Boston Celebrates Israel at 60

Turnout was big for Israel’s 60th Anniversary celebration at the John F. Kennedy Library last night. Governor Patrick, along with Myra Kraft and Israel’s Consul General, Nadav Tamir, addressed the crowd. 

Patrick, whose fortunes figure to rise with the tough times of Speaker DiMasi and the resurgence of Barack Obama, gave a brief, good speech. He pointed out that Massachusetts governors have a record of supporting Israel since William Russell attached his name to the Jewish cause in 1891.

He also announced that he plans to lead a trade mission on behalf of the Commonwealth to Israel. While I’d expect the papers to get on him for this as time away from the state, I think there are some natural synergies between our state and Israel where biotech is emerging as a major industry.

I’ll have more on this historic milestone for Israel later in the week.

 

 

Gitell on NECN NewsNight

Watch me here on NECN NewsNight along with key Barack Obama fundraiser Alan Solomont. The host is, of course, Jim Braude.

Thoughts on Clinton v. Obama: Indiana and North Carolina

Even if Hillary Clinton wins both North Carolina and Indiana today, which is highly unlikely, all relevant metrics still point to his nomination. This could be a shock for some people, including white blue collar voters, who will have seen Clinton surge over the last two months, while Obama has flagged.

The often unsaid reality of the 2008 campaign is that the deck is stacked against white, working class voters due to the Democratic Party’s distribution of delegates. In Pennsylvania, Clinton rode the support of these voters to a victory by a margin of 214,224 voters. Despite her win there, she gained only 10 more delegates than Obama.

Obama, by contrast, won by a sounder margin in the Idaho caucuses. He defeated Clinton: 16,880 to 3,665. Thanks to this 13,000 margin, Obama garnered 12 delegates. Although Clinton won Pennsylvania by a margin that is 16 times greater than the margin Obama won by in Idaho, she received two fewer delegates.

Obama won more delegates in Idaho because of the high percentage of his victory there. It’s all the more puzzling because the state is practically irrelevant to a Democratic win in November. In Pennsylvania, Obama’s losses were mitigated because his success came in urban areas, which carry more delegates than less populated and less Democratic areas.

A similar analysis of Ohio demonstrates analogous results. In Texas, where Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote in the primary by more than 100,000 votes out of almost 2 million, she ended up losing five delegates to Obama. Again, this was due to Democratic delegate apportionment and Obama’s success in a caucus there when less than 43,000 participated.

Just because Obama has the delegate advantage, doesn’t mean it’s fair. But this is politics.

I’d watch the fallout here as the Democratic Party attempts to come together as the Democratic National Convention approaches. 

Gitell on NECN NewsNight

I will be part of NECN’s Election Night coverage. My appearance will be during the 8:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. block.

Keller in the Wall Street Journal

I often take a moment to reflect upon the trajectories taken by local writers and political pundits. One political analyst who continues to elevate his game is Jon Keller of WBZ-TV. Keller began the process when he published “The Bluest State” last year. He followed up on that success with a thoughtful essay in The Wall Street Journal on Saturday. In it, he revisited the similarities between Governor Patrick and Barack Obama.

“Education may be the one area where Mr. Patrick could have done the most to demonstrate that he is indeed a new man of the left. Fifteen years ago, the state enacted strict testing requirements for both teachers and students and passed reforms that encourage the creation of charter schools. The result: Massachusetts consistently places among the top performers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Sticking by these bipartisan reforms – or even expanding them to help minority children in poor areas – would seem to be an easy call.

But to the delight of education unions, Mr. Patrick instead appears to be laying the groundwork to dismantle these reforms. He appointed antitesting zealot Ruth Kaplan to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, where she repaid his confidence recently by disparaging the college preparation emphasis of some charter schools. She said these schools set ’some kids up for failure . . . Their families don’t always know what’s best for their children.’

S. Paul Reville, chairman of the education board, has also drawn attention for his willingness to water down certification testing requirements for aspiring teachers. Under the guise of trying to overcome a teacher shortage, the administration wants to allow applicants who have failed the test three times to teach anyway. When pressed on the issue, Mr. Reville said publicly that the certification test ‘isn’t necessarily the best venue for everybody to demonstrate their competency.’ “

Hillary Clinton: “We’ve Got To Elect A President Who’s A Fighter”

Hillary Clinton has really hit her stride with this Hillary as a fighter motif. That explains why she would appear with vocal critic Bill O’Reilly. 

The mystery of this campaign is that Clinton is peaking as Barack Obama is at his worst. By every measurable standard, Obama should be the nominee. Yet Clinton is lapping him at the end. She’s even been wearing a garish magenta-accented outfit, which along with the return of big hair is causing the Fabulous Dana to suspect is poll-driven to draw blue collar votes.

