk with the National party. Gomez, who it appears as a novice came within 10 points of a weak opponent, received virtually no financial support from the national party.
The national party seems hellbent on becoming a small regional party steeped in the religion and a conservatism that doesn't play well in the Northeast.
Thirdly the Mass GOP, like the national party, needs to broaden itself. It has become too much the byproduct of conservative Talk Radio/Fox News or as it was characterized after the Romney defeat to Obama, the conservative media industrial complex.
Today's Mass GOP statewide candidate starts with the distinct disadvantage of a spoiled brand. Congressmen who speak about rape not producing pregnancy, magical fiscal policies and even more magical foreign policies serve no one well.
As a democrat, I don't feel bad about giving these helpful hints as I believe that the national GOP leadership is hell bent on being the modern version of the Whig party.
Perhaps rather than putting a D after their name, an I might work better.
This is Exactly Right
I am a relatively middle of the road independent who generally votes D but could see myself voting R if they were the likes of Bill Weld from the 80s. But this was a national race and I never even considered for a moment voting for anyone without a D after their name because, put simply, the national GOP is run by a bunch of extremists who would utterly ruin this country if given the power to do so. At this point, national elections are so important in terms of holding off the extremists that I practically don't care who is running on the D ticket - I will vote for them just to prevent the Rs from increasing their mjority in the house or erroding the D's majority in the senate. Honestly, I didn't think Scott Brown was a half bad Senator, but elimenating his party vote was critical in staving off what the GOP is trying to do to America and sending a message that the shameful ideas that they stand for don't fly in Massachusetts. It is really too bad that population shift out of the Northeast reduced our hold over political power in this country.
State politics is a completely different issue and I generally agree that someone needs to start running candidates to break up the cabal that has control over the state legislature.
These comments crack me up
This is the Democratic version of what I hear from my Fox news loving friends and family. It's also similar to the charter opponents who take problems with the program nationally and apply them to Mass when we run a model program (certainly not perfect - but pretty damned good).
Gomez didn't exactly light my fire (although I voted for him as I've become a firm believer we a) need some R representation and b) we should have one D and one R in the Senate for maximum impact) and Scott Brown didn't strike me as the brightest bulb in the box -but both are decent people. This is exactly the problem - 35% of the electorate in this state wouldn't vote for the Messiah if he put an R after his name and would vote for Satan if he had a D after his name. Gomez got about 60% of the unenrolled - but that wasn't enough. Per my original point above - a Republican needs to garner about 70% of the unenrolled vote to win - and that's simply not realistic.
nat'l gop run by religious and economic extremists
Attn Repubs
^^^^^^^^^Read this comment.
Gomez can run again.
And if he runs in a year when the GOP in Congress isn't thoroughly soaked in batshit, I can vote for him and not worry that it will tip the scales in DC in favor of the disgusting Koch brothers.
Gomez = Democrat Light
The same can be said for the choice between a Democrat and someone who acts like a Democrat. Gomez seems like a decent guy with potential and like Brown vs. Warren, Gomez will probably still win more communities overall than Markey, but where did pandering to gays, illegals and the abortion crowd get him? He lost Provincetown 90-10 and was wiped out in the sanctuary cities of Cambridge, Brookline Lawrence, Lynn, Holyoke, Springfield, etc.
So Gomez gets nowhere in the far-left enclaves despite some far-left views and only manages to depress the turnout of conservatives and moderates.
Lest we forget, it took near miracles for Weld (John Silber's disastrous interview with Natalie Jacobsen), Cellucci (pathetic Democrat opposition), Romney (Shannon O'Brien asking the late Tim Russert if he'd like to take a peek at her tatoo during live debate) and Brown (see pathetic Democrat opponent) to win. It's hard to say a Republican can't win statewide when one hasn't run in years.
but where did pandering to
it worked for our last "republican" governor
Put your racism away, for one
And winning more communities has nothing to do with winning if no one lives in those community.
heh
Two things:
Romney was to the left of Gomez when he ran.
