It wasn’t a disaster everywhere, and out of such crumbs must we nourish our hopes till we get our whup-ass mojo going again (Monday, dudes…we’ve got work coming).
So, with that, smile on the results from my home state:
Governor — check (Go Deval!)
All 10 House seats — check (yay Barney!)
All statewide races — check (err, two cheers for Martha Coakley?) (No, I guess I haven’t forgiven her for running the worst campaign in civilized history last Jan.)
Voted to retain our recent sales tax hike
Voted to retain the state’s primary law encouraging the construction of affordable housing
Voted to abolish the state’s sales tax on liquor…which I opposed, but have to admit makes a whole lot of sense in the wake of the results last night.
Massachusetts, while very far from perfect (and at least a couple of klicks east of Eden), gets some of the basics: you can’t run a government without a tax base; a commitment to decent schools and adequate health care produce economic and social goods, and as problematic as many of our long-entrenched Dems may be, the GOP cannot be taken seriously as a party of governance.
A bit of backstory: I just moved from one town to another to get to the best public schools I could find for my kid. As we were completing the transaction, my new town voted to raise their own property taxes, in support of the historically excellent schools there. On a block by block basis sanity can be restored. Given the essentially unlimited money available to the bad guys, we have no choice, I think, but to refine a high-low grass-roots strategy–using all the technology that has low barriers to entry, both cost and access — and fighting local fights to make Democrats out of the disaffected.
Or at least, that’s how I’m spinning this morning.
So come on down (or up) folks! – or more seriously there may be some sh*t to glean from this Massachusetts miracle.
Image: Edouard Manet, “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère,” 1881-82
Anya
I feel proud my state of birth! Way to go people of Massachusetts.
SP
I haven’t done much campaign work so maybe I’m just dazzled by the sparkly lights, but it seemed to me like the Patrick ground game kicked ass. I did a couple hours of calls at a campaign office, but they went through their technology- they have the master voter list assembled mostly from the Obama campaign and Patrick’s first run. They then have poll watchers at every precinct who text in the name of every person who checks in, updating every couple hours. They run that against the master list and generate the call and knock lists for their likely supporters, updating three times on election day. That’s in addition to the usual stuff like free ride service and recording feedback from calls (voted, will vote, not voting.)
beergoggles
YES!
So glad I live here. We just got even bluer.
The only thing I worry about is that Martha will be picked as the Dem contender to run against Scott Brown *again*.
And I can’t help but admit that I was tempted to voted against the alcohol sales tax (if the question was to remove the alcohol excise tax, I would definitely have voted for it) because I’m going to need all the cheap liquor I can get for the next few years.
Punchy
Pretty ironic that the location of the Original Tea Party is pretty much immune to the modern Tea Party.
Meanwhile, the Deep South embraces the teabagging.
Regnad Kcin
Who passed an override last night? Way to go.
And dont get me started on Chapter 70 funding formulas…
Cacti
Get rid of that Senator who likes to show his pubes and I might think about it.
Bulworth
Great news from Massachusetts, and if I may, can we show a little love for Maryland, My Maryland? Martin O’Malley crushed Bobby Hairdo Ehrlich in a rematch for Governator and did pretty well across the board. Frank Kratovil, “independent” Democrat, and opponent of HCR, did happen to lose to his Repub opponent. But good riddance to Kratovil.
Tom Levenson
@Regnad Kcin: No one htat I know — this override came a little while back while my wife and I were working through a house purchase into the overrriding town. We were very relieved when it passed (just before we became residents and able to vote on the measure ourselves). It wasn’t close either.
The Grand Panjandrum
hhhhhmmmmm …. NH just elected veto proof Republican majorities in both houses of the state legislature. IOW we are back to 2004. Vermont here I come!
Tom Levenson
@Bulworth: Woot indeed. Go Maryland!
beergoggles
FWIW, Massachusetts was the first state to establish public schools. Granted the motives for it were shifty, but it was a first step nevertheless.
I also would not count on any sort of disaffected grass-root strategy in the rest of the country; especially the areas that are cutting so much government funding that they can’t afford paved roads anymore.
Captain Haddock
I think the tax on booze should have been tripled. Not that I am against drinking, I like a few sips myself from time to time – but I rake more nip bottles out of my front yard than leaves and am sick of telling drunks my front steps aren’t a hang out. The People’s Republic of Cambridge is a bum’s paradise.
Tom Levenson
@The Grand Panjandrum: Oy…
When New England secedes, we’ll let Confederate-stan keep NH…or no; it’s too beautiful a state; re-education should suffice ;)
khead
Eh. I can get pretty much the same thing in Maryland.
Plus I’ll have a slots parlor 10 minutes from the house pretty soon.
Jennifer
There’s some truth in what you’re saying. Arkansas last night went from a 4 Democrat, 1 Republican congressional delegation to a 3 Republican, 2 Democrat delegation.
But the Democratic governor won in a landslide and Democrats won all the state constitutional offices.
Why? Our Democratic governor did the hard work required to remove sales taxes from food. We don’t tax rich people’s incomes here, so most state revenue comes from sales taxes – and for as long as I’ve lived here, that included taxing some of the poorest people in the country 6% on their groceries. Clinton never tried to address it and neither did anyone else. Our current governor, Mike Beebe, did, through a plan that lowers the tax on food 1% per year until it phases out completely, while replacing that revenue with other sources as it phases out. The sales tax on food now stands at 2% and over the next two years will be gone entirely. That’s truly progressive and populist, and all the people who turned out to replace the horrid Blanche Lincoln with the insane John Boozman recognized it and returned him to office – despite the (D) after his name on the ballot.
