Neal’s Victory Reinforces What We Already Knew About WMass Voters

As readers of MassPoliticsProfs have known for eight years now, Massachusetts voters are not what the rest of the country thinks they are. They are not the tip of the progressive spear in America. They are not politics-hating Puritanical moralists ready and willing to punish corrupt politicians at a moments notice. They are highly individualistic and pragmatic people who see politics as a means to an end, as a highly competitive profession that requires highly skilled professionals, not amateurs, activists, insurgents, or revolutionaries.

The size of Congressman Neal’s margin of victory in yesterday’s primary was a bit surprising, but his victory was not. Mayor Alex Morse had more money, more big-name and big donor progressive support, and more relevant political experience than Congressman Neal’s previous progressive insurgent challenger, all of which helped him come a bit closer to Neal on Election Day than Tahirah Amatul-Wadud did two years ago. The lack of reliable public polling and the unprecedented national attention to Morse’s candidacy made the race interesting and dramatic, but the narrative into which national media outlets placed Morse’s candidacy was never accurate, or ultimately useful to him. The temptation to put Morse into the same category as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was obviously great. Neither her strong endorsement of his campaign nor Morse’s rhetoric on the stump were designed to dispel this notion.

The reality is that Morse’s campaign ended up being trapped between an AOC-style insurgency and an Ayanna Pressley progressive generational change campaign. Like Pressley, Morse wasn’t a political outsider fire-bombing the establishment, but unlike Pressley Morse had not earned credibility with the Democratic Party establishment in the state or region. It is Pressley, not AOC, who provided the electoral road map for progressives in Massachusetts, which is to say, that Pressley played by the establishment’s rules long enough to be an acceptable choice. She was a Democratic Party up-and-comer, not an AOC-style insurgent, when she beat Mike Capuano. Her victory reflects a skillful exploitation by a career politician of a changing district, not an ideological challenge to “politics-as-usual.” For his part, Morse was a four-time elected Mayor, not a civil rights activist or an established thorn in the side of the state party. This is what made his candidacy more viable than Amatul-Wadud’s had been (along with being a white man of course). Unfortunately for Morse all the energy and most of the resources he needed were coming from anti-politics, anti-establishment progressives, making it necessary for him to campaign as an anti-politics, anti-party insurgent. Had Pressley been forced into this box, she may well have failed in her bid for a promotion from local to federal office.

The tragedy of this race is that it was not widely understood as the battle between two well-established theories of democratic governance that it actually was. The prize for the closest media depiction of this reality goes to Commonwealth Magazine’s Bruce Mohl, whose recent piece depicted the race as a clear contest between a transactional politician promising to keep “bringing home the bacon” and a movement progressive promising “change.”

This was a contest between what scholars call “participatory democracy” and “elite” or “pluralist democracy.” The former promises direct and highly responsive representation of popular interests, while the latter promises effective intermediated representation of popular interests, which is to say, popular interests intermediated by transactional politicians, political parties, and established interests. Neal was never in great danger of losing because most Western Mass voters implicitly and explicitly prefer the latter approach and consider the former approach to be unrealistic at best. Furthermore, most voters do not want to participate in governance. They want their agents to do that for them and to do it skillfully and well. The sales pitch for participatory democracy, on the other hand, is very tricky. You have to convince voters that they will have a seat at the table without making them think they will be taking on an extra chore or responsibility. You have to convince them that you will be their voice (in Boston or Washington) without being too explicit about the fact that translating their voice into public policy will require their ongoing attention and commitment of time, energy, and resources. This pitch is easier with already attentive, high-information ideologues, but it’s a real up hill climb when it comes to convincing average voters, even average voters in “the People’s Republic of Massachusetts.” If you want to gauge the power of these contrasting approaches to democratic representation right here in bright blue Massachusetts, just go to a local town meeting, a select board or school committee meeting, and pay close attention to the audience, not the speakers or public officials. With rare exceptions, you will notice growing impatience and an increasingly clear desire for the meeting to conclude. You will notice that un-elected participants seem oblivious to their neighbors’ exasperation with the length of their comments. You will notice these things even at meetings dealing with very pressing and serious concerns because most voters, even those willing to “do their civic duty,” have no desire to share the burdens of elected policy makers and are willing to compromise their interests across the broad array of issues that governments must address in exchange for not having to participate too often in the process.

Even though I found Morse’s campaign to be a pretty strong one, and on balance a pretty honest one, I see Neal’s campaign as more honest and more responsive to the average Western Mass voter. Although I found Neal’s cheap rhetorical distraction tactics against Morse in the debates and on the stump shameful, and I was particularly disappointed with Neal’s failure to call the College Democrats’ smear exactly what it was, I also know that Richie Neal’s pitch has been the same for 30 years. For 30 years he has openly asked to be re-hired to his job because of the tangible material returns he has produced. His has never pretended to be anything other than a professional career politician. I’ve heard him speak at scores of events over the last 40 years and he always explicitly expresses appreciation to his supporters for their part in advancing his career. He has consistently advanced the notion that voters should want him to be powerful and popular because these are the currencies with which he will purchase the things his district needs, wants, and deserves.

At the end of the day, Morse’s defeat may teach us that even with high powered help, anti-politics, progressive insurgency doesn’t sell in Western Massachusetts any better than anti-politics conservative insurgency. Richie Neal has dispatched both varieties with ease during his three decades in Congress and nothing that happened yesterday suggests that he has anything to fear from his right or left going forward. If Richie Neal is defeated for re-election in the future it will be due to the same kind of factors that helped Ayanna Pressley defeat Mike Capuano, socio-demographic changes in the district and a credible, established, political professional running against him. However, I fully expect that Congressman Neal would choose retirement over defeat if that unlikely scenario presented itself.