Kerry: I won’t get involved in Brown primary

[Mass]

First, the title puzzled me as I did not know the Democratic primary had became the Brown primary. Then I read the article and I wondered why this was even a surprise. When was the last time Kerry endorsed somebody in a MA statewide primary?

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view/20110715kerry_i_wont_get_involved_in_brown_primary/srvc=home&position=recent

At least the Globe has a meaningful title, that I understand perfectly, though I still have no idea why this is news.
http://www.boston.com/Boston/politicalintelligence/2011/07/kerry-says-will-not-endorse-anyone-senate-primary/87aKgvnZMvWLugJRGr8lvJ/index.html
Kerry says he will not endorse anyone in Senate primary.

And I appreciate that, contrarily to others, he does not think DC should choose for us.

[MBS]

1. yup, you're right

He has a general policy of not endorsing in the primaries, except for a few cases when war veterans are involved (Sestak and Patrick Murphy in PA etc).
And for the heated complexities local MA politics, yeah, it makes 100% sense to keep his mouth shut. . . especially with Setti Warren in the mix.

Saw Brown's "biography" on the rank in Politics and Prose Bookstore yesterday, and sighed. .(to be fair, it was placed along with a big (and impeccably bipartisan) list of recent political biographies, but still. the guy is such a lightweight.
Surely, surely, the Dems can come up with a good candidate who (unlike Coakley) who, like, actually fight for the seat???? PLEASE let's get Brown out of there. He's not worthy to represent MA in senate

[karynnj]

2. And very notably Obama

I assume that he likely has close ties to most Massachusetts Democrats. He specifically did not endorse in the race when Patrick won before his first term.

The nitwits posting on BH interpreted this as he won't endorse a Democrat over Brown.

[karynnj]

3. Here is an infuriating pro Brown opinion piece that smears Kerry

for missing slightly over a third of the first quarter of 2011's votes. The votes missed were on February 15th and 17th when Kerry was in Pakistan trying (and succeeding to some extent) to quell the anger over Raymond Davis. Brown is contrasted as missing only one vote since elected. This morning when I first saw it, there was no way to comment. Now there is - but there is moderation.
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110718/OPINION/107180334/-1/NEWSMAP

Here is my response:

It is ridiculous that you feel the need to distort John Kerry's record to emphasize how hard working Senator Brown is. It is true that Senator Kerry, in that one quarter, missed about one third of the quarter's votes. The reason though was that he was on an emergency mission to Pakistan as requested by President Obama and with Senator Reid's approval. The reason was that Kerry was uniquely capable of tamping down the Pakistani anger over the murder of two Pakistanis by Raymond Davis, a man working with the CIA. At that point, Pakistanis were speaking of restricting the freedom that US intelligence people had in Pakistan. This was why he missed all the February 15th and 17th votes. (Bin Laden was killed a few months later in Pakistan.) This is pretty shameless.

While Brown deserves credit for his National Guard service, his requesting to do his 2 weeks of training in Afghanistan will not come near to being as important to the United States than Kerry's many trips there as the Chair of the SFRC.

You also mention, as if it is unusual that Brown has CO-sponsored 90 bills. Every Senator signs on as a co-sponsor to many bills - and many will be introduced and referred to a committee never to be seen again. Not to mention, I still do not understand why Brown in early May, joined a filibuster to defeat the small business bill that he co-sponsored. From the list of votes, it does not seem that anything he voted against was added to the bill, which would have renewed to small business programs that have helped create jobs.

It is true that Brown does not vote 100% with the Republicans, but it is also true that there were many important votes like the vote against summer jobs/TANF bill, the vote against extending unemployment benefits, and the vote to ban the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases where he voted with his party against the opinion of the majority of Massachusetts voters. It is a false equivalence to ask what percent the Democratic Congressmen vote against their party. The better question is how often each Congressional person votes with the interests of the state. In all of these cases and the small business bill which he got a lot of press for cosponsoring (which he voted against), many may feel that MA deserves to have a Senator whose vote they can count on.

The oped is sickeningly full of unearned praise for Brown.

[MBS]

4. antidote: get a quality viable Dem candidate to fight

and win against Brown.

