Progressive Democrats of Cambridge - DFA - Democratic Party

DFA Meeting at Democratic State Convention Saturday

Thu, 17 May 2007 14:46:47 -0700

If you're going to the Democratic state convention on Saturday, you might want to check this out:

DFA members "meetup" - A few DFA leaders across the state thought that
it might be nice to get together informally at the Convention on
Saturday. Representative Jamie Eldridge has invited us to get together
at his "Meet and Greet" on Saturday from 3:45 to 5:00 PM at the Cape Cod
Lounge in the Student Union Building. Jamie is running for Congress and
has been unanimously endorsed by the local DFA group, as well as the
Brandeis DFA group. He has generously allowed us to share his space so
that we can have an opportunity to touch base with each other at an
informal gathering. We'll be able to brainstorm about plans for a
statewide grassroots summit. Burlington would like to get together with
us this summer.

... via an email from Kate Donaghue.

Barack Obama in Boston

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 06:43:47 -0700

Come support Barack Obama in Boston at his New England kickoff event on April 20th at the Agganis Arena. For more info follow the link below.

https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/northeast420

Hope you see you there!

How did the MA Republican Party die?

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 07:43:28 -0800

The Wave Maker has a very interesting post today about how the MA Republican Party can resucitate itself. Embedded within is an eye-opening perspective on the history of the party since Reagan's victory in 1980 or so.

I think it's a fine post, but I think Wave Maker places far too much importance on the personal appeal of a candidate, far too little on the candidate's organization, and less still on the candidate's ideology and platform. To hear him tell it, Deval Patrick won because he has a nice smile and can use words properly, not because he had an incredible grassroots following which was inspired by his experience and his ideas.

I can understand WM's point of view: his most relevant experience is running for state representative in the mid-80's. Indeed, at the local level, personality and charm can carry you a very, very long way. However, a lot has changed in 20 years. More and more legislative districts are filling up with transient 20-somethings who are motivated to vote, and have a keen sense of their ideology, certainly as it pertains to social issues, and their stand on a few key national issues that have local echoes, like health care and education. Their transience makes a personal connection with the candidate himself very unlikely, and their ideology and knowledge of social and national issues makes them more likely to vote based on a candidate's ideology and platform. Those twin factors are, I think, drastically changing the way state legislative races are run.

Moreover, gubernatorial politics and state rep politics are two totally different ballgames. State rep races are fought with less money, less media attention, and less volunteer time than gubernatorial races. No doubt Wave Maker knows that, but the effects are impossible to ignore. However little personality matters in state rep races, I would wager that it matters much less in the gubernatorial.

At any rate, I guess we'll get a chance to test out his hypothesis in the 2010 Patrick-Baker race.

MA Congressional Democrats: Pony up

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 13:31:17 -0700

Via kos, it looks like some Democratic Representatives are not doing their part to help the DCCC. The DCCC is the main campaign committee for Democrats in the US House, and campaign finance law allows Representatives can give unlimited amounts to the committee.

So how are MA Congressional Democrats doing?

MEMBER	Cash on Hand as of 06/30	Dues	Dues Paid	Dues Owed	Raised for DCCC
Frank, Barney	462089	300000	310700	-10700	610900
Markey, Ed	2410215	250000	217000	33000	674050
Olver, John	295287	250000	250000	0	97200
Neal, Richard	1322967	150000	125000	25000	26500
McGovern, Jim	100438	150000	150000	0	8000
Capuano, Mike	570266	150000	125000	25000	15000
Lynch, Stephen	1042785	150000	20000	130000	0
Delahunt, Bill	1853996	125000	125000	0	46750
Meehan, Marty	4898715	125000	101250	23750	212400
Tierney, John	1134149	100000	82500	17500	0
Total	14090907	1750000	1506450	254250	1690800

Not, on the whole, an impressive record, unfortunately. The delegation shines in raising money through fundraisers, but has stiffed the DCCC on dues, to the tune of $250,000 - and that includes Barney Frank's sizable overage. Particularly galling is Stephen Lynch's refusal to chip in very much of anything. Capuano, Markey, Neal, Meehan and to a lesser degree Tierney all need to pony up as well. None of them have any realistic challengers this year.

Looking past the "pay your dues already" horizon, it's clear that Markey and Meehan can toss the DCCC a lot of cash, very quickly. I know everyone in our delegation is waiting for a chance to run for Senate, but even that is a long ways off. Markey and Meehan could single-handedly chip in $1 million each without breaking a sweat. That could be enough to net 3 or 4 House seats.

