It seems like disgraced bankers who engaged in Ponzi schemes are a dime a dozen these days. Still Allen Stanford is different in at least one way. Sure he was a crook, he took in money and claimed that he and his financial wizards could and did beat the market average performance, in good times and bad. Sure, that was all a lie with the new investor's money going to pay the supposed profits to the more senior investors. That is nothing special. No, what makes Mr. Stanford special is that he was a big political donor.
The campaign arm of U.S. Senate Democrats has organized a joint fundraising committee to help it raise money along with the 2010 campaign of Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet.
Colorado Senate 2010 was organized by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee with the Federal Election Commission on Sept. 8. The DSCC and Bennet's campaign committee will share the proceeds.
The party machinery is, by definition, anti-primary. It dislikes giving Democrats a choice at the ballot box, perfectly content to let incumbents remain unaccountable to their party partisans. I've long held that primaries are generally useful things, testing candidates, helping build early organization, refining messaging, and so on. And it's essentially (small "d") democratic, requiring elected officials to have a regular "job review" from the voters, both from their party, and in the general with their entire constituency. Heck, in many states and districts, the primary might be the ONLY place incumbents can be held accountable. A small minority of general elections are actually competitive because of partisan polarization. (Same dynamic applies to GOP-held seats, obviously.)
But there is perhaps no place where this DSCC anti-democratic tendency is more egregious than in Colorado, where the DSCC is aggressively trying to keep former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff from challenging appointed Sen. Michael Bennet.
Bennet was appointed to his seat, not elected. He has never been elected to anything before. He is untested in a campaign setting, has never had to sell himself to the voters, has never had to craft a campaign message, has never had to build a field operation. But rather than test him in a primary before Democrats put all their eggs on the Bennet basket, the DSCC is doing what it can to clear the primary field for an incumbent nominated to the seat in an undemocratic process. Their director of communications, Eric Schultz, has spent the last few weeks sending out to their media list negative articles about Romanoff, like this one.
The DSCC, of course, has no interest in good policy and good governance. And it's not really their job. Their job is to elect Democrats, be they of the good or bad variety. But when that mission cross over into the undemocratic desire to deprive voters of a choice, then it's our job to push back.
I don't know if Romanoff would be a better Democrat than Bennet. A campaign would help make that determination. But choice is good, and it certainly has lit a fire under Bennett's ass, helping to push him the right direction on policy. With a little more primary pressure, Bennet might even be "persuaded" to take a position on EFCA, and rethink his opposition to cramdown legislation (which he voted against, and will soon be back).
The DSCC doesn't like such pressure, sure, but the party doesn't always know (or care) what's best for the party.
The DSCC has a new add using Bob Schaffer's own words about him being in the Oil and Gas business. Notice at that time, he says nothing about renewable energy despite his recent jumping on the bandwagon and trying to rewrite history
The Udall campaign has their own add. Personally "partisan bickering" is just another name for the no holds barred tactics republicans have pushed Democrats into over the last decade or so. It wasn't until anticipating the smack-down of the '06 elections that the republicans started talking about partisanship. Unfortunately, the average voter knows nothing about this, and just wants solutions. Thus, to them actually good messaging. Are we at SquareState too highly informed? Is that possible?
In Udall's case, this isn't just messaging. He actually does have a good record working with republicans.
Worked with Wayne Allard to get Rocky Flats cleaned up and set aside as a wildlife refuge
Worked with Scott McGinnis to designate James Peak as a wilderness area
Worked with Republican representative Frank Wolf to craft legislation to redeploy our troops from Iraq
Great vid from the DSCC. Bob's going to play it safe and try not commit to any of the big issues facing us. And he's going to let the NRSC do his dirty work for him.
RSS Feed
