One of the luxuries of living in a one-party state is that one need not pay attention to politics. Presidential candidates do not campaign here. Representatives and Senators, secure of being reelected, ignore communications from constituents other than large donors. Our TV and radio pleasure is not interrupted by political ads. We get to enjoy the full use of our airports and highways, without roadblocks and restrictions put up by the Secret Service. We can concentrate on our work, friends, hobbies, and family.
This charmed life has been rudely interrupted by the special Senate election for a successor to Ted Kennedy. Polls indicate that Republican Scott Brown has some conceivable chance of beating Democrat Martha Coakley, challenging the conventional wisdom that a Republican has a better chance of being hit by a meteor than of being elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. One thing that the polls do not show is the huge number of voters who know nothing about either Brown or Coakley. They may not even know that an election is scheduled. However, when they drive by a school on their way to the supermarket and see a “vote today” sign, they will go into the booth and, just as illiterate Indians back in the 1960s looked for the hand symbol and voted for Indira Gandhi’s Congress Party, will vote for the party in which they are registered (in the case of Massachusetts, overwhelmingly Democrat).
The mailbox is stuffed full of appeals to vote for Coakley, each one from a different organization or committee. Each appeal is a four-color glossy double-sided 8.5×11″ sheet. Presumably the fear is that voters wouldn’t be motivated enough to open an envelope. There are photos of the hated King Bush II and Scott Brown is identified as a Republican. Radio stations are filled with ads by Coakley and affiliated groups. I haven’t heard any ads that say anything positive about Coakley; they all concentrate on what is bad about Brown. Mostly what is bad is that he is a Republican. The word is repeated like a curse in every sentence: “Republican Scott Brown is a Republican who will go to Washington and vote with the Republicans, just as he has voted with Republicans in the state senate.” The “do not call” registry does not apply, apparently, to political harangues, so the home phone has been ringing every day for two weeks. Machines with Obama’s voice urge us to vote for Coakley. People call up and ask us to campaign for Coakley. Friends have emailed asking me to campaign for Coakley.
[The Brown campaign, by contrast, must have only a tiny fraction of the financial resources. I have not heard a single ad for Brown and have not received anything in the mail promoting Brown. No Brown supporters or automated machines have called the home phone.]
So I finally decided to have a look at Coakley’s resume. She is a lawyer who has spent nearly her entire professional life collecting a government paycheck. It is difficult to see how she would add a new perspective to a U.S. Senate already stuffed with people who have similar backgrounds. Why should we have to give up our leisure time to assist with her promotion within the Party? The Russians under the old Soviet Union did not volunteer to get out the vote for the Communist Party. Coakley will win, but do we have to miss an episode of South Park?
[I also looked for the first time at Brown’s biography the other day. He is also a lawyer. The biggest knock against him is that he has spent 15 years as a Republican in the Massachusetts legislature, both in the house and senate. Aside from collecting a fat salary and generous pension, what would motivate a person to do that? The legislature meets all year every year. As it has been controlled by Democrats for decades, the meetings serve no purpose. The Party’s senior officials could decide what they want to do with the state, write it up in one big document, and have the Democrat-controlled legislature approve it in one hour. A Republican has the right to collect a paycheck, the right to attend votes, the right to sit in on some meetings, but could not possibly influence the outcome in any way (and indeed his Web site does not claim that he ever got any specific law passed). If Brown wanted to accomplish anything as a politician, he would have had to move to New Hampshire or switch to the ruling party. But he did not do either of those things, which means that he has essentially done nothing for a good chunk of his professional life.]
Terrified that the reliable sheep of Massachusetts will stray from the Democrat flock, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are visiting this weekend. Thousands of Secret Service goons have converged on the state, commercial flights from Logan will be interrupted, and the area flight schools are all shut down due to temporary flight restrictions (massive economic losses right there) in order to prevent the nation’s most faithful Democrats from shooting the nation’s most beloved Democratic politicians.
For decades the Democrats have been taxing the citizens of Massachusetts and handing the money out to their cronies. Now they are wasting our time as well.
For which party are you registered? I’ve received at least two Brown mailings so far.
Joe: I believe that I’m registered as “Independent”. I’m looking at one of the mailings now. It says that it comes from the Massachusetts Democratic Party and complains that Brown “opposed closing corporate loopholes for Massachusetts companies that make profit overseas”. I think the theory is that 100 percent of a company’s profits belong to the state government and by letting the shareholders keep anything the government is doing them a favor. The mailing does not mention the fact that a company, if faced with a massive tax increase, could move its headquarters over the border into New Hampshire, Connecticut, or Rhode Island and have the workers commute until they found new homes. Nor does it mention that fact that companies that make a lot of profit overseas will find it makes the most sense to move to Bermuda.
