cos | A disagreement with Mike Capuano

Entry tags:

politics

A disagreement with Mike Capuano

Several years ago, when the country was plagued with touchscreen voting machines that made re-counts impossible and gave no way to verify that their counts weren't buggy, Representative Rush Holt (one of the few scientists in Congress) was pushing a bill that would've required these machines to at least produce a paper printout at the time votes were cast, that voters could look at. While he - and I - much preferred paper ballots instead of voting by touchscreen, he didn't think he could get that passed, while this seemed to have a chance, and was better than nothing. Holt's bill had about 150 cosponsors, including multiple Republicans (Holt is a Democrat), but my Representative, Mike Capuano (Boston/Cambridge/Somerville/Chelsea) was not on the list.

I called Capuano's office to ask, and they told me he opposed it. Why? They weren't sure, so they said they'd find out and call me back, and not long after, they did call me back to explain.

Capuano recalled how he'd had to scramble for money to replace Somerville's voting machines. Somerville was not a rich city, and it was tough to fit this into the budget, but he felt it was very important, and had to cut some things he'd rather have not.

Now, this Holt bill was going to make lots of federal funding available to any election district that had touchscreen machines, regardless of whether they could afford the upgrades themselves - including many places that had splurged on touchscreen voting machines because they had money. Capuano felt very strongly that the federal funds should be means-tested, focusing on helping places (like Somerville back when he was mayor) that would have trouble affording voting machine upgrades, without giving the bulk of the money to rich counties that didn't need it.

Okay, I thought, that's reasonable. I want a federal law requiring paper, but means-testing the federal funding for it sounded like a good idea. So I called Rush Holt's office.

It turns out that Rush Holt agreed that it would be better to means-test the funds. However, his bill wasn't actually adding a lot of money. In 2002, the Federal "Help America Vote Act" - which was passed in response to the 2000 election scandal, and which spurred a lot of places to buy touchscreen voting machines - had made a few large pools of federal funding available to places that had punch card or other bad old voting machines. HAVA said nothing about requiring paper, and Holt was partially fixing that flaw. The funding Holt's bill made available was actually mostly from what was left over from the original HAVA funding pools; in other words, in addition to requiring paperless voting machines to be upgraded to add paper, he was also modifying the rules on an existing pool of funding for upgrading voting machines, to say that money could be used for these upgrades, but could *not* be used to buy paperless voting machines.

Holt thought means-testing was reasonable, but felt that if adding yet more restrictions on a pool of money that was already available to all these places, would bring more opposition. In addition to members of Congress who didn't care for requiring paper, he'd also get opposition from members of Congress whose districts were eligible for HAVA funding but would lose access to most of that funding under the new restrictions. Holt preferred to fight one battle at a time, and to take a positive step that had a chance of passing, rather than add more rules to it that might make it better but would give it no chance of passing.

I got all the data from Holt's office: What portions of HAVA made funding available, the sizes of all the funding pools, how much was left in each one, how much money Holt's bill was adding, and so on. I called Capuano's office again, and gave them all of that, along with what I thought was the right way of looking at this:

Capuano's office thanked me for the call, and said they'd pass along everything I'd said to the Congressman.

Shortly after, Capuano co-sponsored Holt's bill.

I've had this story in the back of my mind for years, and am finally getting around to posting it now because Massachusetts is holding a special election tomorrow to elect a replacement for Ted Kennedy in the US Senate. Mike Capuano is running in tomorrow's Democratic primary, and I hope you'll vote for him. I've had several other interactions with him since this one, and he's changed my mind on a few things. I've found him to be effective, smart, progressive, great at constituent service, and great at his job in Congress, and I think he'd be a good replacement for Senator Kennedy. I hope that if you live in Massachusetts, you'll vote for him, and whether you do or not, you'll pass this on to people you know in Massachusetts.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What do you say to people who point out that he's in the bottom 10% of representatives during voting?

