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.

---

---

Franken Carries Liz' Portfolio

Al Franken, no longer funny guy but still stand-up in the other sense of the term, stood in for Elizabeth Warren today in Cambridge. Yeah, he was still funny, even though he's seriously the U.S. Senator from Minnesota.

Truth be told, a friend and I intended to have a pint across the street from the Warren-for-Senate HQ on Mass Ave. out of Harvard Square before the sked announced she and he would appear there about the same time. We're both pinkos about her age, so we were delighted.

Cambridge Common is a fine place for reasonably priced brews, particularly IPAs. I doubt that is why Warren's campaign planted her office directly across the avenue. However after increasing our wisdom, we were ready for the scrum.

Turns out that Warren must have been at another locale. Franken appeared and charmingly carried the afternoon. I was fine with that, having met her numerous times as well as hosting her on the Left Ahead show. I'm decidedly one of her groupies and my wife has been canvassing and phone-banking for her. When we went to her West Roxbury office opening, she threw her arm around me and said, "I love this guy!" My wife allowed as she did too. It was all good.

Lackaday, my chum, who is also a Warren supporter, had not and still has not met her. We tried to get the tap puller to join us, but she pleaded work duties. Just as well...

Al Franken was in town and around for four or five events promoting his potential colleague. He did well.

The room was astoundingly deep for a Cambridge storefront. We packed it with several hundred very decided voters.

Oddly enough, the speakers who prepped the crowd for Franken's arrival were all women and concentrated heavily on LGBT issues. Obviously, this blog has long been gay-rights/marriage-equality oriented. Yet, it was strange that as far as Marjorie Decker (Cambridge City Councilor and candidate for state rep) and Denise Simmons (Cambridge Vice Mayor) and others were concerned, Warren's LGBT positions were start, middle and end. They didn't talk about equal pay, jobs, the economy or the other big issues in play. Meh.

Franken arrived jolly but coy. He stood by his claim that he did not criticize colleagues, as in Sen. Scott Brown. However, he did note the facts about interactions with Brown. Specifically, he cited a bill, the Student Non-Discrimination Act,  he introduced and collected 39 cosponsors for that would provide anti-discrimination for LGBT teens. This would protect kids like the ADA does for the disabled and Title IX does for girls and women. He said he asked Brown to join the cosponsors. Brown said he'd get back with him, which turned into his staff saying no.

Franken preferred to gush rationally about Warren. He noted that control of the Senate is at stake this year and that "is so important." He added that "Elizabeth Warren is so great."

Then he blended his two public personalities to urge those in the room "get off your butts" for the next two and one half weeks before the election. He said that they might have jobs and families, but that they should forget them for the next 18 days.

He joked that 8-year-olds were perfectly capable of using a microwave, while their parent(s) were canvassing or calling for Warren. He added that the 8-year-olds could also teach the 4-year-olds, and that kids really like being on their own for dinner.

He concluded more seriously that you don't want to wake up on November 7th thinking that you could have and should have done more to elect Warren.

Cappy Calls It For Obama and Warren

"I like politics. It's the most difficult thing you can do without hitting each other."
— U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano

Last evening on Hyde Park's Fairmount Hill, Capuano introduced himself to his new constituents. Under redistricting, he now has the whole of Boston's HP as well as down to Randolph. Starting January, he's the guy in D.C. for a lot of folk in new places.

While much of his homey, candid chat to about 40 of us was about his background and politics, he did not shy way from questions about the pending elections. Below are two clips about the U.S. Senate and POTUS races. Click on the players to hear.

The short of it is that he figures both Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama will win. Warren will have to get out of her comfort zone and speak more to voters who don't agree with her. Capuano said, from experience, that it's easy talking to friends, neighbors and others who share your views. "It gets tough when you talk to people who want to poke their finger in your chest ad say you're wrong about these ten things."

He also noted that Sen. Scott Brown has the advantages of being handsome and a nice guy. But Capuano said that "everybody has to decide what he wants. I want someone who's going to fight for values that we share. I'm not looking for a friend. I'm looking for a Senator."

He thinks Obama is also in for a battle, but that "A year ago, I didn't think Barack Obama could win reelection. Now I don't think he can lose." He admits that Obama did not do well in the first debate but "he'll do fine" in the next one.

On the other hand, "I want the Barack Obama I voted for the first time." That would include one not afraid to push for the right goals.

---

---

Take the Woe Out of Warren

If asked publicly, most of like would say yes we'd like a candidate to be sincere. I doubt that...honest yes, but sincere can be a turnoff.

