The newly rebranded CommonWealth Beacon has put the concept of Massachusetts exceptionalism front and center lately with several thoughtful pieces about the quality of life in the Bay State based on the results of a brand new CWB/MassInc poll of Massachusetts residents.
Michael Jonas’s Putting Massachusetts Exceptionalism to the Test asks whether Bay Staters can still claim that we are a “beacon for the rest of the country.” His answer, arrived at with the help of our own Professor Erin O’Brien and MassINC pollster Steve Koczela, is a mixed bag.
Professor O’Brien points out, both in her discussion with Jonas and Koczela and in her own recent CWB op-ed, that the basic economic concerns among state residents evidenced in the new poll results may constitute “seeds of discontent with Massachusetts exceptionalism” that could begin to chip away at Bay Staters’ satisfaction with and support for the state’s political institutions and leadership. While most analyses of the Commonwealth’s political shortcomings focus on the more abstract issue of whether the state’s democratic institutions and processes are sufficiently democratic, Professor O’Brien’s latest analysis focuses on more concrete day-to-day concerns.
Pollster Steve Koczela brought the data, which makes clear that Massachusetts residents remain satisfied with the performance of their elected officials at the state house. Rather than feeling politically alienated or marginalized, average Bay Staters are focused on what political professionals call “quality of life” issues, the availability/quality of the basics, like transportation infrastructure, affordable housing, higher education, and healthcare. Massachusetts residents expect their political leaders to be responsive to these concerns and, frankly, they are. Despite complete control of policymaking at the statehouse, Democrats on Beacon Hill have not and will not pursue an ideologically charged agenda. Instead, they are focused on the economic issues of affordability and competitiveness that resonate with average voters much more than with Democratic Party activists.
As the 2024 election season gets going, more and more political analysis of national politics points to a potentially dangerous divide in the Democratic coalition between ideologically motivated progressives and electability focused Democratic politicians and partisans. In Massachusetts, roughly the same intramural divide has always existed and has at times generated vigorous debate but not competitive elections or meaningful change to transactional politics-as-usual at the ballot box and the state house. This seemingly impenetrable insulation from both the ideologically charged Democratic divide as well as the harsh polarized partisan politics awash in Washington and most other states is a prominent artifact of Massachusetts exceptionalism.
The recent popularity of using the concept of Massachusetts exceptionalism to think through important contemporary political issues in the Commonwealth is deeply rewarding to us here at MassPoliticsProfs.org. It is exactly what we hoped for when we chose to make it the organizing principle for our recently published volume on Massachusetts government and politics. We think it fitting that CommonWealth chose to rebrand its vital effort to provide civic information and education by adding Beacon to the masthead, not only because the new name suggests a similar organizing principle to our own but also because the excellent work produced over the past two decades by the researchers, pollsters, and journalists at CommonWealth and MassINC proved crucial the research for and writing of The Politics of Massachusetts Exceptionalism: Reputation Meets Reality.