Hi all! Back from the Lowell convention

[TayTay]

And it went well. The Senator gave a great speech. I saw a lot of old friends and made some new ones.

My biggest problem is that I am dead-dog tired still. So, instead of a long post from me, how about some questions from you and I will answer them.

It was a really great weekend. The Senator was overwhelmingly endorsed by the Mass Democrats, as he should be, and the process of healing the MA Dems after the bruising primary is well under way.

So, what's on your mind?

[beachmom]

1. Oh, you know what is on all of our minds .....

Ed O'Reilly getting 22% of the convention vote and getting on the ballot. The fact that some of that vote was spite from Hillary supporters (per a Kos diary & past postings we have seen on DU). Was this result expected? And how will the Kerry campaign deal with Ed O'Reilly. His major supporter on Kos is busy smearing a bunch of us, saying we're being paid, again ....

I WAS heartened to see diaries by people who support Kerry. In fact, the two Kos diaries where they went, were disappointed that O'Reilly was on the ballot. I realize Kerry has a ton of support, and we should all focus on that, but the way the BG got so snarky about it, calling it an "embarrassment" didn't sit well with a lot of us.

[ray of light]

2. Pretty much like she said...

Hope this isn't too disappointing for the kerry people and for Kerry himself.

And I hope that somehow JK is able to use this situation to garner more support for himself, for local candidates, and if need be for Obama too.

I think at this point even with helping Obama, people would like to see a Democratic Congress.

I also want to add, I think MA people should be reminded of what getting a new Senator would mean in terms of committee positions.

[TayTay]

3. LOL, relax. We did fine.

In 2006 Secretary of State Bill Galvin, a fine man and a great public servant, had a primary opponent who got 27% at the Nominating Convention. It is within the sense of "fairness" of MA Dems that someone who gets the 10,000 signatures should be on the ballot. Had Mr. O'Reilly been denied this, it would have been the first time in a 2 person race that someone was kept off the ballot in MA.

Again, anyone remember when I took people to The Old South Church in Boston for a re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party event? The good Mass citizens there didn't re-enact the actual Tea Party itself or the hard work of boarding the ships and hauling tea into Boston Harbor. Good Lord, any State could do that. No, we re-enacted the argument. That's what we do.

That's part of the reason why Massachusetts sends such outstanding legislators to Congress. We argue with our Congress-folks. We ask them questions, challenge them, make them account for what they are doing and, occasionally, put obstacles in their way. The best of people respond to this by getting better and rising to the challenge. John Kerry got elected in the first place by talking to Massachusetts and going through the very difficult gauntlet that we make out pols navigate. It is an honor to represent Massachusetts. These good people earn that honor and MA makes it a point of pride to keep up the pressure. Again, that is how you make good, thoughtful fighters in the Congress.

[wisteria]

4. Still, O'Reilly is a loser and the only reason he is there is to spite Kerry.

Also, I don't recall Senator Kennedy ever having to face an opponent for many, many years.

[TayTay]

8. Teddy's press in 1994

Sen. Kennedy ran against Mitt Romney for the Senate in 1994. Kennedy was lambasted as being out-of-touch with Massachusetts. See for yourself.

Massachusetts is very, very, very hard on it's pols. We demand excellence and commitment from them. All of them. All the time. We are beyond blessed in that they so often deliver excellence.

TED WAS THERE WHEN IT COUNTED

Author(s): Mike Barnicle, Globe Staff Date: October 27, 1994 Page: 33 Section: METRO
Phew! Good thing Ted Kennedy didn't decide to throw his weight around the other night because then he would've absolutely crushed Mitt ''I'm Talking As Fast As My Nervous Little Motor Mouth Will Move'' Romney. That collision would've looked as if an 18-wheeler loaded with dumpsters had plowed into one of those teeney-weeney old Nash Metropolitans. As it was, he slapped him silly. Kennedy slam-dunked the bragging Boy Scout from Belmont so often that The Mittster is down to a couple of options prior to tonight's debate: Either jump-ugly at the senior Senator over, ahh, the character issue, or cut his losses and save a pile of dough for another run at another time because this one is halfway through that last revolution in the toilet. How quickly things change.

Seems like it was only days ago that all the haters and a lot of the professional thumb-sucking pundits were writing Kennedy off. He was too old, too fat, too dumb, too tongue-tied, too entrenched, too isolated, too removed, too arrogant, too elitist, too tied in to the status quo to win anything.

Listening to them, you half-expected Kennedy to walk out on stage at Faneuil Hall, peer at the crowd and holler: "This Bud's on me." Or maybe demand that the moderator hit him with a pinch and a couple of cubes.

A funny thing happened, though: Romney arrived with a knot the size of an official NBA basketball right where he fastens the top button of his hand-made shirt.