Oddly, Elizabeth Warren is at once intense and extremely likable. She has never lost her Southern, small city/big town charm. She's often witty and delightfully honest. Yet her intensity has led folk to tell her to lighten up and personalize her ads.

I've heard her speak many times and chatted directly with her quite a few. In addition, she was on the Left Ahead show last October right after she announced her candidacy.

Superficially, I note we share the same birth state (a rarity this far removed) and are the same age. From hearing and speaking with her, I like Elizabeth Warren. More important, I respect her worldview, her personal accomplishments, and her evolved clarity of political vision.

All of that aside, I understand pols and others noting she must do more than be right and righteous. I've long said that anyone spending two minutes with her would vote for her over Scott Brown. Yet most voters won't get that close that long. Moreover, she's up against a theatrical sort who plays an everyman he never was nor will be.

Brown has been successful playing your neighbor. He used this to great advantage against the icy AG Martha Coakley in the special election that sent him to D.C.

Ironies and contradictions abound. He grew up citified/suburban with a lot more money and resources than she. He went to one of the nation's most expensive private universities, while she worked her way through state schools. He did next to nothing as a state senator, while she pioneered and won in creating a major middle-class protecting federal agency. He fairly coasted his way to lawyerly wealth while she proved her way up through academia to earn a tenured Harvard Law faculty position. Both ended up wealthy, but only she has the accomplishments to show for it.

So, why, you might ask does former MA Gov. Michael Dukakis tell the commonwealth's delegation to the DNC convention, "Yeah, I know Elizabeth’s media hasn’t been as good as it should be, and she knows that, and I think you’re going to see some significant changes."? Well, he's brutal and right.

I'm not sure about her woman's issue. I personally have heard middle-aged women I know say she comes on too strong, even that she's bitchy. However, I have to agree with the Duke. Her ads can be dour and impersonal.

Brown has nothing much to say and he no compunction about lying. He seems to love himself and portrays his role as the most important, tie-breaking one in all Congress. But he still comes across as a swell guy in his aw-shucks ads.

She on the other hand may be too intense for her own good. That dogged enthusiasm was key to her running over obstructionist, financial-industry lapdogs in Congress to create the Federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Her combination of knowing she was in the right and keeping up the fight to victory made that happen. Certainly of the two of them, I'd trust only her to do what's right for us here.

In a state that has never sent a woman to the U.S. Senate, many voters of both genders don't seem to know what to do with her. Yet in Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, West Roxbury and Hyde Park among places I've heard her speak, she owns the crowds, men and women, the range of ages. There again, if you spend time with her, you are for her.

The photo above is typical of her posture. It was at Boston Mayor Tom Menino's annual block party celebrating his assumption of office. She listens to the people she's with and when she responds, she leans forward, answers fully and knowledgeably and with great intensity. She may be too much for anyone who wants politicians LITE.

Thus, in today's Globe, Frank Phillips analysis the problem and reports proposed solutions. These include that she seems stiff and unmoving in ads, that she doesn't use stereotypical local places, people and other props, and that she doesn't use supporters to speak for her. I'd also note that unlike Brown's her ads have real and meaning content to the exclusion of fluff and PR.

She shouldn't bring herself all the way down to Brown's big-smile/little-brain level. Yet I know this woman and know that she has a gracious personality as powerful as her intellect. She needs to put both on display posthaste.

Debates: Decisive v. Perfunctory

A truly crude publisher at a magazine I edited had a way of describing the pro forma. "It's like peeing in a blue serge suit. It gives you a nice, warm feeling, but nobody notices."

Modern debate-like objects may well fall in that class. They aren't the classic rhetorical contests from city-state times or even the pre-U.S. Civil War era. Back when free-form, one-to-one, open-ended agones let two contenders go at each other for as long as it took to exhaust their arguments.

Now the candidate fora and even the two-person so-called debates offer little opportunity for cogent policy or even brilliance. Seemingly dull-witted moderators and questioners serve up predictable topics to which candidates respond just as you'd expect. The only revelations or joys come when a candidate says something ignorant or stupid, the old gaffe track that the media live to report. These events are best suited for tweets.

How powerful?

Grousing about the inferior format aside, we have to wonder how meaningful these are and whether they truly influence elections.

The self-interested love to claim each election hinges on debates. This is particularly the case from the sponsors. Consider the October 1st spectacle between Sen. Scott Brown and challenger Elizabeth Warren.

It will be at UMASS Lowell, co-sponsored by the Boston Herald, and broadcast on cable TV at NECN and two AM radio stations, WBZ and WRKO. So, this allegedly crucial debate is likely to have a limited Boston-area audience for a statewide race.