The results nationwide I put down to blind, misguided, ignorant rage directed at whoever could be blamed. That’s not a surprise – we’ve always known that the stupid and ignorant outnumber the smart and well-informed. Let’s see how those same folks feel after two years of government gridlock and phony investigations, with the economic stagnation and malaise that will attend. Last night’s results were not an indication of great love for Republicans but rather a temper tantrum thrown by the stupid majority. It’s not likely that the conditions that provoked that tantrum will improve over the next two years, thanks to the tantrum-throwers choosing to reward irresponsible and stupid people. Such is the outcome of most decisions born out of blind rage. It will cut against the crew that benefitted yesterday the next time around.
geg6
I am seriously considering a move there based on my own state narrowly turning into an insane asylum.
I am bitter and pissed. I hope (white) America gets fucked hard over the next two years. I hope unemployment goes to 20%, I hope that public services are all discontinued, I hope that America fails to increase the debt ceiling and turns into Greece. I hope that (white) senior citizens suffer and find themselves too poor to buy cat food. I hope that all the (white) municipal workers I know who couldn’t wait to don their Tea Party hats lose their jobs. I hope that the (white) college students who sat at home find themselves so far in debt that they’ll never get out, especially since they will never get a job after graduating unless it’s a job at Walmart. And I hope that the minimum wage is scrapped just so they will know the consequences of their indifference as they stock Chinese goods for Walmart shoppers.
I don’t really mean all of this. But I do. Elections have consequences. I want America to suffer the consequences of their decisions.
drunken hausfrau
block by block grassroots? hmmmm…. Bring back Howard Dean as DNC chair! 50 state strategy worked because it was small, block by block, state by state grassroots. Seriously. Dump Tim the Wimp.
pandora
Let’s give a cheer for Delaware, as well!
Maryland
Or move to blue, blue Maryland. We lost one House seat but still have 7 out of 9 and we have two Democratic Senators and a Democratic governor. Our state legislature is solidly Democratic. Maryland never fell for any tea partiers at all.
Guster
Anyone know how the health-care thing’s working for self-employed people in MA? Because moving there actually might make sense for me.
(And drop me a line, Tom, if you’re willing to share what towns have such good public school.)
merrinc
Good for Massachusetts. I keep telling my husband we need to move up north but he hates snow.
Here in NC, we gave control of both branches of the state legislature to the Repubs. First time they’ve controlled the NC Senate since 1868. The county’s been closing libraries and slashing the budget for parks&rec and schools for the last year and the public outcry over it has been rightfully deafening. So I’m not sure how electing bozos who vow to further reduce spending is supposed to help but what do I know? I’m just an irresponsible liberal.
Crashman
I live in Mass. and I still feel sick this morning. The next two years will be rough.
J.W. Hamner
I was a little irritated about the liquor tax getting repealed… and I hand a fair bit of cash to such purveyors… but overall it was a pretty good night locally.
BR
@geg6:
You may get your wish if what’s going on in the banking system is any indication. Today we’ll get the Fed’s announcement on QE2, trying to paper over the mess some more. But it won’t last, and the banks are going to start having serious crises in the next six months. Hopefully Obama is going to start going populist on the issue soon so that he won’t get blamed for it when it happens.
sputnik_Sweetheart
I was listening to Dennis and Callahan this morning (don’t ask) and they were foaming at the mouth over Deval’s reelection and the defeat of the sales tax rollback. They were making lots of idiotic arguments about our founding fathers and the free market. They couldn’t understand why Mass voters wouldn’t vote to keep more money in their pocket, but for the day to day purchases, the tax cut would make such little difference for the average person.
The schadenfreude was wonderful.
Llelldorin
I have to give at least partial props to California–we put Brown back into the governor’s seat, sent Boxer back for another term, and (so far, at least) have a blue sweep on statewide offices.
The only fly in this ointment is that–unlike MA–we haven’t really reconciled ourselves to the idea that taxes are necessary for civilization. Some of our propositions went in really stupid ways–we refused to close corporate tax loopholes, and made it borderline impossible to fine corporations for noncompliance with regulations.
Guster
Jesus Christ. I just checked, and it’d cost me $9,600/year for health care in MA, with the Bronze plan, the lowest cost plan.
I’m so fucked.
rb
I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Coakley – I sort of see her as the Dems’ Sharon Angle, albeit a heck of a lot more accomplished. Just soooooo entitled.
I’d definitely trade her slot to the Rs if they’d drop another of these cocky, entitled schmoes (Rand Paul comes to mind).
BR
@Llelldorin:
I wish there had been more focus on prop 26. Folks should have been saying “no on 23 and 26” as if they were the same. Oh well.
And I guess Oregon or Washington are going to have to legalize cannabis first. Which may be for the best, because those are harder states for the national media to demonize than California – fewer bullshit stereotypes.
Ailuridae
@Bulworth:
I’ve made the reference for a long time that Obama is going to be our transition President and O’Malley is going to be the transformational one.
I really want to see who is going to run against him in 2016.
Still Kudos to MD and the Massholes for getting it right. Illinois totally dropped the ball today.
Crusty Dem
To which of the W’s did you move, Tom?
I do miss the sanity of voting in Massachusetts, of course Washington state isn’t nearly as painful as voting in Texas was, but these ridiculous referendums are a pain…
MoeLarryAndJesus
sputnik_Sweetheart wrote: “I was listening to Dennis and Callahan this morning”
Don’t. I avoid those Nazi assholes as much as possible.
It’s a great morning here in the Bay State as reason has prevailed and all the teabaggers are crying big-ass tears. They really can’t believe that they were shut out.
I love the sound of teabaggers crying in the morning.
