Last Tuesday, the Commonwealth held a primary to determine which lucky candidates would go on to represent their parties in the upcoming special election to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s senate seat. To say the slate of available choices was anemic would be an understatment in the extreme, but that was to be expected considering the size of the shoes these folks were attempting to fill.

Some of my more radically-minded brethren dismiss the idea of voting, as it only serves to endorse an intrinsically flawed system. I tend to be more pragmatically functionalist in my radical politics. Voting might not cure the rot, but if it can change things even slightly for the better, it is worth the effort (and all-too-frequent) heartbreak. Hazarding real suffering in the now versus the vague promises of radical change later on is not in my nature, and contrarian spite against a hated candidate can be motive enough to cast a ballot.

Voting should not encompass the entirety of an individual’s political participation, but rather one of many tools employed towards one’s specific ideological ends. The danger of summarily rejecting the system is that one effectively cedes the contest to those willing to exploit it toward their own ends, effecting isolating oneself while the opposition loots with impunity. Better to flip the bird with a protest vote than to cast no vote at all.

That said, there’s a good chance I’ll be sitting this special election out. I settled on Rep. Mike Capuano for a Democratic primary candidate, as he had a fairly consistent record of “liberal” (read: “as good as you’ll get in this country, leftie”) positions — not perfect, but good enough for my conscience to let me sleep at night. Capuano was trounced by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley in an election with a 20% turnout. (Ted would have been proud of his constituents.)

Barring some major misstep from the Coakley camp, the election is Coakley’s to lose. While it’s mildly amusing to watch the local media outlets attempt to spin the GOP’s candidate — Scott Brown, a.k.a. Mitt Romney 2.0 — as a viable opponent, Coakley has a lock on Middlesex County, Boston’s northern and western suburban sprawl where the state’s center of population is located. This isn’t to say the pundits and analysts should treat the election as a done deal, only that the public would be better served by an actual discussion of the candidates strengths and weakness instead of the county fair wrassling match the election is currently being played up as. (Seriously, what’s the point at playing up Brown’s margin of victory when his primary opponent was a perennial office-seeker whose only memorable accomplishment was crashing his car while doing a cell phone interview with a talk radio station?)

Coakey might be the heir apparent to Ted’s seat, a strongly pro-choice candidate, and another welcome step on the road to gender parity in the senate, but she will never, ever get my vote. Her involvement in the Fells Acres abuse case, in which she put her political future ahead of pursuit of justice assured that.

Whatever happened or didn’t happen to the kids involved, there was more than enough questionable aspects of the prosecution’s case, the means by which information was obtained from the children, and the similarities between the nature of the accusations made and other “Satanic abuse” allegations that later turned out to be pure hokum for a truly conscientious DA/AG to revisit the matter…not shove it under a rug with a negotiated early release of the accused predicated on an extremely convenient gag order.

I’m pragmatic, but not so pragmatic as to accomodate such actions from a potential United States Senator. Nor can I forget the little shindig thrown by the Middlesex DA’s office I attended back when Coakley had the job. Part of the evening was spent listening to Coakley and reps from her office boast about getting the courts to see eye to eye with them on expanded powers of search and seizure and the erosion of Miranda rights, the memory of which causes me to grit my teeth that much harder when I hear Coakley the aspiring senator state her opposition to the Partiot Act (except for those times she supported it).

So fuck that noise. If I do vote in the special election, it will be a write-in vote for a candidate far more qualified for the job.

Recommended listening: The Insane – Politics (from a 1981 single)

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Purchased at In Your Ear’s Allston location (back when it was a couple doors down from The Paradise) during one of the coldest days during the winter of 1992. Great punk music, like waiting for an inbound trolley on a January evening with arctic winds blasting down the length of Comm Ave, isn’t something one ever forgets.

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