Big Boston What-Ifs on Mayor

As hard as it is for us locals to believe, Boston Mayor Tom Menino, the colossus of Hyde Park, showed real savvy in saying 20-plus years would be enough. Now we'll buzz like a hornets' nest about his successor.

The most frequent speculation is surely from David (not Berenstain Bears) Bernstein's blog. He took the Talking Politics name with him from the Phoenix. His stuff is a motley blend of well-researched, experiential, and just uncontrolled typing.

Rules can sometimes be inflexible, as in Boston Councilors running for mayor. They have to step down from City Council.

That has some hole-in-the-body-politic effects. I doubt many missed Maura Hennigan. On the other hand, Mike Flaherty had quite a following. Moreover, San Yoon was surely the brightest person in City Hall; he just lacked political instincts and savvy to go with the brain power. The city could have benefited mightily from many more years of his service on Council.

Just recently, with three previously announced candidates after the mayoralty, the how-many-Councilors will make the jump fascinates. At-large Councilor John Connolly is in the race and won't run for reelection as a result. The other two, marketing consultant Will Dorcena, and co-founder of TOUCH pirate radio, Charles Clemons, at least can go about their business while running. Just entering is Suffolk County DA Dan Conley, with over a half million dollars on hand. He's a former four-term (eight years) Councilor.

So, back to speculation about the larger class of potential competitors — Councilors. What if...

• Ayanna Pressley. She'd be a strong candidate for any office, think lieutenant governor or MA senate as well as Boston mayor. She's smart, accomplished, resilient, even good looking, and driven by volunteerism and social action. She has particularly strong followings in her Dorchester, among women, with African Americans, and fairly well represented citywide. She was a huge vote getter in the at-large contest.
• Steve Murphy. Council President yet again, he does a really good job getting the knuckleheads to knuckle down and focus. He's also the acknowledged financial whiz on Council. In his 50s, he knows this might be his only shot. He has a lot to give up if he goes after it though. He is also a perennial at-large vote harvester.
• Felix Arroyo. The other popular at-large Councilor, he has long ago surpassed his father getting votes and passing the law-like proposals and regulations they do down there. He's bright, pretty, witty and a very nice guy, favored far beyond his Latino affiliated constituents. He's ambitious.
• Tito Jackson. The biggest personality on Council, he is vibrant and enthusiastic. His District 7 folk have no doubt he's all for them first and the city right behind. He jumps into crime, clean streets and other quality-of-live issues. He's fun to be around and is likely looking for the right next level up.
• Mike Ross. He's the downtown Councilor in ever sense of the term. A seven termer, he's been president of the body. (I also like that he's a regular cyclist.) I peg him as the brightest on Council. He brings big ideas, his own and those from Cambridge, other cities and the commonwealth. He'd be the visionary, which might be a tough sell but one that could click if many voters favor big changes.
• Rob Consalvo. His my district Councilor. He's a super-nice guy and one of the most active in proposing Council actions. He's still in the Young Turk/young lion class. The Mayor came from Hyde Park, which Consalvo represents. Word from many fronts is that he sees himself as the natural heir to his good friend Menino.
• Charles Yancey. The longest-serving (15 terms) Councilor and a former body president, he has the title dean of City Council. Virtually all the Councilors have large egos. Hearing him speak at meetings and hearings, I suspect his is the biggest of all. He is a district Councilor and likely doesn't have the personal power, the raw personality to sway the city.

If all of them were in with Connolly, that would be a majority of Council up for grabs. We'd see the usual suspects and bozos running...and losing badly. We'd see numerous activists having real shots at both at-large and district seats. The makeup and direction of the body would change dramatically.

The open mayoralty after 20 years is too, too much for too many. It might be another 12 or so years before there's another good chance. The young lions would be much more like toothless, clawless oldsters.

If every one is in, Boston would be in for a huge shakeup far beyond a new mayor. It might be a net good. However, the district Councilors in particular have gotten their constituent services down pat and their replacements would not master that learning curve quickly, and may not even been good at it or have the right staffers readily available.

So I can join those at the local papers and blogs in surmising. We should know soon, as they can file nomination papers with Elections as early as April 17 and must by May 15 for the preliminary. They have to get and file 3,000 valid voter signatures by the end of May 21. That of course does not begin to account for all the money raising, visibility, online/marketing/speechifying/volunteer recruiting and such. The Mayor has made it plain he's not handing off his political machine to any candidate.

So of the Councilor possibles, what do you think?

• Ayanna Pressley. Here's betting she's biding her time and picking the right combination of office, issues, and timing. I bet she sits tight.
• Steve Murphy. The Herald did an insightful interview with him on how hard this decision will be. He's in a solid, deeply respected position on Council, but in his 50s, this could be his one chance for the other side of the fifth floor. He's lost several runs for statewide office (for which he did not have to quit Council), that's gotta make him ballot shy. I don't know how he's going to go. (By the bye, he's a neighbor but not a close friend.)
• Felix Arroyo. He put out the call for campaign donations. It seems if it comes in fast enough, he'll run. He shouldn't have any problem getting volunteers and the signatures. He'll go. 
• Tito Jackson. He loves his constituents and neighborhood as much as he loves himself and as much as he loves performing. He'd have to get a citywide following to make his candidacy viable. He's likely to look to a State House seat or maybe even lieutenant governor. He sits this out.
• Mike Ross. I suspect he'll go in. He'll need all of his smarts and to amp up his laid-back personality to come off at the guy with a vision for a better Boston. It's possible. Then again, he has to count on the timing. Voters know they'll get change. He has to make them believe he serves up the best flavor.
• Rob Consalvo. He won't be able to stand it. Like most Councilors he shaves the Mayor's face in the morning in his mirror. 
• Charles Yancey. I predict he'll waffle and in the end not go. He's make a career out of district Councilor. He's powerful and respects...in his niche. He's really not a citywide player.

Beyond Councilors, other candidates will get in. State Rep, Marty Walsh is one. I don't see him or Conley even making the final after the preliminary.

I'm figuring Arroyo, Consalvo, Ross and maybe Murphy. It would be an exciting (for us) and exhausting (for them) contest...a true battle of yard signs, innuendo and slurs, and non-stop voter contact.

Da Mare Rides Off

We'll still stunned in Boston. Our longest-serving mayor, Tom Menino, won't run for a sixth four-year term. He's long diddled with potential opponents, waiting until just before the April filing date to announce that, sure enough, he was in again. Now he waited almost as long to say, at 70, 'nuff.

We'll all speculate on who jumps in with City Councilor John Connolly, long-announced Will Dorcena, as well as apparent vanity candidate, Charles Clemons. Neither of the latter has any money to write of. We can be sure other candidates will emerge very soon and probably as thick as black flies in Maine.

Rather than spout off here and now, I have been musing today about Da Mare's decision making on this. My money would be on his wife's influence.

In interviews, he claims he listened to may people, particularly family and made his own decision. I'm not so sure.

It seems like trips to Italy have been almost fatal to him several times. Angela is very, very supportive and always has been, but I'm betting she wants to make sure they get to enjoy their kids and grandkids, while he is out and about after his mayoralty doing good, shaking hands, and still meeting more Bostonians after all these years of doing those things professionally.

When I was at the September rally in Roslindale where he endorsed Elizabeth Warren for US Senate, I left convinced that the shorter Menino had been the catalyst. He had not endorsed anyone and was saying he wouldn't. His blessing was actively courted because his influence is huge.

At the rally, as he put it, he and Angela discussed it and he decided to dub Warren. To me that was his way of saying without saying that his wife made the curtain lecture.

Once he was on Warren's side, he was effusive. It was talk of she has our back and I have hers talk. He pledged his resources.

