Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Guest Post: Deval’s Damask

Guest Post by Susan Falkoff. I just wanted to also note that the failure of Watertown delegates to get reminders about this year's caucus should fall squarely on my shoulders, and not Deval Patrick's. If his citizen's network is going to be successful, he needs the leaders of the campaign to be the driving forces making this happen. I should have been more vigilant. --sco

Deval, Deval what are you doing to us? I cut you slack on the Cadillac but the curtains – it’s so – Nancy Reagan.

I read these stories about ostentatious consumerism with this in mind: I am not generally active in Democratic Party politics so I wasn’t paying attention to the caucuses to choose delegates for this year’s state convention. When someone mentioned in passing that the caucus was that day, I was startled that, as a Deval Patrick delegate to last year’s convention, I hadn’t heard anything at all about the caucus from the Deval Patrick email network. I don’t expect the mountainous volume of email I received during the campaign but getting nothing at all is far less than I’d anticipated. Wasting the progressive base you’ve laboriously created is, in my opinion, a much more egregious failing even than bad taste in curtains.

Unlike a writer to today’s Globe who voted for Deval Patrick and now feels "hopelessly used," I haven’t give up hope for change. The state budget is still to come and there is plenty of time to demonstrate a commitment to conservation and energy efficiency with future state vehicle choices. But I am getting antsy and wonder what happened to the active and engaged citizenry that we were promised during the campaign.