In Rebellious Air Sweeps Even Kennedy Turf, the Boston Globe reports today on how the election played out on the home turf of the Kennedys, Hyannis Port. It is quite a read, representing local reporting at its best. (If there were more of this sort of reporting, and local newspapers would not be in quite the same trouble as they are.) Here are some excerpts:
In this quiet seaside village where his family was rooted, Senator Edward M. Kennedy was a familiar figure, known by many residents as a friend and neighbor. But yesterday, Ted Kennedy’s hometown did not look or sound like a place deeply attached to the senator’s liberal legacy, with blue-and-red Scott Brown signs propped in shop windows and driveways, and many voters voicing an appetite for change. . .
Five months after the summer day when hundreds lined the streets to pay tribute to Kennedy, and a bagpiper played at foot of the Sagamore Bridge to mark his final journey off the Cape, the election day mood in Hyannis was anything but sentimental. Main Street business owners plastered Brown signs in their windows, passing pickup trucks boasting oversize Brown stickers, and many voters cited opposition to the federal health care plan - which Kennedy spent decades helping to build - as the key to their support for Brown. . .
In downtown Hyannis, where he had managed to find room for two Brown signs on his compact storefront, La Petite France Cafe owner Ian Parent railed against the notion that the Kennedy legacy should have any hold on the Senate seat.
“It’s the people’s seat, it’s not Ted Kennedy’s seat, and people have lost sight of that,’’ he said, standing by a rack stacked with loaves of fresh-baked bread. “Ted Kennedy never voted to help small business.’’
Most of the response to his signs had been positive, he said, but yesterday morning a customer called and told him she would never come into the cafe again. She hung up on him before he could respond, said Parent.
Two doors down from the cafe, another Brown sign hung in the window of Jack’s Drum Shop. Manager Stewart Johnston said Brown’s pledge to block the federal health care plan was most important to him.
Sandwiched between the two Brown supporters, scrimshaw artist and Black Whale Gallery owner Nancy Lyon said she was laying low, while quietly hoping for a Coakley win.
Just imagine. In the home turf of the Kennedys, a loyal Democratic voter "was laying low".
After too much power for too long and too many problems in Iraq, the Democratic tide in the 2006 elections was no surprise. After the financial meltdown in summer/fall 2008, the additional Democratic tide was also no surprise. But America can surprise. The foundering, floundering healthcare effort, which the president promised would be done by August, energized a state that had already provided for its uninsured. As the Boston Globe reports in another article today, Voter anger caught fire in final days, the Brown campaign benefitted from $12 M raised over the Internet and a growing amount of out-of-staters coming to Massachusetts to assist the effort.
Scott Brown appears to be no radical right member, but he did support waterboarding. As the title of this post suggests, his victory is a sign that one bulwark of our society, small business, feels that it has largely been left out of the Democratic agenda and wants in. That inclusiveness will likely be good for the economy and good for the country.
The technical breakout of the stock market that was commented on here around yearend from the giant dome that was being traced from the March rally now has another psychological support. Investors should not get carried away, however. The balance of Federal power has not changed much, but for now, the sense is that even in Hyannis Port, many people want balanced change.
Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010
Showing posts with label edward kennedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label edward kennedy. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
The Culture of Corruption Is Causing the Coakley Collapse
You know the Establishment is out of ideas when the anointed successor to Edward Moore Kennedy has to bring in Bill Clinton to try to pull out a win in the only state that didn't go for Richard Nixon in 1972 (but that did go for Reagan in 1984) and he actually says "You have to decide whether you want to be a tomorrow country or a yesterday country". Click HERE for the WaPo article.
Actually, yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away. But that matters not. All that is happening in 3 days is a vote for one of 100 Senators, not a vote for a silly term such as a tomorrow or yesterday country, whatever that means (time's arrow moves in one direction even for reactionaries).
This blog is a good-government advocate. Good ideas can come from anywhere, but they will be useless if they are misused in the modern way that funnels the wealth of the country to the insiders. Partisan politics in the United States has devolved into the Depublicans sharing the riches with the Remocrats, periodically alternating into the Republicrats splitting the riches amongst themselves, with some fringy people such as Bernard Sanders and Ron Paul and somewhat less fringy people such as Richard Shelby and Russ Feingold being ignored by the MSM during disgraces such as the enactment of TARP. The subtext of the astonishing surge by an obscure Republican state senator to what appears to be parity with Martha Coakley is found in the WaPo article:
"Right now, it's broken here in Beacon Hill," Brown said Friday at a campaign event beside former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, summoned to commend Brown's anti-terrorism credentials and to slam Coakley. "There's one-party rule that's contributing to three speakers being indicted, three senators resigned in disgrace. One's in jail right now."
"In Washington, there's no debate," Brown continued. "Everything's being done in the back rooms. The health-care bill, we've lost faith, and we need to send it back to start over."
Three consecutive speakers indicted; three state senators resigned.
In other words, it's the corruption, stupid. The arrogance of power and all that.
When I was advised a decade ago by a Washington insider that bipartisan corruption in the Federal Government had reached highs not seen by all three generations of his family in their lifetimes, I knew something was rotten. Eventually rotting things stink, and the electorate smells it. Given all the gifts from taxpayers to international Big Finance over the past 15 or so months, which continues under the ruse of an anti-deflationary zero interest-rate policy and other Fed and Federal programs, it is obvious that the looting continues. Even Massachusett((e)s voters may have decided that between two bad choices, gridlock is a lesser evil than one-party rule.
