Mass DP Brings the Hammer Down

The Massachusetts Dems' Minister of Propaganda, no, that's Communications Director, Cyndi Roy was rather intemperate today. She more than matched John Bonifaz' outrage with her own indignation.

However, her responses in short to this blog and at length on the Democratic Party site are revealing, and occasionally amusing.

Her main blog post is a near masterpiece of emotion and illogic with a veneer of support from a lawyer. Think how bad the PR is when your only argument is from your paid legal help.

In case you're just observing this windstorm, key points are:

• The DP just had over 100 caucuses at which it elected delegates to the party's June convention.
• Outsider Deval Patrick skunked long-time DP guy, Attorney General Tom Reilly in number of pledged delegates for governor.
• The DP leadership appears to want an established member, under the assumption that he or she would have the best chance to reverse over a decade of GOP governors here. In short, go with what hasn't worked before.
• This coincides with rich guy, venture capitalist Chris Gabrieli's stirrings that he wants to run. He is 0 and 2 for statewide office. He wants the DP to go with what hasn't worked before.
• At the convention, 500 elected delegates can present a petition to nominate someone who didn't go through the caucus process. The white knight rides on from stage left.
  
• The DP looked at options and got their house lawyer to analyze the rules. His interpretation is that the delegated appointed by the DP leadership -- state officials, Ward and DP functionaries, and inclusionary folk who applied to go too -- are as much "elected" as the ones the caucuses elected.

Well, that's one, bizarre, way of looking at the rules. It's legalese and not what the thousands who participated in the caucuses understood. I recall delegates at the Ward 19 caucus remarking that they had been inclusionary add-ons before and wanted to be "real delegates."

In short, the DP has long had two classes of delegates, but suddenly it wants to pretend that there was no "rules change" by this end run.

For a hoot, check Roy's blog, pretentiously entitled just The Truth. (It seems like she should add an MP3 with trumpets and TA DA!)

She is imperious throughout, ending with cascading fits of illogic and emotion. She writes:

The Democratic Party has always been proud to be the Party of inclusion. Not allowing all delegates to sign papers is essentially creating a second class of delegates. Why would we want to turn to one of our minority, disabled, or youth add-on delegates and say, "sorry, you weren't elected at caucuses so you can't participate in this process."? It's not right.

Speculate all you want about why the ruling was made the way it was. But you have the truth and legal ruling in your hands.

Now can we please get back to winning this governor's race?

In other words, if you dare, dare to challenge the DP position, you want to kick the disabled and insult the delegates of color. Shame.

The fact that this line has nothing to do with the subject at hand makes it all the more memorable.

She follows that by dismissing this sudden, Gabrieli-courting ploy. In effect, the message is don't worry your pretty little head about it, honey. Get back to DP work. It's OK.

Cut me a thin slice.

I've been hearing that the DP here is out of touch and far too clannish. Nothing coming out of it recently suggest otherwise.