Today's a very heavy New Hampshire Senate day. I criticized NH Senate candidate Katrina Swett a few months ago, and then today Jeanne Shaheen felt the mighty wrath of OpenLeft. And since this discussion started, I've learned from the comments that Senate candidate Steve Marchand and Shaheen are or have been associated with the DLC (and Swett is a LieberDem, of course). It's not a good scene in establishment-land in New Hampshire, though that shouldn't be surprising as there was a rather abrupt transition from conservative anti-tax New Hampshire to Bush-bashing hippie mecca from 2000-2006. Politicians in the Granite state must have whiplash, and apparently 'granite state' has been dropped in favor of 'sandal-wearing tie-dye state that bums weed off of Vermont'.
Anyway, despite former New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Kathy Sullivan's admirable defense of Shaheen in the comments, these politicians are obvious tools. Apparently, we're supposed to believe that DLC-aligned tax cutting hawk turned antiwar progressive with no explanation shows character, or something. As far as my criticism goes, somehow Jeanne Shaheen's stated support of Bush's tax cuts or the Iraq war is actually Republican plot because it's on Youtube and posted on a right-wing blog, and also someone put it on a wiki and that person is mean.
As it happens, Joe Trippi posted his endorsement today of former astronaut Jay Buckey for NH Senate, so I surfed around Buckey's site to see what the fuss was about. It turns out that Buckey is running a quirky campaign and has neat ideas and an intellectual 'big picture' frame. Check out some of his youtube clips. Net neutrality is core to the new economy, so I like that he's got a thirty second video on that topic. He also covers global warming with a strong focus on energy (and Apollo Alliance framing). My favorite video is his discussion of globalization, where he links it to education, health care, R&D, and retirement security. Buckey's a scientist (doctor), and has an optimist progressive framework that I found really compelling. Some of that is that he's a progressive techie guy and I'm a progressive blogger guy, so there's an obvious tribal affinity.
Anyway, Buckey looks like a really cool choice for Senate. He's more Shea-Porter than Hodes, and a kind of nice fit for a newly hippie Hampshire.
When I came into politics in 2002, I thought that the only problem was that the media was a bit broken, and that Bush was in charge of our country. As I've looked deeper into Democratic Party politics, it's become clear that political discourse in this country is very sick. Today's episode is Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack, both 'liberal' foreign policy experts talking about how the surge is working. I have a friend who used to work for Pollack in 2001, and she's embarrassed to have ever been associated with him. As Glenn Greenwald brilliantly shows just how dishonest these people are, and yet they still get on CNN and have cushy think tank jobs. Even Joe Klein whacks them hard today to his credit.
There's another side to this problem, though. O'Hanlon and Pollack are called to testify before Congress as experts, and many foreign policy staffers rely on them for guidance. This is the unseen influence they have, even when they are not on CNN. This is because our candidates bear little accountability for their support of right-wing politics, and we support them. That needs to stop, and it needs to stop with people like Jeanne Shaheen.