Crashman
@sputnik_Sweetheart:
Good God, I hate those two jackasses. How can you bear listening to them, even if they are complaining? They’re so filled with venom. I’ve switched over to 98.5 because of them.
Llelldorin
@BR:
Totally agree. They brought out that “oh, FUCK, right, 26!” ad campaign in the last week, but it was much too little, much too late.
Hawes
Down south of Mass in Connecticut I had a perfect midterm moment this morning.
Every Wednesday I indulge in a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich at a local diner. And every Wednesday I sit next to these old coots who occasionally talk politics and allow me a Brooksian moment at the Applebee’s salad bar.
This morning I heard them calling Dick Blumenthal a liar and a career politician and how they wish the Tea Party could have taken him out.
Another coot (a closet liberal, methinks) said, “Did you hear about that Tea Party guy (sic) down South who wants to abolish Social Security?”
“Oh, I don’t want that!”
“Heck no!”
Um…Tea Party “guy”? How about the whole Tea Party?
The Idiocracy is upon us!
Old White Guys…
matoko_chan
Or move to Colorado.
The Red Wave turned into beach break here.
Think on it– the GOP could have had 5 more senate seats if not for the TP– Nevada, West Virginia, Delaware, Colorado, Wash state.
The TP IS Sarah Palin.
Like the devils bargain she brought McCain– pumped up the enthusiasm, but pumped up the crazy and unelectable at the same time.
:)
Rosalita
Not too bad a morning in CT either. Dick Blumenthal won, Murphy and Himes kept their seats. The governor is going to wind up in a recount but I have fingers crossed for Dan Malloy.
virginia
Good time to listen to some Steely Dan. And what Jennifer said at number 15. North Arlington, Va — what my brother used to call an island in the middle of the sea. Uma ilha no meio do mar.
Ailuridae
@merrinc:
You’re also adding a House seat before the next election (maybe 2) and now the GOP is going to fuck you over for ten years. I have no idea how this wasn’t more of an issue in states like NC
Bulworth
@pandora: I went to UD, so am pretty familiar with Michael Castle. Thanks, teabaggers for electing O’Donnell instead.
Bulworth
@Rosalita: I was very relieved by Blumenthal’s win. I can’t stand the McMahons.
sputnik_Sweetheart
@MoeLarryAndJesus: I generally don’t, but someone in the house had it on while I was having breakfast, so I had no choice but to listen to it. I did really enjoy their temper tantrum though.
Redshirt
I was pleasantly surprised by my fellow Massholes – I guess I don’t give them enough credit, as I always feel, even here in the heart of Liberal America, I feel drowned out by these loud mouth jerks.
But we’re here, just quiet.
Bummed for Maine though – can’t believe that LePage guy will win.
Llelldorin
@Hawes:
Problem is, we’ve mostly lost the coots who really remember the Depression. These days, the coots are the guys who were kids during WWII, and first experienced adult life in the 1950s. They’re sort of the worst of both worlds–they remember the social environment of the ’50s fondly, but not the economic collapse that preceded it, so they have the modern conservative contempt for anyone “down on their luck.”
lamh31
@geg6:
hear! hear!
BTB, I see from the previous thread and various threads over the intertubes, that the infighing has begun.
Seriously, someone please tell me when it’ll be over!
Until thing, I think my blogroll is gonna be really anemic for a while!
Violet
Texas went even more teabagger and Rick Perry is still the Governor. Does that mean that when the terrible economic conditions that he created become apparent that the GOP will be held slightly more responsible than they would have if Bill White had been elected? One can only hope. The increasing price of oil may offset this issue, but I still hope Perry gets tarred with some of it.
Ailuridae
@Hawes:
My dad is roughly one of those guys except in ruralish NY than CT. Like a lot of older voters he would probably welcome an expansion of SS to provide greater benefits even if it didn’t apply to him. Why the Democrats don’t push this idea to create a federal pension system is beyond me.
Alice Blue
In Georgia, five of our six Democratic congressmen won, but the Repugs now have every single statewide office.
Punchy
@The Grand Panjandrum: Say goodbye to gay marriage
Hal
Yay MA! and Yay CA! and YAY NY — at least when it comes to Governors and Senators.
I’m thrilled that CA sent Whitman and Fiorina packing. 160 million fucking dollars later. Amazing.
And once again, Boxer is re-elected, even though she was supposed to go down in flames.
Still, Fiorina got way to much of the popular vote, IMO. Hopefully, Kamala will come through, and I won’t be surprised to see Newsom running when Brown’s term is up.
Guster
@Redshirt: Yeah. I live in Maine. LePage. Wow.
And speaking of Massholes, looks like I’m not really gonna be in a position to point any fingers.
Rosalita
@Bulworth:
No shit. What a relief not to hear her drippy voice on the airwaves anymore.
Violet
On the plus side, aren’t times of economic disaster great periods of artistic creativity? Perhaps we’ll get some good music out of it or something.
Ash Can
@Ailuridae: As far as the senate race goes, it was because Giannoulias was such a weak candidate. He was never able to get past the family bank and Bright Start issues, and just was seen as too much of a Machine politician, even by Democratic voters. If the state Dems had run someone better the outcome would have been different. Lisa Madigan, for example, would have wiped the floor with Kirk. But she wanted to stay put. Illinois consumers are better off for it, but not so much the rest of the nation.
Pangloss
Massachusetts is nice, but I’m still pinning my hopes on getting Brazilian citizenship so I’ll be out of the prevailing winds of nuclear fallout when Sister Sarah nukes Iran.
Crashman
@Hawes: I almost hope social security is abolished, just to show these old coots what they’ve done. I’m not even thirty yet, I won’t have to worry about it for a while.