I think it's time for the MA Democratic Party to start calling out these delinquent Congressmen. Ask them to prove their party loyalty by giving to the DCCC when the committee needs it most.

Canvass for Deval Patrick, and Support Howard Dean

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 04:06:10 -0700

Democratic National Committee Chair Gov. Howard Dean has called for a "50 State Canvass" this coming Saturday (Oct. 7). As our part of this project, the local Deval Patrick for Governor Coordinated Campaign is going to be canvassing specially targeted voters in selected precincts in wards 4, 5 and 6.

Canvassers are urgently needed for Saturday effort. Participating in this would be a really great way for PDC-DFAers not only to help Deval, but also to express their support for Howard Dean!

If you can help out for about two hours or so on Saturday morning, starting at 10 am (or later in the day), please email or call Lesley Phillips at lrphillips (at) rocketmail (dot) com or phone at 617-547-1632.

What happened in Connecticut and why it matters in Massachusetts

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:35:40 -0700

As I write this, about 84% of the precincts in Connecticut have reported, and Ned Lamont holds a 4% lead in the Senate primary there. So I'm not sure what happened in Connecticut, for sure, yet. But I do have some idea of what happened in Connecticut. Sort of.

The Leiberman campaign, for the last two months or so, has claimed as its sworn enemy the crazy liberal blogosphere. They kept this line of attack open to the very last day, when they claimed that they had been of the victim of what, in the blogosphere, would constitute some kind of capital offense: a denial of service attack against their server. (By the way, speaking as a web professional, that claim is the stupidest thing I ever heard. If the campaign had called our office yesterday at 3 pm, we would have had their website back up by the close of business yesterday.)

Tell you what though: Leiberman was right, the liberal blogosphere is behind this. Sort of. What's really happening?

Over the past two years or so, the liberal blogosphere has developed a solid conventional wisdom; Crashing the Gate is a very good summary of the blog CW as of about December 2005 or so.

I believe that liberal blogosphere CW has deeply embedded itself within the machinery of the CT democratic party. That's why a former chair of the party came out for Lamont, and that's why many other "machine Democrats" came out for Lamont at the state convention a couple months ago. They were tired of Leiberman, or the war, or whatever - largely because of the ideas which had been developed on the blogosphere and had insinuated themselves into Democratic conversations throughout the state. Where else were they hearing those ideas? Not on Fox News, I'll tell you that.

In short, Leiberman was right that the blogosphere was his downfall. But he was maybe two or three years behind the curve! By the time he realized that the blogs were causing him trouble, it was too late. The blogosphere CW had successfully insinuated itself into the Connecticut Democratic machine. And once he lost just enough of the Democratic machine, Leiberman was toast. There's no way you win a hotly contested August primary in Connecticut without the solid support of the machine.

That leaves me with a very big question: how much has the liberal blogosphere insinuated itself into the Massachusetts Democratic machine?

I think that the gubernatorial race provides some insight into this question. Deval Patrick is the darling of the Massachusetts netroots, and has garnered a bit of big-blog love from the MyDD/DailyKos wing of the liberal blogosphere. He's also won a surprising degree of support from the insider Democrats at the state committee and in the ward and city committees.

But what does that mean in terms of the blogosphere CW embedding itself into the machine? Could it be, for example, that Deval Patrick charmed the pants off of all these insiders? Could it be that Patrick out-liberaled his opponents, and that they didn't care about all that "accountability" and "reform" hogwash you hear on the liberal blogosphere?

Well for contrast, consider the treatment that John Bonifaz received at the hands of the insiders. It's a much, much colder reception. His nominee totals at the convention were much lower than Patrick's. He's been getting a lot of heat about his alleged support for Green party candidates in the past. And so on. Bonifaz is what you might call the poster boy for the netroots: he's all about accountability and reform, and he's a procedural liberal through and through. The netroots in Massachusetts have supported him, albeit that support is not quite as deep as it is for Deval Patrick.

Again, there's no telling why the machine and the netroots are lining up in the Bonifaz race. It could be that the Secretary's race is just not that sexy. Or maybe Bonifaz isn't as sexy as Patrick?

I don't know, and it may be a long time before we really know. There is a big question mark in my mind right now: How much of the blogosphere CW has embedded itself inside the Massachusetts Democratic machine? Will it make a difference this year, or in the future?

