Goo-Goo Watch: Term Limits

This is just silly, so silly in fact that I find myself agreeing with Maureen Feeney, whom I despise:

At the hearing and meeting, she went on about being raised to vote, vote, vote. When several voters testified at the hearing that they had little interest in municipal elections, she did not take that as a condemnation of pre-determined outcomes. Rather, that was mortal flaw in the testifier. She represented the anti-limits contingent in declaring that voters had their say (and duty) every two and four years to decide who deserves to be in office. She also represented the related view that it is anti-democracy to limit the voters’  choices by precluding perpetual office holders.

The problem with the term limits crowd is their inability to foresee consequences  – or know their history, because those consequences exist as precedents.  Simply put, term limits are a form of mass moral cowardice on the part people who want to game the system without putting in the sweat equity.

It almost always backfires.

This crap about citizen-legislators, divorced from politics, taking back government from entrenched incimbents started on the Right in the Seventies, and the results (as in California) increased corporate power and decreased governmental accountability. 

It’s not all that difficult to beat an incumbent in a municipal election – if that incumbent has little support, and the challenger has a political work ethic…

Department of the Obvious: Media Division

The Boston Globe in a stunning display of Casablanca Syndrome (they’re shocked; shocked!)  reported that the Obama Administration employs public relations techniques:

President Obama entered the White House promising a new era of openness in government, but when it comes to bad news, his administration often uses one of the oldest tricks in the public relations playbook: putting it out when the fewest people are likely to notice.

What’s next, spinning at pressers?

Menino Flunky Watch: Maureen Feeney

It looks like some folks on the City Council are growing stones: 

With time running out on this year’s session, City Councilor Maureen Feeney is under fire for bottling up dozens of ordinances in her committee – including one changing mayoral succession and another requiring fire trucks to be replaced after 10 years 

For years I’ve seen Boston City Councillor Maureen Feeney pimp the city at Mayor Menino’s behest.  From crippling public health when Boston City Hospital was privatized; to betraying City workers with sick-building syndrome from the mold, fungus, and bacteria in City Hall; to enabling violations of state law in the Election Department, Feeney is always available to do the Mayor’s bidding – particularly if it involves fucking over people in her District. 

 A backlog of 40 proposed ordinances is languishing in Feeney’s powerful government operations committee. The measures require a public hearing before the council can vote on them. 

There are only three more meetings before the end of the 2009 City Council term, but all hell’s gonna break loose in 2010. 

Phoenix Watch: Puerile Journalism 1a

The Boston Phoenix indulges its infantile anti-Catholicism, at the expense of political literacy:

Should the Roman Catholic Church, and the various subsidiary groups and organizations that exist under its umbrella and operate at its direction, be entitled to state- and federal-tax exemptions?

Foaming at the mouth over the demise-by-referendum of Maine’s gay marriage rights, the paper goes over the edge:

There is no doubt that the Catholic Church crossed the line that separates constitutionally protected religious instruction from prohibited political advocacy in its Maine fight.

Hipster bohemians that they are, the Phoenix then gets trendy:

A large and growing Facebook community in that state has now dedicated itself to nullifying the Church’s tax-exempt status.

How the Phoenix is able to geographically locate all Facebook members specific to one State is not explained.   We then get to the meat of the screed:

It would be fitting indeed if the patriarchal and authoritarian Church fathers were called to atone by those more traditionally minded Mainers who believe in the separation of church and state mandated by the Constitution. It is also welcoming to see that at least some in Congress are recoiling from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) pernicious intervention in the national health-care-reform debate.

A recent statement by Democratic congresswoman Lynn Woolsey of California states the case clearly:

The role the bishops played in pushing the Stupak amendment, which unfairly restricts access for low-income women to insurance coverage for abortions, was more than mere advocacy.

They seemed to dictate the finer points of the amendment, and managed to bully members of Congress to vote for added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure.

And this effort was subsidized by taxpayers, since the Council enjoys tax-exempt status.

Though a strong argument can be made that the USCCB should have its tax-exempt status revoked, that is unlikely to happen. Like the defense industry and Wall Street, the Catholic Church flexes formidable political muscle. To paraphrase the late Lenny Bruce, who was by equal measures appalled and impressed by the reach of the Vatican: they don’t call it the Church for nothing.