A word from Da Mare was key and I am sure a word from Angela was powerful to him. I'm surmising that the same was true for his decision this time as well.

Only-a-flesh-wound for Anti-Gay Forces

With the Supremes about to hear the closely linked Prop 8/DOMA arguments in the next two days, the machinations, lies and delusions of the anti-equality types fascinate more than ever. They call to mind the 2012 election night pathos of GOP bigs, like Karl Rove, guaranteeing Mitt Romney's victory as state after state tumbled into the President's bag.

A pathetic but more topical version was yesterday's comments by National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown on a very friendly to him Fox segment. (Screen snag segment of him here. I claim fair use for the altered pic.) He ostensibly debated Marc Solomon, national campaign director of Freedom to Marry. In reality the few minutes they had were Solomon detailing the new reality of public support for same-sex marriage, Brown hunkered down in an old anti-gay version, and the host giving him the "last word" that amounted to half the total time.

By the bye, a crisp, revealing piece on his obsession with keeping homosexuals from marriage rights just appeared in the New York Times.

Even with his temporal treat on Fox, Brown showed the sorry state of the anti forces. He represents the dwindling party that want to harm, hinder, hobble and hamper homosexuals. As so many polls show, Americans have come around quickly from not being able to imagine gay marriage to accepting and supporting it. Solomon cited a few of those, the data are everywhere, ranging from a plurality to a large majority in favor, and this happened so fast I have to admit I had predicted a much slower evolution many times. I'm delighted to have been wrong.

Brown's sorry statements are instructive for many reasons:

1. Big proof. He falls back as seemingly all anti-equality types do to 31 states have laws or amendments or both limiting a marriage to a man and a woman. He never mentions that those were almost entirely passed in relatively bygone days of anti-gay panic after Hawaii considered equal marriage, Vermont instituted civil unions and the clincher, the MA Goodridge decision legalizing SSM coming up on a decade ago. That could not happen now, 10 states and DC have instituted SSM and more are headed that way.
2. Mob rule. NOM's prime offense against equality is the same as other anti-gay groups'. Brown says that because CA voters overturned the legislature/governor legalization (a.k.a. representative democracy) with Prop 8, no court should have the right to deny them, even if their action violates state and perhaps US constitutions. 
3. Don't stir the pot. Brown would have it in a meme the media seem to have promulgated that if the SCOTUS makes a big move — ruling to overturn Prop 8 and maybe even that state law against marriage equality are unconstitutional — this will create a culture war. He and other bozos who make this assertion cite Roe v. Wade. In reality, it is the anti-SSM side who turned this into a cultural battle and continue to do so. We have instead seen too many times that pleas to go slowly in granting fundamental rights and freedoms are just attempts to permanently squelch them.

Lackaday for Brown and his ilk, even if the Supremes do not invalidate state laws and amendments on SSM, more and more states, with considerable numbers of citizens will have the option of marriage equality. Those 31 states were the paranoid extreme. Now that the nation sees the benign and beneficial nature of SSM for the couples and children involved, fear recedes and compassion steps in.

NOM and their running dogs have long loved such verbal tricks as "redefining marriage" and "let the people vote." Of course, they were the ones changing the marriage definition to exclude gay couples. Sometimes that was with such straw-man arguments that SSM will necessarily mean all manner of sexual practices long prohibited by federal and state laws. Sometimes it was the bizarre assertion that only those who can and will have children through their married, heterosexual intercourse should marry, denying the elderly, otherwise infertile, and childless by choice. Also, what a huge insult to the millions of adoptive parents.

The ballot-initiative ploy had two vicious prongs. First, we long ago concluded as a nation that we should not vote on the rights of any minority. Second, it's just another fallback from failure. Where a state like MA had court-mandated equality, the anti forces wanted a vote to strip the right. Where a state like CA voted in the legislature for SSM, Prop 8 also wanted to take away an existing right. No matter how equality comes about, the NOM sorts will try every trick and scheme to destroy that new freedom. Even coming up to a decade of established law here, the MA anti-equality forces make noises of somehow mounting yet another plebiscite to follow other failed efforts.

The graceless Brian Browns of our world will not go away quickly or quietly. They will not accept defeat . They will not consider embracing the newer, fairer marital world. They simply want to hold back homosexual couples and deny they equal treatment.

The rest of the country is moving on.

Fox with Barbed Tongue

To the literal, nil nisi bonum does not extend to the not-yet-dead. So perhaps former Mexican Prez Vincente Fox skips by wishing that Fidel Castro "joins Hugo Chavez...as soon as possible."

Click the arrow on the player to hear the short clip deriding both Castro brothers.

---

---

Fox was at Symphony Hall this week surely in coordination with promoting his autobiography but ostensibly as part of the Lesley University Boston Speakers Series. It was a good venue for him. The audience was late middle age and above and relatively conservative by Boston standards. He is tall, dark and handsome, to flog a cliché. Plus, he did grad work at Harvard — always a big hit with wealth gray hairs here.

By the bye, the pic is from a World Economic Forum image under Creative Commons.

The audience clearly responded to his dog whistles. They didn't object when he praised Cuba's education and health systems. But the applauded deafeningly to his calls for Fidel to die, for one example.

He busies himself after politics with his eponymous center to advance democracy. At the least, it's a presidential library.

His 90 minutes or so was fairly self-serving and a rehash of well-known material. For those of us expecting his usual inflammatory surprises, it was ho-hum.

However, he was at his most insightful when addressing border security and immigration conflicts. He did recount the ill timing of his visit to address a joint session of the US Congress a few days before the 9/11 attacks. He said he expected to convince our lawmakers to back off on the craziness (my word) of a many-hundred-mile wall along the Mexican border. The attacks in NYC and Virginia waylaid his proposals.

Still, he knows that "walls don't work" and are a terrific waste of money.

Instead, he said our hope for immigration control was economic parity. He noted that there is no Canadian/US problem, which he attributes to equal wages on both sides of that 3000-mile line. Not long ago, he added, the disparity with his country was over 10 to 1. It has reduced to 5 to 1 and he optimistically said that in five to 10 years, it may be equal.

I can't believe it will happen that fast, but his point is well taken. If Mexicans can make as much in their country, they won't sneak into this one. He concluded that the U.S. should do all it can within and beyond NAFTA to speed the process of income parity.

His comments on immigration alone were worth the evening.

Wash, Reince, Repeat

Democrats are safe from RNC Chair Reince Preibus.

He released (or it escaped) the Growth & Opportunity Project report. The 100-pager is actually about 30 sheets of big, Mac-style sans serif type pages if you account for the repetition. It could accurately have the title Why We'll Never, Ever Fail Again or Click Your Heels Three Times.

I read the 100 pages, even the iterations and reiterations, verbatim, so you don't have to. Alas for bedraggled elephants, many sheets of, well, stuff don't make Priebus as smart, strategic or analytical as his predecessor Michael Steele. Facts include, Steele and his big candidates were winners, the GOP replaced him with loser Priebus, and the report G.O.P. or maybe GANDOP fails terribly at its two main purposes — 1) explicating how even in the worst of economic times with Republican Congressmen doing their damnedest to make sure our President could neither pass laws, nor appoint key officials, nor govern, the GOP lost the big race and seats in both houses, and 2) detailing corrections that will ensure big Republican wins in 2014 and the 2016 Presidential.