Please explain your one line comment. Do you mean that he is present for fewer votes than 90% of all congressional representatives? If so, do you know how many votes he casts versus how many are called? There are also different grades of voting: significant votes versus normal business versus frivolous votes. Do you have a breakdown? Please explain, after all, the Democratic primary is tomorrow, 11/08/09. Thanks.

I don't know. My father-in-law said it last night at dinner when he asked why I was voting for Mr. Mayor.

It's just since the election that he's missed votes, and none of them significant. Before he began campaigning he had a 97% voting record, one of the best in Congress.

My father-in-law said it last night at dinner when he asked why I was voting for Mr. Mayor.

And did you ask for any clarification as to what was meant?

Nobody's pointed that out, and I don't even know what it means. If you mean he's missed more votes than 90% of Representatives while he's served, it's false. If you mean something else... what is it? I haven't heard this claim so I'm not familiar with it.

This site does various statistical trackings of Senators and representatives - here's Capuano's page:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=400063

It looks like one thing they track is how much you vote, compared to the average and compared to the 90th percentile of absenteeism. It looks like Capuano got close to that during parts of 2000 and 2001, but has been better (though not generally better than the mean) recently. There isn't any separation of significant v. insignificant votes there.

I think it's pretty cool that his office and he were responsive to your call, and changed their position based on a constituent's concerns... but shouldn't he have looked up those numbers himself originally, before deciding against it?

I hold your opinion and research on politics pretty highly in my esteem and may very well go with your endorsement over the endorsement of others of Coakley. But I do want to understand the implications of this story a little better.

It was pretty complicated and took me a while to sort through the information. I did it because I really cared about this particular bill, but I can see how it would've been easy to misinterpret the legislation as something that provided a lot of new money without means-testing, and someone who believed that to be true might not have spent the time to dig around and find out otherwise, if he had a lot of other legislation to research at the same time - which he did. I never hold this kind of thing against a legislator, I assume they're all concentrating on learning a lot about a few things, and miss the details on a lot of other things. I hope that they have good reasons for their opinions based on what they do know, that they're willing to tell people straight up, and that they'll re-evaluate if they get new information or a persuasive new argument, which is what I provided.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to add: One of the things I really liked was learning about his insistence on replacing the punch card machines, before it was a big issue and other places were doing it. I'd moved to Somerville in 1996 so I hadn't been there when that happened and didn't know about it.

Edited 2009-12-08 00:53 (UTC)

I found your story instructive -- however, you made it clear that this was an issue about which Capuano cared significantly as mayor and that you respect him for it. It appears that his staff (and by extension, he) did not do sufficient due diligence on an issue about which he was passionate (as mayor at least). We need legislators who insist that their teams (at a minimum) and themselves (preferrably) are sufficiently informed about issues that matter to them that they make certain to have the information available. I don't think the Holt bill passed, did it? The benefit of the Mass. system is that I know that my vote will count today.

Also, your post doesn't clearly delineate why Capuano would be better (or Coakley would be worse) for those fence sitters like myself.

I'm left feeling that he only made a decision for the better vote because some voter (yourself) happened to make that information available to him with persistent effort and follow-through. A thin thread...

Welcome the discussion and your thoughts.

I was just telling DH (aka fiji) that I am voting for Capuano because of this:
http://www.examiner.com/a-2336797~US_Rep__Capuano__Cheney_should_face_prosecution.html
and he sent me to this post of yours as further rationale.

I like Capuano because of something he said, not in a so-called town hall meeting, but to a constituent who is apparently of the classic town-hall "sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander" stripe. This constituent was holding forth on the subject of health care reform and opining that she didn't want to be paying for any goddamn socialist health care. Capuano asked her what her family did for health care, and she volunteered that she had a daughter and son-in-law who were covered 100% by MassHealth. "So," said Capuano, "It's all right for your family, but everyone else can go to hell?"

