Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics.
You’re listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our goal is to help people understand state politics: investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.
In this episode, we talk about how much more we should expect from our veto-proof super majority of Democrats.
Check out the video of this episode on YouTube.
Sign up to get updates.
Many Massachusetts voters don't feel they need to pay attention state politics, thinking that since "Democrats" have veto-proof supermajorities in both the State House and Senate, the progressive policies we all favor are sure to pass. And many say they are fine with having a Republican governor to "balance" this Democratic supermajority legislature. Yet, progressive bills that have overwhelming support among voters die silent deaths behind closed doors in House committees: our overwhelming Democratic supermajorities aren't even progressive majorities.
Anna, Jordan, and Jonathan discuss what it'd really mean if Massachusetts actually had veto-proof supermajorities of progressive legislators.
Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics.
You’re listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our goal is to help people understand state politics: investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.
In this episode, we talk about how much more we should expect from our veto-proof super majority of Democrats.
Check out the video of this episode on YouTube.
Sign up to get updates.
Many Massachusetts voters don't feel they need to pay attention state politics, thinking that since "Democrats" have veto-proof supermajorities in both the State House and Senate, the progressive policies we all favor are sure to pass. And many say they are fine with having a Republican governor to "balance" this Democratic supermajority legislature. Yet, progressive bills that have overwhelming support among voters die silent deaths behind closed doors in House committees: our overwhelming Democratic supermajorities aren't even progressive majorities.
Anna, Jordan, and Jonathan discuss what it'd really mean if Massachusetts actually had veto-proof supermajorities of progressive legislators.
Producer 0:00
[This transcript was mostly computer-generated and has inaccuracies. The audio is the authoritative version of this podcast. Transcript last revised by hand on 5/12/2021.]
Anna Callahan 0:00
Hey everyone, this is Anna Callahan. You are listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our goal here is to help people understand state politics. So we're investigating why it's so broken, we're imagining what we could have here in Massachusetts if we fixed it, and we're helping you get involved. So I am joined by the inimitable Jordan Berg Powers and the fantabulous Jonathan Cohn. Jordan, would you introduce yourself?
Jordan Berg Powers 0:26
My name is Jordan Powers. I use he/him and I have 11 years experience in Massachusetts politics.
Anna Callahan 0:33
Jonathan?
Jonathan Cohn 0:34
Yeah, thank you for having me. Jonathan Cohn. I use him/his. A slightly shorter period in Massachusetts politics than Jordan. I've been active since 2013 on state, local, and national campaigns, electoral and issue based. I'm excited to be here.
Anna Callahan 0:50
I'm so always excited to have you both here. Just lovely people.
Anna Callahan 0:55
So today, we are going to talk about our veto proof super majorities of Democrats. One thing I have heard from many people is-- you know, when you knock on a door, or you begin talking to people about state politics, they say, "Oh, it must be okay. Aren't they mostly all Democrats?" So we have this idea that if we have a democratic majority, then they're passing the policies that we think they should pass.
Anna Callahan 1:27
So I'm here to tell everyone that we have an 80% proof-- veto proof super majority of Democrats in the State House. We have an over 90% veto proof super majority of Democrats in the State Senate.
Anna Callahan 1:43
And *yet*, there are many policies that seem to be impossible to pass, including 100% renewables and protections for immigrants and many other things. So I loved, Jonathan, I loved with the conversation we had not too long ago, where you brought up our intense battle here in the United States to get to 50 Democratic senators in Congress, and I would love for you to kind of talk a little bit about that.
Anna Callahan 2:16
And you're muted.
Anna Callahan 2:20
Gotcha.
Jonathan Cohn 2:22
Yeah, so like probably many people listening to this, at the end of last year into the beginning of this year, I ended up spending a lot of time calling into Georgia. I felt somewhat bad for the people of Georgia who probably had far too many calls or texts, etc. But it was a really intense process coming out of the election, when we realized that two seats determined whether or not Democrats can get like a narrow 50 seat-- 50 seat majority, and 50 plus one, if, if Kamala Harris ever needs to cast the deciding vote on something she can, and has had to a couple of times, so far. And with-- when we think of all of the money that went into that all of the volunteer power, just to get to 50. And then even beyond of what all that meant of that even though it was narrow it was a majority. And we think even now of the art of getting to 50 for passing legislation, where we constantly hear about the holdouts, whether it's whether it's Joe Manchin, whether it's Kyrsten Sinema, or even when it comes to labor stuff, Mark Warner of Virginia or whatever Democrat is being being ornery and blocking something, we have that kind of that careful dance of how you can assemble every single one of the 50 Democrats so that you can get-- you can narrow something through.