The most effective way to negate the militantly conservative influence of the institutional Catholic Church and its newfound conservative evangelical allies is to target the laws regulating lobbying.

Constitutional illiteracy aside, this is hypocritical coming from a paper known for its First Amendment absolutism in matters of secular free speech.

I’ve covered the political dynamics behind the Stupak amendment in other posts; suffice it to say that, in an increasingly pro-life political environment, it didn’t take much arm-twisting to include an anti-abortion rider to the health care bill

Furthermore, the Phoenix begs a number of questions involving the competence and effectiveness  of the pro-marriage forces in the referendum; questions that those involved are addressing, much to their credit.   From what I’ve been able to ascertain, the pro-marriage forces made a strategic blunder and concentrated primarily in the cities, ceding rural areas and small towns to their opponents.   In addition the pro-marriage forces were lulled into complacency by inaccurate polling (which with the exception of automated IVR surveys) overestimated support for gay marriage.

It was not the efforts of organized Catholicism per se that defeated gay marriage in Maine;  it was organized social conservatives, including, but not limited to Catholics, operating in a political vacuum that passed Question 1.

The pro-marriage forces had a limited ground game in the cities and a nonexistent one elsewhere.  This led to false premises about the meaning of a high turnout:

The expectation in and outside the campaign was that the higher turnout was, the more likely we were to win. Turnout was at 58.5 percent—beating a state record for an odd-year election by seven points—and we still lost by six. While we met or exceeded our overall vote goals in many places, there were simply more voters on their side.

This analysis, unlike the nihilistic babbling in the Phoenix demonstrates the moral courage it takes to achieve reform, and I take my hat off to those who fought gallantly, if unsuccessfully, for marriage rights.

The Phoenix, on the other hand, can kiss my ass.

Deconstructing Martha Coakley’s Op-Ed Piece

State Attorney General and candidate for the United States Senate wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Boston Globe.   Herewith my humble attempt at criticism:

MASSACHUSETTS HAS some of the best doctors, nurses, and other caregivers in the world. Yet our national health care system costs too much and covers too few. Climbing costs put basic coverage beyond the reach of millions. This is economically unaffordable and a moral disgrace.

Complicated by the fact that nurses are being laid off; and there is a shortage of primary care physicians, with no plans to train more in the numbers needed.

Promoting affordable, quality health care has been one of my top priorities as attorney general, and it will be a top priority if I serve in the Senate. National efforts should draw on lessons that we have learned in Massachusetts.

Not based upon your record to date. While the sweetheart deal between Partners HealthCare and Blue Cross/Blue Shield that created the problem (and whose principals funded the political impetus for the Massachusetts plan) preceded your tenure as Attorney General of the Commonwealth, nothing was done to address the antitrust and restraint of trade issues that resulted.

The good news is that our reforms here show that it is possible to provide insurance to almost everyone. We have done so by building consensus with the business community, doctors and hospitals, insurers, and most of all, consumers.

By limiting access to medical care and ridiculously high premiums:

As an aside, those premiums were already the highest in the country.

Our state’s experience also raises warning signs. While costs for individuals, employers, and the state spiral upward, cost often does not correlate to quality. National reform must tackle the cost crisis up front. The most effective way to lower costs is through competition that a strong public option will provide.

No shit!!!  The problem is that you and your office have done nothing to anti-competitive behavior by hospitals and the larger insurance companies.

My office has been involved in health care issues – and we’ve gotten results. We reached a historic $17 million settlement with an insurance company that misled consumers and unfairly denied coverage. We have achieved several record national settlements with drug companies for deceptive marketing and sales, recovering tens of millions for individuals and the state. And we have promoted greater transparency regarding quality, costs, and executive compensation.

While ignoring the more costly abuses noted above.

Here are the key elements on which I’ll focus as a senator:Strong public option. A strong public insurance plan would provide choice to individuals, expand access, and lower costs by promoting competition.

As long as the plan doesn’t include the abuses you and your office ignored in Massachusetts.