Instead GANDOP the gray:

• Does not deal with such core problems as voter disdain for GOP policies and distrust of arrogant candidates
• Pretends that changing voter demographics toward more people of color and a younger electorate are perfectly manageable if only they package their feces in a pretty box
• Uses a one-strategy-fits-all groups (except women) approach of puppet spokesmodels
• Deludes with gear-head fantasies such as if only they hire the right data collectors and analysts or the spiffiest new-media consultants they'll beat the Dems at their game

I can point to some telling pages in the report:

• P2: Contacts shown here and mentioned sporadically suggest hand-clasping, going to favorable or mildly critical, red-state folk and missing meaningful criticisms
• P4: "Republican governors are America's reformers in chief." if you equate regressive and reactionary policy with positive change. The question they should have asked is whether state-level regression contributed powerfully to the defeats in the last election.
• P5: "At our core, Republicans have comfortably remained the Party of Reagan.." Yet his policies differ dramatically from the current GOP platform and pols. 
• P5: However, this page has one of the keenest and most candid insights in the report — The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself. We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue. I suspect this key judgment will disappear in the morass of jive.
• P5: There is a voter perception that the GOP does care about people, while Dems "tend to talk about people. Republicans tend to talk about policy." The report fails to note that Dem policy also tends to act to the benefit of the voters instead of moneyed classes.
• P6: A key conceit is that Republican policies that favor the corporations and wealthy individuals creates a healthy, growing middle class. Very few are so delusional as to believe that. If the GOP wants the White House, it needs to drop this.
• P8: The only mention of gay rights is that younger people favor them. Yet the report only calls "to make sure young people do not thee the Party as totally intolerant of alternative points of view." It's surely not like the GOP is out of step with the nation, eh?
• P8: "If we want ethnic minority voters to support Republicans, we have to enrage them, and show our sincerity." Of course, every conclusion and recommendation in the report is insincere and manipulative. Saying sincere and being sincere are not the same.
• P12: The dark people are coming, Latinos, Asians and others. The report concludes repeatedly that the canned GOP program is the best for everyone. Yet Barack Obama and the Dems convinced voters that Republicans did not have their economic interests at heart. That wasn't a hard sell.
• P14: Iterates over many pages in recommendations. Just get coached surrogates who look like the target voter groups and the GOP wins. For one, "This new organization should design a surrogate program to train and prepare ethnic conservatives for media presentations nationally and locally. Surrogates would speak on behalf of the Republican Party on issues of the day." The report has similar findings for each major group Romney lost in the last election, except for women. The puppet strategy is simple-minded and insulting. You just train the various looks-like-you folk. 
• P15: "It is imperative that the RNC changes how it engages with Hispanic communities to welcome in new members of our Party." This also repeats for each group it lost. It avoids personal responsibility for clumsy, insulting, mean policies by suggesting that if you only phrase the message properly, voters will buy in.
• P16: For each lost group, starting with Latinos, key concepts are that you train the surrogates (puppets), hire a few, suddenly visible representative members as party functionaries, and repeat to them "The Republican Party is one of tolerance and respect..."
• P17: For Asians and Pacific Islanders, no more fly-over campaigning. There is no mention to what party shock will ensue if the GOP actually asks what the various groups want and sees that none of it aligns with party policy.
• P19-21: Women get a slightly different treatment from the cut-and-past recommendations for the ethnic groups. Here instead of policy changes, the report looks to theater, manipulation and tricks. It calls for framing the wooing and training of surrogates with "unique concerns that female voters may have..." and  using "language that addresses concerns that are on women's minds in order to let them know we are fighting for them." It's all fluff for women, fluff and messaging —"Women need to hear what our motive is — why it is that we want to create a better future for our families and how our policies will affect the lives of their loved ones." This is the most patronizing and insulting part of the report.
• P21-22: Youth harks back to the Vietnam Era Young Americans For Freedom glory days. Somehow the RNC thinks it can get eager campus and young professional voters spontaneously organizing for them, all without changing their policies to be more inclusive for real.
• P26: Many of us remember when Republican were first with the internet and savviest with emerging social media. They've lost hat Now they've become gear-heads, thinking if only they have better data collection, they'll best Dems at the game of voter connection. The report does not see that Dems have both delivery AND content.
• P29-30: Dreams of monopolizing early and absentee voter ballots overlook a huge problem. Through gerrymandering and redistricting, they also thought that they had the Electoral College in hand. They overreached with voter suppression in many states. For sure last year and likely going forward, the GOP created new groups of angry, dedicated voters who won't forget the treachery and anti-democracy.
• P31: "The RNC should recruit and hire a chief technology and digital officer for the RNC by May 1, 2013." More gear-head stuff does not admit the problem. It's like a teen thinking if only he had that glove and bat, he'd be a star or an adult fantasizing that his $5,000 bike would make him a champion cyclist.
• P33: Calls for "recruiting the highest-quality candidates with the greatest potential for leadership" ignores the history of primaries that yield extreme and ultimately unelectable entries, chosen by the wingers who vote in these contests. It also avoids consideration of whether the RNC will try (surely unsuccessfully and maybe illegally) to dictate state parties' operations.
• P52: "Our friends and allies (third party groups) should significantly invest in voter registration and grassroots efforts." This assumes a buy-in by voters that has not existed in a long time.
• P54: Relying on ambush videos by "Well-funded conservative groups" tracking Dem candidates is a tactic, but one that many voters find both despicable and boring.
• P54: "Our friends and allies must realize that the Party is at its best as the Party of ideas, and healthy debate of those ideas is fundamentally good for the Republican Party." This is the most unintentionally amusing recommendation in the report. Throughout, it is heavy-handedly paternalistic in not bringing up self-criticism, not admitting failures, and calling for RNC edicts to state parties and the puppets, a.k.a. surrogates.
• P57: The report envies Obama's grassroots support there and here, and notably in "low-dollar fundraising." This follows a passing mention of the rich folk who bankroll the party. It avoids the obvious, that grassroots are millions of voters and million of contributors. Dems win them by offering platform planks that help them. The clear recommendation should be, but is not, to evaluate the party policies to see whether they help the target voters.
• P65-67: Citizens United was not enough. The report wants a total freedom for the RNC and state campaign financial system to raise and spend as it sees fit. The report phrases such anarchy as "making political speech more robust at the state and local level."
• P71: Cut the number of Presidential-candidate debates in half, with the aim of helping the GOP pick a single candidate and getting a head start on the national campaign. Forget that talk about robust speech.

The last third of the report cuts and pastes each section's already iterative recommendations. I suggest not just starting on page 74 for these. You'd miss the shameful and illogical rationalizations.

This report is a marvel of effete delusion. Academics will enjoy this for decades. Given the chance and lots of resources and what passes for brain power in the GOP, Priebus' pals could well have dealt with real causes and real solutions. Instead, it's the fantasy world again.

Yeah, the Dems did this or that better than us. All we need to do is buy the right staff and train some spokesmodels. All will be swell.

It is to laugh.

Benny to Frankie With Little to Show

The vile Benedict XVI is sort of gone, but his replacement Francis is only a little better. Neither is a new testament Christian.

For serious immediate journalism, the WaPo has two takes — his politics and theology, as well as his politics with economics. Instead, I'm here for LGBT and women's issues.

Fundamentally, Francis sucks, except for a big up on  social activism. The dude is down on women — no worship roles and forget about priesthood in Francis' lifetime, no right to choose or even discussion, no gay anything including marriage or adoption, and homosexuality is too gross to discuss. Mentioning marriage equality is the talk of Satan, so there.

When I first saw that a Jesuit, in fact the former head of the Society, was Pope, I had a flash and flush of hope. SJ folk are the most educated of the RC gang and many can discuss big topics without bringing down shades of infallibility and doctrine. Not so, Jorge, now Francis.

The new Pope is hard-line conservative.

