He Spits on the Popular Guy

Putting the gab in Gabriel, that Gomez clown has been doing the winger whinger thing. He is shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that Democrats are openly supporting Democratic candidate for US Senate Ed Markey. Can you imagine?

WTF, Republicans? Day follows night.

Reading and hearing his non-stop petulance, I see the parallel with such lunacy as anti-gay MassResistance spewing about and wanting a boycott of the corporate sponsors of Boston's Gay Pride week and events. Year after year, twisted little Brian and Amy (the army-ette of two) revealed the shocking, shocking I tell you, truth that Pride had a huge list of sponsors.

Apparently, this was to elicit outrage among us far morally superior to libertarians, queers, Unitarians and other scum. We were supposed to see the long and getting longer list of corporate and governmental sponsors and produce steam from our ears, grab our checkbooks to write checks to MR, and boycott these dreadful enablers.

From my distance, I couldn't help but see it otherwise. The sponsor list was a catalog of America, like the city of Boston, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Bank of America, Apple, Verizon, and a huge cross-section of hotel chains, supermarkets and on and on and on. In fact MR got its shaming list from the Pride brochures and any current year's sponsor list will show similar political and corporate power.

This allegation was that this was an anomaly that people could correct with protests and economic sanctions. Somehow, the clueless couple has yet to see that their publicizing the kissy-face support of LGBT celebrations carries a very, very different import.

What shame?

The real message has been for well over a decade that the world has moved beyond anti-gay paranoia and silliness. The wide and deep list of companies and agencies that celebrate diversity and equality indicates that those who hate gay folk are out of touch and out of tune with America and these times. Publishing the lists does not shame the sponsors at all. Instead, it makes reasonable folk ever more aware of how mainstream equality is.

Likewise with Gomez and other Republicans, complaining that two Presidents, the other US Senator from MA and dozens of Dems endorse Markey does not smear him. In contrast, the good guys like Markey, like him enough to trot to places like Boston and Worcester to say so publicly and at length.

In contrast, the best Gomez has earned has been an email from the very short-term, fill-in Senator Scott I-have-a-truck-to-haul-hay-for-my-daughters'-horses Brown. That's right, Brown couldn't even bother to endorse him at an even or on camera. (Insert snicker.)

So Gomez says repeatedly, "That Markey is so popular. Big shots endorse him. That's terrible! Vote for me!"

Instead maybe the unenrolled and even the Republicans will listen to all those effusive and specific endorsements of Obama, Clinton, Warren and on and on. Gabriel needs some friends. After he loses this race, he should have the time to find some.

Herding Democrats

Yesterday's visit from President Barack Obama was certainly jollier than the recent trip related to the dead and maimed from the Boston Marathon bombs. He came to support US Rep. Ed Markey's bid to move to replace John Kerry.


Despite a nearly three-hour wait to get into and kill time in a very hot track-and-field gym across from Roxbury Community College, several thousand Dems, pinkos, and locals who just wanted to be part of the excitement did stand in lines, had previously filled out forms and waited for free tickets, did herd outside, did file dutifully through the chutes, did wait and wait. They got political rewards.

I actually had gotten a couple of those tickets, but I also ended up wangling a press pass. Mine was at the bottom-feeder level, blogger and podcaster. There were national folk video recording. There were local puffballs like Jon Keller, who seems to live to announce how insightful and important he is (he is neither) and local true pundits like David Bernstein, who actually is insightful and not ego poisoned.

Folk were sweating, campaign and DNC staffers were handing out tiny bottles of water, but figuratively everyone was cool. The doors had opened on time at 11 AM but Obama was not due on stage until at least 1:45 PM.

Fear not, like a good pre-game show, theater started a little after noon with stuff...lots of non-stop stuff. A cute kid led the pledge, a very talented local student sang the anthem, several Bostonians, including the country sheriff and Markey's local campaign head, started firing up the thousands.

I know these were their moments,but the real action and political appetizers started with MA Sen. Sonia Chang-Díaz. She's highly accomplished, a solid progressive and it doesn't hurt that she is both gorgeous and very pregnant.

I haven't seen or heard much of her remarks today, but they were in turn funny, rousing and insightful. Click the arrow on the player below to hear a five-minute clip from Sen. Chang-Díaz' speech.

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She differs from most remarks on both sides of this campaign in several ways. She in fact differs from both Markey and Obama. She came from a really local, really pragmatic political view.

She softened up the masses with jokes about how she wasn't due for another eight days....and she waved her absentee ballot form that she had in case she was in labor on June 25th. Then she cut to the teamwork motif that has been lacking in this campaign, at least to my awareness.

