Still gasping from the Veneman blow to the gut, we must now courageously face the latest Obama VP trial balloon, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine. Kaine first played up but is now playing down the buzz.
Perhaps we might humbly catch a glimpse of the plans of our FKD (Formerly Known as Democratic) Party overlords by examining Kaine more closely. Kaine was, you recall, selected by the DNC to respond to Bush's 2006 State of the Union address with a call for bipartisanship.
Lowell Feld is widely credited with pushing Kaine to his Virginia gubernatorial victory. Feld set up an independent blog called RaisingKaine.com, which he also used as a base to help propel Jim Webb to U.S. Senator in 2006. Feld has just published, with co-author Nat Wilcox, the new book Netroots Rising about political blogging.
Kaine has disappointed Virginia progressives. At RaisingKaine, now simply "RK" (which no longer stands for anything), Feld lists in a comment there yesterday:
...a long series of profound disagreements we've had with Gov. Kaine over issues ranging from repeal of the estate tax (cost to state: $140 million per year), offshore drilling, the Wise County coal-fired power plant, Dominion Power reregulation, the no-bid/"aerial option" Metro to Dulles project, the transportation monstrosity (with abuser fees and balkanized regional authorities, now declared unconstitutional), his opposition to embryonic stem cell research, etc. etc.
RK posted an essay Friday entitled: "We Won't Get 'Kained' Again":
Three years into the Kaine Administration, Virginia Progressives stand aghast at what it has become. From his repeal of the estate tax to his abandoned plan for universal Pre-K, to his opposition to embryonic stem cells, from his failed transportation plans to cozy relationship to Dominion Power and his reprehensible support of the Wise Coal Plant, the Kaine administration has fulfilled our every early fear and never failed to disappoint progressive Virginia.
Kaine was once a well-liked liberal by many, including me. But I'm still hopey, 'cause I know what's happened since is nothing a lobotomizing MoveOn video can't help me forget.
UPDATED
To correct Feld's position in Kaine's campaign, with thanks to DCblogger for pointing out the error.
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Comments
Bo, This Was Almost An Excellent Post
I'm not happy at all about the thought of Kaine, or Bayh, or Sibelius, although she seems the best of that lot. I never thought I'd be praying for Biden to be the choice.
I think Obama has, once again, shown himself incapable, at this point, of bold action, else he would have given genuine thought to Hillary as VP, which more and more looks like it makes real sense, both in terms of the election, and in terms of governing.
MoveOn has nothing to do with Obama's choice of VP.
What might be fruitful is a genuine discussion of MoveOn's strengths and the weaknesses that have appeared in the structure of the organization and in the direction and content of their activism.
If your reference was an attempt at wit - try harder.
Jeralyn's case against Biden
Here... you've probably already read that post, but just in case.
MoveOn's problem is like the blogosphere's problem
They aren't party invariant any more, since they endorsed a candidate.
Now, whatever they do has to be viewed through the lens of that endorsement.
Sad.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
And the MoveOn video...
... Sheesh, a little tail end of snark, nothing more, about a video whose humorous effect is not at all the same as its humorous intent.
"Lobotomizing" being a perfectly good word for it, too.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
If your reference was an attempt at wit - try harder.
Uhhh...
jeez.
Fear not Bo...
someone other than Leah, does get it.
Kaine
John Rohrbach was Tim Kaine's internet coordinator. Raising Kaine is just a partisan blog. Virginia netroots, including RK blog, played a role in Kaine's victory, but it was just a part of a larger campaign.
Tim Kaine made a primary endorsement that RK blog disagreed with. Since that time RK blog has launched a vendetta against Kaine. Kaine's candidate won by a landslide, so he knew his buisness well enough.
Kaine ran as an anti-death penalty candidate who promised to carry out court ordered executions. That he won as an anti-death penalty candidate in a southern state is a very encouraging sign.
Our other choices seem to be Biden (D-Credit Card industry) and Bayh (D-Wellpoint). Right now Kaine looks pretty good.
Questioning motives
Feld's comment that I posted is a response to a commenter questioning his motives, as you are doing:
Commenter:"...the front pagers were pissed because he endorsed in a Congressional primary - against all common sense."
Feld: "Actually, as we've explained a million times... that was just the culmination of a long series of profound disagreements..."
Is there evidence for your suggestion that Feld is lying about his motives?
