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Reason 1) Deval Patrick sucks.   A lot.  The overly political hirings and firings have shown that he has turned somewhat corrupt.  This would be forgivable if he accomplished things, but he has failed to do anything meaningful.  Ethics reform failed, and we only got a watered down version.  Instead of the gas tax, we got a sales tax.  The list goes on and on.

2) Tim Cahill is not a viable alternative.  He is corrupt, engaging in indirect pay-to-play in a DiMasi-esque manner.

3) Both Republican candidates are not your average Republican.  Neither of them support across the board spending cuts, preferring mere streamlining.  They both have various issues they are liberal on.  Christy Mihos supports expanding the MBTA massively, with a Blue Line Expansion to Lynn, the creation of a light rail service to replace the Silver Line in Roxbury, and the South Coast Rail Link.  Charlie Baker supports gay rights (his running mate, Senate Minority Leader. Richard Tisei, is openly gay), pension reform, education reform (and I will argue here that supporting charter schools is a progressive reform, despite what the teachers’ unions say [c.f. Alan Khazei's position on education]), and some form of healthcare reform, however watered down (although a part of that is switching MassHealth to a managed care model, which I feel would be disastrous).

And, the most important reason:

4)  Regardless of who wins the gubernatorial election, the General Court is still in charge.  And Democrats have a supermajority in both houses of the General Court

After Tim Cahill’s appearance on On The Record this weekend, Deval is doing some preemption to try to save his hide.  That show saw Cahill using the first Marian Walsh attack of the election, and also a spending cut attack (Cahill says Deval hasn’t cut enough spending).  Knowing that Walsh, Aloisi, Grabauskas, and other mistakes will be a defining issue of this campaign, Deval said this yesterday: “Fear is going to be used as a tool in this campaign.  You watch it. I will.’’  By saying this, he is attempting to preempt his opponents from going negative on him.  It is an interesting strategy, but I don’t think it will work.  Unfortunately, there is too much to be used against him.  My prediction one year out is that the Walsh hiring will be brought up by all 3 opponents, as it is a major example of Deval’s cronyism.  I predict that the Democrats will hold steady in both houses of the General Court, but that we’ll lose the corner office.