The contest itself is unarguably a big deal. Dems need this seat to retain control of the U.S. Senate. Also, politically and emotionally there's the issue of whether to give the self-promoting wastrel a full term in a seat long held by an activist progressive. Whoever wins this go could well hold this seat for 12 or 24 or more years or more.

Writing of the self-interested, the promo for the debate, as reported in the Herald, includes hyperbole. WBZ's director of news and programming, Peter Casey, said, "(We are) looking forward to carrying this debate between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown, because it’s a critical Senate race for the WBZ audience and also for control of the Senate. Debates have become a major element and deciding factor in modern campaigns, and we are proud to take part in the process of letting the people choose."

Any Proof?

Those are oft-repeated assertions, but almost entirely without proof. Like with better-safe-than-sorry posits, most of us likely do not question its validity.

Nosing around in books and clicking around the net, there's little to support the power of the modern debate or forum. The best background and analysis I saw was at Franklin and Marshall College's Center for Politics & Public Affairs. Several of their professors, notably Dr. G. Terry Madonna and Dr. Michael Young, took the subject on from the Presidential level.

They include the conventional political wisdom — "Historically, debates played that role in 1960, 1976, and probably 1980." Certainly for the first, we love the idea that a sweating, sneaky looking Nixon lost the election debating the calm and candid Kennedy. Yet with only three likely examples, each of these is questionable.

Kennedy was already overtaking Nixon. Then in 1976, Watergate's effect may have doomed Ford. Debates of 1980, 1988 and 1992 sit in popular political mythology as being won and lost in debates, but each was likely decided by events and trends instead. As the profs conclude, "In fact, the evidence suggests that modern debates only rarely determine the outcome of elections."

There may be no relationship between debate performance and job performance. While the ideal leader should shine in both, how many pols can you think of that do?

Modern debate traits include:

• Small attendance, even with media coverage and broadcast
• "Viewers are voters with the keenest interest in politics or the party activists themselves."
• Most attend or watch to reinforce their decision on a candidate
• The undecided rarely watch or listen
• Neighbors, coworkers and news snippets are more likely influences

Still, the idea of debates is attractive. Many of us love the concept that we are wise, rational and open-minded, that we come into October deserving to have candidates perform for us, sway us.

High and Low

It's likely too that debates are most powerful influences on the top and bottom. This time at the POTUS level, there's greater than normal interest. At the least, we all have serious stake the recovery and the extrication from war. So the top will get pretty good views, at least of the next day snippets if not the full debates.

Farther down, a few statewide races, like in Missouri and Massachusetts, are contentious enough and covered enough by fragmented broadcast and the asthenic print media. At least in the predigested, next-day bites, these debates will get some notice.

At the local level, the Tip O'Neill true platitude that all politics are local can work. Where there are rare open seats, officials accused of incompetence or corruption, and hot cultural issues at play, voters wants lots of mini-shows. Candidates have been going from one debate-like-object to another covering their neighborhoods and whole districts. Voters demand they perform.

So on all three levels, fora and debates can be big. It's just that in most cases, there's scant evidence they sway voters at all. For the vast majority of races, debates don't seem to do anything beyond feeling good.

As a lover of politics, I don't mind that we beat the drums for debates. Pretending each one is crucial to that contest or even to the whole of the democratic process is almost always an incredible exaggeration. I'll give that a pass, as it is for the good cause of getting for keeping voters engaged.

Brown/Warren note: There are actually four variations on broadcast debates. This may well lead to voter fatigue. In addition to 10/1, there is a 9/20, 10/1 and 10/30. Only one is West, in Springfield, one is only with Jon Keller, and one gets lots of Boston-area media, including sponsor the Globe.

Timorous Senate Candidates

Secondary sex characteristics are frequent hallmarks of pols. As my wife is fond of saying from her consciousness-raising group days of early feminism, if brave men can be said to have balls, brave women must then have tits to spare.

Alas, I don't sense the courage we saw, even in Barack Obama's first campaign for President. Here in the MA race for U.S. Senate, the donkey/elephant yoked pair wage sniper wars by proxy and inference. Tonight I saw my darling of the contest, Elizabeth Warren again, and heard again how she shied from the battle.

As usual, I showed at Boston Mayor Tom Menino's self-celebratory July 12th event of his ascendancy from City Council to majesty. At his Chesterfield digs, a couple of thousand of us elbow and grin for handshakes, good vibes and free ice cream. As a podcast/blog slut, I was there for the pols and politics, as usual.

This evening, I chatted up Menino (left), Warren (above), Councilors Arroyo (below) and Yancey, MA Treasurer/Receiver General Steve Grossman (below Arroyo) and more.