Jonathan Cohn 3:45
But we don't have that same obstacle here, right? But we kind of accept that we want to push things as far as they can go on the national level while acknowledging if you need every single one of 50, it will look different than it was the end goal, you are constantly pushing it till it will be better and better and better, recognizing that you need 50. And as soon as you can get to 50. And as long as me for some things, even some things are blocked by the filibuster until I get rid of that.
Jonathan Cohn 4:15
But in Massachusetts, when there's a supermajority, both houses like comically large super majorities, even, we don't need to think in the same way of how can I eke out that narrow majority support in order to pass something, and it should have been we're talking about state policy, change that sense of ambition, and what we think that we can accomplish as well. And then to look at that reality of them realizing that discrepancy for what that says about ambition, and with the seeming ambitions of so many people there actually are.
Jordan Berg Powers 4:52
Yeah, I mean, it's it's a real-- When you think about the fact that they don't, they could lose democrats on any vote in still Have veto proof majorities, right. They can lose democrats and still have veto proof majorities. And they have a party platform that supposed to give some guidance supposed to give them some vision for shared beliefs, shared things that we all believe in. Right? So they're supposed to be shared beliefs that they enact. And they're not just about any of them. I was just, you know, thinking about the party platform, which just as an aside, is comically impossible to find through the Massachusetts Democratic Party. It's, it is not a secret. It's like the worst right like that they have hid it. It's not actually on their website, you have to download a PDF. party platform, you can't just view what we what would Democrats believe you have to go searching for it and then download it. But once you go through these many steps to find it, because it's completely hidden, you realize that the democrats that across the state and our democratic student majority don't don't have the same vision at all, or seemingly don't have the same vision at all. There's some great stuff in this democratic party platform. Single Payer is something that Democrats are supposed to be working towards
Anna Callahan 6:17
Medicare For All, yep. It's been in the State House for like 30 years,
Jordan Berg Powers 6:21
30 years, affordable health care for all right, sorry, affordable health care for all people. It's been in there for a long time. And it's still still not hard, affordable housing, excuse me, it's actually what I was thinking about is, is obviously, we're going in the wrong direction, and they still don't deal with it. There is supposed to be a push to end high stakes testing. Our state house doubles down on high stakes testing. There is supposed to be equitable funding. They still haven't funded the bill that they've passed, saying that they're supposed to do equitable funding, and let's just to catch us up
Sound effects Anna 6:56
Boooooooo......
Jordan Berg Powers 6:56
And that's just to catch us up to the mistake, you know, to the promises made in 1983. That's not even to go further, right, to really think about eliminating the idea that your zip code will predetermine the education you get. There is so much good stuff in this party platform. There is support for immigrants, there's driver's licenses, there's progressive taxation, there's paying people fairly. These are things that we voters have to go fix, because our democratic supermajority can't pass them! They can't pass them in their legislature! So it's up to voters to fix their things that they do: criminal justice reform, real environmental legislation, you know, all of these things that we care about. The party platform has it. Democrats have a super majority and still we don't have almost any of them.
Anna Callahan 7:08
Yeah, and I think, you know, I think about the the sheer amount of money and time that people just desperately poured into Georgia. Like it, like when you think about that, and then you think like we Okay, great, we've-- we have that here in Massachusetts, and we're totally squandering it.
Jordan Berg Powers 8:08
Yeah. And, and voters will pay attention. Like at some point it will catch up to you. You can't, you can't continue to fail to address the things that people care about on a day to day basis, and expect to continue to be in power. Like
Anna Callahan 8:24
[laughs]
Jordan Berg Powers 8:24
at some point that will catch up to you
Anna Callahan 8:26
hasn't been that way, it's worked for a while.
Jordan Berg Powers 8:29
It has worked longer than than I think many people would expect. But still, you know, there is, you know, you need to do things to address people's ability to live where they want to live, go where they want to go affordably live on this planet while doing so and having a job that they're not worried will be automated in 20 years, like those just basic things, let alone making sure that their kids are educated. You need to address those things. And the democrat party platform has some good solutions. They don't even need to be creative about it. They could just pull out the thing that's supposed to be their their guidebook.
Anna Callahan 9:01
That's right. So I-- Oh, Jonathan, go ahead.
Jonathan Cohn 9:04
Oh, yeah. Jordan, your point about housing. [unintelligible] was kind of amazed when legislators don't care more about their own voters being gentrified out of their district. It's like so many legislators, like that kind of reliability on who the electorate is, and it's like, if in that respect, like good housing policy that kind of brings costs-- makes things more affordable, helps renters, is actually good for their own self interest and [unintelligible] wanting like, a somewhat reliable and reliable constituency,
Anna Callahan 9:36
but you know, even better for their self interest, a sleepy electorate...