VastLeft's "purity meme" post today would seem to address your observation that: "Kaine looks pretty good."
I've updated with your correction; thanks.
Lowell Feld is a very serious man!
As for example.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Biden, Bayh....blah
My prediction: Obama picks someone that the base of the Ol' Racist (TM) Party (Democratic, or ORP) won't like, and even members of FKD won't like. However, the FKD will praise the choice for its brilliance and the ORP will have to "get over it" since racists don't get a say in anything.
[Sorry, Leah. Obama nor his supporters stopped those spurious charges so you're gonna hear from this person of color over and over and over how FKD repeatedly called me a racist. They could have stopped it, but instead propagated known BS.]
Gov Kaine
Virginia Netroots is a big place, no one elected RK to speak for the rest. Does Kos speak for national netroots? No? Then you know how VA netroots feels about the RK community. Opinion is mixed.
Kaine
I'm a rabid Hillary supporter and have been trashing Obama to the point that my blog was summarily deleted from the Virginia god of blogging, RK, as well as lefty blogs and others.
Now having said this, I do not feel Kaine is a centrist ANYTHING. The poor guy is faced with a rabid right wing state legislature that due to gerrymandering will remain in safe Republican hands until redistricting. .
The A-list bloggers in Virginia are conservative (from my point of view). They support the death penalty and are love with Creigh Deeds who is far from a liberal; they also posted some of the most sexist, misogynist crapola during the primary.
Links/examples for Kaine's progressive creds as gov.
would be genuinely appreciated.
What is puzzling to me about these VP rumors
is the purpose. I'm not even certain who is generating them, what with all the secret sourcing. Also, there is this growing drumbeat from the MSM for Obama to announce a choice, without any justification as to why he - or anyone - would do so this early.
The answer perhaps is to identify who gains and who looses from a constant buzz around rumors that Obama will pick this or the other unacceptable #2. Are they really trial balloons from the Obama camp, because they are too ignorant and foolish to not already know that choosing Kaine or Hagel or the abysmal woman (Ann Something?) whose name I've already forgotten will cause even more intraparty alienation and do more damage than good?
Or are some of them being generated and pushed by Republican operatives to sow dissent and keep rubbing salt in the primary wounds? The push from the MSM certainly has that smell to it, since until quite recently the VP choice was never announced until the Convention, after the presidential nominee had his selection formalized. For Obama, or for any Dem, there is no advantage in leaping at that choice now; much better to wait, under the solid management dictum that no decision should ever be made until it is absolutely required.
I think the question of who benefits from the rumormongering is a better question that focusing on each one individually - my humble opinion.
Also, on the subject of Kaine and the support he received from Virginia progressives, I do have to wonder how very shocked they/you can be at what he's done once in office. Bo, you write "Kaine was once a well-liked liberal by many, including me." Was he really a liberal and the election corrupted him? Or was he actually a pretty rightwing conservative who was portrayed as a liberal but in reality was nothing more than not-as-bad-as the Republican?
I don't live in Virginia, but I have spent a lot of time there in cities and towns both big and small. My sense is that even as the northern parts have started to move in a more liberal direction, the state as a whole is not much less reactionary and rascist driven that it has been since forever. People like Kaine and Webb only look good because the comparator is a Republican who in a not too long ago day would have kept a white sheet and a hood in their trunk. Am I wrong, is there a real groundswell of progressive sentiment, or is it just a gradual easing away from the very worst of the Old South?
Regards the Move On crack at the end, like Leah I am puzzled. Is there a linkage with the VP dithering, or with Kaine, or was it just part of a list of things that pissed you off this past week? I am curious; it seems entirely out of place in the post, so what am I missing?
Puzzlement?
You don't then regard MoveOn and the Democratic leadership as working together? Since they support the same candidate, it would seem odd if they did not (though whether MoveOn should have gone in that direction is another question, more obvious in retrospect, perhaps, than at the time).
So, it seems to me that relaxing from one slap of the Hydra's tentacle (Kaine) with another slap of the Hydra's tentacle (the MoveOn ad) is an entirely unpuzzling bit of snark.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
like Leah I am puzzled
Not surprised.
Feh.
too lazy to find links
Kaine is a moderate, progressives don't win in VA. He has done well enough. I live in DC, as my screen name suggests, so am not up on all the details, but Kaine is a moderate.
