• By Fred Thys (@fthys)
• Sep. 2, 2010, 7:45 AM  UPDATED 8:16 AM

BOSTON — Gov. Deval Patrick in his kitchen in Milton. (Jess Bidgood for WBUR)

Gov. Deval Patrick is famous for his love of cooking, and I’m looking forward to a morning in the kitchen with him — but I’m about to be disappointed.

That’s because by the time I get to his sage-green Colonial revival house in Milton, at 10:15 on a Saturday, he’s already made quiche for a New England Cable News crew. He offers me the last piece.

“The quiche has all sorts of things from local farms,” Patrick says. He thinks it may need a little salt, but it’s so good.

“A little breakfast,” he says. “The crust is not my best.”

He made the crust himself. You can tell.

“The onions are local,” he says. “The eggs are local. The cream is local. The kale is local. I’ve never put kale in a quiche, but it seemed as easy as spinach. Did I mention the cheese was local, as well?”

Cooking is such a big part of Patrick’s life that it’s how he’s made some of his friends.

Morgan Mead became good friends with the governor when the two of them were house-sitting in Lincoln during the summer before Patrick began Harvard Law School.

“Characteristically for him, he was having some people over for lunch to celebrate the Fourth of July, and we were standing at the kitchen sink shelling peas for this lunch he was putting on, this 21-year old, and we started to talk, and it was the first time we had really had a conversation, and he was such a great listener,” Mead says. “I think that’s why we became friends. I think he’s the best listener I know.”

Mead, now an English teacher at Concord Academy, remembers another cooking adventure with Patrick.

“Dropping in to see him in Brooklyn once, when he and Diane had just gotten married, and they bought this house in Park Lefferts where her family was from, and he went off and got lobsters and grilled us lobsters on the grill and it was about 110 degrees outside, and he made this fire and stood over the fire,” he says.

“We had a wonderful house in Brooklyn,” Patrick says, “an old late-1800s townhouse that had been owned by Alice Walker, the author.”

That leads me to a natural question: “Your own book, where is it?” I ask. He laughs.

Patrick’s autobiography was due to be published this year.

“It’s almost done,” he says. “You know, most of it had been done before I even went to talk to a publisher.” He says the publication date is next year.

But what if he loses the election — would the publisher still be interested in publishing it?

“Oh, my goodness, don’t even ask a question like that,” he says.

But losing the election to his Republican opponent, Charles Baker, is a very real prospect. As the fall campaign is about to get under way, though, Democratic political analyst Dan Payne says Patrick’s fortunes seem to be rising.

“I think he’s doing a pretty good job considering that a year ago, he was pretty much counted out for re-election,” Payne says. “It was really a matter of time before he would lose, but in the last six months or so, he’s really turned things around. He’s focused on his base. He’s used his strengths as a public speaker, and he’s been a little bit more feisty with his opposition than he had been.”

Patrick says that if elected to a second term as governor he wants to “finish what we started.”

“We’re leading the nation in job gains,” Patrick says.

He’s close: in July, Massachusetts gained more jobs than any other state except Michigan. After Rhode Island, Massachusetts has the highest unemployment rate in New England.

“But we still have a lot of people out of work, so we gotta stay on that path and I want to finish that,” he says.

“What are you proudest of in this first term?” I ask Patrick.

“Everything from ending abuse in the state pension system, to tightening the ethics and lobbying rules, to simplifying the transportation network, abolishing the Turnpike Authority,” he says.

“Of all those reforms, though, education reform in some ways is the most personally important to me, because for that whole 17 years we’ve been on this course of improving the public schools, we’ve had a persistent achievement gap,” Patrick continues. “And stuck in that gap are poor children, children with special needs, who speak English as a second language, more often than not children of color, and those are our children, too.”

To those who would be inclined to vote for him but question what he’s accomplished for the commonwealth, Patrick says it doesn’t bother him as much as he sees it as a challenge.

“I think one of the biggest challenges I have found in this job is being heard over all the folks who stand on the sidelines and root for failure,” he says. “I also think there is a part of this job, the bragging part of the job, which is absolutely essential if you want people to know what you’ve accomplished, but is not my comfort zone. I mentioned this to the president, about that and the fact that I don’t like asking people for money, and he said, ‘Get over it.’ ”

As far as how often he speaks with President Obama, Patrick says it’s intermittent.