Jonathan Cohn 9:39
Yeah...
Anna Callahan 9:40
...not really paying attention. That's what that's what works. That's worked for a long time.
Jonathan Cohn 9:45
Yeah...
Anna Callahan 9:46
One thing I want to do is sort of compare Massachusetts to other states. So we think of ourselves as you know, being this amazing, Democratic supermajority state, a blue state, a progressive state, you know, being all these things. And yet, I think we could-- there are a couple of examples I'd love for you guys to talk about where states that finally reach 50% in their legislature managed to pass a lot of things that we can't seem to pass. I know, Virginia was one example.
Jordan Berg Powers 10:21
Let's talk about it. So I actually worked in Virginia politics. I remember when it was a red state. I did, I did some congressional work down there. I remember young Tim Kaine, who I met on the campaign trail, which really just says how old I am, let alone anything else. And you know, Virginia has just recently-- and there was a lot of work, Virginia was a tough state to turn into a Democratic majority, and it has a slim majority. It didn't ask voters to pass marijuana reform. It just did it recently. It didn't ask voters, you know, things about the future, not just sort of trying to go back and fix some things that are obvious. It's passed-- it's only the second state to pass online privacy protection, real protections for the future that people-- because that's where we're going to interact. That's where we now work, right? All these things. They pass probation and criminal justice reform, they passed worker comp for COVID-19 pretty easily. And they increased and clarified prevailing wages. So making sure that people with government contracts get paid well.
Anna Callahan 11:19
And there are these things that we have not been [laughs] it sounds like not been able to pass here.
Jordan Berg Powers 11:23
These are all things that we can't pass with a supermajority and they passed when they got into power. And I think-- I think Jonathan mentioned it earlier, but they also passed driver's licenses. So again, a slim majority in the South-- capital of the South. And they passed, they passed driver's licenses for undocumented workers, right? They get into-- undocumented folks. So they get into power and they pass things to make people's lives better, even things that are deemed impossible and controversial in Massachusetts, as silly as that is.
Jonathan Cohn 11:58
And that, that when it comes to the to the driver's license legislation that also passed in New York, when New York finally got a Democratic State Senate for those who aren't, uh, active followers of New York politics, despite having an overwhelmingly Democratic State House, the Senate had been in Republican control for a while, in part and then back in the last redistricting cycle a decade ago where Andrew Cuomo actually approved a map drawn by Senate Republicans in New York to gerrymander in their favor, and then helps prop up a group of
Sound effects Anna 12:29
Boooooooo....
Jonathan Cohn 12:02
...renegade Democrats. Exactly. That time, it helps kind of support a group of renegade Democrats who are propping up Republican leadership. That finally, to Andrew Cuomo's dismay, collapsed, and you've had full Democratic government. And then they actually tried to be very ambitious about passing things that they'd wanted to be able to pass for a long time driver's license is one of them. They also pass legislation like actually an impressive like pro renter bill, helping to curb some of the escalation of, of housing costs in New York for renters. And that like the landlord lobby was like horrified that. And in some ways, it's shocking that Andrew Cuomo was actually just dying. But they were able to, they were able to have to do a lot of that.
Jonathan Cohn 12:02
I remember thinking that when Washington, Washington State also had a similar dynamic of a grip of breakaway Democrats propping up Republicans, until they eventually until Democrats did manage to take over a few years ago, and they passed a suite like a whole bunch of voting reforms when they took off, if I remember correctly, that included Election Day registration, something that still doesn't advance their house, even their Senate has supported it in the past. And it's something that's just kind of that's mystifying. And it's ways that you see states where they fight really hard to finally get past the 50% threshold. And then when they do they start beta thinking, what are all the things that we can do, especially because in their mind when they're doing this is knowing that they aren't going to have power forever, and they want to make sure that they pass things that are popular and progressive, so they keep power and also with the recognition that they don't have forever. Whereas here in Massachusetts, there's just kind of a general lethargic attitude toward toward many of many of the issues that we face where they just by being a full time legislature where it couldn't be doing work throughout the legislative session. Just don't have a lot of urgency.
Jordan Berg Powers 14:32
Senator Jeff Merkley actually met with me, so, senator from Oregon, he was so generous with his time. He was-- he basically ran the equivalent to my organization in Oregon many, many years ago.
Anna Callahan 14:46
Wow!
