Massachusetts Senate Race - Page 6

Dr. Cameroon says different.

If you don't mind me stroking my own ego a bit, I said the same thing, although not as clearly, upthread.

Look at Cali. Closest thing to direct democracy, and what happens? People vote for things, but not for ways to pay for them.

California's problems are more structural.

The direct ballot initiative system was originally set up to challenge the power of the oil and train companies during the early years of the state. It has largely outlived that purpose and now is abused and used more by corporations and other moneyed interests than people. In addition to that problem, you have these:

Outside of California, only two small midwestern states require a supermajority in the state legislature to pass a budget.

Outside of California, only a handful of states have a direct initiative system.

No state outside of California combines these two things.

Due to the legacy of Prop 13, the limits on the revenue the state can seek from property taxes are kind of draconian and reaping new revenue to fund things proved by initiative is almost impossible as a result.

However, there is no limit on what spending the public can approve via the ballot.

Basically, the Reagan Revolution and mindless rightwing populism delivered to us an ungovernable state and financial ruin.

Basically California is the ultimate result of all the stupidest GOP ideas on how to govern.

I can't disagree with you, you're right. The bills can use more cost control mechanisms and attempts to revamp the incentives running through our current medical system. There are the pilot programs funded by these proposals and the cadillac tax, but they're sort of weak sauce and likely to get weaker over time. And about the Demos, yeah, you should place the blame on their doorstep. But I think blame could be spread even more widely (i.e. four candidates deciding to jump in on the primary, uninterested voters in the primary stage, etc).

I think what angers liberals about conservatives such as yourself is that you put your economic concerns for the middle and upper classes above the massively discriminatory and unpleasant social conservatism that currently comes as part of the package. Your fiscal conservatism is all well and good, but by voting with that as your key issue you also support a bundle of really nasty views. And that kinda stinks.

We may be talking about two different things. My frustrations about this entire muck up lie in the Democrats poor approach to reform almost from the beginning, and the fact that they were completely unprepared for the pushback, particularly from the grassroots. I'll agree that there was a concerted effort by groups both organized and grassroots to slow down, completely alter and/or kill the bill entirely and that it may be related to the tea party movement. But I don't think our electoral system or the populace being brainwashed by corporate media may have been a deciding factor. The dems lost a lot of people when they dismissed any and all tea party activity as "astroturf." They very well may have been right, but there was apparently enough populist dissatisfaction with the poor economy, high unemployment rate and ineffective governmental response that that segment of the disgruntled population decided that they were being ignored and decided to go with something else. That Fox News and the Republicans, however cynically, tapped into that populism says something about the success of Republican obstructionism and special interest interference, but, to me, it says more about the Democrats' inability to stay on message or handle PR. And those who belittle the tea partiers need to understand that it makes the democrats look worse, because right now, they're the big losers in the battle.

That's a fair critique I suppose. I know a lot of moderates like myself who do vote that way. As for myself, I try and find the most socially liberal Republican in the race and I usually support that guy barring any major problems with his economic ideas.

In the 2008 race, I was a Giuliani supporter mainly because of his credentials on national security but also because he was a pro-choice, pro-gay civil unions candidate (although he didn't play them up as much as I wanted for obvious reasons in a Rep. primary.)

I begrudgingly backed McCain when he won the nomination and I was hoping he would pick Tom Ridge as his running mate. I'm a Pennsylvanian and I've always liked Ridge. The fact that he was pro-choice just added to the fact on how much I liked him. When McCain picked Palin, I fell off the boat and never came back.

If there was a bunch of Republicans with the view of "Smaller government, across the board - gays, women, blacks, we are all equal" then I would wager that a large proportion of militant lefties would be a lot less militant. But honestly, you guys don't seem all that concerned about divorcing yourselves from the social wing of conservatism. I mean, there are lots of Repubs I know who talk a big game about it, but where are they to be found at election time? Or when the Tea Baggers are plastered all over the news?

I completely agree with this. I will add one thing though. Money and the accumulation of power and assets is a powerful motivator. The quest to do good, be civil, do the right thing less so. I get totally dismissed when I say that big business has been organizing for a long time to be focused and prepared to this moment, with think tanks, a ready supply of pundits, media consolidation and shared interest, etc. Big business is the turtle; the people's representatives are the hare. If you have an independent movie that you and your friends got together and made out of love and inspiration, versus a cynical romantic comedy with Jennifer Garner with a crappy script but a guaranteed opening weekend, which is going to have the better marketing campaign?

I'm sick of the moneyed forces being the ones who are organized, strategic and smart and the people's representatives being sloppy, short-sighted and in constant defensive mode, but that's the difference between a focused effort to make money and an unfocused effort to try to "do good." This is why I totally agree with you and am frustrated about the Dems' lack of response to the wheat beneath the chaff of the tea partiers. Here is an organized group of regular people who--sure, a lot of them are brainwashed Rush listeners or racists or brown-people-haters or creepy bible-thumping end of the worlders--but there is genuine anger there as well, and a justifiable reason to be angry. My thing is that the tea partiers have been misdirected about who is behind the total deterioration of our democracy and way of life. It's not "government" as much as it is "government by the corporations." I think a politician with some inspiration could find the common ground, but the only ones who are doing so aren't doing it because they're motivated by money--they're on their own doing it because it's right, i.e. Alan Grayson, Bernie Sanders, even Ron Paul (though I disagree with the the central tenets of libertarianism and think it would be a disaster for the US, as it has already shown to be in some forms).