Crusty Dem
@matoko_chan:
Not sure what you mean about Washington State. Rossi beat the T’bagger in the primary..
How about Oregon electing a goofy NBA player and tax evader to the Governor’s office. I always thought Oregon was saner than that, if only because they had the really good weed..
Pangloss
Illinois sucked dirty ass last night. In IL-08, a lunatic named Joe Walsh knocked off Melissa Bean (right now he’s 800 votes ahead), which I didn’t see coming at all. For full-on lunacy, check out his 28 principles on his Web site, which suggests that the United States was founded on the principle of Manifest Destiny. Oy!
http://walshforcongress.com/issues/28-founding-principles-of-the-united-states/
Jinchi
@Llelldorin:
Second that. California smartly voted to allow the Legislature to pass a budget with a simple majority. Then they voted in a 2/3rds requirement to raise fees which combined with the 2/3rds requirement to raise taxes and the mountain of initiative-funded debt we’re living under will make passing any budget pretty tough. I wouldn’t want to have to run a government under those conditions.
Congratulations Governor Brown. Best of luck to you.
KDP
Happily, California has also remained pretty solidly Democratic. And we voted against the proposition to suspend our landmark air pollution control law. We also voted to allow budgets to pass with a simple majority (although this has potential issues), still after more than a decade of budget deadlock every year.
Tom65
You had me at “no sales tax on liquor”.
Ailuridae
@Ash Can:
I feel bad for Alexi (who like the President and Dan Seals I know a bit from the same pick-up basketball games in college); there is little about him that suggest machine candidate at all especially when you are referencing the admittedly quite competent Lisa Madigan. He might be a bad politician, he might have the charisma of a tea towel but as an elected official he was quite excellent.
Lisa is for all of her other awesomeness (and hotness) Michael Madigan’s daughter can’t be immune from a machine charge while claiming that Alexi is a machine politician can she?
FWIW, during her first state-wide campaign here she used to politic on the nearly all-white NW side of Chicago (Jefferson Park etc) by telling the white ethnics there (Poles, Slavs, etc) that she wouldn’t be like her Dad.
Bill E Pilgrim
Wow, Massachusetts didn’t look like that last time I was there. Okay now I am almost tempted to move there.
Ailuridae
@Crusty Dem:
mankato and facts aren’t exactly the best of friends.
Angela
So why do so many voters follow the party that governs the poorest and least educated part of the country (the South) and ignores the very real economic prosperity and awesome public education of Mass? It befuddles me.
SRW1
Maybe longer term there is an upside to the election results:
The progressive caucus saw four of its members defeated (one of them in a primary), whereas the blue dogs lost half of their members. Maybe at some point the blue dogs will figure out that their choice is to either contribute and make a Democratic majority work or be the first ones to be keelhauled in the next election.
Also, according to the NYT “Tea Party candidates swept up 32 Democratic seats. They won 39 seats total in the House, most by narrower margins than other Republicans.”
Maybe Boehner’s first piece of advice to them should be: Enjoy it while it lasts. What is the probability that these people will not very quickly discover their survival instincts? And what will they tell Boehner that it is they need to survive the next round.
Regnad Kcin
@sputnik_Sweetheart:
Heh. Dennis & Callahan are a must-avoid. Can’t believe they took them back after GorillaGate.
The afternoon drivetime “Big Show” at least keeps the politics in perspective and balances Fred out with Steve Buckley from time to time.
Southern Beale
California also did well, considering. The pot legalization didn’t happen but Prop 25, which allows them to balance the budget with a simple majority vote, was a big winner. As was keeping the climate law, the repeal attempt went down in flames.
And Meg and Carly couldn’t buy their elections. So there were some silver linings.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“The only fly in this ointment is that—unlike MA—we haven’t really reconciled ourselves to the idea that taxes are necessary for civilization. ”
Well, at least we got rid of the supermajority for the budget. But a clean Dem sweep of all the statewide races means the Republicans won’t have anyone with statewide recognition to run for Governor for at least four years. And Fiorina and Whitman’s miserable performance (given Boxer and Brown had a 10% performance) means that the GOP will probably not try Silicon Valley retreads again.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“As was keeping the climate law, the repeal attempt went down in flames.”
Yeah, but Prop 26 indirectly gutted that. No hope of getting a 2/3 vote for a CA carbon tax. Unless Prop 25 had language to strike down Prop 26 if it got more votes.
Mike R.
From a neighbor in little Rhody, congrats! If not for the Scott Brown brain-fart Mass would have an unblemished cast but shit does happen. I’m also kind of pleased with my fellow Rhode Islanders…..we deprived the bastards of any statewide offices and, while the uninformed my not know this, our newly elected Independent Governor, Linc Chafee, is much more progressive than his Democratic opponent.
Southern Beale
@SRW1:
I think this is the big lesson, but Dems will probably not get it. Here in Tennessee the DINO who sponsored our “guns in bars” legislation got defeated by a real Republican.
When given a choice between a real Republican and a fake one, voters chose the real one.
JMC in the ATL
If my Seasonal Affective Disorder weren’t so debilitating, I’d have stayed in New England forever. As it is, the People’s Republic of Austin will have to do. (yeah, yeah, I need to come up with a new handle)
jinxtigr
Or move to Vermont, dawgs :)
I think we might just barely have put in Shumlin as a governor- hope so, there’s stuff we need to address. Our nuclear power plant, Vermont Yankee, sucks and is falling apart with all the good practices of BP, and locals have been howling about it for YEARS. The Repub governor candidate Dubie (currently lt. gov) has been making excuses for it and enabling Entergy Louisiana along with our current Repub governor, and if our shit goes all Chernyobl on us it won’t be such a nice place to live.