Jordan Berg Powers 14:46
And I asked him like, how did he turn Oregon blue because people don't remember but Oregon used to be a solidly red state. And, you know, he talked about the fact that they really focused on getting progressives to run for office. To build up from the state legislature up, and that when they got into power, they had policies ready to go. So that when they got into power, they focused on passing things that to Jonathan's point, made people's lives better, made them more popular, and then gave them a reason to grow. Because people said, I want to do those things. Yeah. So I just, I just, you know, this these, this is the model, right, you pass things that make people's lives better, and they reward you with, with power.
Anna Callahan 15:33
And I want to jump in a little bit on something you said, Jonathan, that there was this group of Democrats that were supporting Republicans. Let's talk a little about how that happens here in Massachusetts. They're, you know, Baker has a pack and the speaker. So Baker is a Republican, right? Speaker of the House Speaker DeLeo, a Democrat, head of the Democratic Party in the House, and how-- what was up with them supporting the same people?
Jonathan Cohn 16:05
So, quickly, before we start talking about this, I just want to quickly address kind of the role that the governor plays in all of this, because one thing that you'll probably hear if we have any state legislators listening to us, right now is the common excuse...
Anna Callahan 16:20
Hello! Nice to have you...
Jonathan Cohn 16:24
...you will often get the excuse of, "Oh, but what does the governor think about it?" "Oh, we can't do that." Like, "Charlie won't sign it. It's dead on arrival." You'll often hear that from stuff. You'll-- you'll have that whenever it comes to, say, taxes or comes to racial justice or immigrant, immigrant justice, or kind of a whole host of issues, you'll you'll get them saying, "Oh, well, I would support this, but the governor is not going to sign it. So what has really been the point?" when, as we discussed before, if you have an over 90% supermajority in the Senate and an over 80% supermajority in the House, you should not be thinking about what the governor is willing to sign. You should be thinking about, like, the fact that you-- that even like-- that you have votes to spare even if you need to get to the 66.6% like repeating right, two thirds, two thirds majority, you're-- both of them are comfortably ahead of that just by raw numbers of the caucus, rather than even just the 50%.
Jonathan Cohn 17:27
And it's just mind boggling. Well, it's not mind boggling, you can see easily the incentives that they have for doing it. But how often they like to temper ambitions by using the governor as a convenient excuse for what they themselves don't want to actually pass when knowing full well, that given how that the this kinda-- the House and Senate leadership when they want something can typically line up the votes, and they have many-- given a centralized body in both cases, have the power to bring along any vote that-- almost any vote that they want to bring along, that, if they're not doing that, it seems clearly intentional.
Jordan Berg Powers 18:06
Yeah, they don't need Governor Baker. Baker's irrelevant to our-- to our current makeup of government. He's only-- he's good for the cameras. But realistically, he doesn't have the ability to stop things if they want to do them. That he stops anything is *their* choice, not the Governor's choice. That he sets agenda is *their* choice, not the Governor's choice. They allow him to have power. He need not have any power. I don't know why he has power. No other state would do that. No other state would give over to the, to the opposing party, power that they don't have. But that's what's happening in Massachusetts, because realistically, as Jonathan said, they just don't want to do it. And they're looking for excuses to not do it.
Jordan Berg Powers 18:50
You know, it's it's the it's the reason that, you know, the Speaker of our House historically, and the people in power have wanted Republican governors because it allows them to have the real power. If you have a Democratic governor and they set the agenda, they then can push the party platform, they can force the legislature and the Speaker to do things that they don't want to do. It takes away their power. Having a Republican governor allows them to have full control because they get to do whatever they want. And then they have some other patsy, who gets to be the person at the top, the person who's the, you know, like, Oh, we can't do a-- look at that guy. That guy's the guy, right? He's a patsy. He doesn't do anything. He doesn't serve a purpose in our current government in terms of power. He does, you know, he's there. But he's, he's their fall guy. He's their person. He's the person who gets to be the reason they can't do things when they actually just don't want to do them themselves. And then they don't have to have responsibility for it.
Anna Callahan 19:42
Yeah, that's, that's-- so this is talking about a whole topic that we're going to get into soon, which is, 'cause the premise of what you're saying is that the *they*, right, the people who this Republican governor is very convenient for, like, if they were deeply progressive, you know, Bernie/Warren types, that would not be-- would not be true.
Jordan Berg Powers 20:05
I don't even need them to be that if they were Biden Democrats! They would pass things. Like, you know, I don't know, I don't need to-- they don't even need to be Warren progressives. Like they could just do the things Biden wants to do: expand government spending, raise people's wages, invest in education, like I'd be fine with that.