“He’s the leader of the free world, so I’m reluctant to call him up to chat,” he says.

When it comes to being governor, Patrick says there is no such thing as a typical day, but that’s what makes it fun.

“My day starts about 5 or 5:30. I take a quick look at stuff online and at my e-mail, get some exercise a couple days a week, and I’m usually out of the house not too long after that, about 7, 7:30, something like that. And then I’m just moving around.”

Patrick says after the last event of the evening, generally around 9:30, he has a conference call with his some of his administration, particularly his chief of staff. After that, he goes to bed around 11.

“It sounds like the only part of your day that you really have some control over is very early in the morning, is that right?” I ask.

“Yeah. Before the demands of the day,” Patrick says. “The job is a gas. Even on a dark day, on a difficult day, we’ve had to make so many painful decisions in order to be fiscally responsible.”

The kitchen seems like a refuge from those painful decisions. The daylight filters through the rhododendrons wrapping the house.

Diane Patrick comes downstairs, and it’s thanks to her that I finally get to see the governor in action in the kitchen. She asks him to whip up an omelet for her.

“I’ll have one of those fresh tomatoes with it, Deval,” she says.

Here in his kitchen, Deval Patrick is the master. Then, it’s out to the rest of the world, where he’ll spend the rest of the day campaigning to keep his day job.

Recent political comments by Dan Payne (D) political consultant

http://www.wbur.org/2010/09/01/down-ticket-races

For state treasurer, there are two Democrats in the primary: former state and national Democratic party Chairman Steve Grossman and Boston City Councilor Steve Murphy. Both candidates have been around the track before. Grossman ran but pulled out of the governor’s race in 2002. Murphy is a perennial candidate and longtime Boston politician who was once a driver for Dapper O’Neil, although he endorsed Gov. Deval Patrick early in 2006.

Grossman has a bundle of personal funds and Murphy will have $80,000 in public dollars. (The state provides public dollars through state income tax forms.)

Boston makes up a big share of state Democratic votes, but the suburbs, collectively, are a major force. So being a Boston politician on balance probably hurts a bit more than helps. But Murphy’s real challenge is to overcome, in Grossman, a well-financed favorite of Democratic insiders who is a successful businessman and active philanthropist. He will likely have a decent advertising budget; Murphy will have very little paid media.

In the auditor’s race, the two top Democrats appear on paper to be similar. Both are former state representatives and both have run large public agencies. Suzanne Bump was secretary of Labor under Patrick and Guy Glodis is sheriff of Worcester County. A third candidate, Mike Lake, runs a new program at Northeastern University on creating a global network of city governments.

Bump and Glodis are quite different on issues. Glodis lost the Democratic nomination when he was shown to be on the wrong side of nearly every liberal issue — gay rights, the death penalty, gun control, taxes, diversity.

But ethics has emerged as a hot issue between them. Glodis has had to defend himself against stories in the Boston Globe that revealed he had improperly taken a $20,000 personal loan from a hedge fund manager friend who was later accused of stealing from clients. Days later, Glodis made a $22,000 personal loan to his campaign.

Sheriff Glodis has a colorful history when it comes to political dollars. In 2009, the Office of Campaign and Political Finance, which polices how candidates handle political money, reported that Glodis had illegally deposited six campaign contributions into his personal bank account. Earlier this year, the OCPF found he was using Sheriff’s Office funds to pay for a political mailing.

Glodis claims that Bump has her own ethics problem. She put on her website several months ago that when she was a represenative she improperly accepted contributions from insurance interests and was fined by OCPF. It happened two decades ago, and she was fined only $600. But Glodis is now trying to create moral equivalence between his ongoing violations and Bump’s onetime error.

Bump will get a $100,000 bump in public funds, which will bring her cash on hand to nearly $200,000 — enough to run a heavy radio campaign. Glodis is not taking public dollars but has a big warchest of nearly $800,000 and a big political base in Worcester County.

As Labor secretary in the Patrick administration, the governor’s political organization could help Bump. She has a solid record as an activist reformer in that job. And being a woman also helps in the Democratic primary. But the auditor’s race won’t get much news coverage, so spending on advertising over the next two weeks could be crucial. The third Democrat, Lake, is more likely to be a spoiler than a winner. He’s 31 and has been accused of excessive padding of his resume. But he’ll have about $58,000 and could take reform votes away from Bump and give Glodis the nomination.

