Rep. Ed Markey defeated Gabriel Gomez in yesterday’s special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by John Kerry. I voted for Markey. (Big surprise, I know.) I did so without enthusiasm. Based on his resume and his rhetoric I feel that I should be more enthusiastic but… no. I think this piece by Jim Sullivan on boston.com captures Markey pretty well. An excerpt:
For the Malden Democrat, who has carved out a profile as a policy wonk during his 37 years in the House, there are opportunities and warning signs. In policy areas where major debate is expected in the coming years, such as telecommunications and energy, Markey has distinguished himself as a go-to member in the House, a role he could reprise in the Senate. Congress will probably grapple with how to distribute broadband spectrum and how to manage the nation’s burgeoning natural gas and clean energy industries.
“There may be some opportunities to legislate there and create supermajorities,” said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who praised as “masterful” Markey’s work on House passage of cap-and-trade legislation.
That’s maybe the origin of my lack of enthusiasm in a nutshell. “Masterful work on cap-and-trade legislation.” Is that not an oxymoron? (I should educate myself w.r.t. net neutrality and broadband spectrum allocation issues. I’m not well-informed on those issues.)
Basically, I perceive Markey as someone who will vote the way I’d like on most issues important to me but I don’t see him as a leader. He’s not going to rock any boats. Alternatively stated: He’s no Elizabeth Warren. (See her here too.) I’m pretty confident that he’ll try to do good things but I’m concerned that his working style depends upon a functional institution in order to get things done. And that, unfortunately, we ain’t got. In the current environment, we need representatives who are going to rattle cages and stand up to the GOP. (For the sake of restoring a functional government, the Democrats need some left-wing Goldwaters not more Carters, Mondales, or Dukakis’. The latter were all decent and respectable public servants. Politicians of that stripe are just not what the country needs now.) The GOP continues to purge its ranks of legislators interested in and capable of making government work – see, e.g., Richard Lugar and Olympia Snowe. They need to be confronted relentlessly until that turns around. Markey is not going to do that. If the Democratic party continues to nominate Carter/Mondale/Dukakis types for higher office then expect those candidates to lose and expect the country to end up in seriously deep shit – because they are not going to be defeated by the likes of a Lugar or a Snowe.
That brings me to Texas State Senator Wendy Davis. If the Democratic party is to have a positive effect on the country going forward, it will be by nominating people like Wendy Davis and getting them elected. (Not to flog a dead horse but the Carter/Mondale/Dukakis types and the pro-choice multi-millionaire investment bankers and corporate lawyers. No. Stop nominating them. Please. Stop now.) Davis was in the news yesterday for her 13 hour filibuster of a bill which would have enacted some the strongest restrictions to abortion access in the country. Her commitment to the filibuster is as significant to me as her commitment to that particular issue. Willingness to fight when the situation demands it should be a litmus test for any candidate who wants to run as a Democrat. Check out Davis’s website. She started from the bottom, bootstrapped her way up through Harvard Law, and is willing to fight like hell for good causes. She seems like the real deal.
More Wendy Davis’s please. (And more Elizabeth Warrens too.) And fewer Jon Corzines, Anthony Weiners, Chuck Schumers, and John Kerrys.