Anyone who give it to one of their own constituents, straight from the shoulder, when that constituent is full of shit, is worth a vote.

I just tweeted your story and the Capuano campaign retweeted it. Very positive and probably just solidified my vote. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Capuano has always shown himself to be honest, intelligent, and a straight-talker. He'll tell you the truth even if it's not what you want to hear......not a trait shared by most politicians. Capuano did put in the optical scan machines for just the purpose he stated. The old election process was being upgraded and these machines do a computer tally, but also produce a hard copy which can be re-counted.
Another thing about Capuano that many people probably don't know.....when the state Lottery decided to implement KENO they started putting the KENO machines everywhere, including small corner convenience stores. Capuano didn't like the idea of people sitting in the corner store playing the numbers while kids were coming in and out for candy or ice cream. Since Somerville had an ordinance banning gaming machines he fought the state, telling them KENO machines were not allowed in Somerville. Unfortunately, he lost, but in the meantime he stood up for his constituents in a big way.
He also, as mayor, required his department heads to live in Somerville. What a difference you see when the city administration goes home at night to Elm Street, Willow Ave., or Highland Road, rather than Brookline, Winchester, or Reading. The administration was filled with constituents who wanted what was best for the city, because it affected them as well.
I don't always agree with Capuano, but I know he'll come to a decision based on facts and not special interests and he'll tell you exactly where he stands!

I can't vote for him as he supports healthcare+Stupak. NOW endorsed Coakley and so do I.

This (http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/house/1/884) voting record says that he voted *against* Stupak.

Correct. He voted against Stupak but FOR healthcare-with-Stupak.

NOW, NARAL, and other womens' rights groups have taken the position that healthcare-with-Stupak is not worth getting. It's too big a compromise of womens' rights. I tend to agree.

Interestingly yesterday 538 ran a piece (http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/in-polls-much-opposition-to-health-care.html) showing that much of the growing opposition to the current healthcare bill is coming from the left, who feel it gives away too much - that it's less a "compromise" and more a "surrender."

This is the position I took in my own LJ posting about a month ago: http://drwex.livejournal.com/234854.html

I understand your inflexibility regarding your one issue, but I hope you can rationalize it with this:

"An estimated 47 million people in the US are uninsured, and every 24 minutes, an uninsured American dies because adequate health care is out of reach."

And while you might think Coakley will help you achieve your abortion funding efforts, please note that Capuano is not standing in your way.

I disagree. People (particularly Democrats who are nominally pro-choice) are the specific problem here. Because they're willing to compromise away (or throw under a bus) the needs of women they allow healthcare reform to be defined in terms of narrow tweaking, rather than what's really needed.

It's true that the lack of healthcare is killing people. But we won't fix that by giving away more and more. Single payer? Off the table. Public option? Only with triggers and opt in and won't start for years. Mandatory insurance? Sure, but without adequate support for poor people.

It's too much. Seriously, too much. Adding restrictions on abortion coverage was just the last straw.

No, Coakley would've helped kill it, despite her good intentions.

She's gonna need to learn. She doesn't know how to do that legislature thing yet.

If two people are going to die, but you can save one life or neither, which do you choose?

Something is better than nothing. It's a step in the right direction.

It's like someone voting against same-sex civil unions simply because it's not "marriage."

I disagree that "something is better than nothing".

To wit, I point you at the presently rumored "compromise" coming out of the Senate that kills the public option. Is that better than nothing? If we force more people to give more money to the insurance companies without any added competition is that better? If we don't change the law to allow competitive bidding (the way Medicare does it) is that better?

I reject the notion that simply passing SOMETHING and calling it "healthcare reform" is better than the status quo ante. To be better it needs certain things, one of which is the public option and one of which is respect for womens' health care needs.

I don't believe it's honestly feasible to get the bill passed if it covers medical procedures that a large bulk of America (unfortunately) believes should be outright illegal.