What makes this race important is something the Boston Phoenix said about Glodis: “He has left a trail of crude comments that gives him a reputation as a piggish, misogynistic boor who would be an embarrassment to represent the party on the statewide ballot.”

Building a Nation of Know-Nothings

By TIMOTHY EGAN (New York Times)

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

Having shed much of his dignity, core convictions and reputation for straight talk, Senator John McCain won his primary on Tuesday against the flat-earth wing of his party. Now McCain can go search for his lost character, which was last on display late in his 2008 campaign for president.

Remember the moment: a woman with matted hair and a shaky voice rose to express her doubts about Barack Obama. “I have read about him,” she said, “and he’s not — he’s an Arab.”

McCain was quick to knock down the lie. “No, ma’am,” he said, “he’s a decent family man, a citizen.”

That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party. It’s not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.

Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.

Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies.

The Democrats may deserve to lose in November. They have been terrible at trying to explain who they stand for and the larger goal of their governance. But if they lose, it should be because their policies are unpopular or ill-conceived — not because millions of people believe a lie.

In the much-discussed Pew poll reporting the spike in ignorance, those who believe Obama to be Muslim say they got their information from the media. But no reputable news agency — that is, fact-based, one that corrects its errors quickly — has spread such inaccuracies.

So where is this “media?” Two sources, and they are — no surprise here — the usual suspects. The first, of course, is Rush Limbaugh, who claims the largest radio audience in the land among the microphone demagogues, and his word is Biblical among Republicans. A few quick examples of the Limbaugh method:

“Tomorrow is Obama’s birthday — not that we’ve seen any proof of that,” he said on Aug. 3. “They tell us Aug. 4 is the birthday; we haven’t seen any proof of that.”

Of course, there is proof as clear as that baseball box score. Look here, www.factcheck.org, for starters, one of many places posting Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate.

On the Muslim deception, Limbaugh has sprinkled lie dust all over the place. “Obama says he’s a Christian, but where’s the evidence?” he said on Aug. 19. He has repeatedly called the president “imam Obama,” and said, “I’m just throwing things out there, folks, because people are questioning his Christianity.”

You see how he works. He drops in suggestions, hints, notes that “people are questioning” things. The design is to make Obama un-American. Then he says it’s a tweak, a provocation. He says this as a preemptive way to keep the press from calling him out. And it works; long profiles of Limbaugh have largely gone easy on him.

Once Limbaugh has planted a lie, a prominent politician can pick it up, with little nuance. So, over the weekend, Kim Lehman, one of Iowa’s two Republican National Committee members, went public with doubts on Obama’s Christianity. Of course, she was not condemned by party leaders.

It’s curious, also, that any felon, drug addict, or recovering hedonist can loudly proclaim a sudden embrace of Jesus and be welcomed without doubt by leaders of the religious right. But a thoughtful Christian like Obama is still distrusted.

“I am a devout Christian,” Obama told Christianity Today in 2008. “I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” That’s not enough, apparently, for Rev. Franklin Graham, the partisan son of the great evangelical leader, who said last week that Obama was “born a Muslim because of the religious seed passed on from his father.”

Actually, he was born from two non-practicing parents, and his Kenyan father was absent for all of his upbringing. Obama came to his Christianity like millions of people, through searching and questioning.

Finally, there is Fox News, whose parent company has given $1 million to Republican causes this year but still masquerades as a legitimate source of news. Their chat and opinion programs spread innuendo daily. The founder of Politifact, another nonpartisan referee to the daily rumble, said two of the site’s five most popular items on its Truth-o-meter are corrections of Glenn Beck.

Beck tosses off enough half-truths in a month to keep Politifact working overtime. Of late, he has gone after Michelle Obama, whose vacation in Spain was “just for her and approximately 40 of her friends.” Limbaugh had a similar line, saying the First Lady “is taking 40 of her best friends and leasing 60 rooms at a five-star hotel — paid for by you.”

The White House said Michelle Obama and her daughter Sasha were accompanied by just a few friends — and they paid their own costs. But, wink, wink, the damage is done. He’s Muslim and foreign. She’s living the luxe life on your dime. They don’t even have to mention race. The code words do it for them.

Climate-change denial is a special category all its own. Once on the fringe, dismissal of scientific consensus is now an article of faith among leading Republicans, again taking their cue from Limbaugh and Fox.

It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence?

But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.

It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?

