Recently, one of the many interactions I have with such folks on Facebook reminded me of this concept. I see two kinds of internet partisans; faith-based, true believers who merely spread the gospel and “tactical” partisans who understand that their commentary and “cut & pastes” are without substance or actual probative value, but who nonetheless dutifully spread the word. Recently, one of my many right wing Facebook friends admitted to me in an otherwise typical exchange that he intended to besmirch Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren as “hard as he could every day” without reference to facts, reality, or reasonableness, because he desperately wants Senator Scott Brown to win re-election and “every vote counts.” He was essentially admitting that he was well aware that the charges and rumors he was helping to distribute were very likely false and definitely irrelevant, but that the possibility of turning off even one potential Warren voter or encouraging one more Brown voter made his consciously deceptive “tactics” worthwhile.

You might think this Facebook partisan was a Brown campaign operative, or a conservative political activist. In fact, to my knowledge he has no significant organized connections to any campaign, interest group, or party, other than his voter registration and maybe an NRA membership. Nonetheless, this very passionate hater of anyone or anything “liberal” spends time EVERY day posting and responding to political postings on Facebook with very aggressive, dishonest, and hate-filled messages directed toward President Obama, Democrats, and now also toward Elizabeth Warren. What gives?

Essentially, I consider this fellow to be a prime example of a “trickle-down tactical partisan” because he is knowingly doing the work of a professional partisan tactician without material compensation or conventional recognition. He’s not just spouting off hand or impromptu conservative opinions while engaged in daily social conversation. He is consciously and expressly using social media to articulate and distribute partisan propaganda with the hope that doing so could yield measurable benefits to Republican candidates for public office. Not only does he seem to understand that his role is to spread lies and irresponsible claims so that his party’s campaigns and candidates can maintain the appearance of clean hands or at least plausible deniability; he is happy and proud to have been so deputized, even though no one actually pinned a badge on him.

So what drives these trickle-down tactical partisans? Why is it worth so much time and effort for them to appear to their Facebook friends as MVPs on Team Left or Right in America’s political culture war? Clearly, there are no direct material benefits and ironically many such folks are fighting against their own economic interests (including the fellow I’ve been describing). The benefits appear to be entirely social and relevant to the identity and self-esteem of these amateur Machiavelli’s. They have no interest in real persuasion or even in the intellectual stimulation of argument. They seem to want simply to reinforce their socio-cultural group memberships and to enjoy the camaraderie of fellow travelers, so to speak. They operate online like bullies on a school playground, though with a much more developed sense of self-righteousness. Their interest in actual political outcomes is disconnected from rational considerations and is essentially symbolic. The world is divided between good and bad people and their side of the culture war represents the good folks, making even the symbolic victory of their side’s “political affiliates” (the two major parties, for example) an important event that reflects well on their personal in-group identity and their group’s social standing.

An interesting question for another day is; what does it take to extricate a trickle-down tactical partisan from their voluntary servitude to political masters who don’t actually give a damn about them? What arguments or incentives could persuade such folks to reframe their perception of the political world as well as their place in it?

In his first run for the mayoralty in 1914 Curley called the powerful Democratic City Committee a group of “empty eggshells” and labeled the ward bosses a “collection of chowderheads.” He termed the leading citizens of the Good Government Association “Goo Goos” and business leaders the “State Street wrecking crew.” To Curley the refined Brahmin aristocracy was “clubs of female faddists, old gentlemen with disordered livers, or pessimists croaking over imaginary good old days and ignoring the sunlit present.”

When the incumbent Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald reversed himself and decided to run for re-election, Curley was ready. The challenger knew that Honey Fitz was enjoying the charms of a woman not his wife, the young and lovely “Toodles” Ryan. Did Curley assign the scandal to his press secretary for a discrete leak to a favored news reporter? No, no. He announced that he would deliver a series of lectures including “Great Lovers, from Cleopatra to Toodles.” Fitzgerald dropped out of the race, clearing the path for the election of Curley.

The day after he was sworn in the self-identified “mayor of the people” enraged his Yankee detractors by proposing to sell their beloved Public Garden and employ the funds to buy new public gardens in neighborhoods “more easily accessible to the general public.”

Curley would not be hemmed in by the city’s establishment. He declared that “The day of the Puritan has passed; the Anglo-Saxon is a joke; a new and better America is here.” What Boston needs is “men and mothers of men, not gabbing spinsters and dog-raising matrons in federation assembled.”

Curley was defeated for re-election but he came roaring back in 1922. Ward boss Martin Lomasney put up John R. Murphy, who was endorsed by the Goo Goos. Curley derided Murphy as “an old mustard plaster that has been stuck on the back of the people for fifty years” and was returned to office.