His big exception is that he actually is New Testament in social action. You know, help the poor, mingle with plain folk, accept the range of human conditions. There's a little room to improve the billion Roman Catholics' lot there. It's a damned, very God damned shame, that he'll exclude women and homosexuals from human rights. Yes, shame on Frankie.

Business Princes

Not only does the emperor, or more aptly satraps, have no clothes. Those little folk with power and prestige and almost all weak of mind and devoid of accomplishment. The alleged best and brightest (BaBs, for derision) in the biz and finance worlds are the scammers who hold open their attache cases and see their boards overfill them with cash and options.

Over at the Financial Times today, Lucy Kellaway dared take another peak at the nude and ugly princelings. Her sideways look was an unscientific poll of overpaid shots. (The link may require registration, but you should be subscribing to the FT anyway, and The Nation as well.) A few admitted to her they were obscenely overcompensated. They had come to terms with that. More common was the dumb-as-a-post attitude that they create value, so they are underpaid if anything.

Chicken lips!

---

Best and Brightest?!

---

Go to a biz-school library or click around the net to see that most top execs and financial types are mediocre at best. The BaBs generally lead companies to underperform the Dow. The financial types are generally like pilots whose ships are carried along by strong currents. That lack of real value added doesn't stop their boards or partners from proclaiming they are wizards worth every penny of their multi-million-dollar annual packages.

In contrast to the big paydays, companies with these execs would be better off putting their cash in an index fund. Then they would not get a higher return, but they could take the millions they would otherwise pay the top dogs and actually invest it in meaningful R&D and expansion.

Of course the guys (almost entirely white men by coincidence) who hire these bozo BaBs have a real stake in the scam. Their fiduciary duty includes ensuring competent top management. That in theory carries both criminal and civil costs of they goof up doing so.

Most top business executives share some major flaws. For example, among the worst is short-term thinking. They and their direct reports typically develop and market to pump up profits for one or two quarters. Such tactics almost invariably rob the company and its shareholders of longer term, bigger profits and market share. They simply aren't putting resources where they will pay off biggest. Come evaluation and bonus time, the princelngs claim great benefit to the company.

Oddly enough, in many companies, even if exec plans blow up and returns are awful, the bigs still get bonuses on top of huge salaries. Increasingly shareholders switch into WTF? mode at annual or quarterly meetings, but the klutzes on the thrones remain there.

Another typical mediocre to awful boner is plumping margins by such moves as moving most production offshore, by underpaying workers, or by downsizing to starvation staffing levels. Yet, it's been over a century since Henry Ford showed the wisdom of a different approach. He'd pay is workers enough so that they could afford the cars they built — a large base of loyal, local, repeat customers. Building for a healthy and growing middle class and above is not counterintuitive. It too is a long-term survival plan, and one that gives you a much higher level of control than chasing third-world and developing-nation purchases.

---

Fantasy Worlds

---

My conclusions after long exposure to the constant stupid decisions by the shots is that they tend to be very ordinary people who develop the level of self-delusional ego typical of surgeons and ministers. So many above and below pour praise all over them. They begin to believe it all and then come think it is both absolutely true and natural.

It's likely that in a few big companies, shareholders will force some change, although not as likely that these will be deep, systemic improvements in executive selection, hiring, evaluation and compensation. It is even less likely that boards will admit they didn't hire BaBs, rather just connected buffoons who aren't particularly competent. Board members have a huge stake in appearing to have met their fiduciary requirements.

Occasionally,. reporters, biz school academics and some influential bloggers draw attention to the grossest failings of top managers and the absurd levels of reward for ordinary or inferior performance. Therein may lie the catalyst for change. Coming from such an oblique angle will surely take a long, long time.

Big Dog's Duh on DOMA

Maybe it's as simple as Hillary Clinton's stratospheric public approval and acclaim for her Secretary of State role. Meanwhile hubby William J. Clinton kind of labors much more obscurely. As front man for his humbly named William J. Clinton Foundation, he smiles a lot and aims to do big things in world health and such. The man is still competitive and still polishes brass plaques for his legacy trophies.

There's no shine yet on his biggest disgrace, DOMA. Yesterday, he buffed it again with an apology, in the classical not vernacular sense, for the Defense of Marriage Act. His short opinion piece in the WaPo smacks of lawyerly speciousness. It calls to mind his Lewinsky-related testimony about depending on what the meaning of is is.

He writes that DOMA is wrong now, but he can't, simply can't, admit he was wrong about it back in 1996 when he pushed it and signed the bill into law. It was his and he brought Congress and the nation along with him.

Instead, he lawyers up again and again. Oh, it was bipartisan. Oh, a bunch of people figured it would "defuse" the drive to flat outlaw same-sex marriage nationwide (and remove the right to control marriage from states). Oh, only 81 Senators and Reps opposed DOMA. Oh, oh, oh.

For a man who dearly loves himself, he shied away from write I in this piece. He could have written, "I took a gamble, led a compromise, let the chips fall every which way, and buried the issue. I let the anti-gay types think they won something by guaranteeing no federal tax or other benefits for homosexuals. I wanted the pro-equality types to think they could hold shreds and threads of hope if they were willing to fight for one, two or more decades."

That would have been both analytic and candid.

Instead, in his WaPo It's time to overturn DOMA piece, the former President linked to his weasel-worded signing statement that accompanied the bill. Therein, he writes in the first person, opening with "Throughout my life I have strenuously opposed discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans." He concludes the brief statement with DOMA does not "provide an excuse for discrimination, violence or intimidation against any person on the basis of sexual orientation. Discrimination, violence and intimidation for that reason, as well as others, violate the principle of equal protection under the law and have no place in American society."

Chicken lips!

DOMA is discrimination legalized and codified. It has led directly to cases before state, federal and now the SCOTUS. It has punished millions with unequal treatment, a.k.a. discrimination. It was and is a vicious, mean-spirited betrayal of LGBT Americans. It was Bill Clinton's easy way out that has not been at all easy for homosexual couples nationwide ever since.

It's positive that he eventually reversed his one-man/one-woman thinking. He got there before VP Biden and Prez Obama, but not by much. His current call too may help a little. I have to believe it would be a lot more effective if he started with the truth, the whole truth.

Quixotic or Prophetic Candidates?

My version of an elephant graveyard is a leaning heap of political yard signs. Many are from dramatic winners, like Obama and Warren.

One that still bothers me though reads:

INDEPENDENT 
JIM HENDERSON 
SECRETARY OF STATE 
www.JimForSOC.com

Jim is a friend. Moreover, he is a crusader and reformer. We don't like them much around here.

He ran in 2010 and got about 1 vote for every 23 that incumbent Bill Galvin did.

We have our own Deval Patrick. Much like President Barack Obama, our first black governor strode into office as a reformer, when the time and all conditions were right. Recently Sen. Elizabeth Warren did much the same.

Those are decided anomalies. We here in Boston, Massachusetts and New England are like much of this fairly conservative nation. We like our change in creeps not leaps...most of the time.

I definitely thought of the discarded reformers figuratively buried here when we spoke with John Connolly yesterday on Left Ahead. His show is here. This at-large Boston city councilor announced he would not run again for that post, rather for mayor, regardless of whether the longest-serving ever, wildly popular incumbent Tom Menino goes for a sixth term.

Da Mare loves to make councilors and other wait to see whether he's in for another run until well into spring  This year, candidates can wait until May 13th to pull nomination papers. Folks are understandably afraid to run against Menino, with his hoard of campaign funds, political organization, incumbency, and other powers. Those who don't have Connolly's guts are left scrambling for money, endorsements and ground troops on a truncated schedule.