Preserving women’s rights. The Stupak/Pitts amendment included in the House health care bill represents an unnecessary, significant step back in women’s rights. It violates the very intent of health care reform by severely restricting access to reproductive health services, especially for low-income women. This amendment represents a false choice. We can and must pass meaningful health reform without compromising women’s access to reproductive care.*

Given a choice between no bill and a bill with Stupac, a majority of the House of Representatives would have gone for no health care bill at all.

Consumer protections. With a requirement that all people obtain insurance, federal and state government must enforce strong consumer protection measures. Insurers must not be allowed to deny coverage based on preexisting conditions or make false marketing promises. Being a woman should never be a preexisting condition. In some states, victims of domestic violence are denied coverage, which is reprehensible.

What about age? Premiums also vary by age; the law allows carriers to charge older people twice as much as they do a younger person for identical coverage.

Cost control. Immediate steps to curb costs include reducing preventable hospitalizations, readmissions, and hospital-acquired infections. We should also encourage standardized billing and claims processing to reduce administrative overhead. We need to focus on prevention and develop better models for primary care. We should close the Medicare Part D coverage gap, and help seniors afford the drugs they need.

See extended link above.

Payment reform. Federal reform should look aggressively at ways to reshape the incentives that providers face. Our current fee-for-service models reward hospitals for performing more procedures and tests, not for quality. In contrast, models such as global, bundled, or episodic payments encourage integrated care management and reward providers for better outcomes. That said, I will oppose federal funding cuts aimed at our state’s health care providers, which would jeopardize the progress we have made in covering the uninsured.

Again ignoring the fact that the Commonwealth has disinvested in primary care and primary care training for decades.

Protecting Social Security and Medicare. Health care reform will improve the quality of care in Medicare, reduce costs for seniors, and preserve Medicare for future generations. In the Senate, I will support reform that eliminates excessive government subsidies and results in lower out-of-pocket costs on prescription drugs.

The problem isn’t government subsidies per se, it’s the deregulation of pharmaceutical advertisements, coupled with the incestuous relationships between too many doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. A relationship not always acknowledged by the doctors.

Achieving real health reform will take a different kind of leadership than the old partisan fighting we’ve seen in Congress. Massachusetts showed a different kind of leadership in passing health reform three years ago. Senator Ted Kennedy himself was a different kind of leader, and I hope to follow in his footsteps, and work to bring real reform to health care.

No disrespect to the late Senator, but Kennedy advisors were a big reason we got in this mess to begin with.  To quote the Columbia Journalism Review:

One health care provider who asked for anonymity told me: “Nobody wants to be quoted as going against Senator Kennedy. Nobody wants to be the one who says the emperor has no clothes. If you or your organization speaks out, you get cut off politically.”

Nuff said.

*Bold print in original

The Stupak Amendment and the Avoidance of Reality

Since the passage of the health care bill in the House pro-choicers have been bouncing off the  wall over the amendment to the bill filed by Congressman Bart Stupak, forbidding the use of fully or partially federally-funded insurance plans to pay for abortions, exclusive of rape, incest, or life (not health) of the mother.

The Dog, while pro-choice himself  is unsympathetic to the bleatings of those like our sanctimonious dipshit frontrunner and likely Senator Martha Coakley, who are willing to sacrifice the health care needs of millions of Americans upon the altar of her ego.

What Coakley and her supporters ignore is the way abortion plays nationally.  As the Gallup Poll noted in May, the United States is now a narrowly pro-life country.  For a variety of reasons, not least of which being the absence of  the organized pro-choice movement from grassroots politics, Americans are supportive of restricting access to the procedure.

The shifts can be seen in the graph below:

This shift is more pronounced among men:

But women aren’t exempt:

As a candidate for the United States Senate with a (presumably) professional staff there is no way that Coakley cannot know the national dynamics of this issue.  Nor  is there any way she doesn’t know that grassroots pressure forces many Democrats to support the amendment as the least of evils just to get health care through the House.

Finally, she knows that Hobsons Choice in the House or not, the Stupak amendment can be neutered in the Senate. 