( The Center for American Progress (CAP) is a progressive website funded by George Soros. The CEO is John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. Phil Sweeney)

Vice President Biden and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) yesterday both released reports showing how much the America Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, also known as the “stimulus bill”) helped the U.S. economy.  The reports are a stunning rebuke to all of those who say the stimulus bill has been ineffective.  CAP’s Richard W. Caperton has the story.

The Vice President’s report, “The Recovery Act: Transforming the American Economy Through Innovation,” details how ARRA has ramped up the levels of investment in numerous growing industries.  In particular, ARRA’s policies have led to dramatic increases in investment in clean energy technologies, especially wind and solar.  The report painstakingly documents success after success, demonstrating conclusively that the stimulus bill has helped move our country toward a clean energy future.

Most of ARRA’s support for wind and solar comes from three programs:

• Treasury cash grants in lieu of tax credits (“Section 1603″).  The cash grants have supported more than 500 projects by leveraging $6 billion in private investment.  This investment has created 12,000 new jobs.
  
• Manufacturing tax credits (“Section 48C”).  This tax credit supported 183 projects by leveraging more than $4 billion in private investment, creating a total of 58,000 new jobs.
  
• Loan guarantees (“Section 1705″).  Through this program, the government will guarantee more than $2 billion in debt, which will lower borrowing costs and make it possible for private companies to invest in new projects.
  

Unfortunately, each of these programs is under attack.  Section 1603 cash grants and 48C tax credits are responsible for tremendous growth in the wind and solar industries, but are in danger of ending on December 31.  Congress needs to extend these programs through a tax extender bill.  The Center for American Progress has also written about challenges facing the loan guarantee program, calling for Congress to restore money to the program that has been raided to pay for other policies.

In addition to the direct investment, ARRA has also driven technological improvement.  Most notably, by investing in research and development, the government is helping solar power become cost-competitive with fossil fuels.  The report states:

“The cost of solar is forecast to reach grid parity over the next five years in many parts of the country. This means homeowners (who pay an average retail cost of about 10 cents/kWh for electricity from the grid) and utility companies (which have average wholesale power costs closer to 5 cents/kWh) can use solar power without paying a premium over fossil-based electricity.”

ARRA has also guided investment to energy sectors beyond just renewable generation.  Electric vehicles, oil-reducing mass transit, smart grid, and electricity transmission have all grown substantially because of the stimulus bill.

The stimulus bill’s investment has been in all segments of the economy, not just energy.  CBO’s report describes the effect of ARRA on the overall economy.  According to a summary posted on the CBO Director’s blog, “ARRA’s policies:

• “Raised the level of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent,
  
• “Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points,
  
• “Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million, and
  
• “Increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by 2.0 million to 4.8 million compared with what those amounts would have been otherwise. (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers.)
  

Government action may not be popular with everyone in the U.S., but there’s no way that anyone can claim it’s ineffective.  ARRA is helping the economy, now we just need to make sure that the policies that are working stay in effect.

– Richard W. Caperton is a Policy Analyst with the Center for American Progress Energy Team.

Agenda

Monday, August 30, 2010 7:30 p.m.

Marblehead Community Center

Humphrey St., Marblehead

1. Financial Report
   

    

2. Chairman’s Report:
   

    

   There is no guest speaker this month. The meeting will be an opportunity for members to strategize about the coming Primary. Bumper stickers, lawn signs and other campaign materials will be available. We need everyone’s help so please try to attend. This is the last meeting before the September Primary.
   

    

3. Old Business
   

    

4. New Business
   

    

5. Adjournment
   

Baker ally’s woes go beyond red tape

Patrick critic faces suits, wage claims

By Frank Phillips

Globe Staff / August 26, 2010

•  

  At a recent press conference denouncing Governor Deval Patrick’s economic policies, Republican rival Charles D. Baker presented to the news media a small-business owner who regaled reporters with a woeful narrative describing how his business went bankrupt and why he blamed the governor.
  

•  
  •  

  Joseph M. DiStasio, a former owner of two Quincy tree companies, described what he said was a long struggle with state agencies that ended up drowning his businesses in red tape, fees, and rising taxes. He filed for bankruptcy for himself and for both companies in January.
  

  “I was forced to close the doors,” he told reporters as Baker, the GOP gubernatorial nominee, stood by his side. “Regulations and never-ending rules are ever changing; taxes are going up. I’m scared to try to grow another business in Massachusetts. . . . I got the rug pulled out from under me.”
  

