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He’s saying that the district is more conservative than it was, and he can’t win re-election.

Whatever happened in the rest of the old district Barney was always going to win the primary because of the liberals in Newton and Brookline and he was always going to win the general election because New Bedford at the other end of the district would always give a lot of votes to the Democrats.

They weren't necessarily liberals in New Bedford, but they were overwhelmingly Democrats. Now that New Bedford's in another district, there's a chance that the district could be more competitive. Some of the towns along I-495 that are included in the new district and weren't in the old one just might go for a Republican.

I hope he’s right, but I suspect it’s due more to the fact that he doesn’t want to expose himself publicly given the mood of the electorate.

Barney's messes were fresher last time and didn't give him any trouble at the polls. The man has no shame, and voters, whether they're yellow dog Democrats in New Bedford or die hard liberals in Newton and Brookline, didn't hold him to any kind of standard.

Barney's a classic example of somebody who came in as an outsider and a reformer and ended up more corrupt than the old machine. He has all the arrogance of an old ward-heeler about power and adds the intellectual arrogance of a Harvard liberal.

“...he doesn’t want to expose himself publicly...”

Now that sounds kind of creepy.

Uh, maybe he doesn’t want to face the public in the light of day, but somehow I don’t think he has enough moral sense not to expose himself publicly. LOL

He’s saying that the district is more conservative than it was, and he can’t win re-election. I hope he’s right, but I suspect it’s due more to the fact that he doesn’t want to expose himself publicly given the mood of the electorate.

I agree with your suspicion. Recall that in the last election cycle he 1.) had a GOP opponent who actively used his culpability in the financial meltdown against him and 2.) actually admitted to the Boston Globe (or maybe it was the Herald) that he assumed the Bush Admin warnings on Fannie and Freddie were just politics, so he played politics right back.

If he was looking at a race that he would win by only 5 points, he'd know that he'd get the cr*p kicked out of him so thoroughly that even in winning there'd be negative cascading consequences throughout Dem races - not only would he have to raise a ginormous amount of money (that could go elsewhere), the heightened emphasis on the role he played in enabling the behaviors that led to the meltdown would command multiple national news cycles. IOW he'd have a Pyrrhic victory that would damage other races ...