And, I'm sorry, but it *is* a nebulous area. There are certainly instances such as rape where a pregnancy is not the direct result of the woman's choices. But if you allow public health care coverage to pay for the repercussions of actions done by individuals who know the risks, what other things must you likewise cover? Lung cancer costs for smokers? Prosthetic legs for people who go whacko on shrooms and self-amputate? I realize I am treading next to a slippery slope argument, and I don't mean to say that "paying for abortions" implies "paying for these other things," but I ask where the line is drawn and why there?

I think getting healthcare coverage for people who catch the flu or people who have a genetic condition requiring some fancy medication is better than not getting healthcare coverage for them. That something is better than nothing.

Rejecting a health care bill for lacking all of the health care needs of the American people is akin to blowing up someone else's food just because you have no mouth. It doesn't solve your problem. It just leaves you both hungry and sad.

>> I don't believe it's honestly feasible to get the bill passed if it covers medical procedures that a large bulk of America (unfortunately) believes should be outright illegal. <<

You're wrong about both halves of that statement.

A very large majority of Americans either has no objection at all to abortion coverage, or is okay with the compromise we've had since the Hyde bill, where federal money doesn't pay for abortions. The set of people who think we need to go beyond that is a minority, not a majority. Stupak goes way beyond what the majority of the public would demand, to appease a minority.

Also, it is much more likely that whatever health care legislation passes will stay at the Hyde level - federal money won't pay for abortions - than that it will overreach to the Stupak level. While such an overreach is a real danger, it's something that *might* happen, not something that definitely will. Your suggestion that it's the only feasible possibility is definitely false.

I would've said the same thing back on Monday, but now I can show a bit more evidence: the Senate rejected it on a vote of 45-54. If even the Senate defeated this Stupak language on a 9 vote margin, you can't possibly make the case that it's not feasible to pass reform *without* it. It may not be feasible to pass reform *with* it.

Oh and for that matter I know quite a few gay people who reject the notion of civil unions as perpetuating a "separate but equal" regime that never works and that locks them into second-class citizen status.

I agree that using different terminology does perpetuate that. However, second-class citizen status is better than last-class citizen status, which is what we have under NO UNIONS OF ANY KIND. If an alternate class of unions is established for same sex couples and *GASP* it doesn't destroy families *GASP*, I think the legislation to correct terminology should be easier to pass. I truly believe that although baby steps may not be IDEAL or JUST or GOSH-DARN-IT-ETHICAL-AND-FAIR, they *are* practical and they *do* work.

second-class citizen status is better than last-class citizen status

That's your opinion, and you're certainly entitled to it. Just don't confuse it with everyone's.

This is very highly misleading.

Louise Slaughter and Diana DeGette, the leaders of the House pro-choice caucus, *also* voted the same way. Do you think they're not pro-choice enough to earn your support?

The real difference here was that Capuano, like his fellow members of the House pro-choice caucus, are actually working legislators, while Coakley a) doesn't know how to do that job yet, and b) just needed to stake out some clear positions for campaign purposes. She was *wrong* on substance, but it was a good campaign move. I don't think she knew she was wrong, though - I think she was showing her inexperience.

The House health care bill would've failed if the pro-choice members had voted against it, and they all knew that, so they all voted for it to keep it alive. Their goal, obviously, is a good health care bill without Stupak. The "without Stupak" part is, and always was, very likely to happen, but the "good health care bill" overall has always been a tricky thing that might not happen. The worst blow to its chances would've been no house bill, because then we would've had to live with whatever dreck the Senate put together; pressure from the House is the thing that could push the Senate to pass something good. All of the pro-choice House members knew that if they killed the House bill right then, there would be ZERO chance of getting what they want (good health care reform without Stupak), but if they kept it alive and then threatened to kill the conference bill later if it came with Stupak language (a threat Capuano joined in) they would keep the chances alive.

There are a number of members of the house who are as good on pro-choice issues as Capuano, but there are NONE who are better. He's at the extreme end on this.