As a matter of procedure, the Republican Right has been exploiting these attitudes since the Seventies, knowing the traditional progressive disinclination to dirty their hands with grassroots work.

Just as Paul Wellstone and Barbara Boxer were instrumental in getting the U.S. into the Iraq War, Coakley, if elected, will be  operating as a one-woman Right-wing outreach mechanism outside the Commonwealth, and within the Senate.

I feel like puking.

Stupidity in Journalism Watch

“VOTERS TURN OUT IN HIGH NUMBERS FOR ELECTIONS” : Boston Metro,  November 4, 2009.

The turnout was 31.16%

The Death of Floon

I’m still celebrating.  When I finish my analysis of the precinct-by-precinct numbers, I’ll have a more comprehensive analysis.

For the moment, here’s the unofficial tally:

Registered Voters 356453 – Cards Cast 111067 31.16%

MAYOR
		Total
Number of Precincts		254
Precincts Reporting		254	100.0 %
Number of Uncast Votes		845
THOMAS M. MENINO		63123	57.27%
MICHAEL F. FLAHERTY		46768	42.43%
Write-in Votes		331	0.30%

The Banner’s Non-Endorsement

The Phoenix’ Adam Reilly had some fun with the Bay State Banner for its non-endorsement editorial on October 29.  Fair enough, but in the context of an earlier blog post essentially acusing the Banner of being in the bag for the Mayor (The Mayor arranged a  $200,000 loan that saved the paper.), a few explanations of the paper’s function is in order:

While the Bay State Banner does an admirable job of expressing the general consensus of Boston’s black communities, its internal culture tends to boosterism.  As a result, there is little critical reporting of the political, activist, or nonprofit sectors.

This puts the paper in a corner when, the Mayor’s opponent in the upcoming election has never done anything in his nine years on the City Council to back backup his rhetoric as a candidate.  Complicating matters is the Fact that Flaherty’s campaign (based as it is on progressive myths about activism) actually repels people at the grassroots.

There was no quid pro quo with Menino; the Banner is evading Hobson’s Choice.

A caution for 2010

In the PPP website, there is a note of  caution about misconstruing Republican shrinkage:

As Republican identification levels hit record lows in a lot of polling those voters have to go somewhere and what they’re doing is making the ranks of the independents more conservative and Republican leaning. They may be changing the way they label themselves but they’re still around and voting the same way- just something to keep in mind when talking about the independent vote this year and moving on into 2010.

In a state like Massachusetts, where Unenrolled voters outnumber Democrats and Republicans combined it’s something that should be considered, particularly in the context of a three-candidate final election in 2010…

It must be remembered that self-described liberals in Massachusetts are slightly outnumbered by their conservative counterparts, with the majority of the electorate describing itself as  ” moderate”.  Massachusetts is not a liberal state; it is the state with the highest percentage of liberals (29%); another thing entirely.

The Hell with ACORN

Some within the left-blogosphere  are up in arms about the memorandum from the head of the Office of Management and Budget denying any future obligations to ACORN, suspending current obligations, and terminating all payments to the organization.

They shouldn’t be surprised.  From a political perspective, ACORN has been isolated for years, with little in the way of tangible grassroots support.  As a result, the organization simply had no constituency to protect it.

While respecting its advocacy work, the political community was well aware of the organization’s limitations.  Anyone present at the Boston Elections Department at the last day for voter registration would hear employees joking about the false names, fictitious streets; the sheer bulk of crap voter forms.

Elected politicians found the group useful because its institutional arrogance and lack of a real constituency could be manipulated to ensure positive media coverage; thus negating the need to address real problems.  The bogus registration drives just added humor relief  (except for those poor unfortunates in Elections who had to spend hours of unpaid overtime checking  fraudulent motor-voter forms).

As an astroturf organization with little grassroots support, ACORN was simply expendable when right-wing activists videotaped activities that were already common political knowledge.   Any protests by left-progressives can be safely ignored because they have no meaningful constituency either, and the primary function of the Left in American politics is to operate as a Republican outreach mechanism.

To be fair, the structural corruption within ACORN was noted by some on the Left, most notably Bill Fletcher, whose article on the subject therefore deserves to be quoted at length:

It is important to separate the attacks on ACORN which it is receiving from the political Right from the actual content of the organization’s problems.