One thing I do think is most likely true: to whatever degree my "embedding" thesis is true, I'm positive its mostly true - in the way I've described it - in deeply liberal areas, like the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the upper Midwest, and the West Coast.

It may be much more true in more conservative areas. Sounds strange, right? But my guess is that most of the people who are showing up at Democratic party headquarters in the Plains, the Mountain states and the Southeast are the people who started out reading blogs and decided to see if they could find other like-minded people in their areas. They showed up, I'm guessing, and found Democratic committee spots open for the taking, and they took 'em. And then they took over their Democratic party. Check out the Alabama Democratic Party's web site, or North Carolina if you like, and tell me I'm wrong. This is a very different process, if you think about: the blogosphere isn't insinuating itself into the Democratic party, it's becoming the Democratic party.

Anyway, what are your thoughts? Has the blogosphere embedded itself into the MA Democratic Party? If not, will that eventually happens?

Update: Before I finished writing this post, Leiberman conceded defeat. Huzzah!!!

Progressive Rout at the Convention

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 06:55:53 -0700

Progressives cleaned up pretty nicely this weekend:

Governor: Deval Patrick, 58%, Tom Reilly 26.7%, Chris Gabrieli 15.4%
Lt. Governor: Tim Murray 49%, Andrea Silbert 28.9%, Deb Goldberg 22%
Secretary of the Commonwealth: Bill Galvin 70.7%, John Bonifaz 29.3%

In bold are the candidates who were endorsed by DFA, DFA Cambridge, PDC, or some combination thereof. Bonifaz was expected to squeak onto the ballot, just barely clearing 15%; instead, he whooped Galvin good, clocking in at double the required delegates. Gabrielie juuuust barely made the ballot, and there's some speculation that the Reilly camp or the Patrick camp boosted him onto it (depending on who you talk to.)

Regardless, we've got our work cut out for us. I don't think the delegate counts are worth a bucket full of spit in the primary, with the possible exception of Patrick. The rank and file is with him and then some. Will they be able to overcome the entrenched support for Reilly? Maybe. Will he have coattails for Silbert and Bonifaz? It's not clear.

Johnston: "We will continue to keep Democrats out of the Democratic Party"

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 11:32:03 -0700

What is with the Mass Dems? Here's party chair Phil Johnston, speaking about a movement to modify the rule which forces candidates to win 15% of the delegates to the convention in order to get on the ballot, via Adam Reilly:

We're fully prepared for any effort to change the rules, and we will do everything we can to beat back any such efforts. We will not support any rules changes, and we will fight any and all changes. One of the messages that we wanted to send in enforcing the loyalty rule the other day was just that...

I have [congressman] Jim McGovern and [former governor] Mike Dukakis, who co-chaired the [convention reform] commission, prepared to debate... They have a lot of credibility with the delegates, and they're fully prepared to argue.

Maybe it's just me, but I thought that the convention had, you know, delegates? Who were elected by voters? Who are empowered to make these kinds of decisions? Who should be Johnston's boss and not the other way around?

This kind of stuff is bananas. The Democratic Party has no business telling its delegates how they should vote on these questions, and while its leaders are certainly entitled to an opinion they should not be doing "everything they can" to subvert the will of the delegates. This abusive relationship with the party's base has really got to end.

Incidentally, I think the 15% delegate threshhold should be scrapped altogether. If a candidate has enough signatures to get on the ballot, let the voters decide on who gets the nomination. Oh, and move the damn primary to May or June already. This September primary business is a joke.

Mass Scorecard Updated

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 06:23:56 -0700

Jesse Gordon, who's been recently named the Chief Troublemaker of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, today brings us great news: the Mass Scorecard has been updated to reflect the last two years' worth of votes in the state legislature.

If you don't know what the Scorecard is, you better find out! It's a systematic effort to "grade" our Democratic state legislators according to the policy positions set out in the Mass. Democratic party platform. Apparently, they are using the pre-2005 version of the platform. (In 2005, a strong anti-reformer movement led by the Mass. Dems. party leaders led a successful effort to cut many key provisions out of the party platform. Fortunately, a few renegade reformers were able to "copy" and "paste" the old platform to their computers before party insiders whisked it away.)

At any rate, the Scorecard is a wonderful resource for anyone who wants to hold their Democratic representative's feet to the fire. It's also a good way to put challengers on the record - by finding out how they would vote on the key votes listed in the scorecard.