But at least we’re fighting to deal with that, and socially we are quite awesome. Our senator Bernie is actually a Socia1ist, no shit :) we’re incredibly left-wing considering our old Repub contingent- I suspect even they balk like mad at things like curbstomping young women, even our rightwingers can’t be made to go full teabag in the numbers needed to ruin our state.
Bernie wants to put together government health clinics. I’m really eager to see him to it because I’m self-employed, have brought tens of thousands of dollars in trade into the country by my work, and thanks to Bernie I MIGHT be able to have medical and dental work when I need it. Right now I look a little like Cletus McHillbilly because I had a tooth pulled (on Medicare) and there wasn’t money to support any sort of replacement, so I don’t get to look like a cosmopolitan businessman- but fuck it, I can still work even if I end up gumming my food and looking like shit, and I’m going to do that.
Southern Beale
Colorado rejects “fetal personhood” .. more silver linings.
See it ain’t so bad1
Bill E Pilgrim
@Bill E Pilgrim: I also love that you can see that the beer was Bass Ale, and if you look at this really high resolution version you can not only see brush strokes but zoom in to the far left bottle of rosé to see what’s written on the label…
Such a great painting.
Crusty Dem
Holy crap, I hadn’t looked at politics where I grew up recently, but my hometown in Illinois (which has had a D congressman for ~30+ years) just elected a 9/12 member and pizza place (and check the website, do you really want to elect a restauranteur whose website doesn’t even post a menu??) owner with 10 kids to the US Congress. His wiki page is very informative with it’s complete absence of information…
Angela
@Southern Beale: That is good news.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Llelldorin:
This.
If you look carefully at modern European and North American history, it looks like there may be a sort of 70-100 year repeat interval for major human caused disasters (continental scale wars, massive economic collapses, etc.), which I suspect has something to do with the gradual loss (over a period of 3-4 generations) of living or 2nd hand and 3rd hand memory from the last really big fuck-up.
I remember stories of the Great Depression told to me by my parents and grandparents. But for my kids, it is all just a bunch of boring black-and-white photos in their school social studies textbooks. Too bad those photos are coming back to life, only this time in color.
AB
@Tom65:
Don’t get too excited — I suspect this got repealed largely because MA already has an excise tax on alcohol, and the repeal proponents campaigned pretty effectively on “double taxation is unfair.” At least you’d be close to New Hampshire if that’s your priority.
Violet
@Southern Beale:
Except in West Virginia. Manchin ran as far away from Obama and the Dems as he could.
Downpuppy
First (& probably only) time in my life all my votes were on the winning side.
I have an ongoing battle with the liquor store on Beacon to go to even dollars rather than .99, & was making progress until the sales tax messed everything up.
Suck It Up!
@jinxtigr:
didn’t Vermont just become the whitest state in the country? the only reason I’d come to Vermont is to visit America’s Test Kitchen
Oscar Leroy
But–but–but I thought the election proved full-throated liberalism doesn’t work!
liberty60
As a California resident, I am not feeling the despair that other Dems are across the country. As others pointed out, we did pretty well here, considering.
As for punditry of what it all means, I think the biggest lesson is, that no matter who you are or what you claim to represent, you have to deliver the goods.
Only glibertarian nerds and stooges of power players go around quoting long-dead philosophers as a guide to their vote. For 99% of the people, its the kitchen table issues- the economy, stupid. And whether it is our fault or not, the Dems haven’t been able to deliver prosperity, or at least not enough, soon enough.
As far as strategy, I keep hearing about how O must- MUST, I TELL YOU, move to the CENTER!
Except the Blue Dogs didn’t do any better than Alan Grayson. Sucking up to corporate interests didn’t seem to help Blanche Lincoln. And if any Dem thinks that blathering about “limited gummint” is going to endear him to the Teahadists, he is smoking something.
I worked during the campaign for a state assembly candidate, and am fired up now, by the prospect of carrying on the fight. I am joining the local Democratic committee, and will be working the next 2 years to raise our profile and provide consituent services, pounding home the message that government is good, that government can provide important vital services that the private sector can’t, and that the Dems are the ones providing this.
Getting bogged down into shouting matches over Hayek is a mugs game- we will win in 2012 by providing things people need, not jerking them off with the wankery of empty ideology.
ElBlot
I was particularly proud that we defeated the sales tax rollback, even though it was a closer vote than I would have liked. I did a (very) little GOTV yesterday and was impressed with the Patrick organization like the other commenters.
Joshua Norton
I’m originally from Mass. and San Francisco, CA will do me just fine, thank you very much. I’m perched on the side of Twin Peaks with a breath-taking view of the bay, the bridges and downtown SF. And in the winter it only rains. No shovels needed.
Redshirt
@Downpuppy: I can support this war! The 99cent item is a crime against humanity. If you know the tax is going to push it to $1.04, then price it at 95 cents and win happy customers!
Ash Can
@Ailuridae: No, you certainly can’t say that Lisa Madigan is Machine-free. And I voted for Alexi myself. But as far as obviously too many people were concerned, he just couldn’t shake the perception of crookedness and incompetence that his financial mishaps gave him. It made a supposed moderate like Kirk look all the better, and the rest is history.
The ironic part is that now Kirk disappears too. The North Shore moderate is gone; in his place is just another Mitch McConnell vote.
matoko_chan
@Southern Beale: yup fetal personhood was on the ballot in 2008 and was rejected by about the same margin.
In my GOTV experience that really hurt Buck on the Front Range.
He also said stupid things about stopping government student loans and restricting abortion rights.
The TP actually lost 5 senate seats for the repubs; Nev, Del, Colo, Wash state, W. Va.
all TP candidates that fell to the democrat.