Something is very wrong in ACORN and, unfortunately, the leadership of the organization does not seem to recognize the depth of the problem. The alleged embezzlement of nearly one million dollars by Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder and long-time chief organizer, Wade Rathke, sent shockwaves throughout the progressive movement and foundation community. It was not simply the fact of the alleged theft, but the reported manner in which this had been covered up such that much of the leadership, not to mention the membership, apparently had no knowledge of the circumstances. The matter was handled much like a family embarrassment rather than as a legal and ethical challenge.

and:

From the outside it appears that at least two things are operating within ACORN. The first is arrogance within a part of the leadership. That fact that a clique within the leadership would attempt to shroud an alleged theft and treat it as if it were a personal matter displays a significant level of lack of accountability. The extent of the alleged embezzlement was such that criminal prosecution should have been entertained immediately. Yet this clique kept this silent and did not discuss the ramifications for the entire organization.

The second thing that appears to be operating is that the organization is not operating, at least in a functional manner. In other words, there is a systemic lack of accountability and training. On the one hand, in the face of the right-wing provocation, some cities immediately recognized that something was up, but, for reasons unknown, this was not communicated to the entire organization. Worse, that some employees when actually confronted with an illegal business proposition did not have the proper awareness of the consequences of giving advice on an illegal matter shows, at a minimum, poor judgment.

The subsequent attacks on ACORN by the Right, therefore, have been entirely predictable. ACORN has opened itself up and invited the enemy in. Yet they now wish for all liberals and progressives to rally around them in their defense yet their leadership only offers an anemic explanation of the depths of this crisis.

Fletcher summarizes with a list of steps to reform the organization, including:

An apology to the friends, supporters and members of ACORN: To be honest, I do not want to hear anything more about how the Right is attacking ACORN. What I do want to hear is how sorry and self-critical the ACORN leadership is about the current state of affairs and how they, in fact, let down the members, supporters and friends of the organization.

At this stage, it’s a bit too late to resuscitate the corpse. There is a competition among prosecutors across the country and across the political spectrum, including the federal level investigate ACORN, with an eye to crimonal prosecution.  Since the President of the United States and the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee are  among those calling for an investigation it makes no legal or political sense for the federal government to fund a possible criminal defendant.

Anyone thinking otherwise is deluded, at best.

What’s Wrong (and Right) With This Picture?

Ground-breaking ceremony for the Area B-2 Police station in Dudley Sq:

 
Source: City of Boston; per The Bay State Banner (print ed.)

What we have here is a perfect metaphor for the sorry state of black politics in Boston.  You will note that the only elected official present representing the  black community is Councillor Turner. Conspicuously absent are Rep.Gloria Fox and Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz…

Turner’s work ethic, particularly in matters of constituent services, goes a long way to explain his popularity in his District, legal problems notwithstanding.

The Globe Giveth and the Herald Taketh Away

The Globe ran an interesting piece about the fireman’s union today today:

Embroiled in a longstanding dispute with the mayor, Boston firefighters have not just endorsed the mayor’s challenger, Councilor at Large Michael F. Flaherty Jr. They have inserted themselves deeply into the campaign, boosting Flaherty when he is low on funds. But their actions have associated Flaherty, at times uncomfortably, with a union that is controversial because of the high usage of sick leave by firefighters and the union’s resistance to mandatory drug and alcohol testing without more pay.

So far, not too bad, even if the reporter, Stephanie Ebbert overstates the Union’s credibility within the City limits:

But the firefighters have positioned themselves as an uncommon force to be reckoned with, and they are using the campaign to amplify their grievances against City Hall. One early success: Firefighters waged a postcard campaign that prompted so many people to e-mail WCVB Channel 5 before the Oct. 1 televised debate that they succeeded in persuading the debate moderators to question the mayor, on-air, about why the Fire Department has no dedicated hazardous-materials unit, a favorite issue of the union.

Of course, being the Globe, they tend to forget that campaigning on the Net is not necessarily the same as grassroots and the core Channel 5 audience is in the MetroWest suburbs.  Still, all in all a good piece given the institutional limits of Globe political reporting.