You’re right, obvious and blatant pandering doesn’t work. People don’t appreciate be patronized.
The state GOP needs to reach out and show people (women, gays, immigrants, minorities) with actions, not throwing them some talking point bone (with a wink to their base, who funnily won’t even let them play that game) when they need a vote.
How do you get preliminary numbers from the Elections Division?
How do you get preliminary numbers as the Elections Division http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleidx.htm compiles for Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bill Galvin?...
When I type "D" on my keyboard,
Thanks to my latest PC hack, when I type "D" on my keyboard from now on, the screen will render it as an extended middle finger.
This state needs a viable opposing party badly! Are there really not enough people out there who are tired of the Big D Machine (and I don't mean the lovers of WRKO and Fox25)?
Key Word
Indys and Conservative Dems take one look at the GOP base and recoil in disgust. They are not a viable option for a state that prides itself on it’s world class education system, and cutting edge science and technological industries.
We’re not Georgia.
Numbers don't seem to support that
I believe I've heard latest figures are 52% of the electorate in Mass is unenrolled, 35% dems and 11% R's? Assuming they all voted roughly along party lines - for Gomez to get 45% of the vote - some 2/3 of the indy's voted for Gomez. May be off a bit depending on mix of how many indy's and party affiliateds voted - but regardless - that's a far cry from recoiling in disgust. In today's world if you get 60-65% of the vote - it's a landslide.
Those numbers are assuming everyone voted
They didn't. Record low turnout.
No
they assume the people voted roughly in proportion to how they are registered. No matter - Dems outnumber Republicans by a wide margin - so unless Registered Republican turnout was a significant multiple of the Dem turnout (I doubt it) - Gomez still took an easy majority of the indy vote. that would be true for Patrick's election as well as Warren's too - higher turnout elections that almost certainly run much closer in proportion to registration.
But
35% != 50.1%
Going through he towns, it looks like Gomez underperformed quite a bit. You might call them Dem's just the same, as people called Gomez a RINO, but unenrolled is the largest constituent in MA and the one you need to win.
What does that mean
35% !=50%
I don't get it.
Underperformed relative to what? Again
35/50
35% does not equal 50.1%, which is needed for a majority.
I suppose if all Indys stay home, sure the GOP will never, ever will have a chance due to party identification. But that’s not at all how this state electorate works.
There’s a lot of socially super liberal, but moderately economic conservatives in this state (compared to elsewhere). There’s also plenty of actual Conservative positions ripe for the picking, that would bolster support from that big squishy middle. But the tiny base of the MAGOP is quick to silence them and get them in lockstep, or starts shouting RINO from the rooftops. Gomez was to the right of Romney, yet look at the bludgeoning he got for simply taking a few moderate positions (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) in the race. Even when it was transparently pandering, they would not let him. He was unpure.
That the GOP feels the need to be more like Georgia than a new England Republican of old isn’t a problem for anyone but them. They have NO support in this state, and they likely never will absent a protest vote against corruption. And it ain’t the Dem’s fault they’re seen as the only alternative.
That was actually the brilliance of browns pick-up-truck 1st camping. He ignored his party affiliation for the most part, the media did as well, and the even as the base wasn’t so hot for him, they let it slide.
Then he went to Washington, voted practically lockstep with the national party, and came home and was forced to run a GOP talk radio campaign that sunk him. The right wing media and consultants made quite a killing though. But they once again posioned the water.
One Part of Your Argument that Bothers me
I like your argument. It internally logical and my memory does say the national politics was not affect GOP branding as much back then. Media look at Brown and Croakley with much less focus on the affiliation. The rest I'm neutral in the assessment.
Except the part of Brown's time in the Senate. I remember the last comment dust-up when in the Brown-Warren Race. One part had Swirrly debating with someone else calling Brown a GOP waterboy who voted completely in line with the GOP. I went to check back then and still remember the link now.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/scott_brow...