He is a nice fellow, a pleasant man. He is handsome, polite, glib, smiling, smart, rich, goes through life without a single hair out of place, waves at poor people one day a week and thinks a walk on the wild side means drinking a cherry Coke.

However, he has no idea how much his health plan will cost taxpayers and sure isn't responsible for anything that occurs at some plant he helped purchase. Why should he know that? He's only the owner.

Kennedy, on the other hand, has managed to become a somewhat sympathetic figure. Before Tuesday, many observers were convinced the night would be a disaster for the senator, whose use of language manages to make the late Frank Fontaine or Professor Irwin Corey sound like Abba Eban or Adlai Stevenson.

They were ceding the thing to Romney on appearances alone. His waist size equals the number of years Kennedy has served in the US Senate. He has never suffered so much as a pimple, never mind any personal pain and, according to his own answers, he is pretty much without a flaw.

Meanwhile, the negative build-up and dread surrounding Kennedy's difficulty in finding verbs to go with nouns and objects, plus the added burden of putting action words in their proper place throughout a spoken English sentence, so lowered the expectations that the mere fact he didn't fall off the stage into the audience was a victory.

And you know what? It was great. It was a victory for old guys, for out-of- shape guys, for guys who are counted out before the bell, for guys folks figured would never hit in the clutch.

Ted Kennedy won because he is stubborn in his beliefs. You may not like his views, and you may not like him, but at least he's not running around suddenly seizing upon the electric chair or welfare cheats as the trendy ticket he needs for a return trip to the Senate.

He's the government guy, the go-to-guy when you're looking to have the feds pick up the cost of 16 additional weeks of unemployment compensation, get you the extra bounce in child care and Head Start appropriations, get money back from Washington to help lower astronomical MWRA water bills. Maybe you think stuff like that is a bunch of liberal horseshirt.

He doesn't. He makes no apologies for who he is and what he believes. He has a philosophy that isn't pushed around by pollsters. Perhaps some of it is dated, but the man is consistent.

He's 62 and looks it. He has lived through a cargo of grief, and inflicted a lot of it upon himself. He has had some terrible difficulties and they have not been hidden. His life has been a long, public sorrowful mystery of the rosary.

Ted Kennedy is many things, but none of them is a secret. He might be in the back of his van this morning eating quarter-pounders and fries between every stop and it wouldn't go unnoticed. (I never thought ears put on weight until I saw his on TV Tuesday.) Why, if you put Bill Parcells and Kennedy on either end of the Boston Public Library, they could serve as human bookends for a whole building.

For a long time, people were down on him, figuring he was afraid to take his turn at bat against a formidable young foe. Well, the other night Ted Kennedy gave the young guy a good old-fashioned arse-whipping because he still wants to win.

This does not sound so different from the press that the other Senator from MA is getting now. Massachusetts is very, very, very hard on their pols. We always have been.

[TayTay]

9. Ah, one more thing, that was "positive" press in 1994

For Teddy. Ah, that was from someone who was writing a column that expressed the "pro Teddy" side.

Ah, seriously, you should have seen the other press stories. Now they were nasty.

[wisteria]

15. Thanks Tay. This makes me feel a bit better.

Although, I hope O'Reilly doesn't turn out to be another Romney.

[Mass]

5. I have a basic question and may be somebody from MA can answer.

First, I am not surprised about the result. It seems very unlikely that, with 2 candidates, one of them would get less than 15 %. The other guy would have to be a convicted felon or something like that.

However, what surprised me was the number of people here and there complaining about Kerry's constituent services. Even considering that some people would use that to hide a "pro-Hillary" anger, this seems to come back a lot. So, what are these constituent services that he is supposedly so bad at, and why would people consider him so bad at that? I have to say it puzzles me. Thanks for an honest answer.

[whometense]

6. Well, as another MA person,

I have the same question. I hear that complaint too, but not a lot of details as to what the cause is. I've never called his office to ask for help, so can't say.

It's my impression (and I could be totally wrong about this) that people compare Kerry's senatorial style with Kennedy's and they resent his more global viewpoint. It seems to me that people want him focused more on small-bore local issues, and though Kerry works hard at these issues they gather less press than his more global interests. So people tend to take away the impression that Kerry's more interested in global warming and international relations than bringing home the bacon. The Globe and Herald have been beating this drum FOREVER, so I guess it shouldn't surprise us that it has become conventional wisdom.

Looking at some of the comments on this Herald story this morning, they list in a nutshell the kind of ignorance that fuels local resentments.