Unfortunately, the Herald pissed on their parade.

Floon Catamite Watch: Bernstein Goes to War

Wherein the Phoenix’ David Bernstein, Flaherty  internals in hand goes to war against the Boston Globe.

 A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  As I mentioned in my post yesterday, a Globe/UNH Poll has Menino comfortably ahead in the Mayor’s race.  It would seem that this bruised Bernsteins feelings somewhat.

 From Bernstein’s blog:

 The Boston Globe has the results of a new poll in the Sunday paper, which shows Tom Menino cruising to re-election: “Menino holds a lead of 52 percent to 32 percent over Councilor at Large Michael F. Flaherty Jr.,” it says.  But a poll conducted at the same time (earlier this week) by Flaherty’s campaign – provided to me by their campaign just now, in response to my inquiry — shows Menino leading by half that gap: 48% to 38%.

So what gives? It’s hard to tell, because the Globe’s story makes it hard to tell what their own (UNH)polling actually shows, and at this hour they have not made the data available.

So, does Bernstein take the time to contact the Globe or the University of New Hampshire Survey Center?  No, he just decides to display his ignorance of sampling methodology:

The Globe/UNH poll, however, used 553 “randomly selected Boston residents,” which is frankly a ridiculously overbroad pool — it would include a lot of folks who aren’t even registered to vote. The article says that 438 of them “said they were likely voters,” which shows why you don’t want to use self-identification for that sort of question; if 80 percent of Boston residents are likely to vote on November 3rd then I’m Napolean (sic) Bonaparte.

It is highly unlikely that any reputable polling firm would sample from a raw residents list.  The voter list (and voter history list) is  computerized and available from both The Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office and the Boston Elections Department, and 553 voters is a reasonable sample (in the context of the 4.2% and 4,7% sample margins of error).

The issue is this: Bernstein is neither a pollster, nor a statistician.  He would have done better to discuss the sampling and methodology with someone with the experience and training to understand the models used by John Della Volpe (Flaherty’s pollster) and the UNH Survey Research Center.

…and then it gets worse:

Bottom line? I think the race looks much more like Flaherty’s poll than the Globe’s. But the importance of the Globe poll is not in its accuracy, but in its effect.

If the Globe was reporting today that the gap had closed to within 10

points, that would have produced a major jolt to the final two weeks of the campaign. By reporting that the gap stands at 20, the Globe may have ensured that the city turns its attention elsewhere.

 What we have here is a Bernstein implying  polling malfeasance on the part of the Globe to re-elect Menino, using his gut feelings and Flaherty’s numbers as his premise.  We’ll forget that The Floon receives much better Globe coverage than its component parts deserve, based upon their records, both as Councilors and candidates.

I wouldn’t expect Bernstein to consider the comparative accuracy of  Globe and Flaherty polling to be a matter of grave import, to be discussed with input from people in the field:  it’s all a conspiracy by the Globe to suppress turnout and disenfranchise the people!

Considering….

I’ll have more thoughts, I’m sure, when I have details of the Globe/UNH poll.

…that he hadn’t bothered to read the damn thing.

Deval Patrick Death Watch, Part 1

This is the first of an ongoing series cataloguing the impending crash-and-burn of that  popcorn pimp  narcissist in the corner office. If you really want to piss off the goo-goos, just croak them on an environmental issue.

With the totally predicted fiscal meltdown, in the face of publicly available data that’s been available for years, the “human service activist” community will probably go down in flames as their preferred programs get the ax, but the suburban environmental community puts sweat equity into its issues.

Field Dog’s Political Glossary: Progressive

The term “Progressive” as it is used today is a politically meaningless term after eighty years of semantic corruption.  Often used as a synonym for “Liberal”,  in practice progressives tend to be characterized by class bigotry and elitism.  As a class, they are not noted for their knowledge of , or adaptability to, local conditions.  They tend, therefore, to provoke populist reactions at the grassroots, which result either in electoral apathy or right-wing populism.

Originally a form of reform conservatism, the Progressive Movement espoused the rational administration of society by trained elites.   While supportive of mixed-economy capitalism (given its cultural and economic  Hamiltonian antecedents), Progressives were aware of the social and economic costs of unregulated markets.