Connolly says he has no plan B if he doesn't win. He says he can beat the mayor or any other councilor or outsider...and that's that.

He figures to get there with his reformer/transformer campaign. While citing his great respect for Menino personally and for his accomplishments over 20 years, Connolly says one way or another, time is up. He is impatient for big advances in public schools, not "tweaking around the edges."

While he has policies and plans for public safety, employment and more, schools are the heart of his plan to become mayor. Listen to his show to hear how he specifies the problems and solutions.

Mayor Menino may well run again. As he has told me and so many other, "What else am I going to do? This is all I know." Plus he clearly loves the job. On the other hand, he's coming up on 70, has been ill intermittently for years, and can be chauffeured away leaving a deep and wide legacy of accomplishments.

Clearly, Connolly has a greater shot at the office if Menino does not run. He has a strong message of reform, as well as teaching credentials, kids coming into public schools, a dedicate to public education, and years of experience running the council's education committee, leading numerous improvement efforts. Plus, he has very understandable and detailed proposals for revamping the city's schools.

---

Smothered Dreams

---

Our history here in not electing reformers came to mind recently as I watched the PBS series The Abolitionists. There were many tough times and even death threats and violence aimed at the likes of Angelina Grimke, Theodore Weld, William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. Boston has more than its share of slave-ship owners, fugitive-slave catchers, and many who just didn't want change or moralism.

We still like to think of ourselves in the main as lefties, liberals, progressives and such. Yet, really in the main we often share social conservatism as well as fiscal conservatism. We either need to ease into change or in those rare cases of an Obama or Warren be swept along in the excitement of reform.

I think again of Jim Henderson. His Left Ahead show where he advances his considerable reforms is here. Likewise, in 2009, City Councilor Sam Yoon ran on a reformer's platform for mayor. His Left Ahead show is here. Yoon lost in the preliminary (but not by much), had his candidacy folded into an unofficial vice-mayor slot with leading contender Councilor Michael Flaherty. Menino won 57% to 42%.

I've often held that Yoon was the smartest person in city hall. Many local observers are quick to agree and simultaneously point out that he lacked the political smarts and instincts of Menino. Almost invariably, those who win public office or become the wealthiest are not the brightest. They often don't have the best plans, but they hit sweet spots of timing and presentation.

Yoon was fine by me. I loved his intensity, his problem/solution analyses, and particularly his reformer conclusions. I too am an impatient sort.

To many though, Sam was overly wonky. He could be casual and personable, as I recall him at a big table at Flash's on Stuart Street. A bunch of us bloggy sorts joined him over ale to discuss his campaign. Sure, as always, he had the data and conclusions in his brain at the ready, but he delivered it with humor and excitement.

To most voters though, he may have been  too serious. He wanted us to take a flight on his reformation express. The voters liked Menino, saw that the city was gradually getting better with him in office, and found the call for reform too abrupt and uncertain. Instead of Boston mayor, Yoon is president of the Council or Korean Americans outside of D.C.

Another would-be reformer, Henderson, is a successful lawyer in Stow and principal of a video marketing firm. He's doing fine. He just has never gotten the chance to transform the secretary of the commonwealth's office.

---

End Game

---

Reformers tend to be resilient and relentless. Sometimes they prevail.

I recommend The Abolitionists, particularly the last episode. During four decades to eliminate slavery, Garrison specifically faced mobs, public shunning and disdain, financial catastrophe, threats of arrest and death and more. Eventually with the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment, Garrison and his like-minded reformers won. Even the change-averse public praised and supported them in the end.

The visionaries generally struggle. It's almost unheard of that they propose their reforms and receive acclaim and support...without the angst, defeat and rising from the muck.

In Connolly's case, working to ensure that tens of thousands of youth receive high-quality education and the lifelong opportunities that accompany it is noble. It surely is less so than freeing millions of slaves, but noble and worthy none the less.

Whether Menino runs, is it John's time? Can he market himself and his ideas strongly and clearly enough to overcome to inertia of a change averse Boston?

Dutch Boys 12 Years On

In the weekend Financial Times, Simon Kuper writes about what same-sex marriage has meant for his native Netherlands. Among his conclusions:

• "(I)t doesn't change much."
• Following legalization in 2001, political squabbles turned to other matters.
• Despite crazy claims otherwise, it does not affect straight marriages.
• SSM does "slap the churches in the face," in the sense they have the scramble to show their relevance.
• Stereotypical, traditional gay scenes are disappearing as more homosexuals integrate in the larger community.

Markey Weaves a Beautiful Tapestry

OK, kiddies, Ed Markey can do this. He can be senatorial, certainly while campaigning, and that's sine qua non for this run to replace US Sen. John Kerry.

I wasn't sure. His typical wonky pronouncements as US Rep. can be dour and dry, from the video clips. Maybe it was the venue (JP Licks) or the audience (lefties all), but he was dynamic, passionate and funny. He delivered a simultaneously detailed and focused stump speech that owned the packed half of the joint.

He may be able to match our MA Treasurer Steve Grossman in the ice-cream talk. Markey's dad worked for Hood and the son worked his way to and through Boston College in part by driving a Hood ice-cream truck.

Today, he heaped on the related humor. "My life is inextricably linked to ice cream," he started, adding, "Without ice cream I'm not going to Boston College." He went on about how great it was to be at JP Licks.

He also delivered a smooth set of lines related to his wife, whom he had wave to us. That would be Dr. Susan J. Blumenthal, very bright, highly accomplished (as in and MD, Georgetown and Tufts professor, assistant surgeon general and on and on). It never hurts a pol either that she is very attractive and shiksha looking (my term, not his). The very Massachusetts, very Irish-American pol had good fun saying he had  "lived the American dream. I married a Jewish doctor."

We'll see how much traction Rep. Steve Lynch gets with his iron-worker v. ice-cream vendor approach in his campaign for the seat. On the face of it, walking steel beams is tougher stuff than driving an ice-cream truck. Yet that too may be risky for Lynch, as after a few years in his father's profession, he became the union local president and seems to have been more a union pol than a rusty-hands laborer.

With the crowd chuckling and attentive, Markey hit his policies, aims, and reasons to vote for him.

Considerable rhetorical and literary elegance, as well as strong evidence of crisp, goal-oriented thinking, appeared in his 20 minute speech. He started, reworked and ended with recurring themes that reappeared and reinforced each other. Yes, he was for gun safety/control. Yes, he was for health care for all, as right not privilege. Yes, he unabashedly touted his constant support for choice, equal treatment and rights for women, as well as his LGBT constituents.

His themes though echoes Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama. He spoke recurringly of the hopes typical Americans have, particularly for their children. For example, that came up in his jest about marrying the American dream, but also in the reality of his immigrant grandfather and his father starting in a ground floor apartment of a Lawrence triple-decker. Then in a Honduran-American endorsing and introducing him in Lawrence. Again in visiting his old family digs at 88 Phillips Street there, to find a different Honduran-American family with aspirations the same as his father and grandfather had for their kids...aspirations Markey has manifested.

He tied himself strongly to Warren, saying such as, "I want to go to Washington to be a partner with Elizabeth Warren on the Senate floor." He added he wanted to advanced the same agenda as she and Obama. He benefits from not having to fudge his record to support that.

This campaign his likely to see such well-written speeches and debates. Here Markey has strong advantages over Lynch and any possible GOP candidate. He has not changed his policies or postures. He is in tune with the typical liberal/progressive MA voter. Also, he's really a pretty funny guy behind all that smart speechifying.

His campaign site is nude at the moment — just volunteer or cough up. However, ProgressiveMass is all for him and stocks his issues. I had gone there basically to meet his press folk and get a Left Ahead podcast in the works (done and done). I'm glad I waited for him to show.

