Left Center Left

Who knew that December was high politics season in Massachusetts? The statewide races are heating up, particularly given Romney’s announcement yesterday that he will not run. Lots of great political coverage, particularly at Blue Mass Group, which is following the races brewing for Lt. Governor and Middlesex DA with particular thoroughness.

Then there’s the governor’s race, which increasingly looks like a Deval Patrick vs. Tom Reilly showdown on the Dem side. Since I’ve been on record of leaning toward Reilly (though honestly I am undecided), let me offer what I think is a broader perspective for the primary race. As of 2004, the party affiliation of voters broke down as

Democrat     1,410,388 (36%)
Republican      512,396 (13%)
Independent  1,944,209 (50%)
Total            3,904,361

In the 2002 primary, meanwhile, 767,226 Democrats and 254,398 Republicans voted. However, in the 2002 general election, 2,204,966 voters total voted, over 1,090,000 of them for Romney/Healey.

Sorry to keep proliferating numbers, but there are a couple of points I want to make. First, diagnosing centrist tendencies of the independent voters is not some ideological smokescreen. Jesse Gordan’s Building the Democratic Wing primer (which I don’t enjoy picking on - it really is a useful resource), for instance, asserts, "We assume that independent voters are liberal, while the party establishment assumes that what they call ‘unenrolled’ voters are conservative." The numbers bear the party establishment out. Only 13% are registered Republicans, but 50% voted Republican. On the flip side, the Dems got a net gain only of 7% proportion of the voting population, or 17% of the independent voters for grabs. Not good.

Second, Democrats voting in the primary accounted only for 78 percent of the Democratic voters in the election, 70 percent of the total number needed to win. All our discussions about whether the progressives or the party establishment will carry the day should be carried out with the awareness that the combined force of progressives and center-left party activists is not enough to carry the election. A third term in the equation, the non-party-activists, oft-independent voters are just as crucial.

I agree with a lot of the substantive points my fellow bloggers have made. I’ve been impressed with Deval Patrick when I’ve seen him interviewed and I’m still more than open to his candidacy and what he brings to the race. Ken has praised his policy papers so effusively, I’ll definitely be giving them a closer look, especially when Reilly announces and actually posts something of his own.

But for those who think that "let’s talk first about what it is that we insist government do, figure out how much that will cost, and then we can decide what the appropriate tax rate should be" is a winning slogan are talking to other progressives, not to the population at large. Every indication suggests that the independent voters don’t trust us progressives to decide the appropriate tax rate or even to insist on government services. The progressives this year are ignoring the massive anti-tax votes from 2000/2002 (remember? 40% voted to get rid of the state income tax entirely!) and are creating post hoc explanations that pin 2002 gubernatorial defeat on every factor except centrist voter sentiment. I’m enjoying the substantive arguments for and excitement behind Patrick, but can’t shake the feeling that the strategic arguments are grounded in wishful thinking.

Which isn’t to say we have to completely forego visionary government (I plan to put forth my xmas wishlist soon…) but that after 4 Republican governors, maybe this isn’t the year for vision. At least we shouldn’t be getting so caught up on questions of vision and violation of progressive issues that we ignore that the battle is bigger than the one between the "democratic wing" and their purported insider enemy.

The fact that the weird feedback loop of national presidential primaries have soured us on the notion of electability mustn’t blind us to the fact that the purpose of a party primary is for a party to choose the candidate the party members/voters think has the best chance of winning and effecting the policies it wants in place. Patrick may in fact be quite electable, Reilly may be oversold on that count, but I’m surprised at the humbrage so many take that strategy should play a part. I want a Democratic governor, damnit.