Being part of a House caucus is a meaningless label. Lieberman caucuses with the Democrats. It's a convenience. Leading it is another matter, I'll grant you.

I also don't think the issue is "pro choice enough" - that assumes a single unvarying dimension on which people can be ranked, which I reject. The underlying issue is a question of which compromises people are willing to make, and for what end. Voting for healthbill+Stupak is a calculated risk. The gamble is that it comes out with healthcare-Stupak and that you don't have to trade off something else.

I'm well aware that Capuano is steeped in the "way things get done" - the political dealings and backroom tradeoffs that characterize how legislation is made. You dont' get to be mayor of Somerville and not "get" that. On the other hand, the range of possibilities defines the space of what gets negotiated and it's also reasonable to say that womens' reproductive rights are not a negotiable item, and still expect to negotiate over the substance of the legislation.

As I said in my posting back in November, I thought that a robust public option was the only deal-breaker. I view this issue as a deal-breaker. Now, as to whether or not Coakley seized on it for purely political reasons and won't follow through... that's something I don't know. All politicians are opportunists; some more so than others. It's certainly true that (as you noted in your other post) Coakley has taken other positions that I disagree with. And it's possible that over the course of a six-year Senate term those issues will loom larger. But right now it seems like healthcare reform is one of the top five issues we're likely to see legislated. Congressional action on, say, the War on (Some) Drugs may or may not happen, but in any event it looms much less larger in my political calculus.

The two party caucuses (Democratic, Republican) are very different thing from the voluntary caucuses that form to organize on specific themes or issues. It's not a meaningless label in either case, but its meaning is different: With the party caucuses, the meaning lies in who party you choose to have majority and control of the body's rules; with the other caucuses, membership indicates someone's legislative priorities, the things they don't merely support, but also focus their energy on working towards.

> The gamble is that it comes out with healthcare-Stupak and that you don't have to trade off something else.

No, that's what you don't get: It's not the gamble you think it is. Voting for the bill doesn't prevent them from voting no on it later if it still has the Stupak language. But if they'd voted no on it, that would've been a huge gamble: that the bill fails in the House and then the only option they get is whatever comes from the Senate - and from the Senate when it feels no pressure from the House, at that.

You keep talking about the public option without seeming to realize that if the pro-choice House members had voted no on the House bill, that would have absolutely, without a doubt, completely killed any chance of anything resembling a public option.

Voting yes, on the other hand, while distasteful, was a very small risk. It meant keeping the House bill alive, pressuring the Senate to do better, making a conference committee possible to improve on whatever the Senate passes. It preserved multiple opportunities to stop the Stupak language, or to vote down the whole thing at the end if it still contained that language.

Coakley didn't get it. And I think you still don't get it. Coakley will hopefully learn once she gets into the job, but if we'd had a bunch of Coakleys in the House, as she were, when those votes happened, we wouldn't have a chance at decent health care reform.

Bottom line: Voting yes on the House bill was not a gamble, it was the unequivocally correct vote for anyone who supports a public option or decent health care reform, regardless of their position on choice. This is *not* a matter of who's stronger on women's rights. Coakley is NOT stronger on women's rights. She's just less clueful about how to get the things she wants in a legislature.

Edited 2009-12-10 15:00 (UTC)

Believe it or not, I do get it (I can't speak for Coakley). I just make different trade-off weightings than you do.

You assert that if hc+stupak had been voted down then the only alternative for the House would have been to vote on whatever the Senate produced. But they can't vote on that - they only vote on bills brought up from the House itself. Sometimes you just copy the Senate bill and intro that, it gets voted on, the conference committee is a no-op and it's passed. And sometimes you vote on something that differs from the Senate bill and the differences get worked out in conference and then there's a (usually pro-forma) re-vote on the compromise.

