In opinion piece Eileen McNamara delivers a well deserved smackdown
It is easy to fall out of touch with Beacon Hill when you spend so much time dining with political strategists in Washington or courting audiences in Missouri, South Carolina, Michigan, or Utah.
These days, the two frequent fliers look less like potential adversaries for the American presidency in 2008 than tactical twins courting the same bloc of socially conservative voters. In their political calculation for higher office, both men are running away from the one constituency they were elected to serve, the people of Massachusetts.
Does he really think that his support of civil unions, instead of marriage, for same-sex couples is going to win over voters in the 11 states that passed bans on gay marriages last fall?
Don't forget us, senator
By Eileen McNamara, Globe Columnist | May 8, 2005
If Senator John F. Kerry really wants to influence the Democratic Party in Massachusetts, wouldn't he have more impact in Lowell than in Louisiana?
The failed Democratic presidential nominee was in Baton Rouge last week when he said it would be a mistake to include a statement of support for gay marriage in the platform of the Massachusetts Democratic Party because the issue is so divisive.
But Kerry himself won't be attending the party's platform convention in Lowell next weekend. He is traveling the country, testing the waters for another White House run. I mean, he's already on the road holding town meetings on children's healthcare needs.
It is a shame Kerry could not fit a stop at the Tsongas Arena on his cross-country tour. He would discover what the 3,000 delegates to the convention already know. He could bring the news to the rest of the nation. The earth did not tilt off its axis one year ago when same-sex marriages were legalized in Massachusetts. The demonstrations are over. Massachusetts has moved on.
Like Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, Kerry is spending a lot of time these days talking to audiences far from the Merrimack Valley. That might explain why both men find themselves so often misreading the sentiments of the folks back home.
Last week, while Kerry was ignoring a March poll that showed solid support for gay marriage among Massachusetts Democrats, Romney was ignoring the endorsement by state law enforcement officials of a bill to allow over-the-counter sales of hypodermic needles. Romney opposes the bill, his office says, because it ''facilitates illegal drug use," a rationale rejected in public hearings last week by two prominent district attorneys and a representative of the Boston police commissioner. Even his own Department of Public Health endorses the needle sale legislation as a means of slowing the spread by tainted syringes of the virus that causes AIDS.
It is easy to fall out of touch with Beacon Hill when you spend so much time dining with political strategists in Washington or courting audiences in Missouri, South Carolina, Michigan, or Utah.
These days, the two frequent fliers look less like potential adversaries for the American presidency in 2008 than tactical twins courting the same bloc of socially conservative voters. In their political calculation for higher office, both men are running away from the one constituency they were elected to serve, the people of Massachusetts.
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