If Martha Coakley, who was elected Attorney General in 2006 with (merely) 73% of the vote, joins Jon Corzine and Creigh Deeds on the list of Democratic unpersons, the main message may well be that the public is mad as hell at the p0wers that be that have given us bread, circuses and misery while enriching and entrenching themselves in over-the-top style. They know well that an unreformed Republican Party is not the answer, but they are hoping, perhaps against hope, that the country can return to the days of FDR when the Government appeared to actually work for the people rather than the powerful (not that it was as simple as that narrative), or of Eisenhower when a vicuna overcoat and oriental rug were given to Ike's powerful Chief of Staff Sherman Adams--who was fired in less than one day by Eisenhower when he learned of the apparent bribe.
Even loyal Democrats and other Obama voters are disheartened by the realization that candidate Obama was another liar, just like so many of his predecessors, but one who they actually believed was different. Now it's a fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me story. This realization has led to the following observation in Massachusetts, also from the WaPo article:
There was no shortage of dismay on the ballroom floor. "I'm from the Cape. There's Scott Brown signs everywhere," said Pam Alden of Sagamore. "What I don't know is if there's enough time. There's $3 million being poured in. Are we already tired? Will we listen?"
Scott Brown signs all over the Cape where John Kerry began to lose the campaign while windsurfing so skillfully? Heavens forfend!
If the upset actually happens (and Brown's camp is trying to curb its enthusiasm), Hollywood couldn't have scripted it better.
Mr. Brown goes to Washington?
Win or lose, heckuva job, Brownie.
Even if you're no James Stewart, if you are elected it will be to channel Jefferson Smith.
Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010
Actually, yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away. But that matters not. All that is happening in 3 days is a vote for one of 100 Senators, not a vote for a silly term such as a tomorrow or yesterday country, whatever that means (time's arrow moves in one direction even for reactionaries).
This blog is a good-government advocate. Good ideas can come from anywhere, but they will be useless if they are misused in the modern way that funnels the wealth of the country to the insiders. Partisan politics in the United States has devolved into the Depublicans sharing the riches with the Remocrats, periodically alternating into the Republicrats splitting the riches amongst themselves, with some fringy people such as Bernard Sanders and Ron Paul and somewhat less fringy people such as Richard Shelby and Russ Feingold being ignored by the MSM during disgraces such as the enactment of TARP. The subtext of the astonishing surge by an obscure Republican state senator to what appears to be parity with Martha Coakley is found in the WaPo article:
"Right now, it's broken here in Beacon Hill," Brown said Friday at a campaign event beside former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, summoned to commend Brown's anti-terrorism credentials and to slam Coakley. "There's one-party rule that's contributing to three speakers being indicted, three senators resigned in disgrace. One's in jail right now."
"In Washington, there's no debate," Brown continued. "Everything's being done in the back rooms. The health-care bill, we've lost faith, and we need to send it back to start over."
Three consecutive speakers indicted; three state senators resigned.
In other words, it's the corruption, stupid. The arrogance of power and all that.
When I was advised a decade ago by a Washington insider that bipartisan corruption in the Federal Government had reached highs not seen by all three generations of his family in their lifetimes, I knew something was rotten. Eventually rotting things stink, and the electorate smells it. Given all the gifts from taxpayers to international Big Finance over the past 15 or so months, which continues under the ruse of an anti-deflationary zero interest-rate policy and other Fed and Federal programs, it is obvious that the looting continues. Even Massachusett((e)s voters may have decided that between two bad choices, gridlock is a lesser evil than one-party rule.
If Martha Coakley, who was elected Attorney General in 2006 with (merely) 73% of the vote, joins Jon Corzine and Creigh Deeds on the list of Democratic unpersons, the main message may well be that the public is mad as hell at the p0wers that be that have given us bread, circuses and misery while enriching and entrenching themselves in over-the-top style. They know well that an unreformed Republican Party is not the answer, but they are hoping, perhaps against hope, that the country can return to the days of FDR when the Government appeared to actually work for the people rather than the powerful (not that it was as simple as that narrative), or of Eisenhower when a vicuna overcoat and oriental rug were given to Ike's powerful Chief of Staff Sherman Adams--who was fired in less than one day by Eisenhower when he learned of the apparent bribe.
Even loyal Democrats and other Obama voters are disheartened by the realization that candidate Obama was another liar, just like so many of his predecessors, but one who they actually believed was different. Now it's a fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me story. This realization has led to the following observation in Massachusetts, also from the WaPo article:
There was no shortage of dismay on the ballroom floor. "I'm from the Cape. There's Scott Brown signs everywhere," said Pam Alden of Sagamore. "What I don't know is if there's enough time. There's $3 million being poured in. Are we already tired? Will we listen?"
Scott Brown signs all over the Cape where John Kerry began to lose the campaign while windsurfing so skillfully? Heavens forfend!
If the upset actually happens (and Brown's camp is trying to curb its enthusiasm), Hollywood couldn't have scripted it better.
Mr. Brown goes to Washington?
Win or lose, heckuva job, Brownie.
Even if you're no James Stewart, if you are elected it will be to channel Jefferson Smith.
Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)