Obama = Patrick, fine by me

Note: Originally posted at MYDD in response to some writing a Obama will suck because Patrick sucks diary... I couldn't take it, I have always been lukewarm about Obama, but Patrick is a different story... He got me re-engaged in local politics, I got elected to the state party convention... Reilly had been the appointed candidate, but the Patrick campaign out organized him, got his people elected city by city, street by street and we overwhelmed the state party at the convention and now have the amazing Mr. Walsh as our party chair.  I use blue mass group liberally to make my arguments, great web site.

Deval Patrick and Obama are two different people... Yes, they are both black, give amazing speeches, and inspire people to check back into the political process.. but I welcome the comparison...  Deval Patrick won a historic election in Massachusetts by mobilizing the grass roots.

However, One thing people need to remember about Mass is we have a liberal congressional delegation, but a much more conservative state legislature... The speaker has a tremendous amount of power  

Well, we know that due to the Democratic super-majority and extremely tight discipline, the Speaker of the House has vast power, possibly even more than the governor.

  We have been left with a budget disaster... Our bipartisan culture of GOP governors and Finneran democrats, known as

the Big Dig culture of Beacon Hill -- which has been a bipartisan failure, over a long period of time

has let the infrastructure of our state crumble  Roads, Public Transportation, Education, etc  

Infrastructure, public transportation, health care and education are tremendous assets for Massachusetts. And they didn't happen by accident, sprung fully-formed from the head of some beneficent Commonwealth-Zeus. We are enjoying the fruits of the ambition, courage, can-do spirit -- yes, and hope -- of previous generations.
Is it possible that over the last 16 years (at least), we've been underinvesting in our quality of life in Massachusetts? Were we so eager to tear off the "Taxachusetts" label -- exploited so well by Lee Atwater in 1988's election campaign -- that we neglected to keep up with the times? Are the endless Prop. 2 1/2 override battles an unavoidable condition of living in MA -- to the point that we can hardly imagine a world without them?

Patrick has put together a number of ambitious proposals
10 year 10 billion dollar life science initiative to keep Mass on the cutting edge of this important sector, free community college for all residents, instate tuition for undocumented immigrants since kids should not be punished for the ‘sins’ of their parents (the other Democrats in the race and his GOP rival tried to kill him on this, but he stood his ground and the voters still elected him overwhelmingly), reorganizing the dept of education to have more accountability, universal pre-k, longer school days, closing of corporate tax loopholes, Cape Wind.. the list goes on... As BMG notes

The state's got big challenges. The Governor realizes that, and -- whatever the merits of his policy proposals -- at least possesses a sense of urgency about it. If the legislature doesn't like being embarassed by the governor, it needs to get off the dime and start dealing pro-actively with the deterioration of our assets. It's not just a matter of dealing with the governor, it's dealing with reality.

But most importantly he ran against the big dig culture that has been ignoring our growing budget problems... They just lower aid to cities and towns to get the heat of them...  This results in skyrocketing property taxes and cuts in services.  He ran against the Finneran democrats..  It would have been easy to be the inspirational leader, stick to giving great speeches and just go along with Sal DiMasi....  However, he fought and those interests fought back..  People thought Patrick was down because after elected he didn't spend as much time working his rheortical skills... Because he was dealing with a budget and state left bankrupt by 16 years of GOP leadership and a DINO legislature... He worked on his many proposals, fought beacon hill and the results are coming in now...

He is winning on the corporate tax loopholes and winning on the life science initative

Patrick is showing that progressive change doesn’t happen overnight, but this Obama clone, is fighting for it, not backing down when things get rough, and winning  

It looks like Patrick's high-stakes, high-pressure strategy may be paying off.  Of course, DiMasi didn't include casino revenues in his budget -- but the fact that Patrick did so may well have forced DiMasi's hand on the corporate tax loopholes.  Patrick said, essentially, put up or shut up.  DiMasi put up.  I'd call that excellent progress, and a significant win for the Gov.

I don’t know if Obama will be like Patrick... But if I were the Clinton supporters I would back away from this comparison... Cause this is a guy who is doing right.  Don’t believe me listen to what Bill Clinton has to say about him  It is the Worcester Rally under speeches.