Asymmetrical Information

Good article from the Boston

Good article from the Boston Herald on why the Democrats lost Massachusetts. I think it has wider application to the party across the nation.

The Democratic Party is indeed a big tent, so large it seems to include virtually every politician in the state. But what does it stand for? Outgoing Senate President Thomas Birmingham and House Speaker Thomas Finneran are almost opposites on a wide range of issues. Yet each calls himself a Democrat. Aside from a desire for power, is there any common bond?

Perhaps there is none. And perhaps that was the real flaw in O'Brien's campaign. She was standard-bearer for a party that is spread too thin, a party that too much defines itself as an amalgamation of interest groups rather than by some coherent political philosophy. Unlike, say, Jill Stein, O'Brien had no overarching cause with which to capture the public imagination.

And so, with nothing uniquely substantive to say, O'Brien ended up running a campaign based on style. On Election Day, as it turned out, she just wasn't in fashion.