From MA State House News (Subscription only):
This week in state government and public affairs: a hotel full of Democrats – a non-union hotel full of Democrats – who had busted their humps to elect a Democratic governor three years ago decided Wednesday to picket said governor the next afternoon, politically wounding him and, in all likelihood, their own most fervently held causes.
Put another way: with the national Democratic Party already looking cross-eyed at Massachusetts because of their brethren’s inability to retain Ted Kennedy’s seat – Ted Kennedy’s seat – the state cousins on Thursday opted to zap a sitting governor who has in three years overseen a 21.5 percent increase in union membership, by Patrick aides’ reckoning.
In addition, there’s been continued implementation of first-in-the-nation legislation easing unionization, and, oh yes, the asymptotic approach toward universal health care.
Any guesses about whether the national party has some concerns about what’s going on up here? If Sen. Scott Brown’s storming of the castle hadn’t been enough, and it was, the specter of the president’s buddy – who shares the hackneyed list of demographic similarities – getting shot down by one of the Democrats’ most loyal constituencies, probably reaches the threshold of disturbances that would irk the nationals.
So when Gov. Deval Patrick decided at the last minute Thursday to bail on the AFL-CIO’s annual conference in Plymouth, after the group’s executive committee had agreed the night before to stand up and walk out and join more than a hundred cops on a picket line outside on Water Street, the selfsame protesters had a bit of whiplash, a sort of “now what?†moment, a dark night of the soul. The anger among the laborists toting anti-Patrick signs morphed into anger-tinged confusion.
AFL-CIO legislative director Tim Sullivan went Zen discussing the House of Labor’s discontent with its chosen governor.
“They’re in office until they’re not,†he said of elected officials. “And they’re in charge of the list of things they’re charge of until they’re not.â€
“Because of the economic conditions, I think the natural alliance between unions and Democrats has been strained somewhat,†Speaker Robert DeLeo said, adding that he likely would have appeared where Patrick did not.
http://www.statehousenews.comIt's bad kids.