Downpuppy
Redshirt: I’m just trying to get them to change from $10.99 to $11 instead of moaning that they’re running out of 9s for the signs. The psychology that made .99 seem like less seems to have reversed – even dollar prices look lower now.
The sales tax is now 6.25%. Figuring against that to even dollars would confuse the regulars way too much.
aimai
Its funny you should post this, Tom, because although I’m happy to wake up in MA this morning I just heard the workers at my local grocery store bitching about needing “to learn Spanish” and taking their tax dollars up to New Hampshire now that they didn’t repeal the sales tax. I didn’t say anything because the political split inthe community has always been especially evident in my little corner grocery store where the clientele is entirely upper class and liberal and the workers, except for the brazilian guy, predictably right wing.
But I really wanted to turn to the guy and say “I hope you are going up to New Hampshire when your house burns down, or when you need police protection, or when your kids need to go to school too?” Because jeezus christ people really think, to the extent that they do think, that the government fairy pays for everything out of pocket and the taxes you pay just dissapear.
I also want to say that this conversation between the two workers was one reason that the Dems need to always be closing. You need to always be having this conversation about taxes and services and life in general. You can’t leave it until the last moment because these people have been fucking brainwashed.
aimai
Mitch
If you had a “post to facebook” button I would have proudly posted this article to my facebook wall. Happy that my Congressman (Barney Frank) is going back to DC to fight for sanity and that Gov. Patrick will continue leading the Commonwealth.
ruemara
is too cold. I got tropical blood here.
Downpuppy
Aimai :Given that (1) we don’t tax groceries & (2) our meals tax (6.25) is lower than New Hampshire’s (9%), what you overhead is still no dumber than what I’ve heard today.
thomas Levenson
@Guster: Shoot me an email – [email protected] and I’ll tell you what I know about local public schools here.
thomas Levenson
@Crusty Dem: One of the B’s actually. I can’t handle the suburbs.
burnspbesq
Move to a state where the only football available is the stinking New England Devolution?
“No chance, you seelly Eenglish bedwetting types.”
Life is to short to watch shit football.
thomas Levenson
@Bill E Pilgrim: “such a great painting.”
Concur. Glad you like it.
Judas Escargot
I was ready to vote Yes on #1, myself, because of the double taxation argument. Then I bothered to look it up: The excise tax on alcohol is a whopping 11 cents per gallon. 40th out of 50 in the US (as of 2004).
I agree that double-tax on alcohol is unfair, but it’s the excise tax that should have been repealed, not the sales tax.
That said, while I knew the House was going GOP, man were my personal predictions wrong. I thought Reid was toast. I thought Baker was going to squeak by Deval Patrick. I thought my own Congressman and also Barney Frank were toast, but they weren’t. CO and WV were surprises.
So… we’ll see.
Beffie
Best news for MA is that snake Snot Brown has no…NO coattails.
Hee hee.. from Huffpost:
On Wednesday morning Red State’s Erick Erickson put Brown on his list of “Potential Tea Party Targets for 2012.”
Even the Herald was whining this morning that Scott Brown still had “star power”. Not evident yesterday though was it
http://bit.ly/9oFV6z
Amanda
Another MA resident chiming in with BIG YAY!! re: Deval’s win and the Dem sweep here. I did some GOTV tho not a ton. Was also very psyched that my local state senate race was won by a Dem woman with human services background — her voice will be great to have @ Beacon Hill…and she replaced an obnoxious GOPer, so very satisfying on many levels…
Could not agree more with commenters upthread re: the need to ALWAYS hammer on the taxes and services message. Dems, even in this supposedly Marxist/commie state, have failed for several decades to make this argument ever/often. So the discussion 24/7 even in Mass is should taxes be cut somewhat or altogether but don’t you dare cut my [fill in the blank government service]. This is the long term, un-sexy, hard work of rebuilding that needs to happen. Basically since Dukakis was Governor, the Dem party in MA has failed to do this work, especially with working class & middle class whites. Which is how we got Scott Brown.
We dodged a bullet yesterday bc Deval’s campaign and the state party worked like crazy on GOTV. This is the opposite of what happened with Scott Brown’s race — that was electoral malpractice on a scale that still makes me boil.
Speaking of which, I voted for Coakley for AG despite my anger at how she blew it for the Senate race. My hope is that Dems in MA have learned the lesson from that race and this one — which is that it matters a whole heck of a lot whether the person you nominate knows how to campaign at all and will do so vigorously and takes nothing for granted. No way in hell does the MA Dem party re-nominate Coakley for any other office other than AG, ever. I’m crossing my fingers for Mike Capuano to get the nom to take on Brown — I really think he’s got what it takes to win it. I’m guessing the phone calls about that race started this morning…
Amanda
The other problem on the alcohol tax issue is that money supports drug treatment programs, so the tax cut will threaten those programs in a big way. Which I learned only a few weeks ago. The opponents of that question did a piss poor job of informing voters on that angle. In contrast, I thought the messaging and ads on the affordable housing measure and the sales tax rollback were SUPERB. Three cheers for the folks who worked on those — we are all in their debt.
Trueblood
@Captain Haddock:
Scalliwags! Philanderers! I agree completely. Alcohol is the last thing that needs to be exempt from sales tax.
ellid
And this is yet another in the myriad of reasons why I stayed in Massachusetts after college, have lived in Massachusetts my entire adult life, and have every intention of dying in Massachusetts and having my ashes committed here. We actually *think* here before we cast our ballots, and the result is near-universal healthcare, good schools, paved and plowed roads, and a refreshing lack of the theocractic and libertarian foolishness that has poisoned the modern Republican party.