Markey Sparking Barking

Fur shore, dood, MA's campaign to replace US Sen. John Kerry is already in the mud. Faux indignation follows each pronouncement of little-bit-ahead leader Ed Markey. There was the whore monger and more recently the fake cries of racism.

It'll only get worse. Even with a new GOP party chair here, the dreadful craziness and irrationality of Scott Brown's failed calumny of Elizabeth Warren last fall still is the tone.

Consider those two examples. First Markey will attend a fund raiser for his campaign co-hosted by former NY Gov. Eliiot Spitzer. Also, Markey really hates the Citizens United decision and compared it judicially to the Dred Scott ruling of 1857 when the US Supreme Court tortured Constitutional law to uphold slavery.

That fund raiser is in the DC home of Spitzer's sister. It's private and asking $500 to $5,000 per. In case you have had more important issues to consider, then NY AG Spitzer spent a lot of money on prostitutes. He resigned in 2008 with hints of impeachment for to rumored fiscal improprieties related to his lusts. He's pretty much rehabbed himself — writing for the likes of Slate, teaching at City College, lecturing and such.

As one of her first public acts, the new MA GOP head, Kirsten Hughes, got low and nasty on this. As the Globe reported it:

“You are judged by the company you keep and it’s disgusting for Congressman Markey to rub elbows with a man best known for his solicitation of prostitutes,” Hughes said. “Instead of lining his campaign coffers with donations from the disgraced Eliot Spitzer, Markey should immediately cancel the fundraiser and denounce Spitzer’s abhorrent and unacceptable behavior. Anything short of a public condemnation and cancellation would send the wrong message to women everywhere.”

From that same GOP with its current and long history of plug nasties — serial adulterers, tax cheats, and far worse — as candidates as well as supporters, that's some guts she showed. Pots and kettles, dear.

For the Citizens/Dred thingummy, The Phoenix' David Bernstein doesn't think it'll last or have much impact. Not only do I agree, but I think Markey offered a fair comparison that deserves consideration.

Negative reactions to it may say more about New Englanders than Markey's remarks. He delivered the analogy in the Berkshires and The Republican on masslive.com sought out Springfield NAACP President The Rev. Talbert Swan II to view the video and react.

He concluded, "I don't think he had an ill-intent making the comparison, but it's an ill-timed statement (noting it is Black History Month)." However, he also said, "I don't think I would have compared any Supreme Court decision to the Dred Scott decision that subjugated a whole race, but I do understand the parallel between the two cases. The Dred Scott ruling denied rights to human beings and made them property. The Citizens Untied case took property and gave it human rights."

Those who try to play racial games with this and avoid Markey's ideas should note Swan's clarity.

---

Regional Ways

---

That brings up the provincialism issue. Not only Bostonians but many other New Englanders have real problems with abstracts and even metaphor. They can be confused by them, can fall back on literal interpretations, and seem to lack literary contexts.

While I've spent the majority of my life in Boston, I've lived in many places and spent some of my most formative years in the South. The contrasts in speech, writing and thinking North and South are abrupt and revealing.

There are good fiction writers up here, but not all that many. Contrasted to the Deep South, New England is the home of philosophy and hard and soft science writing...serious (and generally literal) stuff. You'd be hard pressed to find a Southern city or town without its famous native novelist or playwright.

That is nowhere as obvious as in daily conversation. Classroom, grocery, bar, living room, backyard BBQ, floor of the legislature, Southerners love their words, their tropes, their puns, their analogies. They as a group take great pleasure in turn of phrase and comparisons. It's a form of mental calisthenics that may not serve any great purpose, but lubricates interactions considerably.

That's why it shocks me so much to see the terrified alter kaker Sen. Lindsey Graham act out like such a Yankee on the cabinet nominee hearings. He picks up verbal crumbs and figuratively runs about the hearing room holding them high and squealing. We understand he's trying to convert his legacy of decades as a wishy-washy sort with uncharacteristic bombast. It doesn't suit him or his heritage.

Here, we'll see how far Hughes and other attack sorts can carry these small socks of shame they think they found. I suspect not that far. However, I also suspect they just won't stop trying.

NM SS Marriage. Mirage?

As America fumbles and stumbles toward marriage equality...trailing even France, our legal and societal ineptness is nowhere plainer than in New Mexico. Mirabile dictu, 64 same couples married there on February 20, 2004.

Sandoval County Clerk Victoria Dunlap announced she'd issue the licenses. Turned out that she found that nothing in the state law prohibited it, nothing limited marriages to a man/woman combo. Her office was perking from 8 AM until 4:10 PM 4:10 p.m when then-Attorney General Patricia Madrid halted the process. By then 66 licenses were complete, but dozens of same-sex couples were left in line.

In all, 66 licenses were issued. Dozens were left in line.

Among the unanswered questions in the 9 years since are:

• Are the 64 marriages valid? (A judge ruled one couple seeking divorce had a valid marriage, but that only applied to their case.)
• Why haven't lawmakers legalized or made illegal SSM there? (NM has a strong equal-rights law that forbids gender discrimination.)
• Can clerks start issuing these licenses again? (They have an informal agreement to wait for the legislature to do something solid and sensible.)

Census stats say NM has the fifth greatest percentage of gay couples. It's a reasonable place to get sensible.

Self-flushing Scott Brown

Let us laugh together. Scott Brown has flushed himself down the drain, apparently out of greed alone. According to the Globe and to the Herald, he'll be a talking head for Fox(if you pardon the oxymoron)News.

Giggle now that he wasn't immediately available for comment. Consider that this attention addict doesn't even get that aspect of it all.

So in a couple of years from a drone realty lawyer to a do nothing state legislator to a big honking ego disguised as a fill-in-the-term US Senator, Brown chose to unplug the drain and wash himself down.

In his Congressional mini-life, truncated when someone with ideas, accomplishments and the compassion he totally lacks skunked him for the full-term in office, he was also a do nothing.

Rather, he was a do badly while pretending otherwise. Assuming all other Senators and all voters were thoroughly stupid, he played junior-high tricks. He'd stand at the edge of the new playground, the Senate chamber, waiting to run in and make the key point or save. He'd pretend to play for one side and then for the other, all the while saying not that this proved his deviousness and dishonor, rather showed him fair and balanced, to coin a phrase. He feigned bipartisanship so many times, he seemed to come to believe it himself.

So there you have it, FoxNoise hired him to provide political commentary and insight. Well, at least he's in the Sarah Palin moldy mold of no-noting, do-nothing, having accomplished next to nothing, smoke blower. Brown as a political commentator is like Bernie Madoff teaching ethics. They make it up as they do and hope they don't get caught.

French To Join SSM Parade

With the opposition reduced to petty cleverness (as in 4,999 amendments to clog the works), the French National Assembly voted 329 to 299 for same-sex marriage and adoption by gay couples. The Senate takes it up in two months and seems certain to make it law. President Francois Hollande supports and drove the move.

Good coverage at WaPo in the recap, with a bonus column speculating on what finally tipped France into the gang of nearby Roman Catholic-heavy countries who already legalized marriage equality.

Joyeuse St. Valentin.

While France led much of the world in decriminalizing homosexuality (1791, a trail of the Revolution), it's taken its time with this. Religiously and culturally similar Spain and Portugal, among others, have SSM already.

Now despite government support up and down, public opinion approval, and law almost completed, the opposition acts like that here. There's promise of both protests and court battles. Even in a country noted for sexual and marital liberty, the nasty meddlers want to be in charge of other folk's private matters.