Here's BlueMass Group on Setti Warren :

http://bluemassgroup.com/2011/07/setti-warren-solid-on-jobs-deficits-health-care-soft-on-mars/

Wed, Jul 6, 2011 1:14 PM EST
Friday before the weekend, David and I sat down with Setti Warren, current mayor of Newton, former Kerry staffer, Iraq war vet (Navy intelligence), FEMA official under Clinton, and now Senate candidate. My initial impression is that he’s a serious candidate:

He has the requisite political skills: The gift of gab; charisma; a strongly presented, concise, and persistent message; a sense of being well-grounded and good-humored.
He refers aptly and relevantly to his biography and background;
He communicates passion and emotional engagement; and –
He shows a healthy and correct impatience with the failures of Scott Brown to represent our interests in the Senate.
We asked him, Why run for Senate? Warren believes this will be one of the most important elections in American history, and that Scott Brown doesn’t represent the interests and values of the state.. .

(see link for full interview)
In the introductory video on his campaign site (http://settiwarren.com/), he has a great line about 2/3 of the way through, something like, "We cannot let a financial crisis born out of fiscal mismanagement destroy everything that America stands for". BINGO.

By the way, the Cape Cod TImes publisher is notoriously conservative (and large chunks of the Cape are indeed politically conservative)

[karynnj]

7. I agree and I think that many of the candidates would suddenly gain

a lot of stature winning the nomination.

What it may come down to is the meaning of the word "representative". People need to be informed enough on the votes where he is voting against the positions of a large majority of Massachusetts people. It doesn't matter that Brown came out of working class Massachusetts - he votes against the very programs that allowed him to succeed. Any of the Democratic nominees would have voted for those programs and against gutting the EPA on greenhouse gases.

As Warren says, "Warren believes this will be one of the most important elections in American history, and that Scott Brown doesn’t represent the interests and values of the state. "

Every Democratic possibility can in various ways be contrasted to where Brown has stood - though Brown's positions are muddled - not because of evolution - but because he knows there are times he must vote with the Democrats. The real question is whether people who really favor the Democratic agenda want a vote they can count on on issues like SS, Medicare etc.

It is good to know that this editor is "notoriously conservative". I likely over reacted because he seemed to be trying to slip in the RW theme that Kerry doesn't show up, contrasting that with the hardworking Scott Brown. (I also find it interesting that no one has tried to connect the dots to ask if the anger in Pakistan would have continued to accelerate if the work of the people targeting OBL would have been affected. As it was, there was little coverage in the US of that trip.)

[Mass]

5. I read that, and groaned. This said, hopefully, we can start the primary campaign seriously

so that our candidate can become well-known in the state and beat this idiot.

That is, if national and state Democratic establishment stop denigrating existing candidates in the search of the white knight (be it Elizabeth Warren, Capuano, or somebody else). If they want to run, so be it. But Please, Dems in high posts, stop giving interviews that infer that the other ones are not good.

[Mass]

6. Here is another hilarious piece of support about Brown,

using Kerry's editorial about Obama's right to change his opinion on same-sex marriage to justify Brown's finger in the wind.

Particularly funny (involuntarily) is this paragaph.

http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2011/07/17/columns/9885000.txt

Remember, the Wrentham Republican jumped straight from the state Senate to the U.S. Senate. He didn't have national political experience. (He was just popular with the voters.) Isn't it reasonable that he modify some of his positions as he learns more about the implications of certain bills?

So, we should be patient because he is incompetent? Really? This is the excuse?

[karynnj]

9. I saw that - and it is beyond stupid

However, if you want to comment, you have to give them a credit card number so they can charge you 99 cents! I thought about it, but decided it was stupid.

It is rather silly to justify flipping back and forth multiple times and never explaining the reasons for the shifts to a serious comment on people changing over decades on an issue where society itself has greatly changed. I also think that that the article describes his own journey better than Obama's. While I suspect that Presidential ambitions might have slowed Kerry's own changing public position, I suspect that his private position really did shift as well. I wonder if it is his "consensus building" proclivity described in the NYT article that may have led him to see a possible midway point of full legal rights, but not the word "marriage" - a position he now rejects. Lost is the fact that his 2004 position of equal federal rights was more than any former nominee or candidate took - and it was in face with e GOP led effort to use the issue to bring out the evangelicals.

With Brown, many in MA might think that his shift on climate change was devolving, not evolving. It also does not explain things like Brown getting a lot of press for cosponsoring the Small Business Committee's bill (far more than JK ever got when he was chair and was the lead sponsor on the similar bills) and then actually filibustering the bill that he cosponsored! What was pathetic is that only BlueMassGroup called him on this. (I googled at the time of the BMG post because I thought their question was a good one - Why did he filibuster his own bill - and everything I got was a posting elsewhere of the BMG post. I looked at the amendments - and there were none that passed that Brown voted against.