Well for someone like myself, I wish every day that the social conservatives would just get up and walk out. That said, I can understand why a moderate Republican political candidate needs the social conservatives. They need them to win elections. Social conservatives make up a large amount of the party mainly due to the fact that moderate Republicans are so fed up with them that they go independent or sometimes Democratic. If the states decided to have their primaries open up to all voters, I think you would see more moderates pop up (especially in the Northeast.)

However, when you have closed primaries, all candidates of that party fight for the votes of that party's registered voters. With the Republicans, a vast majority of those people hold some sort of party identification with the party because of their social conservative record. A moderate running in a closed primary would get squashed despite the fact that they may actually have a better shot in winning the general months later.

As you can see here... many states still run closed primaries, which in turn, destroys moderation before the general election can even begin.

http://archive.fairvote.org/?page=1801

Then closed primaries need to go. And fiscal conservatives need to stop voting for social conservatives.

In the end, its about winning elections and "winning" power. The entire system is built in a way that rewards that way of thinking.

At this point, I honestly think there are 3 major and a rightwing nutjob party somewhere inside the dem/rep dual party system. However, any attempt at trying to split off into parties that actually have a fairly coherent and unifying agenda would result in losing your shot at winning.

Since its about winning, splitting up just doesnt make sense at all. You would lose hard to the other sides mega-bloc, the "big tent" of people with wildly different views and intentions all pulling the same rope so their gang can win this time.

Closed Primaries are just one small aspect that stands in the way of getting these behemoth parties into a slightly healthier direction, but thats a bandaid, not a cure.

2-Party-Systems are just too easy to subvert and really lend themselves to deteriorating into a polarized, "we or them" mindset.

I mean, this whole Mass election thing, and the big deal about the one little vote that was needed for the much-vaunted, little-used supermajority is the perfect showcase for what simply does not work anymore.

In such an environment, its exceptionally easy and cheap to win just enough support for virtually any agenda to deadlock and swamp the political process for months, if not years... if not long enough for "your" guy to shoot it down in 2012.

Jon Stewart takes Olbermann down a peg for his rants on Scott Brown.

How long till Stewart is THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD?

ETA: I can't seem to get the direct link to the Daily Show's site to work right now. Here's an alternate site with the video.

Good. Olby's an ignorant sack of shit.

Gotta love Stewart. The guy never shies away from sticking it to his own party, which I can only commend.

Brown: No To Federal Funding, Yes to Abortion Rights

I don't think this guy understands how fucked he is at this point. Doing this will completely alienate the Teabaggers, which was the only real support he had in the race. He's going to get primaried, and successfully. One way or another, he's a half-term Senator.

The driving force behind the tea parties is economic, not social. People who say they want smaller government. Libertarians. Nothing about being pro choice would raise the ire of the tea partiers, unless they also happened to be social conservatives. Sure, there's a good deal of overlap; but social issues have nothing to do with the reason the tea parties were organized. Using the pejorative "teabagger" as a catchall for "really conservative" makes about as much sense as those who think neoconservative means "super duper conservative".

And there is nothing inherently contradictory about his abortion stance. It's a pro choice stance that also respects the pro life position that federal funds shouldn't be used to fund abortion. Whether or not something is legal and whether or not the government should use tax dollars to pay for it are two very different questions.

It just goes to show how many on these forum have a total disconnect with anyone who does not sure their political ideology. Some conservatives may not like it, but they can live with it. What really pisses off the pro-life group is saying that the Fed need to support abortion.

You're sort of forgetting that these people think abortion is murder and their idea of subtlety in argument is holding up a sign depicting the Jews at Auschwitz with commentary about "Obamacare" scrawled over it. Anything outside of saying that abortion is murder and should be outlawed is going to get these people to turn on this guy like nobody's business.

Not everyone on the right thinks like that.

Demonizing everyone who is not down with abortion of every single fetus on demand at the taxpayer's expense will not help your cause.

Of course both sides have their extremists, but I'd like to think there is some common ground to be found where reasonable people can make policy for the rest of us.

Again, I'm talking about the Teabaggers specifically. That is Brown's base. They are the fringe of the fringe of the Republican Party. Saying that you're not going to push for the overturning of Roe v. Wade is not exactly a way to endear yourselves to them.

I've, unfortunately, had to spend a lot of time around them since they always show up to the events I organize. None of them ever have reasonable signage or say reasonable things. They always show up with Neo-Confederate signage and signage depicting the Holocaust or claiming that Obama wants to turn them into niggers and bullhorns to interrupt the actual event the city has cleared for use of that space. If you think these people are going to understand that Brown is distancing himself from that rhetoric so he doesn't get his ass handed to him in 2012, I think you're kidding yourself.