Bye Bye, Benedict

I am not Roman Catholic, have never been and don't even play one on internet radio. Yet I have more than passing interest in Pope Benedict XVI, born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, 25 years running the Roman Inquisition (formally the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), and widely known in ecclesiastical circles as God's Rottweiler. 

It may be unfair in some emotional ways for a non-RC type to criticize him, but he's long been a foe of marriage equality among other good trends. He's also done his damnedest (most blessed?) to shrink the Church. He's made it plain that he only wants to truly devoted and obedient congregants.

So, he announced that he's stepping down on February 28th and has called for a conclave to replace him in March. The last time a pope resigned was 598 years ago, when Gregory XII stepped down to heal a major succession schism.

I confess, if I may use that term in its common meaning, that I admire and appreciate his reasons. Unlike many predecessors who literally limped along when they were ailing and both physically and mentally enfeebled. he admitted he doesn't have the oomph to do papal duties. As he put it, ... "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry..."

He brother Georg Ratzinger said the Poper was having increasing difficulty walking and that his resignation was part of a "natural process".  "His age is weighing on him. At this age my brother wants more rest."

I of course hope for a new, improved version, one less doctrinaire, more compassionate, and more believing in using the Church's resources for social action.

Good on Gomer

Were my maternal grandmother alive, would she rejoice in Jim Nabors, a.k.a. Gomer Pyle, getting married...to his love of 38 years, his new husband?

Out to his friends and colleagues, but no one else, the 82-year-old actor figured it was time, while he had time. He and partner Stan Cadwallader flew from their Hawaii home to Seattle, where such doings are legal.

Pic note: Public domain from Marine Corps.

Licit or not, my grandmother 1) adored Nabors on The Andy Griffith Show and other TV, particularly where he'd sing, and 2) was befuddled by and hostile to homosexuality. She was born at the very start of the 20th Century and lived her whole life in the hills of central Maryland and the Eastern panhandle of West Virginia.

Mable didn't consider herself a hick. After all, they lived in Romney, the Hampshire County seat, with a metropolitan area population of over 2,000. The hicks and ridge runners came from the real hills to downtown Romney with its several restaurants, department store, groceries, and menswear shop (run by the mayor, head of the only Jewish family in the county).

Yet the wild, the citified, and sexually remarkable were not an admitted part of her world. Yet, it turns out, gays were about. A very familiar relative by marriage was one, several family members I learned had bi relationships, and my best friend in the town where I summered and spent my holidays my whole childhood and youth was gay. Had she known things I did, she likely would have denied it each and all.

One of her daughters, my mother, was more candid but still befuddled. Two of my longest-term friends are gay men. She knew them both, one from my sandbox days and one from college on. They would visit her on swings through the Southwest, with their partners. She and they all enjoyed their meals and conversations for many years. She would tell me how much she loved the four of them, but always add that she just didn't understand homosexuality.

She didn't live long enough for the full circle. I have solemnized both couples' marriages.; I suppose she would have said she didn't understand same-sex marriage either.

Her own mother though was never in a state of mind to discuss homosexuality. She read her Bible and The Upper Room daily as well as attending and serving in church. Without the obnoxious aspects, she was a fundy, and I have no doubt she knew same-sex love to be sinful.

Gaydar jokes aside, Nabors was fairly plainly gay at least to us boomers. That was fine enough. What I had trouble with was what my grandmother adored, his drama-queen singing. He favored lugubrious ballads, huge, round-mouthed tones and virtually no feeling involved.

Yet, every week, she'd invariably say if Gomer was on with Andy, "I hope he sings." Also, when the Cumberland Times or TV Guide would list him as a guest on some other program, she was elated because it invariably meant he'd do a number or two. She loved the songs even if she would have hated the sin.

She'd be well over 100 now. I have to wonder whether she would have grown at all with the times. Surely she never would have left Romney. What would it have meant to her to know I'd performed several gay weddings, of people she knew and liked? What would the growing national support of SSM meant to her? Could she have talked about it with me?

Grandmother Mable taught several generations to think for ourselves, to speak up at every lunch and dinner on every subject, to be well read and informed. She had her huge blind spots. I have to wonder whether she would have shifted over the decades. In particular, Jim Nabors was a hero of hers. wouldn't that be something fine?

My blessings fall on Jim and Stan, newlyweds.

Obama's Great Rights Address

Put me in the long column of those pleased with President Barack Obama's second inaugural address.

I am torn about whether he should have been so bold in his first one. I do admit that had he campaigned so progressively strongly, he might well have lost that election. We are a socially slow nation.

Several areas in particular yesterday's speech struck many of us lefties. For example:

1. A long overdue parallelism and paean to Seneca Falls (women's suffrage), Selma (Black civil rights), and Stonewall (gay rights) was the clear moral and intellectual posture we've longed for from him.
2. A strong statement for marriage equality — "Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law - for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well."

Many other themes he iterated had appeared and gotten action in his first term. He wants to complete equal pay for equal work for women, for instance. He likewise spoke again of curbing gun violence, reversing climate change and many more works in progress.

It seems part of his finally fully supporting LGBT rights, including marriage equality, reflects the nation's zeitgeist. Leading the reversal of the military Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell policy, led his opposition to the indefensible Defense of Marriage Act, which in turn led his clear support for marriage equality. Instead of costing him this election or poisoning the well of public support, those did the opposite. Most of America is with him on these issues.

The unhappy and increasingly scatter band of anti-LGBT sorts still chant. They point to the 31 states that enacted anti-same-sex-marriage laws and/or amendments after New Hampshire went with civil unions and then Massachusetts with marriage. The coup those who would hamper, harm and hinder homosexuals maxed out and is being reversed, in many cases by the most populous states. It's a dwindling party of bigots, doomed to sit increasingly in their rented halls and living rooms muttering.

We can hope for the slim chance that the SCOTUS will fully enable SSM. Otherwise, the Prez can continue to nibble away at the blocks to equality here. Placing such rights clearly on a plane with other huge civil-rights struggles has already set the tone.
 

No No NOM

Splendid piece in the SF Chronicle yesterday details the unresolved angst and conflicts in the GOP over marriage equality.

Despite nearly 40 states having anti-same-sex marriage laws or amendments in place, GOP and independent voters have moved on. The paranoid, puerile panic was the ephemeral anomaly and not the new, permanent norm.

Writer Carolyn Lochhead compiles trends, including things many of us already know — such as Dick Cheney supporting SSM and President Obama not getting any measurable blow-back from announcing he favored it before the last election.

She brings in analysts who say that Latinos and African Americans are not the only groups the GOP is turning off. For one, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Walter Olson said bluntly, "Republicans have to be delusional to think they can take that position into a national campaign, that there ought to be a constitutional amendment against something that there is now majority support for."

She also offers a small taste from the bowl of nuts, notably National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown. He seems virtually alone in his dire, "Practically, the Republican Party dies if it abandons marriage." GOP voters and many of its pols are muttering or even shouting that it's time to get past this irrational obsession, in light of a solid majority of the nation approving of SSM.

The piece touches on changes by the Church of the Latter Day Saints.She even ends up with a crisply applicable history lesson no states-rights and alcohol prohibition,with some counties remaining dry even today.

Dems might appreciate the national GOP remaining stupidly diverted by anti-equality fights they've already lost.  We probably can't count on that much longer.

Warren Brings It Home

Not exactly an Andrew Jackson moment, Sen. Elizabeth Warren's ceremonial ceremony had little pomp, no fluff and lots of celebrity pols. The conceit was that while she had already legally taken the oath, a show version in Boston would reinforce her populist cred. It worked.

