Taking some swipes at Massachusetts Democrats

By Chuck Leddy | October 6, 2007

The 1991 comedy "Naked Gun 2 1/2" contains one of the funniest visual jokes in recent film history. A despondent Lieutenant Frank Drebin (played with bumbling genius by Leslie Nielsen) visits a depressing bar called The Blue Note to get drunk alone. The camera pans across the bar's bleak walls, where framed photographs show the burning Hindenburg, the sinking "Titanic," and finally a portrait of failed presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis.

In Jon Keller's "The Bluest State," the liberal politicians of Massachusetts, especially losers at the national level like Dukakis (1988) and John Kerry (2004), remain a running joke. Keller's contention is that Massachusetts politics is both disproportionately influential within the national Democratic Party and also uniquely dysfunctional, leading the national party into the proverbial ditch. A television and radio commentator on local politics, Keller isn't one to pull his punches. He refers to the Bay State's brand of liberalism as "impotent snake oil that doesn't deliver relief for the working-class people it purports to help the most."

Keller accuses liberals, especially Kerry ("a prototype of the spoiled boomer, free to indulge his narcissism at every turn") and the Kennedy clan, of an elitism that antagonizes working-class folks both locally and nationally. Keller says the soaring cost of housing is pushing working families out of Massachusetts, as are growing crime and tax rates.

And while Keller feels pocketbook and safety issues go woefully unaddressed, he points to gay marriage and abortion as central items on the state's political agenda, triggering ferocious, scorched-earth battles over issues that rarely affect working-class voters directly.

Keller argues that Shannon O'Brien's loss to Mitt Romney in the 2002 gubernatorial race was due to O'Brien's kowtowing to prochoice advocates, thus conceding the large political center on abortion to Romney. Keller also highlights the Rev. Eugene Rivers and his faith-based initiatives to quell gang violence in Boston. While Rivers's efforts have won plaudits nationally, their religious nature has "alarmed" many local liberals, notes Keller.

Keller collects all the usual suspects for his assault on the state's liberal political establishment, including the corrupt, mismanaged Big Dig, political correctness, rampant identity politics, and the hypocrisy of those who advocate loudly for fair housing and equal educational opportunity while living in affluent, lily-white suburbs with overwhelmingly white, well-financed school systems. Keller approvingly cites Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's humble salary, modest rhetorical skills, and willingness to put his home number in the phone book. Most shockingly, notes Keller, Menino refuses to view his current job as a stepping-stone to national political stardom.

Some of Keller's contentions seem over the top, as when he depicts Romney as some beleaguered Don Quixote fighting for the average Joe against the entrenched powers of Beacon Hill. But most of his barbs are well directed. Keller exposes the gaping hypocrisy between soaring, Kennedy-esque political ideals and the state's harsher realities, which are far removed from Camelot. Referring to himself as "a liberal who's been mugged," Keller calls for an end to "the silly, arrogant affectation that PC represents," and suggests that liberals drop into a Dunkin' Donuts or "hang out on the subway" on occasion to see how working-class people actually live.

"The Bluest State" argues that there is a growing alienation between the Democratic Party and working-class voters, a rift the Republicans have exploited for years. Keller hopes that Massachusetts Democrats will choose to look in the mirror and attend to the state's squeezed working-class families.