Amusingly enough, previous Left Ahead podcast guest Grossman was happy to agree to another session and called over his executive director to start planning a date. Warren's campaign lackey in contrast was horrified that I'd even ask. Among that group, we'd already had Arroyo, Menino several times and others. The once-burned Warren was the one with no guts.

If you aren't a regular, you might wonder what toxin I carry. Start with the coverage of the elite-hick podcast. Warren and I were both born in OK about the same time, long ago, and found that humor fodder on her podcast. The evil and rapacious wingers tried very had to turn our comments into some slander, which in turn found its slimy way onto Fox News, the NYT and such.

Not being too subtle, I showed up this evening with my handmade HICKS FOR ELIZABETH campaign button.Of course, as my yellow Ray-Bans were singular on Chesterfield Street, so was my button.

I went straight to Warren pulling out my button for effect. She pounded my back and shoulder saying, "I love it," as well as re-affirming her affection for my glasses, as she has before.

As any social-media slut would, I careered among pols. I found myself back before Warren a few times. She was insidious in making her own rounds, going from hamburger stand to music stall and beyond. She is a real master of the personal. Wingers like to proclaim that Scott Brown is the guy you want to have a beer with and the homey one. They clearly have never spent a few minutes with Warren. She is as our mutual roots suggest, real folk, with none of Brown's smarminess.

Regardless, one of Warren's minions saw me taking pix of pols and asked if he could take a pic of her and me together. Amusingly enough, in all my years of photography and newspaper and magazine work, I'd always avoided any shots of me with a celebrity. This time though, it felt right. I agreed. I took off the hicks button and held it forward when her campaign lady pushed it down. She said Warren would do BlueMassGroup for an interview but certainly never Left Ahead again. The elite-hick incident was before her time, but she new the story. As Scientologists would have it, she'd been engrammed.

Therein lies the gist of this. Where are this year's balls, tits, guts, vision?

In 2006, Deval Patrick got social media. He leveraged us bloggers and used us as press as part of his grassroots/netroots victorious campaign. His good chum Barack Obama followed suit two years later.

What's happened? Where is the vision and courage of the current crop of pols?

What we're seeing and hearing with such as the Warren and Brown campaigns are shallow and sallow versions of the heroics of yesteryear.

Having underlings tweet the predictable and self-serving is not savvy new-media usage. Picking a few friendly, non-taxing interviewers is not gutsy

One of the times I was next to Warren on Chesterfield Street, I handed my hicks button to her. She said again she loved it, but her lackey glared at her. Warren then retreated by saying to give it to her later.

That's pathetic.

She grew up in OK. I was born there and spent much of my childhood in my mother's turf of the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. Warren and I are hicks to the core, not matter my decade living in Manhattan or  our many years living in Boston and Cambridge. We are ordinary folk, grounded in honor and honesty, candor and simple values, good manners and respect — traits that transcend intelligence, experience and credentials.

I am doubly embarrassed for Warren.

While I surely shall endorse here (disclaimer: my wife has already contributed), I'd like to see the guts I know she has. People may well disagree with my strong positions on this or that, but they won't have to wonder what my opinion is. I expect the same from her.

Moreover my Left Ahead co-host Ryan Adams has decried the dreadful shrinkage of local blogs and other netroots folk. The vitality that the likes of Patrick and Obama brought to new media is nowhere to be seen in the current pols. With Facebook, G+, Twitter and more free and for the direction, what the hell are they thinking...or not thinking?

Regardless, back to my wife's hoary allusion, where's the courage?

Bring Scott His Brown Trousers

Just when I thought Sen. Scott Brown could not be shallower and sillier, he bottoms out deeper. Word today is that he's doing his best schoolyard bully and simultaneously being yet another Republican who spits on the Bill of Rights, particularly Freedom of Speech.

All reports, as in the brief in the Globe, are that after trying to get any debates with Dem challenger Elizabeth Warren only on right-wing talk radio, he agrees to at least one neutral one. Yet, he soils it like a tom cat marking territory.

Brown asserts that Ted Kennedy widow Vicki Kennedy would be forbidden from endorsing Warren — even after the debate! He also begrudgingly accepts the bland Tom Brokaw as moderator, but only under the condition that MSNBC not be a sponsor of the debate.

Of course, or of coarse, that is outrageous. The current GOP, Brown most definitely included, seems to have missed civics classes or failed them.

Brown wants to censor and stifle even-handed commentary. He'd rob Kennedy of her free speech. He'd determine how dispersed the debate is. In short, he'd be a Republican.

I'd like to feign surprise. I can't.