Anna Callahan 20:23
Even with-- another interesting topic-- because even with all Biden's talk about bipartisanship, you know, he has been surprisingly willing to pass things that don't have, you know, Republican, Senatorial, support.
Jordan Berg Powers 20:38
But I want to argue solidly in the Democratic platform things. He's not passing radical progressive legislation, passing solidly things for which there are shared vision and shared values, and supposedly a shared platform to guide his thinking, right? Like he's not-- he's just doing basic Democratic ideas, which is you spend to get out of problems and you invest in people at the bottom and raise up their wages. It's very basic. It's old fashioned Keynesianism, right? And that's all he's doing. He's not-- and that's like what we're asking here. It's like what we're asking here.
Jonathan Cohn 21:11
As well as even like, [unintelligible] like Joe Biden, as is different, even though he doesn't want to tax rich people as much as I think that we should. Joe Biden has recently, he would like to tax rich people more. And like, it's always stunning. How like, like, outside of the context of pretty much the Fair Share Amendment, which is very important and we're fighting to get it on the ballot for next year. Most Democrats in the state and state like in our in our overly Democratic state legislature get really antsy at any mention of taxes.
Jordan Berg Powers 21:46
Yeah, so I think you get to this. So that's where you get to this weird place, right? To your point, Anna, and I'd love for you to expand on it. That the speaker, and the and the and the Governor Republic, opposite party, people are working together to get legislators that aren't, I would argue, ideologically invested in a project of making people's lives better. They're ideologically invested in the idea that these that power that the that the people in power should get to have power, right? Like they they're ideologically invested in power being the only decision makers, people with elite power people with, you know, already deep pockets and deep and deep influence that they are the ones that get to lead us and we all just need to sit down, shut up and listen to them. Right? Like, those are the people that they invested in. So in that sense, they you know, their ideology isn't-- isn't sort of parties, their ideology is power, and the powerful.
Anna Callahan 22:43
Yeah, we're gonna be talking a lot about those things.
Jonathan Cohn 22:48
Anna, to your point earlier, one thing that was striking to see last year, right, so Charlie Baker's allies created this super PAC, that spent quite a lot of money across across the last year on the state legislative races, as well as some other down ballot races across the state. And when you have a number of like rich Republican -ligned donors funding a PAC, your first thought would be these are people who are gonna they're just going to try to help flip seats, it's not that like flipping seats gets ya a whole lot here in Mass-- like Republicans flipping seats gets you a whole lot in Massachusetts.
Jonathan Cohn 23:22
But what was striking to see is that that that, that super PAC of Republican-aligned donors, and particularly people who are very close with the governor, helped spend money supporting a number of Democratic incumbents as well. So that when you had certain Democratic incumbents facing challengers from the left, that super PAC was happy to spend, spend some money, especially I think, on mail and on Facebook ads, boosting the Democratic incumbent, and not not showed something that many of us in the progressive face often complain about.
Jonathan Cohn 23:55
It was just putting up of the underlying kind of shared underlying consensus between the Governor and the Speaker of the House, that the Governor's allies would see it see it as in their best interest to prop up a month, like a number of Democratic incumbents in the House shows that, through many ways they don't view a number of those Democratic incumbents as actually a threat to what the Republican governor wants to do. Because those incumbents are largely going to do what the Speaker Speaker wants and kind of a "go along to get along" attitude, that's fairly dominant in the House, that system of power, especially power for the sake of power, and maintaining all the bits of access along with that, stays in place. And it helps it's kind of like a I scratch your back, you scratch mine kind of ecosystem of money and power, kind of operating on that. But it's just striking to see that the same superpac cropping up some some democratic legislators who would probably call themselves progressive and also funding sound like incredibly right wing republicans at this Same time, in general action races makes you really question about what the why those donors view them as habit as both benefiting the same.
Anna Callahan 25:10
Why are they friendly to the the purpose of as Jordan, as you said, of maintaining the power structure? So, next week, we are going to talk about the power that the Speaker has in the State House. And I can't wait to talk about that, because I think we're all, you know, pretty horrified, and excited to make sure people understand what's going on there. But, you know, this whole idea that we have to pour money into places where we could maybe just get to 50% Democrats, and then we allow our own state government to fail year after year after year, I hope that listeners will realize that we have a problem here and we can fix it.
Anna Callahan 26:00
So always thrilled, excited, loving being here with you both. And look forward to chatting with you next time.
Jordan Berg Powers 26:10
Thanks.
Jonathan Cohn 26:11
Awesome. Thank you.