{"id":16716,"date":"2014-04-09T10:28:11","date_gmt":"2014-04-09T14:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=16716"},"modified":"2014-04-09T10:33:26","modified_gmt":"2014-04-09T14:33:26","slug":"new-boston-globe-mapping-service-finds-the-political-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/04\/09\/new-boston-globe-mapping-service-finds-the-political-center\/","title":{"rendered":"New Boston Globe Mapping Service Finds The Political Center"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Boston Globe<\/em> has the article Governor\u2019s race has all Democrats leaning left<\/a>.\u00a0 The story is on the front page of the newspaper.\u00a0 I think it would have made an excellent addition to the comics pages.<\/p>\n

Missing from this year\u2019s crop, though, is a candidate who fills a long-running role in previous Massachusetts Democratic primaries: a prominent centrist alternative.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is where the new Globe mapping service must come in.\u00a0 They have found the center, and they can tell you who is there and who is not.<\/p>\n

The candidates need to capture 15 percent of the delegates at the June party convention to qualify for the September primary ballot. In jockeying to obtain the minimum percentage of delegates, La Raja said, Democrats are being forced to prove their left-leaning credentials, often the case in primary races of both parties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That must mean that the Democrats are so unified ideologically that you cannot even find 15% of the delegates who aren’t way left.\u00a0 Did you ever see a group of Democrats that could be that uniform?<\/p>\n

In 1990, the last time Democrats ran to succeed one of their own as governor, the party nominated Boston University president John Silber, who ran to the middle before losing to Republican William Weld.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If they think John Silber was toward the middle compared to William Weld, I start having doubts about the new Globe mapping system.\u00a0 John Silber may have been more to the middle than Ted Cruz, but that is not saying much.<\/p>\n

The campaign\u2019s only self-proclaimed fiscal moderate, Wellesley biopharmaceutical executive Joseph Avellone, identifies as a social liberal and backs what he calls a revenue-neutral carbon tax long sought by environmentalists.<\/p>\n

He is the field\u2019s leading skeptic on other new taxes. But he trails in both public polling and delegate commitments, according to tallies maintained by other campaigns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t suppose that the fact that nobody knows who Joseph Avellone is could be responsible for why he trails.\u00a0 I am pretty sure he hasn’t been out to Sturbridge.\u00a0 See if you can find a picture of Avellone among all the other Democratic contenders for the governors office in the photo album 2014 SDTC Scholarship Brunch Honoring Senator Stephen Brewer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It might help to refer to RichardH’s post on this blog Diversion\u2013Highway Fatalities and Lemons<\/a>. The Globe writers and editors could use a good dose of the debunking of the fallacy that correlation is the same as causation.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the last decade has brought a cascade of left-leaning policy changes, from same-sex marriage to health care expansion to marijuana decriminalization.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So I guess you can call Mitt Romney left-leaning because the Massachusetts health care reform was started during his administration.\u00a0 He even claimed the authorship of the idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cEight years of the Patrick administration and a lot of his successes in terms of his political achievements have moved the party to a more left agenda,\u201d said state Representative Aaron Michlewitz, a North End Democrat unaffiliated with any gubernatorial campaign. \u201cAnd I think our candidates in this race are a microcosm of that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How could the Democrats be so ideological that they would want to propose anything that has been “successful?”\u00a0 Does the Globe think you would get more votes for proposing things that have been failures.\u00a0 It seems to work for Republicans on a national level.\u00a0 Then again the national Republicans have the Koch brothers who have been propagandizing for these failed policies for over 30 years.\u00a0 Maybe The Boston Globe is envious because it has not been as successful as the Koch brothers in gulling the people here as the Koch brothers have been almost everywhere else. You may remember that Marilyn Vos Savant once said in the pages of this newspaper that “You won’t find the word gullible in the dictionary.”<\/p>\n

Well, enough hilarity for one day.\u00a0 Maybe I’ll find something more serious to post.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Boston Globe has the article Governor\u2019s race has all Democrats leaning left.\u00a0 The story is on the front page of the newspaper.\u00a0 I think it would have made an excellent addition to the comics pages. Missing from this year\u2019s crop, though, is a candidate who fills a long-running role in previous Massachusetts Democratic primaries: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16716"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16719,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16716\/revisions\/16719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}