In 1929 Curley ran for a third term against Irish Catholic attorney Frederick Mansfield. To Curley, Mansfield was “as spectacular as a four-day-old codfish and as colorful as a lump of mud.” Curley won again.

James Michael Curley didn’t have an army of communications specialists and consultants, and he topped out at a high school education. But he was a proud attendee of the Staley School, later the Staley College of the Spoken Word. And you have to admit, “clubs of female faddists, [and] old gentlemen with disordered livers” beats “hypocrite” as a political gibe any day.

*Quotations are from Thomas H. O’Connor, The Boston Irish. On Curley and the Staley School, see Jack Beatty, The Rascal King.

DeFranco was back in the news because she crossed the threshold needed to get her name on the primary ballot.  She did this in almost stealth fashion as the attention in this race has been on Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren.  She forced a primary against tremendous odds.  That’s energy that other candidates need to try to capture.

Her success has caused unnecessary fear among the nervous nellies: those Democrats who shudder at the thought of a fellow Democrat harming Warren.  They wish to only focus on Brown.  The nervous types don’t like anything that deviates from the script.  They are the ones who knew, just knew, that the long and hard-fought Obama-Clinton race of 2008 would destroy the chances of Democrats to win the White House in 2008.

DeFranco has made this a race on the Democratic side.  She’s progressive not only in policy outlook but in party outlook as well.  Too often of late party leaders in Washington have tried to dictate nominees to state and local organizations.  It is not a critique of Warren to note that once party bosses in Washington and Boston made it clear that she was their candidate, most other viable candidates gained little traction and were very quickly shown the exit.

What an odd turn of events, particularly for progressives.

Progressivism began as more than just a policy regime designed to ameliorate the social and economic inequalities that existed in turn of the 20th century America.  It was also an anti-party movement designed to strike at the power party bosses had at their disposal to dispense nominations, control patronage, and obstruct national regulation over state and local affairs.  Primary elections emerged as one of the most powerful tools used by progressives to make parties answerable to the party faithful.  Ordinary voters gained the right to choose party nominees and that right has been fairly sacrosanct ever since.

Later in our history, some party organizations came to believe that party leaders had become too weak in the process of choosing nominees and attempts were made to restore some of their power: Super Delegates are just one example.  In Massachusetts, a candidate must meet a low threshold of support in a Convention in order to have their name appear on the primary ballot. This was designed, in part, to ensure that nominees had a measure of support from their own party and some relationship to the party leaders who might be essential for governing.

DeFranco is likely to meet that 15% and ensure that the progressive party in Massachusetts lives up to the expectations of earlier generations of progressives.  Democrats should not dismiss her: she is a passionate defender of progressive values, she is the only candidate who speaks with a deep knowledge of immigration law, and if she is bested by Warren, DeFranco voters won’t bolt.  They will turn out to vote for Warren.

Expect a barn burner of a speech from DeFranco at the Democratic Convention in June and a hardy band of volunteers storming the state afterward.  Exactly the type of grass-roots activism that helped to begin the progressive movement.

Let me begin by pointing out the obvious: no one expects the whole of the Democratic party in Massachusetts to be able to stay on a single message: it’s far too big and unwieldy with pockets of power all over the place.  Fine.

Still, O’Flaherty succeeds this morning in getting Democrats off the anti-Wall Street message by reminding voters of another institution they hate: Beacon Hill.  Second, he provides yet another opening for state Republicans to emerge as the anti-political corruption party, should they ever get their act together and take up this mantle.  Third, his actions bring to mind the reasons why Mitt Romney was once well liked here.

This all takes some effort.

In Frank Phillips’ piece in this morning’s Globe we learn that the House approved a budget amendment that contained a proposal to move the Chelsea District Court from the supervision of the state district court to the Boston Municipal Court.  Fair enough.  Now the checklist:

• There was no debate on the proposal and no public notice;
• The vote took place late at night;
• The Chief Magistrate of the Chelsea Court, Kevin Murphy, was recently disciplined by State District Court Chief Judge Lynda Connolly for failing to handle evidence properly;
• Kevin Murphy is a good friend and ally of . . . [wait for it], Eugene O’Flaherty;
• The Boston Municipal Court is still viewed as a paragon of patronage politics;

O’Flaherty claims the move is all about efficiency.  Then calls questions about the proposal “gossipy and childlike.”