The claim that Brown lost because he went GOP in Washington is not supported in the graph. To me, this undermine the narrative painted in your argument.
Thanks for finding that
Exactly - these are Democratic talking points - not facts (granted - there is a level of subjectivity in that graph - but it's equally subjective to both sides).
For Brown and Gomez to get the support they needed to achieve their vote totals, both took an overwhelming number of the unenrolled, but were unable to overcome the outsized liberal Democratic vote in the urban areas, metro Boston and Western Mass. It's frightening to see that very moderate and reasonable people like Brown and Gomez are pigeonholed with some of the psychos the Republicans put up in the rest of the country and even more frightening that they lose 9-1 in supposedly enlightened enclaves like Brookline, Cambridge and various parts of Boston.
Republicans do need to reach out more to minorities and women to be effective and some of the complete morons they pick in other parts of the country with their 17th century thought processes need to be weeded out of the bunch before they get on the ballot - much less suck precious resources from the party.
They need to focus on their core issues like strong national defense, smaller government, sound fiscal policy etc. If they stick to this knitting and enter the 21st century (or even the late 20th) on social issues, they would wipe the Dems off the map - maybe not in Mass - but certainly in the overwhelming majority of the other states.
They're "pigeonholed" because
They're "pigeonholed" because they chose to put a little "R" next to their name. Lie down with dogs, etc., regardless of how hypothetically "moderate" they are.
http://www.govtrack.us/congre
You'll forgive me if I glance suspiciously at a graph that says simply "ideology score" on one axis. WTF is that supposed to mean?
Digging into their "methodology" page, we discover that it is completely unrelated to Brown's voting record:
In other words, this is based solely on bills cosponsored by Brown, not his actual voting record, where, as claimed, he voted in virtual lockstep with the Republican leadership, obstructing bills that would have passed a simple up-or-down vote 30 times out of 32, before Elizabeth Warren announced her candidacy (at which point he had to attempt to present a veneer of bipartisanship).
You can read the gory details, including actual facts and figures, and list of legislation which Brown obstructed as a Senator from Massachusetts, here:
http://www.progressmass.org/press/new-study-progre...
Incomprehensible
A)How do you make sense of that
and
B) ANYTHING that is posted on a site with a name like progressmass is certainly not unbiased.
I saw a rundown of his voting record and the overall results - he was the deciding vote on a grand total of I believe ONE issue - something related to Taiwan buying F-16s I believe.
Bottom line - Mass is probably better served by having some Republican representation and let's face it - any Democrat would reach out to Scott Brown (or Gomez) for support on a borderline issue LONG before any Republican is going to give Warren a call. She has to be about the worst person anyone could send to Washington at a time when greater bipartisanship is needed. Markey may at least actually get one or two of those calls - we'll see.
Too funny
So, the material on that page was too complicated for you to understand, but you're willing to judge its veracity based on the domain name? Thanks for clearing that up. I'll try to stick to words of one syllable in the future.
Goes two ways
I get stuff from my fox news loving friends that I dismiss as not credible as well. That's the problem - too much partisan crap on both sides - like that stuff.
Bottom line - if you were a Democrat and needed a possible vote from the other side would you reach out to Brown - probably and probably one of the first people you'd speak to (along with a few other New England Senators).
If you are a Republican - would you bother wasting 30 seconds to pick up the phone and call Elizabeth Warren. If you want to waste 30 seconds fine - but I'm sure there are 50 other people you'd probably think of before you'd call her.
I don't need a blow by blow analysis from some left wing site with an obvious agenda to tell me that, but hey if it validates your and Sock Puppet's vote for one of the most corrosive people in DC - have at it.
Sorry if offering concrete
Sorry if offering concrete numbers offended your sensibilities. Please, continue making grand sweeping generalizations based on barely remembered websites you think you heard about once.
Concrete numbers?