  But a closer look at DiStasio’s plight shows several legal claims filed against him and his companies undercut his assertion that Beacon Hill policies were the sole cause of his downfall.
  

  American Express has filed a petition with the bankruptcy court, saying that DiStasio ran up more than $40,000 in bills on his personal card for luxury items in the weeks before the January filing.
  

  Last month, Attorney General Martha Coakley fined one of his companies nearly $100,000 for significant wage law violations.
  

  And, in a lawsuit, his former business partner asserts that DiStasio siphoned company funds to purchase luxury items and to cover personal expenses. DiStasio did not return repeated calls for comment this week.
  

  His personal bankruptcy petition outlines liabilities of $3.6 million. He lists assets of $4.1 million, but $2.7 million of that is money that he said he was owed as part of a counter-lawsuit against his partner. A judge has already dismissed two-thirds of that amount.
  

  A Baker spokeswoman brushed aside DiStasio’s controversial financial history, insisting that the campaign simply offered his story to illustrate what it calls the destructive business climate that the Patrick administration’s management of the state’s tax structure and regulations has created.
  

  “This is a guy who has been negatively affected by the state’s regulatory policies for the last four years, and we are happy to provide a platform for him,” said Amy Goodrich, Baker’s spokeswoman. She would not say whether the Baker campaign was aware of DiStasio’s legal issues or had looked into his background.
  

  She also would not say what rules and regulations caused DiStasio’s problems. “You can talk to him about that,” she said.
  

  In an effort to connect with voters, political candidates often bring “real people” along with them to events — business owners, homeowners, or other people affected by government — to bring a human face into abstract political discussions.Continued…
  

  In showcasing DiStasio, Baker chose a 37-year-old businessman who has been active in GOP politics in Quincy. DiStasio donated $2,000 to Baker and his running mate, Richard R. Tisei, since filing for bankruptcy. According to his bankruptcy filings, he opened D&B Tree Service in Quincy in 1997 with Mark Bogan. DiStasio and his wife, Jill, started a second company, Able Tree Service, at the same address in 2007.
  

  During his appearance with Baker, DiStasio told a compelling story but provided few details about the specific regulations that had bogged down his company. He also did not mention some of his other financial woes.
  

  American Express, in a petition filed in DiStasio’s bankruptcy case, says he charged $40,537 to his personal credit card in the five weeks prior to filing for bankruptcy protection in federal court on Jan. 5.
  

  Credit card records show he racked up $7,043 in charges at a Best Buy store on Dec. 12 and 13 last year and spent $980 for a two-day stay in late November in San Diego. That included payment for a room at the Se San Diego, a luxury hotel that describes itself as “ultra-chic.”
  

  Last month, Coakley’s Fair Labor Division issued a citation against Able Tree Service, alleging that it cheated its workers out of more than $268,000 in wages between July 2007 and December 2008. During that time, the office found, the company had intentionally paid its 68 employees less than the legally mandated wage rate for work removing more than 2,000 trees for the cities of Newton and Braintree and the town of Southborough. The DiStasios, who are appealing the case, were ordered to pay the lost wages and were slapped with a $97,500 fine.
  

  DiStasio and Bogan, his former business partner, are also battling in Superior Court. Bogan filed suit in 2008, saying DiStasio had forced him out of the business without giving him just compensation and that his “lavish lifestyle” had drained the company’s coffers. This lifestyle, Bogan asserts, included DiStasio’s purchase of a home in Braintree worth nearly $1 million and use of company funds for vacations “under the guise of attending professional conferences.” He also leased a Rolls-Royce, a BMW, and several Mercedes-Benz cars, Bogan claims.
  

  DiStasio blasted back with a countersuit soon after, leveling similar charges against Bogan. He also says his former partner used company funds to buy luxury items, such as a 2005 Corvette, and rented a $9,000-a-week oceanfront house on Cape Cod.
  

  Bogan said the Corvette was for DiStasio’s use and that five families, including DiStasio’s, shared the summer rental. “Mark walked out of there with only his shirt on his back,” said his lawyer, Robert K. Kelly of Quincy.
  

  According to his bankruptcy filing, DiStasio also owes $27,000 in local real estate taxes: $18,000 to the City of Quincy for industrial land, and $9,000 to the Town of Holbrook, where he owns rental units that produce about $24,000 a year in income.
  