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/politics/view/2008_06_08_With_Kennedy_ailing__Massachusetts_may_look_to_Kerry/srvc=home&position=recent

[ray of light]

7. I've called the DC office and have NEVER had a problem. They were incredibly helpful!

[Mass]

12. Thanks - It is exactly what I am thinking too, but the meme is really deep and I wonder

how you reverse it. I saw the article you linked to and I jumped when I read Capuano's comment. Menino had a similar comment a couple weeks ago, where what started like a compliment to Teddy K. after he had his seizure ended like if nobody else was doing anything for Massachusetts. While I understood the intent, it was really adding to the meme that nobody else in DC was helpful for the state and Boston.

[beachmom]

13. The comments I read sound like Republicans who want ANWR drilled.

They are the ones with a bad attitude. I know someone in Virginia from Boston who spews the same BS every time I talk to him. (HE NEVER ATTENDS COMMITTEE HEARINGS!) Meanwhile, Kerry coasts to victory every time, even handily beating Weld in '96. The quiet ones who respect him don't comment. Still that "LMS" person really knows their stuff! :)

[MonteLukast]

10. And make sure they spell out what they mean...

... by shortfalls in consituent services. In concrete and measurable terms. No "he doesn't connect with me" allowed.

[MonteLukast]

11. This is (maybe) a stupid question

but, when is MA's primary election again? Is it right around the time of the national convention, or sooner?

[TayTay]

14. Sept 16th, 2008

Approx 7 weeks before the general election on Nov 4th, 2008

[MonteLukast]

16. *Sigh.*

Later than I expected. Obama's gonna have Kerry all to himself for only 7 weeks. :-(

[TayTay]

17. Not really.

Sen. Kerry will continue doing what he has been doing all year, being an incredible advocate for the Democratic agenda, both at home in Massachusetts and around the nation. He will be in Massachusetts a lot because he is paying strong attention to the State and to assist because our other Senator is feeling a bit under the weather lately. (This is as much cause to stay close to home as anything else that has come up recently.)

Not to worry. Sen. Kerry will continue to be a strong presence on the national scene. He is one of the best advocates Democrats have and will continue to be out there on the stump for Sen. Obama and a lot of other Democrats. Massachusetts and the nation is well-served by having a stronger Democratic Congress. That means all hands on deck where needed.

[karynnj]

18. Do you think that it will be a problem that there is no Republican race?

Could the loony left and right unite here - with enough Republicans and Independents voting for O'Reilly because a Republican could have a chance against him?

I am furious at two groups of people - here. I nearly posted on the DFA site indicating just why I will NEVER send them money. I am progressive and liberal - and they are just out for noise. It is beyond annoying that they were happy with Edwards, with all his conservative hawk baggage forgiven - yet they go after Kerry. (This is also a legacy of the poisoning in early February by Dean when he was angry that he was losing).

The other group are the Clinton people. You had to be blind not to see that the Clinton people at minimum undercut Kerry in 2005 - 2007. There was no attempt to "give" him anything - vs the "what can we give HRC". Amazing after Kerry ran the classy campaign and she didn't. That HRC did not call off her vicious dogs, means she has no intention to go back to being human. Yet, the call is for everyone to be nice to her?

[Mass]

19. DFA? Do you need PDA?

I've seen that O'R is proposed for endorsement on DFA, but, to my knowledge, DFA has not endorsed him at this point.

I have no pb with PDA endorsing O'Reilly. His position are copied on theirs and, honestly, Kerry did not make a lot of effort getting the endorsement, so why not endorse somebody who at least tries to listen to them. Now, Clinton's supporters are another question, as they are pushing somebody who is totally against all the Clintons represent.

[karynnj]

20. Sorry - you're right I meant PDA

I have a problem because they looked at words - not actions. Did they try to think who with similar power was willing to fight any of the fights they were for?

[Mass]

21. It never hurts to say the words, you know, and not to expect that people will remember

what somebody said 10 years ago. This is a problem for some when Kerry still will not say whether he supports gay marriage (I know he fought for the MA House and Senate not to take the bill, but once again, for many people, it comes out as convenience -do not put out a bill that will get the wackos out during an election year) more than principle. Same thing for single payer (I do not oppose single payer is not the same as I support single payer), and it goes forever.

BTW, O'R is not a candidate of opportunity for them, somebody who will say the words that should be in the national debate and are not. For most people, this is why he is on the ballot: so that there can be a debate about issues they care about: Western Massachusetts, a real healthcare reform, gay marriage, the economy. We need this debate badly. That does not mean that Kerry is a bad senator. That means that sometimes, he needs to express his views more strongly as a Massachusetts Senator, not a DC politician that has to go with the Reid machine.

In addition, Deval Patrick's unpopularity does not help. The new SUSA numbers are out and, while Kerry is back to normal numbers with the usual difference with Kennedy
This is something frightening when it comes to Obama, because it is really important that Democrats change, if we want some of these reforms to be possible. If we look at the latest vote, it does not seem likely.