Also, maple syrup and apple cider. Doesn’t get much better than that.
sputnik_Sweetheart
@Beffie: I actually wonder how much Scott Brown energized the Dem voters. I think Brown’s election was a wake-up call for a lot of people who assumed that they didn’t need to GOTV for Massachusetts Democrats because they were a sure thing.
jayjaybear
If yinz could do something about those winters, I’d move there in a heartbeat. We just sent Mr. Club-for-Growth Toomey to the Senate. And put a Republican apparatchik in the governor’s mansion.
I weep for PA.
Downpuppy
If we need to raise the excise on alcohol, (which we do, but not as much as gasoline) not a problem. It’s invisible. Tie it to opening up the distribution system & you could even end up lowering retail .
The sales tax is a nuisance, and putting it on instead of raising the excise was simply a mistake. Kid of dangerous – it’s fun being able to vote against a tax, and possibly addictive.
joe from Lowell
Massachusetts also has the best public schools in the country, the highest job creation rate in 2010, the highest rate of economic growth, and legal gay marriage.
And Tom Brady. Let’s not forget Tom Brady.
Mister Papercut
Point me in the direction of a job and I’m there. It’s long past time for me to bounce outta Virginia.
I’ll warn you, though, I can’t competently drive in snow yet, but give me time.
catclub
@geg6:
“I want America to suffer the consequences of their decisions. ”
I think Mencken beat you to it.
Unfortunately, too many innocents ( relatively) will suffer.
This is why Democrats surrender to GOP filibusters. Extending the fight means innocents suffer most.
Will the Democratic senate change senate rules? I doubt it.
beergoggles
@ellid: And apple cider is extremely easy to harden. I buy gallons of the stuff, add a bit of yeast and then leave it out on the back porch to freeze come winter. The alcohol is then quite easily poured out and enjoyed.
Cheryl from Maryland
We’d be happy to see any of you in Maryland.
Dems — Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, both Senators, 8 of 10 representatives. Alas, we have Steny Hoyer, but if enough of you move, that could be taken care of.
John Bird
I suppose I am not to be taken seriously by a center-right nation, as I believe Massachusetts offers one model for how the entire country should conduct itself (higher taxes, wider access to services).
mwing
@Captain Haddock:
A few sips? And you call yourself Captain Haddock? For shame, sir, drink up!
noncarborundum
@sputnik_Sweetheart:
I can’t listen to D&C even for the Schadenfreude. It’s to the point with me that hearing a single word in Callahan’s voice causes my gorge to rise. Even if it’s “the”.
Mike in NC
Ditto. Except for time in the military, I lived in New England all my life until a recession and layoff forced me to relocate to the DC area for the next 20 years. I’d move back in a heartbeat but the wife has Winter Derangement Syndrome. Best we can manage is the occasional holiday visit.
aimai
Perhaps the post election discussion will enlighten this point but I spent a ton of time in hospitals this last month and every second the tV was on in the waiting room it was wall to wall republican ads insisting that MA’s economy was the worst, blah blah blah. I staggered out of the hospital yesterday swearing that we would lose. I mean I didn’t hear *any* pro democratic ads. I was wrong, we did win. Did those ads have no effect on right wing voters? Did they energize democrats? They had a massively depressing effect on me and only the fact that I’m an old person who would never miss a vote prevented me from just slitting my wrists and giving up.
aimai
Redshirt
I’m all for as many taxes as they want to place on the sale of alcohol, tobacco, and eventually marijuana. Voluntary sin taxes are the best revenue streams, especially if they are channeled back into programs that aid addicts of those substances.
Lottery tickets are the same.
Cyrus
@Suck It Up!:
False, it always has been the whitest state. (Well, “always” is a long time of course, and maybe it just recently transitioned from the second whitest to the most whitest, I don’t know. But it has been one of the whitest for a long time.) It’s still the state that popularized civil unions, gay marriage by legislative vote (not that I think the legislative vs. judicial thing matters, but a first is a first), Bernie Sanders, Howard Dean, Ben & Jerry’s…
Cat Lady
Another resident of the Commonwealth here. We seem to possess some kind of immunity against this infection of moronic teabaggery, keeping it to a low grade fever. Perhaps it’s because all of us who grow up here, especially around Boston, for the most part, just get so steeped in history all around us everywhere that we know who those real patriots were, and what they actually believed, and what this country was really founded on, and are taught to be proud of it. As school kids we all get dragged to Concord and Lexington, Salem, Thoreau’s Walden, Hawthorne’s house, the Alcotts house, the Saint Gaudens statues, and always everywhere the colleges that keep bringing us the wicked smaht kids, over and over and over, a lot of whom stay. Education is the key to the universe bitchez.
We’ll keep the lights on.
Susan Ross
Evidently you didn’t see the one Libby Mitchell (D) ran for governor up here in Maine this year. Makes Coakley look positively charismatic.
twiffer
@Rosalita: we have an odd tendency to go dem for national, but elect republican governors in CT, don’t we? granted, this one is still damn close.
thomas Levenson
@Mister Papercut: Re driving in snow: why should you be any different from 50% of Mass drivers on any given day. (And sadly, not the same 50% day over day.)
Susan Ross
@Redshirt:
He will win with less than 40% of the vote mostly because Libby Mitchell ran the most incompetent campaign in recent memory, and people desperate to keep Boss Hogg LePage out of office started turning in droves to Eliot Cutler.
Man, I knew we were fucked the minute Mitchell came out as the Democratic primary winner. She’s as charming and energetic as Eeyore.
thomas Levenson
@aimai: I think what you are seeing is one snapshot of the waning of the influence of traditional media. It’s still really important…but just not quite as powerful as it used to be.