Since the House has to produce its own version of the bill somehow either it could have carbon-copied the Senate bill (not bloody likely) or gone back and re-drafted a bill without abortion restrictions. Assuming nobody changes his vote you're right, the house can't produce its own bill. Another assumption is that Representatives would be persuaded to change their votes on abortion restrictions when it became clear that a bill with such restrictions wouldn't get out of the House. Reps don't like being dictated to by the Senate and - given the political cover of being able to say that they'd voted for it once - they could then have worked out a compromise that included no restrictions or less onerous ones.

My calculus is that given the choice of "eat Senate crow" or "come up with a bill that doesn't add new restrictions on abortion" the House would've chosen the latter option. I don't think my calculus is any less of a political realist view than yours and I'm sort of annoyed that you keep insisting I don't get it.

And while I'm at it, we also seem to weigh the post-conference vote differently. You seem to be claiming that it's important that after a hc+stupak bill came out of conference committee the House could still have voted that down. I agree that's technically true, but I think it's incredibly unlikely.

If Nelson's amendment had passed in the Senate then the conference committee would have had two bills with abortion restrictions and would almost certainly have produced a final bill that contained the language. If you're claiming that when faced with that FINAL language the pro-choice Dems would then have changed their minds and voted against it I think you're being overly optimistic. I think they would've voted for it.

The only way I can see to keep anti-abortion language out of the final conf committee bill is to keep it out of either the House or the Senate version. By voting for it in the House, the Dems were counting on the Senate to keep such language out. That's a gamble.

>> I agree that's technically true, but I think it's incredibly unlikely. <<

You're mistaken about that, and I answered it in my comment below.

>> By voting for it in the House, the Dems were counting on the Senate to keep such language out. That's a gamble. <<

You're also wrong about that, but more subtly: You missed the point that the House pro-choicers were attempting to pressure the Senate into not including that language, and knew their chances of success were very high.

>> You assert that if hc+stupak had been voted down then the only alternative for the House would have been to vote on whatever the Senate produced. But they can't vote on that - they only vote on bills brought up from the House itself. <<

That's just not true, as a matter of simple fact.

>> Sometimes you just copy the Senate bill and intro that, it gets voted on <<

Exactly, "it gets voted on".

>> and then there's a (usually pro-forma) re-vote on the compromise. <<

"usually" doesn't mean it has to be. That was explicitly the strategy openly publicized by the House pro-choicers: If the final bill came back from committee with Stupak language they'd all vote against it. All the Republicans were already promising to vote against it for other reasons, so that would've killed it. But it's no longer necessary, because the Senate voted Stupak down (as House members thought it likely would, and perhaps also due to some Senate votes shifting because of the threat from the House - exactly what they intended).

>> Since the House has to produce its own version of the bill somehow either it could have carbon-copied the Senate bill (not bloody likely) or gone back and re-drafted a bill without abortion restrictions. <<

Not true. Once the House voted it down, it would not have re-drafted. This bill already went through three House committees, a full debate and amendment process, and a full House vote. There's no way whatsoever that the House would've gone through all of that again this session. They would've been forced to vote up or down on the Senate version, and if they'd voted it down, it would've been the House's fault the Obama's top priority got killed, and he could try to get Congress to try again next year, when better results would be unlikely.

>> I don't think my calculus is any less of a political realist view than yours and I'm sort of annoyed that you keep insisting I don't get it. <<

Your calculus rests on a number of misconceptions (only some of which I addressed here). You in fact do not get it. That vote was the unequivocally correct vote for any public option or real health care reform supporter. That is why just about every strongly pro-choice Democrat in the House voted yes on that bill. The rare exceptions I was able to find, such as Dennis Kucinich and Eric Massa, had already said they were going to vote against the bill for other reasons (mainly that its public option doesn't go far enough) before the Stupak Amendment came up.

That is overwhelming evidence, IMO, that this isn't just a matter of differing calculus - you're just wrong on this.