  Despite his financial problems, DiStasio is leasing a 2008 RS 60 Porsche Boxster, a sporty two-seat convertible, according to his bankruptcy filing. The lease costs him $798 a month.
  

  DiStasio’s criticism of Massachusetts’ business rules fit Baker’s theme for the Aug. 17 press event in front of the State House. The Republican candidate called the press conference to denounce the Patrick administration’s regulatory and tax structure, saying its strictures drive small businesses into bankruptcy and destroy jobs.
  

  “We are way too complicated in terms of our red tape and regulations,” Baker said. He said that Patrick’s policies are a “huge impediment to job growth and job creation,” particularly, he said, for small businesses.
  

  Frank Phillips can be reached at phillips@globe.com.
  

  © Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
  

Monday, August 23, 2010

In an election, a solid “no” usually beats an uneasy “yes, but.” That’s the heart of the problem Democrats and President Obama face this fall.

The advantage of saying no without equivocation is that a significant share of the electorate is usually ready to shout the word from the rooftops, especially when the economy is as bad as it is now. Both parties have regularly offered variations on George C. Wallace’s brilliant slogan, “Send them a message.” The catchphrase leaves voters free to define who “them” is and to fill in the message themselves.

Democrats know this, since the power of negative thinking won them back both houses of Congress in 2006. Their supporters swarmed the polls to say no to George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.

That’s why identifying the GOP as “the party of no” won’t do the Democrats as much good as they’d like to think. With more than a third of conservative Republicans declaring that our Christian president is a Muslim, just saying no to him is a more than adequate motivation to spend a few minutes with a ballot.

And no is certainly more powerful than the mixed messages Democrats are putting forward. In their sweeping victories of 2006 and 2008, Democrats picked up dozens of seats in very conservative districts. Many of these incumbents don’t want to be associated in the least with the remarkable record their party has built in this Congress for fear of tying themselves to Obama or the party’s congressional leadership, or both. But this means that Democrats are defending their achievements half-heartedly, while Republicans are assailing them without mercy and, often enough, without much concern for accuracy.

To solve this problem, the Democrats have come up with a loud “no” of their own, asking voters to reject the Republican past one more time to avoid moving the country backward. The president makes this case by providing some reflections on driving. “When you want to move forward in your car, what do you do? You put your car in ‘D,’ ” he says. “When you want to go backwards, you put it in ‘R’ — back into the ditch!” It’s a nice line, but will it get enough of his party’s supporters to drive themselves to the polls? What’s missing from the Democrats’ campaign is a willingness to raise the stakes of the election. This may be the only way to inspire the party’s own supporters and move those independents still open to persuasion.

The principled case that must be made is that the brand of conservatism seeking power this year is irresponsible, incoherent and untrue to the best of its own traditions. That’s clear enough at the most basic level of policy: Conservatives can say that they are deeply worried about deficits, or they can insist that tax cuts matter most. But when they say they can reduce taxes and trim deficits at the same time, they are either deluded or deceptive, and they are playing voters for fools.

But there is something far more troubling at work: the rise of an angry, irrational extremism — the sort that says Obama is a Muslim socialist who wasn’t born in the United States — that was not part of Ronald Reagan’s buoyant conservative creed. Do Republican politicians believe in the elaborate conspiracy theories being spun by Glenn Beck and parts of the Tea Party? If not, why won’t they say so? Liberals who refused to break with the far left in the 1950s and ’60s were accused of being blinded by a view that saw “no enemies on the left.” Are conservatives who should know better now falling into a “no enemies on the right” trap?

When Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert warns, with absolutely no proof, of the dangers of “terror babies” — children whose mothers allegedly come to the United States to give birth so their offspring can have American passports for later use in terrorist activities — have we not crossed into never-never land? Where are the responsible conservatives who should be denouncing such crackpottery?

What the current right has on offer is far worse than anything Bush put forward, which means that this election isn’t even about whether we’ll go back into the ditch. It’s about whether a movement that’s gone over a cliff will be rewarded for doing so. A victory for this style of conservatism will be a defeat for the kind of conservatism the country needs. And that’s a worthy matter to put to the voters.

ejdionne@washpost.com

Tuesday’s Washington Post has an article about Governor Patrick and the implications his reelection campaign might have on the President’s own reelection in two years. As we have come to expect, much of the article was about inside political baseball and prognosticating. However, there was a statement by Governor Patrick in the story that is far more important than any inside-the-beltway political navel gazing, and I wanted to make sure you saw it. It sums up so much about Deval Patrick’s leadership.