By which I mean — I watch between five and ten hours of TV per week. All of it, barring Patriots football games, at my computer through Hulu, Netflix or direct websites. Even the ad driven sites, like Hulu, make it easy just to shrink the window and mute the sound. The delivery channels are narrowing. This will continue. Therein lies a sliver of opportunity to ameliorate (not eliminate) the advantage of the Murdoch’s o the world.
This is not to say advertising is meaningless — I think a number of the seats Dems lost last night went down, in the end, to the impact of wall-to-wall negative ads funded by essentially unlimited outside money. Not to mention the damage done by the narratives set in major media “news” operations.
But bit by bit, these avenues are becoming a little less potent. IMHO, of course, which is worth exactly what you pay for it.
Mike in NC
@thomas Levenson:
We saw the Ben Affleck bank heist flick “The Town” and my wife said afterwards, “Don’t all of you people from up there drive that way ALL THE TIME?”
I said YES!
Downpuppy
Or there were so many negatvie ads that they formed into one big inchoate mass of Fear & Loathing.
By last weekend, all a candidate would have had to do to break away is come out like Dick vanDyke in Mary Poppins, do a little dance, whistle, show a kitten & a baby, not say anything, and enjoy their victory.
Kilkee
Three cheers for my native Massachusetts. And three stiff drinks now that Cutler has conceded to LePage here in Maine.
jinxtigr
@thomas Levenson: Yep. Overexposure. Part of the process of people tuning out, which is not automatically failure to vote. It can also be ‘you can no longer believe anything anybody says on television’.
goblue72
@Jinchi: Easy, now with a simple majority, we can just defund Orange County and the Inland Empire. Budget problem solved.
Cat Lady
@Downpuppy:
I believe that’s why Deval won. He’s very warm and soothing, and according to the analysis today, women broke for him like crazy.
goblue72
@Cat Lady: Down South, kids gets dragged to Civil War sites and taught that Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and Bobby Lee were Patriots. Kinda explains a lot of it.
goblue72
@Crusty Dem: I can’t believe that freak used to be union shop steward. Talk about pissing all over your former brothers and sisters in arms.
ppcli
@thomas Levenson:
Yep. It is a great painting. You might want to check the spelling of “Edouard” tho.
Lysana
I grew up in MA, and what folks are saying about how it is to grow up steeped in the reality of the Revolution is so true. Good on you, my home state. Here I am in CA, where we kept it pretty blue but found a new way to hamstring our legislature. Not to mention killing off our state parks.
Redshirt
@Cat Lady: For 8 years I worked directly besides the Old South Meeting house in Boston – the place where Sam Adams and the boys planned the ACTUAL tea party. The State St Orange line stop is right beneath it as well.
You get used to everything over time, of course, but you’re right: That proximity to history, and the frequent reminders of it, is a powerful thing.
Any other nutjobs get into office in Maine?
Mako
I’m not a bigot, but it’s still Massachusetts. You people really need to rename that state something easier to spell. And learn how to drive.
Redshirt
They’ll never learn how to drive. The system does not allow for it. And I suspect they like it that way, for the same reasons most Massholes enjoyed the curse of the Bambino. They like to suffer. Some Puritan/Catholic mashup thing.
Mako
Uhg, I’d actually rather live in Mass than Maryland. Good god how that state has been raped. Why, I remember when Gaithersburg was dairy farm country, Urbana was way the hell out in the country and Hagerstown was a shithole, oh wait… But it used to be rolling hills of green and cows, now it’s a squalid cesspit of strip malls and zombie life-sucking suburbs. And what’s up with that inter-county connector, finally built the thing and now you gotta pay a toll?
noncarborundum
@Mako:
Some French-speakers I know call it “Mâche tes chausettes”, which means “Chew your socks”.
You could always just call it “Mass.” And really, if you’re looking to complain about hard-to-spell state names, shouldn’t you be focusing on Connecticut first?
Scamp Dog
@Angela: Because nobody ever tells them. The Rs have spent 30+ years coming up with great sound bites, while the so-called liberals in the media never calling them on anything (lower tax rates mean more revenue! SS is broke!).
We’ve gotta come up with something out here in the grass roots, ’cause big media and national-level democrats will continue to refuse the job.
Kilkee
@Redshirt: No other really obvious nuts elected in Maine (the Dems held on to both House seats), but given that the GOP apparently has taken over both the State House and Senate, I imagine if we looked closely enough we could find some. Funny, the legislature has been Dem for so long I figured that even if LePage won he couldn’t do much. Uh-oh. I guess on the positive side, when he fails to turn Maine into a business paradise in 4 years he won’t have the Ds to blame.
And am I the only one who thinks it’s weird when he claims in his victory speech to be the first “French” Governor of Maine? Not Franco-American, not even French-Canadian. French.
Mako
@noncarborundum:
Connecticut is still a state? Who knew. Thought it was part of NewYork.
Redshirt
@Kilkee: I’m moving back to Maine next year (at long last, thank FSM!) and I’m expecting you all to have cleaned this all up by the time I arrive. Deal?
sputnik_Sweetheart
@Mister Papercut:
A lot of Mass natives can’t drive competently in the snow either. Or you know, on a sunny day. They call us massholes for a reason.
thomas Levenson
@ppcli: Ah yes. Proof reading is my friend.
Mister Papercut
@sputnik_Sweetheart:
Ah, then I like my chances for assimilation even better…
Crusty Dem
@thomas Levenson:
Good on you. I lived in one of the W’s and it sucked both of my B’s. Great schools, if you don’t mind all the suicides…
Crusty Dem
@goblue72:
Yeah, union -> teatard seems like a pretty fucked transition, doesn’t it? But I’ve seen the type, it’s all about self-promotion.