The original movement had the intellectual flaw of presuming the inevitability of human progress, and the social flaws of class and ethnic bigotry.  The movements had regional variants, which addressed some of these social flaws as local conditions allowed. (e.g.  in the Midwest, the movement allied itself with Socialists and the labor movement; in California, the alliance was with Populists)

Starting in the 1920’s the  Communist Party used the term as a label for their attempted penetration of the labor movement, through various  “Popular Fronts”, but Progressivism retained its original meaning outside of faculty clubs.  Despite the failed attempt of the Communist-influenced Progressive Party under Henry Wallace in the 1948 Presidential election, Dwight Eisenhower had no problems with using the term self-referentially throughout the McCarthy period.  (A modern example of  an intellectually honest use of the term was Bill Clinton, who correctly used Eisenhower as his model.)

The term evolved its present usage during the simultaneous structural collapses of  labor liberalism and working-class black nationalism in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.  The New Left-New Politics fusion that remained was notable for its militant class-bigotry and racial condescension.

Contemporary progressives as a class,  constitute a bohemian Tory movement, based in upscale urban neighborhoods and suburbs.  Intellectually, their distaste for manufacturing industries (and workers) makes them vulnerable to various New Economy/Service Economy fantasies, forgetting that in large ecinimic systems, there is a need to produce tangible goods in order to create the wealth to fund the services.

In government, progressives tend to circular analysis, which leads them to mistake models for reality, and equate funding levels for results.

The private sector variant tends to consultant triumphalism.

A variant is the “Left-Progressive”; a misnomer, which equates in the real world to bohemian reactionary.

For these reasons, in partisan politics, progressives function primarily as political suppression or Republican outreach mechanisms.

BlueMassGroup as an Activist Focus Group?

Yesterday, I posted on BlueMassGroup, a Democratic group activist blog, giving my back-of-the-envelope assessment of Capuano’s probable victory in the Special Democratic Senate primary.

What suprised me was the testimony of some in the comment section, citing a slow but steady drift from Coakley to Capuano.  Granted, the small number of responses has no  statistical validity, but it’s an interesting signpost for assessing trends among activists, particularly in a public blog monitored by the respective campaigns

If this is indicative of  a trend among the worker bees in the Mass. Democratic Party, it definitely reinforces my point.

If  I were Coakley’s field coordinator, I would start doing some serious spackle and duct tape work.

Early Prediction: Special Mass Senate

As things currently stand (and The Dog is unaffiliated with any campaign), I think that Capuano will wall Coakley into the more upscale parts of Norfolk, Essex, and Middlesex Counties.   He will take those counties as a whole, plus the remainder of the commonwealth.

I doubt that Alan Khazei and Steve Pagliuca will be much more than well-funded vanity candidates competing for a slice of Coakley’s geographic and demographic base.

The Floon saga: I hear crickets chirping

Ray Flynn and Mel King just endorsed Floon, and the Dog is totally underwhelmed. 

All that happens is to further seal Floon into JP, Southie, and lace-curtain Dorchester.  Field reasonance in the black, Latino, and Asian communities will be zero, none, nada.

Purely for the humor relief, I’m working on a somewhat more comprehensive overview of the cultural dynamics of this election, to be posted within the next few days, with the working title of  Float like a butterfly; sink like a rock: the Floon saga.

OMG A Cyber DocuDump

http://www.cityofboston.gov/news/kineavy_messages.asp

Well, the City made 5000+  of Michael Kineavy’s  email  messages available to the public at the above link.

God, THAT’s what I call rapid response!

Granted, its Bill Clinton, 1998, but if it works….?

Observations on the Boston Mayoral Election

Incredible!  Less than a month to go, and a classic Democratic Regular versus the Evil Goo-goos  dynamic is in play.  Barring an indictment, it will be Menino in a walk, with his opponents operating as his field outreach mechanism.

In particular, the Floon alliance is alienating even those folks in the precincts that are not particularly hospitable to the Mayor; a surprising  dynamic for a second-generation Boston pol.

More later…