I don't really follow wonkish politics and certainly am not up on the party committee heads or candidates to fill those roles. I can tell you Terry McAuliffe is slime, but that the longer he runs the Democrats the better life gets for the Republicans. Aside from that, who knows?
Anyhow, you can read here about why some outspoken Democrats think that a particular candidate of theirs is unfit to lead the party. I love seeing the particular ways that parties define themselves by exclusion, especially when the delicious irony is just how frequently Republicans are accused of it.
Bonus fond memory:
Roemer was one of the Democrats that voted against the Clinton budget of 1993 -- the one that in the end won by a single vote and cost Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky and so many others their seats. (Not just the big vote, but a number that led up to it.)
Ah, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky... where is she now? Just like payback, constituency revolt's a bitch, isn't it?
(It's also the major downside to Republicans enjoying the power that they do now - if they are the institutional party, then they're not going to do nearly as much about institutional excesses as they used to.)
HELPFUL HINT: If you have a bee in your bonnet about "fiscal responsibility," just remember that Uncle Sam has a lot more control over spending than over intake. (True, you can control the RATE of taxation, but economic changes have consequences, to the point where a rate hike won't bring in nearly as much marginal revenue, nor a rate cut "cost" you nearly as much, as you'd have assumed if just ran the static numbers.) Ever ask yourself why the Democrats who raise a stink about budget-balancing only ever talk about the input rather than output? Well, it's hard to cut spending if you're protecting sacred cows, isn't it?
(Not that Bush's record on spending is anything remotely to brag about -- but the people who come down hard on him for tax cuts and don't even think to mention the spend-like-a-drunken-sailor part, are making a double f'up.)
Posted by Matt Bruce at January 5, 2005 04:20 PMThis is probably pointless... but the fact that reducing taxes may reduce revenues by a smaller percentage than the change in the tax rate does not mean that reducing taxes wasn't still a bad idea. So forgetting to complain about the spend-like-a-drunken-sailor part of Bush's record is still just a single fuck-up, not a double.
In addition, the biggest complaint about Bush's tax cuts is not their net effect on government revenue, but rather where the cuts are targetted. The cuts are targetted precisely where they will have the least expansionary effect on the economy and also generate the least total utility (because they represent a much smaller percentage increase in income for the people who receive them relative to where the money could be going).
Posted by: David at January 6, 2005 01:43 AMTo answer your (surely rhetorical) question, MMM considered running for the nomination to challenge Rick Santorum in 2000, but dropped out because there were too many pro-choice Philadelphia-area Democrats already in the race, including State Sen. Allyson Schwartz. A pro-life Democrat from Pittsburgh suburbs ran and nearly won on the strength of Gore's coattails. A year later, MMM's husband (a former Iowa Congressman) was indicted for financial wrongdoing and convicted. Her political career was officially over.
Allyson Schwartz lost the primary for the Senate race that year, but today she's the representative for Pennsylvania's 13th district, representing the constituency that rejected MMM in 1994.
Posted by: M.S. at January 6, 2005 09:48 AMAnother thing, and this should be obvious, is that the standards of exclusion for the leadership of the party should be a lot more stringent than those for membership.
Any Democrat would be thrilled to have Roemer run for Congress, Senate, or state office in Indiana today with his positions as long as he identifies as a Democrat on some issues. But if he's going to lead the party, he has to stand for something in opposition to the Republicans, and now that Republicans have won the battle against secular values in education and sexual freedom, it appears to be fiscal policy that Democrats can rally around in common.
Christie Whitman doesn't seem to be getting a better reaction than Roemer and all she did was write a book.
Posted by: M.S. at January 6, 2005 09:56 AM