Much has been made of the anger that many of the voters Obama has brought into the system will express if the super delegates choose Clinton as the nominee (as Politico reports many have already decided). But could there be an equivalent — or even greater — sense of frustration from those who have witnessed Obama take a dive over the last several weeks. That’s what the recent Suffolk poll of Pennsylvania suggested.

This means that if and when Obama becomes the presumptive nominee any sense of peace among the Democrats will hinge on Clinton and her supporters. If Clinton chooses, it could be ugly.

In Case You Missed This On Drudge: Chris Matthews for Senate

One story I came across when I was down in Pennsylvania for the primary was the interest in Chris Matthews running for the Senate. It was not surprising that Matthews, a local hometown boy would move his show to Philadelphia in the days before the primary. But he appeared to use the program in a way that would be politically advantageous to him — if he did decide to run.

I write in The New York Sun: “Political figures that appeared on his national show were the mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, and an African-American congressman of Philadelphia, Chaka Fattah. In addition, Mr. Matthews interviewed on ‘Hardball’ the chairmen of the Democratic committees of Allegheny, Montgomery, and Lackawanna counties, James Burn Jr., Marcel Groen, and Harry McGrath, local figures vital to any statewide candidacy.”

I met up with Burn at Pamela’s P & G Diner in Millvale following Bill Clinton’s speech in that community just outside Pittsburgh. ” ‘It would be interesting … He’s got a great history. He knows how to do it,’ Burn told me. ‘I look forward to having a conversation with him about his candidacy.’ “

Hillary Clinton and 1960s Radicalism

Remember my post on Hillary Clinton’s vulnerability to charges of radicalism after the last Democratic debate?

Now I’m joined in that thought by former 1960s radical Tom Hayden. Here’s what he writes in The Nation:

“Hillary is blind to her own roots in the sixties…She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale law school meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an “unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged.” She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. She surely agreed with Yale president Kingman Brewster that a black revolutionary couldn’t get a fair trial in America. She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents.

Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm’s partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others ‘tolerated communists’.” 

 

 

Jeremiah Wright’s Media Tour

I caught most of Jeremiah Wright’s address to the National Press Club today. There’s no way this can be helpful to the campaign of Barack Obama. It was notable that Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, called into MSNBC on-air to push back against the wire-to-wire coverage of Wright’s media tour. That’s the best evidence that the Obama campaign would love to see Wright just go away. The fact that he isn’t means damage for the campaign, both now and for November.

Roslindale Rant

The Boston Globe chose to focus on Roslindale as a prism through which to view the economic downturn. It’s a bit of an unusual choice, considering Roslindale’s not being particularly hard hit by mortgage foreclosures as are some communities on the 495 ring or in Southern New Hampshire, where I spent much time last fall. But the neighborhood is a vital, but often unnoticed, part of city life. I suppose the choice to center on Roslindale makes more sense with the recognition that several major executives at The Boston Globe, including Al Larkin and Brian McGrory, grew up in Roslindale.

Stephanie Ebbert, who’s been reporting on Boston since she came to the Globe from Pennsylvania some eight years ago, certainly nailed one major attribute of Roslindale Square, the food.

“The village is a food lover’s paradise, with ethnic markets, inviting restaurants, and a belt-straining six bakeries. Here, you can find burritos, baklava, bibimbop, pizza, paella, and pho. Casually chic restaurants mingle with unadorned postwar markets whose owners seem to see no need for upgrades.

“The storefronts of Greek markets dangle candles ribboned and bedecked with toys for Orthodox Easter, while the broad window at Fornax Bread Co., maker of artisanal breads, is draped with artfully mismatched aprons.

“Unlike most urban centers, Roslindale Village still feels completely real, dominated by locally owned businesses and traversed by people and a wide array of races and incomes.”

But overall I felt this take out had an arbitrary feel. For example, she makes a big deal out of the fact that Bob’s Pita Bakery has admittedly disappointedly stopped baking its own bread. (In fact, with the departure of the Near East Bakery on Washington Street in West Roxbury, there’s no place to get freshly baked pita, where previously there were two bakeries nearby.) But she neglects one of the most welcome recent additions to Roslindale Village, the Boston Cheese Cellar. Of course, a write-up of such a high end, sophisticated food shop, which has experienced an uptick of growth this year in the face of tough economic times, would have directly contradicted the “neighborhood in crisis” notion being promulgated in  Ebbert’s piece. 

When I drove through the Village last night, the neighborhood was buzzing with couples and families walking to dine at one of the many fine local restaurants.

Perhaps I’m too sensitive on this. I’m a neighborhood property owner as well as a new member of the Main Streets board. It’s great that the world has finally noticed what we have here. It’s too bad it’s taken a downturn to get them to take note.