Tasini (4.00 / 1)

MyDD ignored Tasini when he ran against Hillary Clinton in '06.  It appears the tradition continues, despite his being far more progressive than either Gillibrand or Maloney.  I thought you believed in supporting progressives in primaries.

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by: Jay Gold @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 12:22:54 PM CDT

It's distressing (4.00 / 1)

I just gave Tasini money and I urge others to do the same.

https://secure.actblue.com/ent...

I want true-blue progressives in the Senate. These past few months should've taught us the problem with moderates and corporate "progressives" like Maloney. Now, make no mistake, she's much better than Gillibrand but as Chris says, she voted for the war. Like Hillary, she refused to apologize for it. She's also voted for many free trade deals, including the Peru FTA, which is already causing such problems.

When she cast her vote in the House in October 2002 giving the president authority to use military force to make Iraq give up its weapons, she said she believed the administration's assertions that Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein posed an imminent threat.

Still raw from the loss of 500 of her constituents in the Sept. 11, 2001
attacks on the World Trade Center, she attended intelligence briefings on
Iraq's stockpile of chemical and biological weapons. Officials detailed
scenarios in which thousands of New Yorkers were killed after terrorists
dropped chemical agents on the city. It turned her stomach, she said.

"All I had was the information before me," Maloney said. "I voted for what
I thought would protect the people I represent. You make a judgment of
what you believe is right."

Maloney stopped short of apologizing for her vote and said the United
States now has a responsibility to rebuild the country.

http://carolynmaloney.com/news...

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by: david mizner @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 14:00:49 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Tasini isn't a serious candidate (4.00 / 3)

and by that I mean that he didn't actually run the sort of campaign needed to have a chance to defeat Clinton. He is running in order to talk about the issues which is fine but for on-the-ground activists that are willing to work their tails off to get a candidate elected that means that he disqualifies himself from consideration.

There is no reason to contribute to or work your tail off for a candidate that isn't working their tail off for themselves.

If he does differently this time around then I'll withdraw the comment and say that he needs to be considered a serious candidate but until he takes himself seriously I don't see any reason why anyone else should.

Peace,

Andrew

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by: Andrew C White @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 15:30:15 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Fully agree (4.00 / 2)

There are candidates and then there are serious candidates.

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by: Adam Bink @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 16:42:38 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Tasini took 18% of the Primary vote from the "Goddess of Peace" (4.00 / 1)

He took 18% of the vote from a personality cult leader.  Do you really think he wasn't "working"?

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by: billyoc @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 16:54:42 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Come on! (4.00 / 1)

"Personality cult leader"? Must we relive the primary wars? I know a number of folks here have issues with Hillary Clinton (just as I did, even when I voted for her early last year). But come on, we need not resort to bashing her supporters as "cultists".

Want to save marriage equality in Maine? Ask me how! ;-)

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by: Andrew Davey @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 18:18:04 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Yes (0.00 / 0)

I guarentee it. He had absolutely no organizational presence in my 10 county congressional district. None.

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by: Andrew C White @ Thu Jul 02, 2009 at 13:32:24 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Any chance of a third entrant in either of these primaries? (0.00 / 0)

Is the field definitely clear to the left of Specter and Gillibrand?  Are there potential candidates with their fingers in the air who might hop in if the incumbent look wounded by the challenger has run into problems?  At what point in time does the money race make that almost impossible?

Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company: Religion, Politics, the Occasional Intersection of Both

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by: Anthony de Jesus @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 12:23:21 PM CDT

Doubtful that anyone else (serious) will jump in (0.00 / 0)

Specter and Gillibrand are well-funded incumbents backed by the establishment, including President Obama.  Hence, the primary fields in both elections have been as dry as a desert.  But in order for these primary challenges to be successful we need to make sure there's only one liberal candidate, otherwise we'll split the liberal vote.

Bill Kortz is running against Specter, but he's been practically invisible and there's no indication his challenge is serious.  Only Sestak has the will and the resources needed to dethrone Specter.  The one potential challenger who's truly liberal and even remotely viable, Joe Hoeffel, has already endorsed Sestak.

As for New York, the Schumer/Reid/Obama/Emanuel complex have already scared off everyone other than Maloney.  I don't see any reasons for us to complain about Maloney though; she seems to be a very liberal Representative aside from her vote for the Iraq war resolution (which other liberals voted for too).  For that matter Gillibrand's been pretty good on the issues as well, at least so far.

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by: liberalmaverick @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 15:58:37 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

OT - test (4.00 / 1)

This is only a test. I can't seem to post comments on Quick Hit entries, am trying to see if it works here.  

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by: Oaktown Girl @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 13:20:52 PM CDT

OK, well that's weird (0.00 / 0)

Can get my comments to post here, but not on Quick Hits.

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by: Oaktown Girl @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 13:24:32 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

DW-Nominate scores (4.00 / 2)

are still kind of a mystery to me, seeing how non-transparent they are, but they do go beyond 1.000 (and may not even be finite, since they seem to measure how much a person's record differs from all other members of their body in that particular session); Ron Paul, whose voting record is very much unlike that of anyone else's, is somewhere around a 1.400.

My other thought is that Gillibrand's DW-Nominate score for her House tenure isn't as useful a metric as her current Senate record, since, as Maloney points out, Gillibrand has "evolved." Unfortunately, there's no DW-Nom scores this early in the session, but Progressive Punch scores have been calculated, and Gillibrand is at 97.81 for the 111th Congress, which slots her in at #16. The four Senators closest to her on PP are Whitehouse (98.70), Harkin (98.12), Levin (97.52), and Leahy (97.48), so by treating these guys as a cohort and averaging out their DW-Nom scores from the 110th (- 0.531, - 0.569, - 0.499, and - 0.490, respectively), Gillibrand seems to be operating around - 0.522 this session. (Although I should add "for now" to that last sentence, as she's on her best behavior right now.)

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by: Crisitunity @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 15:50:00 PM CDT

I wouldn't call DW-NOMINATE non-transparent (0.00 / 0)

Although reading an explanation of it, I would say that it is much too complex to be understood by the average poster here.

One possible explanation for someone like Gillibrand changing in DW-NOMINATE score upon moving to the Senate is that members of the House feel much more electoral pressure to bring their votes in line with the views of their district since they are up for election every two years, but Senators feel less pressure due to longer terms, so they are more likely to vote their conscience.  Some Senators will move leftward as a result and some might move rightward.

Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company: Religion, Politics, the Occasional Intersection of Both

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by: Anthony de Jesus @ Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 17:20:42 PM CDT

[ Parent ]