So, why other than Mitch McConnell telling them to do so would he filibuster it - as Snowe did too. I looked through Brown's press releases and did not find an explanation after the vote. I did find that an amendment that he sponsored with all the Republicans that seems not to have been voted on - that might be why they were pouting. http://scottbrown.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news?ID=012c713d-3996-4f5c-9132-9e65ef3fd5fe

This amendment is an insidious, dishonest attempt to dry up any remaining stimulus funds. Here is how Brown's own press release defines it:

U.S. Senators Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), John Thune (R-South Dakota), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts), Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) and David Vitter (R-Louisiana) today introduced an amendment to the SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act, which the Senate is currently debating, to pay for any cost associated with the current legislation by rescinding unspent, unobligated stimulus funds.

But later in the same press release, Snowe is quoted as saying:

Redirecting stimulus funding that failed its promise to be timely, targeted and temporary will support job creation and critical innovations to keep our nation at the vanguard of competitiveness,” said Senator Snowe, Ranking Member of the Senate Small Business Committee. “While the SBIR/ STTR reauthorization does not directly appropriate any money, we must be ever mindful of the fiscal constraints facing our nation.”

http://scottbrown.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news?ID=012c713d-3996-4f5c-9132-9e65ef3fd5fe

Note the first excerpt does not limit the funds to be rescinded to the amount needed to cover any costs.

The fact that the MA, which gave him credit for being a cosponsor on these programs - that Kerry and Snowe originally sponsoored really never told people that in the end, he joined the Republicans who blocked the reauthorization for completely ideological reasons!

[karynnj]

10. Kerry's spokesperson wrote a great letter defending Kerry

on the missed votes:

James Freeman's July 18 guest column, "Scott Brown at midterm," got the facts wrong about Sen. Kerry's attendance record.

Kerry has missed only 21 votes — a mere 5 percent — out of almost 400 cast since Sen. Brown took office. More than half of those votes were during a three-day stretch this February when, at the request of the Obama administration and with the permission of Majority Leader Harry Reid, Kerry was in Pakistan as Foreign Relations Committee chairman working successfully to free an imprisoned American at a volatile time when American flags and even an effigy of Kerry himself were being burned in the streets of Lahore. That's an example of Kerry doing his job, not missing it.

A majority of those missed votes were procedural motions decided lopsidedly, and in all cases Kerry's vote was unneeded for passage — while his presence in Pakistan was very much needed by our government to help avert a human tragedy.

Freeman is entitled to his own partisan preferences, but Massachusetts will judge John Kerry on the quality of his service, his seniority on vital committees, and his ability to get things done.

Jodi Seth

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110720/OPINION/107200331

[Mass]

8. Brown panders to African Americans, and some fall for it

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2011/07/sen_scott_brown_throws_support.html

Brown, who faces re-election in 2012 for a first full-term, met privately on Monday with members of the Massachusetts Black Empowerment Coalition to discuss redistricting and the group's push to craft a new majority-minority Congressional district that would increase the odds of electing a minority to Congress.
The freshman Republican's approach has been a study in contrasts to that of U.S. Sen. John Kerry and Gov. Deval Patrick, the state's first elected African-American governor, who have both declined to weigh in thus far on the redistricting process as a 28-member panel of lawmakers held hearings across the state and now will begin work to redraw the state's political boundaries.
...
"He's agreed to reach out to every member of the Legislature to express his views on this. We appreciate the Senator's understanding of how sensitive this issue is to the African-American community," Kevin Peterson, the group's executive director, told the News Service after his meeting with Brown.
...

I am not familiar with the group or the person (which does not mean they are not important), but Brown's ploy is so transparent it is sickening. Yes, it would be nice if the Commonwealth had an African American in its representation (or more), but what Brown is talking about is to park Boston Democrats in one district so that one or two Republicans can win (all white males, I would assume). It is difficult to understand why this guy is falling for it, particularly given Capuano's district is already a majority-minority district.

[ObamaKerryDem]

11. Understandable, especially since it's been a pretty consistent policy of his..

..over the years (barring the exceptions already mentioned previously on this thread) and especially since if he came out and endorsed Setti, you KNOW how the press and other critics would react (saying it's "Beacon Hill politics as usual", "the establishment", blah, blah, blah).

JK will jump in when the time is right and I have a strong feeling he will be FAR from "demure" (as that recent article put it) in his support for Brown's eventual opponent. :D