For the record, here's how our Cambridge senators stacked up. The number in parentheses represent (number of pro-Platform votes / total number of votes):

Sen. Travaglini: A (9/9 votes)
Sen. Barrios: A (21/22 votes)
Sen. Tolman: A (21/22 votes)

Not bad, not bad at all.

The Democratic State Convention is this weekend!

Wed, 31 May 2006 07:42:36 -0700

The Democratic State Convention is this weekend in Worcester!

If you are a delegate, you may want to check out the "Survival Kit" published by the Deval Patrick campaign. It contains lots of useful, practical tips for every delegate - even non-Patrick delegates:

http://www.devalpatrick.com/resources/pdf/survival_guide.pdf

If you have not yet made up your mind about how you will vote at the convention, please consider the following recommended candidates, endorsed by DFA Cambridge or an allied organization:

Governor: DEVAL PATRICK
endorsed by Democracy for America and Progressive Democrats of Cambridge
Lt. Governor: ANDREA SILBERT
endorsed by Progressive Democrats of Cambridge
Secretary of the Commonwealth: JOHN BONIFAZ
endorsed by DFA Cambridge and Progressive Democrats of Cambridge

If you are not a delegate to the convention, we really need your help! DFA Cambridge and several other DFA groups from across the state will sponsor a table at the convention, where we will hand out DFA literature to inform the thousands of Democratic delegates about our organizations and how they can get involved. We need as many volunteer non-delegates as we can get, to run the tables on Friday night and Saturday. Please let us know if you can help by emailing info (at) dfacambridge (dot) org.

If you need a ride to the convention, or if you can offer someone else a ride, please post a comment below! Don't forget to include your contact information so other folks can contact you.

The case for Bonifaz at the Democratic convention

Tue, 23 May 2006 06:32:01 -0700

Yesterday, on the Progressive Democrats of America - Massachusetts email list, our own Ofer Inbar posted this great summary of who John Bonifaz is, and why delegates to the Democratic state convention should support him:

Electing John Bonifaz is my top priority this year, and I'd like to
make the case for him. I should also mention that I've joined his
campaign, and I blog at http://www.johnbonifaz.com/ so come read!

John Bonifaz is a real leader on election reform and voting rights.
Putting him in charge of our elections would be a coup that would
vault Massachusetts into a national leadership role. John would fight
for things many of us want, including:
- election day registration
- public financing of election
- investigating voting on the weekend or a holiday
- requiring paper ballots (if you don't think we need to worry about
that, you probably don't know the elections division is considering
the Diebold TSX touchscreen voting machine for Massachusetts...)

For those of you in PDA-MA:

- John Bonifaz is on the national board of Progressive Democrats of America!

- Tim Carpenter, head of PDA, urges us to support Bonifaz in this open letter:
http://www.mfw.us/carpenter-on-bonifaz

John Bonifaz founded the National Voting Rights Institute, and serves
as its lead counsel. As part of his work with NVRI, he has:

* Advanced novel legal arguments in support of public financing,
earning him a MacArthur Foundation grant, aka the "genius award"

* Went to Ohio immediately after the 2004 vote to lead the fight for
a recount, serving as lead counsel for the recount efforts.

* Sued the Finneran legislature over their failure to fund the
Massachusetts clean elections law in 2002, winning a landmark ruling
from the state supreme court that led to public financing for Warren
Tolman and other candidates.

John Bonifaz is also co-founder of the After Downing Street Coalition,
and author of Warrior King. He's a fighter, a leader, an expert on
election law, an effective progressive who jumps in and takes action.

I think we need real leadership from the Secretary's office, and we've
been getting inertia instead. I was so inspired by meeting John last
summer, and hearing him speak last fall, that I picked his campaign as
the one to put most of my energy into this year.

Just to add a little bit to that: DFA Cambridge endorsed John Bonifaz in April, unanimously, because we believe that he has been a nationwide leader for expanding access to our democratic institutions. Expanding access is the heart and soul of our group, and we are very proud to join Bonifaz in his efforts to make Massachusetts a more democratic state. We strongly encourage all delegates to the convention to support John Bonifaz for Secretary of the Commonwealth.

More generally speaking, there's been some great discussion about the convention on the PDA - MA email list. If you're not on it already, join the list and chime in!

Liveblogging the Mass Gov debate at Harvard - NOW

Thu, 18 May 2006 15:58:26 -0700

The Harvard Democrats are liveblogging the gubernatorial debate (with Patrick, Reilly, Gabrieli, Mihos) at Harvard's Kennedy School. With commentary. Right here.