Deval said: “If you really do respect democracy, and you really aren’t in it to just win reelection but to do what you think is right, then you have to take the chance that you lead with conviction”

Leading with conviction. Sadly, that is the exception rather than the rule in our politics today.

The people of Massachusetts are so fortunate that the rare leadership qualities of conviction and principle are at the heart of who Deval Patrick is.

Those values have guided Deval’s policies and decisions and ultimately delivered clear and undeniable results for Massachusetts. While times are still tough, the Commonwealth is strengthening more rapidly than many other states in job creation and economic growth. It leads the nation in health care coverage for its residents. Its 4th and 8th graders lead the nation in reading. The Governor and Lt. Governor have invested in expanded services for our veterans and brought Massachusetts forward as a leader in the green energy future.

That said, all elections are about choices, and this election Massachusetts faces a very stark one between Deval or former Health Insurance CEO Charles Baker or Treasurer Tim Cahill. Baker and Cahill have a very different vision. They’ve stood with Big Insurance on premium hikes; proposed policies that would risk funding for schools and health care; and offered Big Dig economics and budget gimmicks that would threaten job creation, pile up big debt, and weaken the Commonwealth’s bond rating. Both of these men want to take Massachusetts in a very different direction.

And that is why I am writing you today. We have to work as hard as we can to make sure everyone in the state is clear about the choices in front of them, and I need you to help us spread that message by contributing $50, $100, $250 or even $500. Deval’s commitment to grassroots politics with volunteers at the center of the campaign is unshakable and in my view a principal reason he will succeed. So many of you are giving something so precious, your time. But we also need the financial resources so that the special interests who want to take us back are not able to buy this election.

I know that for many, it is interesting to look at the political implications of an election. But I would argue that this election is really about the choice that the people of Massachusetts will make about the direction of their state. Aside from political implications, this election has real implications on health care for our loved ones, the quality of education for our kids, and how we invest in our economy to bring good jobs at good wages. Most importantly, it’s how Deval Patrick views this election – it’s a chance to ensure the progress and promise are not stopped dead in their tracks, and worse, reversed.

We can’t allow that to happen, and that is why I need you to give $50 right now to support the Governor’s reelection efforts. It’s a lot to ask but there is a lot at stake.

Sincerely,
David Plouffe

P.S. Every dollar helps. Donate $50 right now.

]]> http://marbleheaddems.org/?feed=rss2&p=869 0 http://marbleheaddems.org/?p=864 http://marbleheaddems.org/?p=864#comments Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:38:11 +0000 admin http://marbleheaddems.org/?p=864 The Unnecessary Fall

A counter-history of the Obama presidency.

John B. Judis

John B. Judis

Senior Editor

view bio

Contrast Obama’s attempt to develop a politics to justify his economic program with what Reagan did in 1982. Faced with steadily rising unemployment, which went from 8.6 percent in January to 10.4 percent in November, Reagan and his political staff, which included James Baker, Mike Deaver, and Ed Rollins, forged a strategy early that year calling for voters to “stay the course” and blaming the current economic troubles on Democratic profligacy. “We are clearing away the economic wreckage that was dumped in our laps,” Reagan declared. Democrats accused them of playing “the blame game,” but the strategy, followed to the letter by the White House for ten months, worked. The Republicans were predicted to lose as many as 50 House seats, but they lost only 26 and broke even in the Senate.

Some commentators have noted Reagan’s popularity was even lower than Obama’s. But, on key economic questions, he did much better than Obama and the Democrats are currently performing–and voters expressed far greater patience with Reagan’s program. According to polls, even as the unemployment rate climbed, a narrow plurality still expressed confidence that Reagan’s program would help the economy. On the eve of the election, with the unemployment rate at a postwar high, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that 60 percent of likely voters thought Reagan’s economic program would eventually help the country. That’s a sign of a successful political operation. If Obama could command those numbers, Democrats could seriously limit their losses in November. But Obama has not been able to develop a narrative that could convince people to trust him and the Democrats.