We've gotten to the point where you're repeating yourself more emphatically and I am not convinced by the emphatic repetition. You seem comfortable saying "$this WOULD have happened" and "someone WOULD have done $this". I acknowledge that you say these things, but remain unconvinced.

... and you won't even take the fact that not a single member of the House who shares your political goals agreed with your view, as evidence that you may be mistaken. Not even a single one. Okay, then. I just hope anyone else reading this discussion isn't convinced by what you're saying.

You are also arguing based on "$this WOULD have happened", no less than I am. This isn't you arguing facts vs. me arguing hypotheticals. We're both stating our views of what WOULD have happened in different cases; if you don't see that you're doing so as well as I am, that might explain why you don't get it.

Edited 2009-12-10 15:36 (UTC)

>> It's certainly true that (as you noted in your other post) Coakley has taken other positions that I disagree with. And it's possible that over the course of a six-year Senate term those issues will loom larger. But right now it seems like healthcare reform is one of the top five issues we're likely to see legislated. Congressional action on, say, the War on (Some) Drugs may or may not happen, but in any event it looms much less larger in my political calculus. <<

These issues come up ALL THE TIME.

Coakley would not have tried to stop torture.

Coakley would've enthusiastically supported most forms of Internet censorship (while Ted Kennedy led the opposition to the Communications Decency Act - which passed with only 14 Senators voting against it, despite being so unconstitutional that the Rehnquist court struck it down 9-0).

Coakley would've enthusiastically lobbied for warrantless wiretapping and telecom immunity.

Coakley would've been fine with the Military Commissions Act.

Coakley lobbied against recent efforts to reform the Patriot Act.

Coakley will vote the way I like on more things than not, but she's a scary, dangerous, police state politician. She has done, and will continue to do, damage. I'm depressed at the fact that her political rise seems unstoppable, and very scared at the prospect of her becoming Governor. I'm trying to think of ways to reform her, since she can't be toppled (which would be much better).

*shrug* I'm not going to defend Coakley. I don't like a good chunk of her record, but I'm also not going to assert that I know how she would have voted.

Senators are subject to pressure and 6 years is a long time. If she runs for governor in six years I'll worry about it then. The MA Dems have a long history of producing craptastic candidates for governor, which is one reason they keep losing those races.

I will say that I'm not likely to condition my vote in a Senate race on whether I think that person might run for governor in six years.

>> I will say that I'm not likely to condition my vote in a Senate race on whether I think that person might run for governor in six years. <<

That was an addendum, taking up a very small portion of my comment, at the end. It did not try to present it as the reason to have voted against her.

The thrust of my comment was, "These issues come up ALL THE TIME." Because they do. They came up in this Congress, they'll come up in the next, and the next, and the next. We've lost one of the best people on these issues - Kennedy - and have replaced him with almost a polar opposite, a lock'em'up prosecutor who favors brutal unethical police practices, surveillance, harsh punishment, and criminalization of anything she finds weird. I just want to make that clear.

This vote was bad primarily for the reason that it's going to make her a Senator. The chance of her also possibly becoming governor in the future is a secondary scare that was much less relevant, but is relevant in explaining my feelings about her.

NOW is going to love this: "Coakley accepts abortion restriction"

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/12/21/coakley_accepts_abortion_restriction/

NOW is a good organization for divisive sexist bigots.

Coakley is a horrible candidate and the people who vote for her will all get exactly what they deserve. More FISA and USAPATRIOT Act police state erosion of America from your friendly neighborhood prosecutor.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A disagreement with Mike Capuano

no subject

Your comment

Re: Your comment

Re: Your comment

Re: Your comment

no subject

Since I was also wondering what that might mean...

no subject

no subject

really care about voting accountability

no subject

no subject

no subject

Capuano

I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

You're mistaken

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

Re: I like Capuano but

As for the awfulness of Coakley

Re: As for the awfulness of Coakley

Re: As for the awfulness of Coakley

Re: I like Capuano but