DFA Table at MA Democratic convention

Thu, 11 May 2006 07:59:59 -0700

Kudos to Ofer Inbar for his tireless efforts in DFA-land. Word on the street is that he's putting together a DFA table at the MA Democratic convention in June.

If you'd like to volunteer to help out at the table, drop me a line at info (at) dfacambridge (dot) org.

Burd and NDLSC giving the Federalist Society serious heartburn

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 08:50:12 -0800

MyDD has a fantastic post today about the National Democratic Law Students Council (NDLSC). NDLSC is an organization of law school students of Democratic stripes. It's a bit of a cross between the College Democrats and the National Democratic Lawyers Council, a subgroup of the Democratic National Committee. The founding conference of NDLSC was held this weekend at Harvard Law School, and I unforunately had to miss it.

In no small part the group owes its existence to the imagination and effort of David Burd, a third-year law student at Harvard Law School. Burd is also the founder of DL21C Boston, a local group which holds events for young Democrats. I've had many opportunities to work with him personally, and he is an exemplary leader. He should be seriously commended for his role in building a network for left-leaning law school students. Law school students are not just another interest group within the Democratic party. As MyDD points out, they can serve crucial roles in election protection and other related activities.

Far more importantly, law school students are at an important nexus within the judiciary: they edit law review articles and serve as clerks for federal and state judges. As such they play a reasonably major role in shaping jurisprudence. They are at least on a par with legislative staff in shaping policy and attitudes about policy.

The conservative movement, through the Federalist Society, has developed an intricate system of patronage for conservative law school students. Conservative federal judges will sometimes make participation in the Federalist Society a requirement for their clerks. No doubt most of the federal dollars paid to federal clerks would reach conservative law school students anyway; these kinds of requirements merely add clout and influence to the Federalist Society. The quasi-mandatory nature of membership in the Federalist Society among conservative law school students more tightly integrates promising scholars with the conservative movement. Moreover, the patronage system provides incentives for moderate to become part of the conservative movement.

The NDLSC and a related organization, the American Constitution Society, are forming the left's answer to the Federalist Society. We have yet to see whether the NDLSC and ACS will foment a patronage system like the Federalist Society, or even whether such a system would be appropriate and ethical for left-leaning judges. However, the importance of the two groups in facilitating networking and idea sharing among left-leaning law students cannot be overstated.

About that state committee rule change...

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 09:30:50 -0800

There's an email making the rounds these days about the recent shenanigans at the Democratic state committee.

The email in question:

The recent actions of the putative leadership of the Massachusetts Democratic Party are quite disturbing. The challenge is to question their actions without the rancor which could jeopardize our efforts to produce progressive leadership in the corner office.

In order to provide an orderly process, through which an individual can be designated as the nominee of the party, the Democratic State Committee promulgated what are known as "rules". For the 2006 election cycle two persons have sought out the Democratic nomination for Governor and, up to this writing, both have followed those rules.

The candidates organized their supporters, attended the caucuses which were open to all enrolled Democrats, and later counted their votes. Individuals at the caucuses mainly sought election by their fellow Democrats as delegates for Mr. Reilly, Mr. Patrick or as uncommitted delegates. It appears that the vast majority of the delegates chose Mr. Patrick.

After the caucuses were complete it appears that some of the party elders were unhappy. For no possible reason other than the disappointment of the few they decided that other candidates should be added.

There actually was a process to add persons to the convention who had not chosen to present themselves to the Democrats who attended the caucuses. The person seeking to bypass the grass roots Democrats would have to obtain the signatures of 500 of the 3000 delegates elected to the convention.

But, there was a loophole. A loophole the size of a noose. Beyond the 3000 elected delegates there are several hundred ex officio delegates to the convention. If they could be included in the number of eligible signatures the odds of a late entry would improve. So, in a classic inside move, it was reinterpreted by the few in order to disregard the many.

It is my opinion the we should express our displeasure with the process by refusing to sign any document to expand the candidate pool and, redouble our efforts for our personal choice. Both men who played by the rules deserve this action. It is time that the "party fathers" realized that we are not their dependent children but rather their emancipated children. Although we can be found in the field of politics, the grass roots Democrats are not the sheep of the party, we are the shepherds.

Paul McDevitt
Elected Alternate, Great Barrington

Rule change? Or run of the mill interpretation? You decide.