A small portion of the mailing is devoted to Martha Coakley. It says that she will “fight against unfair trade practices that cost Massachusetts jobs.” There is no elaboration of how she proposes to do that. The main thing that has cost Massachusetts jobs is people in China and India going to college. Perhaps Coakley knows of some way to shut down universities in China and India.
The symbol for the Congress party in India is the hand. All political parties have a symbol to allow the illiterate to identify the party of their choice.
I disagree with your analogy to an Indian who votes for the Congress party. In India, nothing is a given, electorally speaking. Since about 1989, no party has ever acquired a clear political majority, something diametrically opposite to the situation in Massachusetts. Voters routinely “throw the bums out”. In fact, in one southern state, Tamil Nadu, which is closest to two-party rule, the incumbent almost always meets with defeat at the hustings.
The only place where India had Massachusetts-like monopolies was in West Bengal (the capital of which is Calcutta), which was a Communist party bastion long after the USSR ceased to exist. Here, too, the commies recently got their comeuppance.
Jagadeesh: I have corrected the “cow” to “hand”. I did not mean to imply that all or most Indians voted for one party. Only that a voter would go into the booth already affiliated with a party and vote that party without looking too carefully at a particular candidate’s biography.
“fight against unfair trade practices that cost Massachusetts jobs.”
Like Massachusetts’ stifling tax rates?
Jeff: Painful as paying taxes here is, I don’t think that we are very different from the average U.S. state. See http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/35.html
Obviously the overall burden of federal and state taxes here is much higher than in a lot of foreign countries, and Massachusetts has been spectacularly inefficient with spending as well as committing itself to ruinous pension liabilities for public employees. But our state and local governments’ incompetence and profligacy is matched by many other places in the U.S.
Dorothy Rabinowitz has an unflattering story about Martha Coakley’s involvement in a notorious sex-abuse case, here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575003341640657862.html
The “Do Not Call” law specifically exempts restrictions on calls of a political nature.
See http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt107.shtm , points 28 & 29.
Nothing like politicians writing a law that intentionally benefits themselves.
In the former Soviet Union, it’s considered good manners to have a portrait of the current leader on your wall. Your generous masters don’t ask even that much. How churlish of you to complain about a little inconvenience every few years.
Think of the current festivities as a celebration of democracy — and more importantly, a morality play about democracy: Your loving, generous masters have wisely chosen a senator for you, but the hated, hateful Others are trying to pervert the democratic process by hijacking the election. You must passionately Fight the Power and Speak Truth to Power by reaffirming your support for your loving and generous masters. That is, if you really DO believe in democracy.
Now get to it, Greenspun!
The starting salary for a state rep in Massachusetts is about $45k and my understanding is that it takes about 10 years to get appointed to any committees that have any significant stipends associated with them – especially if you are a Republican. The starting salary for a state senator may be a touch more but I would hardly call these salaries “fat”…
Also, the glossy ads for Brown started showing up this week (3 as of yesterday) out here in the Berkshires – aside from being generally annoying they are also useless for starting or re-kindling the wood stove…
Dana: http://www.empirecenter.org/html/legislative_salaries.cfm says that a Massachusetts legislator earns about $60,000 per year plus a per diem that can add another $30,000 per year. As there is no requirement to show up to work it is hard to convert these into an hourly fee.
http://www.bostonherald.com/projects/payroll/massachusetts/last_name.ASC/SEN//2/ says that Brown earned just over $73,000 last year. (A search for Coakley shows that she earned $134,000 for her full-time job with the state.)
So are you voting for Coakley?
KansasGirl: I hope that you won’t think I’m a bad citizen, but I do not think that I will be able to summon the necessary motivation to vote for either candidate. They both went to law school and then to work for the government. There is already a guy like that in the White House. There are already hundreds of people like that in Congress. If politicians with that background could lead the U.S. to prosperity, we would not be in the debt hole that we find ourselves in.
Separately, I believe that Coakley will win by a large margin, simply due to people walking into the booth and seeing “Democrat” next to her name.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
I caught up with your blog post after the election – and am personally thrilled that against all odds Brown won at the polls. Not that I know anything about Brown, think that we need another lawyer in Congress, or even that I am particularly ‘Republican’ — but by removing the incumbent party the People of MA have lodged an emphatic statement against Obamacare and the leftward direction taken by Congress.
Kudos to the People of Massachusetts!