The drama on stage was largely unspoken. Senior Senator for the moment John Kerry towered politically as well as physically. The always funny and nearly as candid as Barney Frank Sheriff Andrea Cabral (check her wonderful lacy black fan she kept flapping) started with the virtual certainty that Kerry will become Secretary of State. Kerry himself said that should that happen, Warren will be the Junior Senator for about three legislative days, as opposed to his 26 years behind Ted Kennedy.

What didn't happen was anyone overtly pitching for either the resulting interim Senate spot or for the permanent spot to be decided in a special election, likely in June. The tension was there though, with so many possibles within a few yards of each other and sometimes in adjacent seats on stage.

Frank already made his lust known on the Morning Joe Show. He said he told Gov. Deval Patrick he would like the appointment. In his usual straight ahead style, he said, "I’m not going to be coy. It’s not something I've ever been good at. I've told the governor that I would now like frankly to do that because I would like to be a part of that. It’s only a three-month period; I wouldn't want to do anything more. I don’t want to run again…Coach, put me in!" With all the looming fiscal conflicts and crises to resolve in Congress, Frank figures he decades of expertise there make him the right temp for the job.

While I saw the two huddling to one side of the stage before showtime, no one could hear, there were no bear hugs following, and Patrick has never indicated approval of the plug-in. MA political gossips instead latched onto yesterday morning's tweet from Patrick's campaign demigod, Doug Rubin. While Rubin noted later he was typing only for himself, he did tweet, "I respect Cong. Frank and what he has accomplished, but there are better options for MA Senate interim appointment."

Rubin is always smart and often right. I lean with Frank on this one. The interim Senate seat is a specialized one for the fiscal expertise and negotiating skills it will require. Frank knows the devil out of the money and tax aspects, as well as the reality of Congressional dealings.

Likewise, no one spoke to the special election. At hand were Rep. Ed Markey, who not only announced first, but quickly got oral support from several MA pols. Most significantly was Kerry. 

Yet Congressmen Mike Capuano and Steve Lynch are likely to make plays. Also MA Sen. Ben Dowling was there and could well go for the special election. They milled around the stage, shook hands, hugged the women pols, and tried not to look too eager or needy. As an interesting sidelight, when the college president was calling out the officials there, Capuano was the only Congressman who got big cheers and applause. He truly is the working voters' champion that ex-Sen. Scott Brown pretended to be. That plays well, at least in the Boston area.

Not surprisingly, over at the Herald, in several posts related to the ceremony, the negativity was predictable. The commenters large dislike liberals, disrespect women, and detest progressives. The usual clowns who ride the fantasy pony of Warren gaining some advantage after the fact from her slight Native American heritage, continued to rant about certain debt and death of honesty via her. A few did manage to note that yesterday's show swearing in was apt for someone they continue to define as a fake Indian. A lefty woman will never, ever suit them.They become pebbles washed up on the banks as the river flows on.

My mini-rant is one of amusement rather than disdain. Warren believes she is a true egalitarian. Certainly her writings and public service indicate that. Yet the upper distant half of the auditorium of perhaps 1000 seats was for us plebes. Thus, the shots that follow are from over 100 feet away and not all that clear.

Lower seats were for pols not important enough to be on stage, yet more important an ordinary voters. There were press rows, chosen campaign workers and such. No guards kept hoi polloi away, but there was a decided caste system in play. Again, her heart and head are aware, but this was no Andrew Jackson, let-the-rabble-in moment.

No one seemed to notice or mind. In fact, at the following reception in the student cafeteria, hundreds dutifully lined up in airline-ticket-style rows to get pix taken with her, her husband and Justice Kagan. People wanted to be part of their populist Senator's day.

	The cute quotient came via the Cohasset Girl Scout, including the short end. They led the pledge of allegiance. Towering pols behind them, Steve Murphy and Andrea Cabral had to nudge the girls off stage as they became stunned by the clapping, cheering audience.
MA Treasurer/Receiver General and U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, The latter, publicly at least, gave his Senatorial ambitions a rest for the afternoon.
	MA Auditor Suzanne Bump and AG Martha Coakley also got spots on stage and were very busy before showtime. Neither allegedly wants to pending open Senate seat.
On the other hand, whatever Bump had to say to Boston City Council President Steve Murphy kept his constantly amused.
	My nominee for best accessory of the day was Sheriff Andrea Cabral's lacy black fan. She gave it a real workout.
Gov. Patrick stifled himself. Warren praised him and his wife for their support and advice. He said nothing to us about the coming interim or replacement Senate spots.
	Kerry managed to speak of his near certain move to Secretary of State in theoretical terms. He did seem elated at the idea though.
Warren as always had the crowd with her populist messages, such as everyone paying fair taxes and government cuts starting, not with Social Security, but with big agriculture and big oil. She concluded by saying she hoped to be able to live to up Ted Kennedy's legacy. "As I take this oath of office, I make this sacred promise to each and everyone of you that's here today witnessing, I am honored to have the opportunity to serve as your Senator, I am grateful for your hard work and support, I am deeply touched by the faith and trust you have put in me, and I pledge today that I will  never, never stop fighting for you."

Pix Notes: You’re welcome to anything useful. They are Creative Commons, so just cite Mike Ball once.

Warren's Triumphant Replay

In a splendid bit of local political theater today, Elizabeth Warren seemed to be sworn in as U.S. Senator, the first ever woman to hold the post from MA, on the main stage at Roxbury Community College. I suspect everyone in the packed hall knew she'd officially taken the oath in D.C. and then did it again for the photo-op with VP Joe Biden administering the oath.

Nonetheless, the idea worked. She brought the sense of ownership, both for voters of her and for her of constituents. It was a jolly hour, with nearly all the state's political big shots speaking, glad-handing or mugging for cameras.

A few were missing. Boston Mayor Tom Menino is still not dancing on his toes after his recent hospital stays.  City Council President Steve Murphy sat on the stage in his place. The until-a-few-days-ago Sen. Scott Brown somehow didn't make it either. More seriously, I was a little surprised not to see U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas. While her district is farther north, as a woman in Congress she would have been a likely cameo performer.

Warren did her part though to bring Menino into the occasion. She gave the only real speech and she thanked him specifically. The other speakers were gushing over the pols, naming many, teasing Senior Sen. John Kerry for being about to leave office to become Secretary of State, as soon as he is confirmed.

While she's senator of the state and not Boston, this still is his town. It was peculiar that so many had spoken briefly, flinging praise around without mentioning Menino. Warren said she couldn't let the occasion pass without "a special thank you to our great mayor." She added that, "They Mayor gave me good counsel more than a year ago, telling me that it's really all about just fighting for our working families. He told me to say what I believe and to trust in people. He told me, 'Get out there and do that, kid. They'll be there for you.'"

That advice mirrored his endorsement of her in Roslindale in September. Then he told voters to support her, work for her and vote for her because, "she has your back." He said because of that she "got my vote. She has my help."

She had considerable praise for Kerry and for the only-a-few-days retired Rep. Barney Frank. No one at all mentioned that Frank has publicly said he'd like to fill Kerry's seat for the several months until a special election is held. He said his financial expertise from the House side would be very useful with the pending Senate negotiations.

While he briefly huddled with Governor Deval Patrick, No one else knows whether he even mentioned his eagerness to temporarily become a Senator.

At least three who would become the next Senator in the likely even that Kerry becomes Secretary and his slot goes to a special election. Congressmen Ed Markey, Mike Capuano and Steve Lynch all floated around the stage, smiling and seeming to be in the moment. While Markey has already announced and gotten early approvals from various pols, That election is perhaps six months away and will be the one chance to become a U.S. Senator for all three Reps. This looks like a worth battle.

More commentary on this event and a few snaps to follow.