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DAVID S. BERNSTEIN
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Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s credentials, support, and savvy make her almost untouchable — and she knows it.
Elizabeth Warren was the only senator on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, aside from the chair and ranking minority, to show up at last Thursday's hearing on indexing the minimum wage to inflation.
Talking Politics
It's no surprise that the coming weekend's Saint Patrick's Day celebrations have become politically charged, given the extraordinary convergence of electoral events visiting South Boston.
Talking Politics
Steve Lynch is winning back much of the union support that left him in 2009.
Talking Politics
It's a matter of political decorum: when an officeholder is running for higher office, you wait until the election has been won before publicly coveting the resulting vacancy.
It wasn't just that Scott Brown announced he was not running in the special US Senate election — it was that it quickly became evident that he was not handing the job off to another Republican.
A huge year in politics could see the next generation of South Boston political legends emerge — or get swept aside.
Twenty years since a Hyde Park Italian-American succeeded Ray Flynn, South Boston retains its public perception as the city's nexus of political power.
This week, as Tom Menino gave his State of the City address, Boston politicos scrutinized him carefully for signs that might foretell an end to his 20-year reign.
Few parts of Massachusetts government need additional spending as badly as transportation — or have as publicly visible deficiencies.
Congressman Ed Markey's announcement that he will run in the upcoming special election for US Senate was quickly followed by a choreographed show of institutional backing, from Vicki Kennedy, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and even John Kerry, holder of the soon-to-be-vacated seat Markey desires.
Talking Politics
The nation has just suffered through fiscal-cliff negotiations that left nobody, on either side of the aisle, happy with the results or the process.
Talking Politics
As word circulated on Thursday, December 13, that Susan Rice was withdrawing her name from consideration for secretary of state, it was like a 2013 starting gun going off in Massachusetts.
Obituaries for the Massachusetts Republican Party have been written many times — I've contributed several items to that genre myself.
Talking Politics
The Massachusetts Medical Society's strident opposition to medical marijuana helped prevent passage in the legislature, but could not defeat the ballot initiative.
Talking Politics
I take the blackout as a sign that the universe wants these smart and savvy yet secluded and out-of-touch campaign elites to hold their tongues — and learn some lessons from what ordinary people have been trying, collectively, to tell them: that voters know more about the country's mood than the campaign strategists do.
Through much of 2012, the local political media — myself included — were a bit distracted by the big-name, big-money campaigns of Mitt Romney, Scott Brown, and Elizabeth Warren.
This was supposed to be the calm after the storm.
The fire this time
On LGBT rights, civil liberties, economic inequity, immigration, criminal justice, labor organizing, money in politics, and voting rights, the Obama administration let progressives down time and time again. And who's to say Obama's second term won't be the same as the first?
The vote totals that poured in through the state secretary's office November 6 provided one set of winners (Elizabeth Warren, John Tierney, Joe Kennedy III, medical marijuana) and losers (Scott Brown, Richard Tisei, medical suicide). But there were plenty of other victories and defeats in Bay State politics last Tuesday.
As I write this column, a campaign-weary Commonwealth awaits the end of a year-long, roughly $80 million Senate race that seems to have been on the front pages — and in every commercial break — for as long as we can remember.
Our hour-by-hour breakdown
Nobody needs convincing of how much is at stake in Tuesday’s elections.
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