Why has the White House failed to convince the public that it is fighting effectively on its behalf? The principal culprit is clearly Barack Obama. He has a strange aversion to confrontational politics. His aversion is strange because he was schooled in it, working as a community organizer in the 1980s, under the tutelage of activists who subscribed to teachings of the radical Saul Alinsky. But, when Obama departed for Harvard Law School in 1988, he left Alinsky and adversarial tactics behind.

The young lawyer who returned to Chicago and won a seat in the Illinois state Senate in 1996 practiced a very different style of politics. Obama’s principal accomplishments in Springfield were bills restricting lobbying and requiring videotaping of confessions in potential death penalty cases. He was not a typical blue-collar, bread-and-butter Chicago Democrat, but the kind of good government liberal that represents the upscale districts of the city, seeing in politics a higher calling and ill at ease with (although not in open opposition to) the city’s Democratic machine. He was also a post-racial politician who eschewed the hard-edged, angry rhetoric of Jesse Jackson. (That, too, is oddly reminiscent of Carter, who partly campaigned in 1976 as the white Southern antidote to George Wallace’s angry racial populism.)

Obama carried this outlook into the U.S. Senate, into his campaign for the presidency, and then, into the presidency itself. He is a cerebral, dispassionate, post-partisan; he wants to “end the political strategy that has been based on division,” to “turn the page” on the culture wars of the 1960s and the partisan battles of the 1990s. During the campaign, his aides jokingly referred to him as the “black Jesus.” While he can tolerate and even brush aside conflict, he is reluctant to actively foment it. “In a time of crisis, we can’t afford to govern out of anger,” he declared in February 2009. During his campaign and his first year in office, he held to a blind faith in bipartisanship, even as the Republicans voted as a bloc against his legislation. He is, perhaps, ill-suited in these respects for an era of bruising political warfare.

His advisers have clearly reinforced these inclinations. In the campaign, they fashioned him as the outsider candidate of “hope” and “change” and have extended this strategy into the presidency itself. They see him as standing above party. In a meeting with congressional leaders last April, senior adviser David Axelrod rejected the complaint that Obama accorded equal blame to Democrats and Republicans with his descriptions of the “cynical politics in Washington.” Within the White House, top aides still speak of promoting the Obama “brand.” Organizing for America, the administration’s campaign organization, which is supposed to be focusing on the 2010 elections, recently devoted its resources to organizing parties across the country to celebrate Obama’s forty-ninth birthday.

These efforts to elevate Obama above the hurly-burly of Washington politics have been disastrous. Obama’s image as an iconic outsider has become the screen on which Fox News, the Tea Party, radicalright bloggers, and assorted politicians have projected the image of him as a foreigner, an Islamic radical, and a socialist. He has remained “the other” that he aspired to be during the campaign, but he and his advisers no longer control how that otherness is defined.

The White House and cabinet officials he appointed have reinforced his aversion to populism. As Jonathan Alter recounts in The Promise: President Obama, Year One, Geithner and Summers repeatedly blocked attempts to get tough on Wall Street on the grounds that doing so would threaten the recovery itself by upsetting the bankers. For most of his first year, Alter writes, “Obama bought the Geithner-Summers argument that the banks were fragile and couldn’t be confronted while they remained in peril.” Its reluctance to come down on the bankers crippled the administration politically, making it far more difficult for it to get its way with Congress on a second stimulus program that would have boosted the recovery and Democrats’ political prospects. Bad politics can trump good policy.

Populism has profound shortcomings as a worldview. It tends toward demagoguery. In its relentless focus on the middle class, it can ignore or stigmatize those below it. It can prove hostile to a long-range scientific outlook. A more populist Obama, for instance, might have postponed the battle for climate change legislation or national health insurance and probably would have taken a weaker stand on immigration. But populism has been an indelible part of the American political psyche, and those who are uncomfortable making populist appeals, like Hoover or Carter–or, more recently, presidential candidate John Kerry–suffer the consequences at the polls.

If Obama’s politics leads to a Republican takeover of one or both houses of Congress, and even to a Republican president in 2012, then much of what Obama has accomplished could be undone. It’s unlikely that a new Republican president and Congress would actually repeal the health care or the financial reform bill. But the former could be starved of public funds and deprived of regulatory oversight; and the latter could be neutered by a hostile treasury secretary and by weak or hostile presidential appointees to the Securities and Exchange Commission or the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Reform legislation needs administrations and congresses committed to reform. That is where politics has to come in; and that’s where the Obama administration, with its aversion to populism, has fallen short. 

John B. Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and a visiting scholar