Let’s go out on a limb and suggest that O’Flaherty’s close and personal relationship with the Clerk Magistrate had nothing to do with the proposal.  If so, why wouldn’t O’Flaherty take reasonable steps to promote transparency.  If the Chair of the Judiciary Committee has a close and personal relationships with political figures who will be directly impacted by his proposals, perhaps the House might choose a different Chair?  (In fairness, O’Flaherty is leaving his position this year, though not because of patronage politics). Or perhaps the Chair might recognize the poor message he sends by sheparding a proposal that can be viewed as a rebuke to Lynda Connolly and an assist to a  friend recently reprimanded and under investigation.

The Globe piece goes on to detail the patronage practices that Legislators have inflicted on the judiciary, often with disastrous consequences.  O’Flaherty should have dropped this issue or let a colleague bring it forward.  Further, he should have demanded that, because of his personal relationship with Murphy, the debate be done in the bright sunshine of the day and without his own participation.  If the issue is really efficiency, they why bring it up in the dead of night without debate?  Without public notice? If questions about his relationship to Murphy are “childlike” they why the sad spectacle of another midnight deal?

No, the questions again swirling around a senior Democrat in the Legislature on the issue of patronage are not childlike.  Representative O’Flaherty opted to remind voters exactly what it is they hate about Beacon Hill politics.  Oh, and he provided a nice reminder for why they, once, liked Mitt Romney. It was Romney who tried to right the patronage wrongs at Boston Municipal Court only to be stopped by Democrats in the Legislature.

Forty-four percent in the poll of likely voters identified as Catholic, 26% as Protestant or other Christian, 3% other religion, and 20% as None/Atheist/Agnostic (often grouped as “seculars”).

Steve Koczela of MassInc Polling has a good post Does religion matter in the Brown-Warren race? The poll did not ask about the Blunt amendment but Steve’s post suggests it is a religious and a woman’s issue. Brown leads among Catholics by 46%-39% but only splits with Warren among Catholic women. That leads to another interesting aspect of the race, Brown’s continuing good showing within subgroups of women voters.

Senator Brown’s overall favorable/unfavorable is 46%-33% and he does well with Catholic and Protestant voters, and not as well with seculars. Warren is 34%-25% overall. She is 30%-30% among Catholics, 31%-23% among Protestants, and 52%-4% –yes, 4% unfavorable – among seculars.

Warren has room for growth with low income voters. In the less than $25K group she is only 26%-25% favorability. But 21% of those voters are undecided and another 23% have not heard of Warren. Brown’s favorable among the lowest income group is only 29% favorable-34% unfavorable, with 19% undecided and 19% not having heard of him. These are relatively low information voters but Democrats do well with lower income groups.

The poll also asked if Massachusetts is heading in the right direction or is off on the wrong track.  Women are a lot more optimistic than are men. Women are 54%-34% in favor of right direction; men are only 46%-45%. As MassInc’s recent report on Massachusetts’ Lost Decade found, lower educated men have been especially hard hit by the recession.  Young people 18-29 see things as heading in the right direction by 57%-29%, as do the 30-44 year old group by 62%-32%. Those 60 and over are narrowly divided 45%-43%, but the 45=59 group is negative: 38% right track, 50% wrong track. Democrats see it 63%-27% right track, but Republicans are negative 43%-52%, and Independents even more pessimistic, 38%-50%. Interestingly, low income and high income people are the most positive in their outlook with the middle income groups more doubtful.

Oh, and the poll has Warren with 43%, Brown with 41%, a statistical tie.

We still have no real insight into the impact of the Elizabeth Warren as Cherokee story, and only tentative insights about the Blunt amendment on contraceptives issue. These have been the two big controversies so far.

As Professor Ubertaccio wrote yesterday the JP Morgan fiasco that saw the bank suffer $2 billion in trading losses has allowed financial regulator Warren to regain her footing. Democrats rallied, calling on Senator Brown to disclose any fund raising ties he has to JP Morgan Chase. At the same time the Democrats were prodding the senator on any connection to the ailing bank, the Brown campaign was also holding a conference call with reporters to push the Warren as Native American flap. Quite a juxtaposition.

Now ask yourself: Did the world face a depression in 2008 due to professors misstating their heritage, or because of under-regulated, out-of-control financial institutions?

Elizabeth Warren has called upon Jamie Dimon–the embattled and soon to be former Chief Executive of J.P. Morgan Chase–to resign from the Board of Directors of the New York Fed.  Dimon oversaw a $2.3 billion trading loss and Warren publicly called for his resignation.  Her statement declared “We need to stop the cycle of bankers taking on risky activities, getting bailed out by the taxpayers, then using their army of lobbyists to water down regulations . . . We need a tough cop on the beat so that no one steals your purse on Main Street or your pension on Wall Street.”

