In Massachusetts we’ve got a hotly contested three-way gubernatorial race between the incumbent, Deval Patrick, Charlie Baker, a former health insurance CEO, and Tim Cahill, the present treasurer of the commonwealth.

 Patrick’s biggest liability, aside from the fact that he is short and ornery and has a voice that is white enough that he could have been the first black man in the cast in Friends, is the fact that he’s been in office during a precipitous drop in prosperity and employment and is running as an incumbent and close friend of the president at a time when both are about as popular as kids who eat their own poop. 

The independent candidate in the race is Tim Cahill, the current treasurer of Massachusetts.  Cahill, a lifelong Democrat, abandoned his party last year in order to avoid running in a primary against Patrick but since making the decision, also realized it freed him up to have a confusing platform of xenophobia and slashing government spending, except when such spending relates to unions of any kind, pension reform or infrastructure projects, or building schools or anything else.  While he has used most of his time in the limelight to enunciate often-incoherent and contradictory positions, he also used some of his time to create his own negative press by asked for a Democratic

ballot to vote in last week’s primary after spending most of the last six months trying to fit in at Tea Party rallies.

 The third candidate in the race, Charlie Baker, is probably the best man for the job, but has thus far failed to capture the people’s imagination largely because he doesn’t have one, as indicated by the fact that he speaks entirely in platitudes.  In Charlie’s world, there is no such thing as speaking on the fly - there are only rehearsed sayings and buzz words. 

When Charlie talks about the governor making short-term fixes and not addressing fundamental problems he talks about “kickin the can down the street”.  While we are all clever enough to understand the metaphor, voters are left with the impression that what Baker plans to do is pick up the can, and then say something trite.

When he talks about making fundamental changes and reforming state government, which is pretty much all he talks about, he refers to his interest in “takin’ a run” at X, Y or Z inefficiency or chides the  governor for failing to “take a run” at U, V or W.  Aside from the fact that it’s annoying that he uses phraseology most people reserve for pick-up sports or discussing girls at a bar, it’s also insulting that he fails to articulate his words.  It’s one thing for George Bush to talk about “bringin freedom” and so forth, but a Harvard-educated former CEO should at least be able to pronounce all of the syllables used in his gym teacher rhetoric.  

But without a doubt, Baker’s worst tendency, and the one that may keep him in the private sector watching Deval kick the can, is his inexplicable and criminally-frequent use of the uber-low-rent “at the end of the day” which should be reserved exclusively for athletes and sports radio callers but which Baker works into nearly every answer, question or statement regardless of whether it makes any sense.  The phrase “at the end of the day” is a replacement for other stupid and unnecessary sayings such as  “when all is said and done” and “the bottom line” and “what it boils down to” and “when push comes to shove”, all of which are verbal ticks which convey either a reluctance to directly attack a person or idea, a lack of confidence in one’s argument, or lack of confidence that one’s audience is paying attention, which for him is not a bad guess.   

In last night’s debate he said it five times in a single response and once, used it to bookend his other standby “quite frankly” which is also worth a kick in the nuts.  Throughout the course of the debate he used it at least 30 times, and would have used it more if a quarter of the time hadn’t been wasted on Green Rainbow Candidate Jill Stein and her useless comments about standardized testing policy being good for corporate boardrooms and other ridiculous contentions that make liberals like me wish she’d go back to homeopathy or whatever she does.  

This should be Baker’s race to lose.  He’s only a few points behind, and polls show less than half of voters even know who he is.  My advice to him is to keep kickin’ the can down the street, preferably in silence,  because at the end of the day, it’s all about the putting points on the board, and if he spends too much time talking, Deval will have to wait another four years to join a sitcom.