Prefaced by blatantly partisan characterizations like this:
Among the 40 measures with majority support in the U.S. Senate that Republican Scott Brown voted with his Republican colleagues to obstruct were:
Sorry - get back to me with a more neutral analysis. Talk about lacking credibility. How can anyone that laps up crap with comments like that in it be credible?
You can argue about the methodology in the other study and it's only one measure - but at least it's analytically neutral.
Again - we sent a corrosive partisan person to replace a right leaning moderate (I've heard she even rubs a lot of people in her own party the wrong way). I get it that you may want a liberal - but electing a grotesquely divisive personality at a time when we need people who reach across the aisle is downright stupidity. Unless that leopard changes her spots - she'll be at best marginally effective for the duration of her tenure. We can at least count our blessings for that, and given that there isn't much pork left on the bone to hand out anyway, we won't miss the bacon that would otherwise be left on the table.
Who's "grotesquely divisive"?
Who's "grotesquely divisive"? Brown voted lockstep with the GOP leadership to block bills at virtually every opportunity. Those are the facts. If we had a few more "corrosive partisans" like Elizabeth Warren, we might actually have a Congress that cares more about people than banks.
Unbiased
Yeah, I'll take "Stevil saw it one time" over verifiable data any day.
He's just so credible!
Context Matters
On any and all votes of confidence, Brown was lockstep.
On votes where he was allowed by leadership, or votes for amendments and bills that never had a chance of passage, he started to get his "I'm a bipartisan guy" cred.
Now maybe I’m being too cynical. But you can’t have your cake and eat it to, and on every vote that really mattered, he never rebuked the party leadership. To me the big issuers to judge bipartisanship are first the bills he sponsored (among those he did and passed), and the votes he worked on to get passed even if it was unsavory to many in his party.
If you go digging, there’s just not much there but the typical Washington coverage game. Think the house voting for the 37th freaking time to defund Obamacare, just so those reps can return to their districts and put it in a commercial. That’s PR, not progress or anything to be proud of.
I won't even get into "is the middle really the middle". Snowe got "bipartisn" cred as well, but when you can't vote unless one side get 90% of what they demand, thats bipartisan?
For a state that prides itself on anything,
a one-party system is not a viable option.
You're right
And a two-party system is starting to look like not such a great deal either (nationally speaking).
Washington wasn't too hot on parties in general and said so in his sign-off from the Presidency:
Probably getting the immense gobs of money out of campaigns and having more than 2 parties that are forced to deal with one another in continually evolving coalitions, like a Parliamentary system, would be a bit better.
Not having regularly scheduled elections would help cut down the campaign season as well and get these assholes off the tv, radio and my phone. Other countries do this and they seem to survive it. Not so sure we're going to survive our current political system, sadly.
I'm fine with that!
I'm fine with that!
Thanks to my latest PC hack,
FIGHT THE POWER!!!1!11
How do you navigate the Elections Division website?
How do you navigate the website?... of the Elections Division of the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bill Galvin at http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleidx.htm Terminology for the Elections Division weblinks are confusing, vague !
The bottom line
MA won't elect any more Republicans to national level office until Rove-Boehner Inc. is deposed.
We all saw what happened to Scott Brown - and he had vastly more experience as a legislator than Gomez.
I thought it was cute that Gomez harbored some of the same delusions as Martha Coakley - i.e. that he could stride into office as a freshman senator and turn the place upsidown and rule the senate by decree, and make big changes in Washington!!!!
Naive.
Coakley was used to being a DA, Gomez a CEO, and neither seems to have any clue about how to maneuver in an environment of 99 peers, most of whom have greater standing and contacts.
Gomez seems to be a decent person and I don't think we have seen the last of him. He seems to have an energy for public service. He needs to run for state senate or rep or even state level office and get to work learning a new trade.
My gut tells me that his
My gut tells me that his point of stride of saying give him 17 months is to differentiate himself from Markey's 32 years in Congress. Re-framing the years of Markey as a negative (which I do see there's something poignant in that argument, isn't Congress at at 17% overall approval rate?) as already got his chance versus someone uninvolved with politics.