Markey has not stressed that he'd be a one-two punch for Dem values with Sen. Elizabeth Warren. He should. He only says that GOP opponent Gabriel Gomez would cancel out Warren's vote. Chang-Díaz worked the teamwork theme from several angles for him. She first noted that big Massachusetts liberal victories came from widespread teamwork, including marriage equality, CORI reform and healthcare reform that spread nationally (she welcomed Obama for joining in).

In a great take on the current race, she made a credible call for GOTV efforts. First in Spanish, then English, she said that Gabriel Gomez was not the only Latino in the race, then pointing to the audience and herself. She called for at least as big a turnout as last November's that send Warren to the Senate.

Markey wasn't on stage, but I hope his minions paid attention and informed him.

For the big show, Obama was pretty damned good. He was on at least his B+ game. There was show cutesy stuff, as there was with Markey, about the Boston/Chicago Stanley Cup Final teams, but the POTUS quickly got serious.

NECN has his whole half hour, which is worth a watch and listen. Click here for that.

Big Dog Next

What I'll watch for now is Bill Clinton's endorsement of Markey this Saturday in Worcester. I can't get to that but I definitely want to compare it to his pitch for US Rep. Steve Lynch three years ago in Boston. That one surprised and appalled me. It was all about Clinton when it should have been about the candidate.

In contrast, Obama was focused and balanced yesterday. He started, continued and ended with specific reasons to campaign for and vote for Ed Markey. Where the President inserted himself into it, the point was that "I need Ed Markey" in Washington to pursue the big goals...shade of Chang-Díaz' teamwork.

I'll catch the video of that show and see who's the hero of those remarks.

Endorsement Door 3, Ed Markey

Kisses. Kisses. Kisses.

This morning over in DOT at the IBEW Local 103, Business Manager Mike Monahan loved Mayor Tom Menino and Rep. Ed Markey. Menino loved Monahan, the union, unions, and Markey. Markey loved Menino, Monahan and, well, everybody.

The occasion was for Menino to endorse Markey in the special election to the U.S. Senate, replacing suddenly Secretary of State John Kerry. Markey won the Dem primary over Rep. Steve Lynch and faces the GOP's Gabriel Gomez near the end of next month.

As Menino's endorsement of Elizabeth Warren in the previous special, to replace the late Ted Kennedy, was key to her victory, you might have supposed the crowd would have been bigger here than about two hundred.

Then again, Menino squatted like an owl on a limb before coming out for Warren. The anticipation was palpable and fierce. At the endorsement rally in the middle of Roslindale (at Adams Park, a.k.a. Roslindale Square), every bench, bit of sidewalk and patch of grass was populated. The crowd spiraled with increasing passion for 90 minutes before Menino  and Warren appeared. A virtual political talent show ordinary women spoke powerfully for Warren. She ascended the stage to swelling music and louder cheers.

Two years earlier, at another endorsement to-do, former President Bill Clinton came on for Lynch's re-election bid. That was the strangest of such events I ever attended. Everybody got up at the Ironworkers hall to say how wonderful a prez Clinton had been. In a odd juxtaposition, Lynch spoke before Clinton, saying of  course what a wonderful prez he had been. Only at the end, did Clinton podium up to say, yes, what a wonderful prez he'd been. Then at the end of the remarks, he briefly praised Lynch and urged voting for him, campaigning for him and donating to his campaign.

Not today. It was the natural order of things. Monahan introduced Menino, who introduced Markey. Everybody had plenty of praise for the other two.

There was also no tension or doubt. Gomez held no trump card as Scott Brown did as incumbent Senator. No one was surprised the Mayor went for Markey.

There was pretty good stuff around, substance and detail as well as a love fest. They spoke of gun control, protecting Social Security, ensuring equal opportunity in education, or as Markey put it to great appreciation (hear clip below), "...every child should have access to the skill set they need..."

He also said that the kind of partnership he's had with Menino is exactly that he'd need as a Senator "to fight for the cities." He listed urban concerns and what he and Menino had worked on together.

On the other hand, there was no mention of him and Warren as a team, as a one-two punch in the Senate. If I can finally get him on Left Ahead, I'll ask about that.

This show was pretty short, a campaign stop, in and out in a half hour. I have seen and heard Markey do better on the stump. In particular, three months ago at JP Licks, he spoke with wit and power to over 100 crammed into the ice cream parlor. Today, he was warm and generous in praise, but you could see the audience looking around a bit and shifting from foot to foot as he spent most of his time speaking of the splendors or Boston and her Mayor.

He could have benefited from a slice of Clinton's ego. He has a good story and tells it well. He should learn to acknowledge praise and then move to the important stuff. He has some time to practice before the two debates with Gomez.

Click the arrow on the player to hear a two-minute clip from Markey endorsement acceptance.

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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.

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Regional Ways

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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.