Her demand has been picked up by media outlets all over the country, featured prominently in the Washington Post today, and ensures that conversations about Warren’s candidacy will compare her crusade against Dimon’s poor leadership and not the issue of her heritage.

This doesn’t happen simply because she’s a Senate candidate.  It happens because she has spent a lifetime working on issues of finance, regulatory oversight, and consumer protection.  She has a platform that few other politicians have on these issues.

Her opponents are likely to try to squeeze another week out of the story of her heritage.  They will increasingly belittle themselves if they continue to milk the issue beyond its natural shelf life.  Voters who are moved by that story have been so moved and her polling numbers don’t seem to have gone into the downward spiral some of her most ardent critics had hoped for.  With a well-timed call for Dimon’s resignation, I suspect her campaign will have regained some crucial footing.

There are a finite number of weeks a candidate has to beat a popular incumbent,” Payne said. “If you spend a week on your Indian heritage and a week on tax returns, you’re not making the case against the incumbent. That’s the problem. The Warren camp has been made the incumbent and Brown has been made the challenger. It’s been a role reversal.

If the Warren camp has been put into the position of the incumbent and Brown’s camp into the position of a challenger, then that’s GOOD for the Warren camp. The idea that the controlling narrative in this race will center on candidate character is very unlikely. Who are these voters Payne worries about that will pull the lever for President Obama and then think, “I don’t know about that Warren gal, she seems a bit disingenuous,” right before pulling the lever for Scott Brown.

All three Masspoliticsprofs recently attended the New England Political Science Association’s annual meeting. At that conference research on the causes and effects of America’s increasingly polarized politics was discussed on several panels. One of the big take aways is that this polarization narrative is deeply embedded in campaigns and the media coverage of campaigns. A byproduct of this saturation of polarization imagery and rhetoric is the increased likelihood that races will be “base” elections, not fierce battles for the mythical “swing vote.”

The decision of the President to publicly endorse gay marriage at this time may well represent a decisive acknowledgement of this dynamic by the Obama campaign. Since the Romney-Obama matchup will undoubtedly color and frame the Brown-Warren race in the fall FAR more than will personalized politics, the polarization narrative will be re-enforced pushing “undecided” voters to see themselves as members of an “us” against a “them,” in which the two sides are distinguished by partisan, not personal, values. Imagine watching a Red Sox-Yankee game at Fenway. Do you really think there are several thousand Derek Jeter fans in the stands rooting for the Sox to win the game but for Jeter to hit home runs and turn double plays? It’s true that a lot of Sox fans like Jeter. I like him. He’s a great player and seems like a nice guy. He plays hard and fair. He’s model handsome. But I do not root for him at Fenway.

Voters in this environment “sort” themselves into a party. Warren’s campaign is very well situated for this polarization narrative, while Brown has no choice but to attempt to somehow destroy Warren personally before the national circus comes to town, so to speak. Warren is in the position of an incumbent, and although she is not personally well known to Massachusetts voters yet, she isn’t unknown either, and because she has resources that most Senate challengers do not (i.e. national exposure, very strong ticket topper, and lots of cash), she doesn’t need to go into war room mode to counter Brown’s present efforts to discredit her. She merely has to stay on message (economic populism & style versus substance) and build up her resources for the fall campaign. The first TV ads in the race are telling. Brown is up with a “bio” piece heavy on regular guy and “independence” (i.e. Oh mythical swing voter, look at me). Warren’s ad goes right after Washington Republicans and Wall Street and is heavy on economic populism.

There is nothing wrong with Payne’s logic and his conclusion is perfectly reasonable, all things being equal. However, this election has several peculiar elements that allow Warren to avoid reactive campaigning. She’s in the driver’s seat, not Brown. The Salon.com piece in which Payne and other Democratic insiders are said to be nervous about the race also points out that Warren’s campaign is being run by Doug Rubin “who masterminded Gov. Deval Patrick’s two improbable victories – both based on positive campaigning and avoiding negative attacks.” That ain’t for nothin.

While I realize that fretting and self condemnation are encoded in the DNA of Democratic partisans, in this case they should trust the “long ball” strategy and get over their PTSD from the Coakley campaign debacle. Though the polls in this race are too early to be significant, and not sufficiently precise in their efforts to identify “likely voters,” there is nothing in them hinting at real trouble for Warren. In the latest Rasmussen poll, a poll generally friendlier to Republicans and the poll in this race with the most sophisticated effort to get at “likely voter” opinion, the race is a dead heat.