RK stands for Real Kool Aide. If you are one of their favored politicians then you can do no wrong. If Webb promotes the use of coal, then he is supporting SW Virginia, but is Kaine supports a coal fired plant, then he is an environmental bad guy. If Webb supports off shore drilling, than RK simply does not notice, but if Kaine does, then Kaine is a bad guy. RK is about a small clique who affect to speak for all of progressive Viginia, but in fact, don't even speak for their region, which explains why their site traffic is declining in a presidential year.
Please link to good stuff on Kaine when you get the chance
I sincerely want to know.
I've not the least interest in promoting RK
But your link shows an increasing trend at RK over the last year, not a declining one, with substantially higher numbers than last year at this time. There was a big bump in February from the primary, from which it has been receding, but the overall trend is up.
Factesque on the floating of GOP VPs--
"... Choosing a Republican corporate stooge with an itch to destroy the environment "doesn't hurt you with Democrats. It just doesn't hurt you."? Is that really the party you imagine you belong to, Dems? Is that the party you want to belong to? ...
And they don't. Sad, sad what the Donkeys have come to. They could win without doing any of this pandering (if that's what it is), and might lose because they're identifying themselves with a party the country HATES.
Sad, that's what it is. Sad and pathetic. " -- http://casadelogo.typepad.com/factesque/...
bringiton rules
I forgot my rule about anonymous sources, that stories based on anonymouse sources should be ignored. They are a distraction and are intended as such.
MoveOn DNC
I don't think they are coordinated, I think they arrived at the same destination from different points.
MoveOn DNC
I don't think they are coordinated, I think they arrived at the same destination from different points.
Try harder, perhaps?
If the video reference was so deeply troubling. The link is to a very lively thread last night having fun with the "this is your brain on hope" ad, with 70+ comments. Or you could just consider it an in-joke for the many who participated. Please rest assured I don't think MoveOn picks VPs.
And fun we had, indeed
And it was a harmless line tagged at the end of the post, clear to me, at least.
This is an important and interesting topic of discussion, so, let's focus on the substance rather than line-by-line scrutiny for crime low level snark by unclear standard, shall we?
The Eyebrow thing
I don't know if I can deal with that for three months.
Now that's substance!
Way to go, there, JB64. Haw.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Who is pushing the rumors?
IIRC, in '04 I remember the press showing pictures of pols in clandestine meetings with Kerry's team. It didn't seem to be orchestrated by the Kerry campaign. At the time it seemed the Kerry camp was at pains to keep it a secret. Not so much this time. Or am I wrong?
Who indeed?
This particulat iteration on Keane comes out of Politico (ass-twitch) with one claimed secret source after another (multiple ass-twitches). Who benefits from Politico pushing this story?
Could well be that Keane is on a list. The group doing the search should cast a wide net, and step away from constraining assumptions to look at anyone even barely plausable. That means a lot of oddball people will get a once-over and that's a good thing, as opposed to a top-down, here are the requirements and now make a force-fit, approach.
Not much in this Politico piece but rumors of rumors, seems to me.
Who would make a decent VP, and why? Is it worthwhile chewing that over and coming up with a Progressive Short List - with electability/governance justification - and pushing those individuals rather than reacting to the rumor du jour from Politico?
Thoughtlessly reacting to Obama's trial balloons
But it's what he wants.
One might also ask, is it worthwhile reacting to each reaction to the rumor du jour?
Are we allowed to react to this? Just came out this afternoon:
Washington, DC Elites Split on VP Picks
Whose Balloons?
Is my question.
If they are Obama's, why float them? How does the reaction impact the decision? Assuming it might, how then should the reaction be framed and delivered to gain a desired response?
If they are not Obama's, does that change the reactive strategy? In what ways?
This press release from StrategyOne is a great example to work from.
Who are the 400 "leading Beltway influencers"? What are the criteria by which they were selected? Who asked for, funded and benefits from this work?
StrategyOne is a wholly-owned research and advocacy arm of Edelmans, a PR and market development firm,
whose purpose is to do private confidential polling and, as in this case, publically announced strategic polling, where the answers elicited are designed to help push public opinion towards a particular client's advantage:
Who is the client? What is the agenda? From the StrategyOne web page, after clicking on [ABOUT US]:
What other questions might lead to a fuller understanding of what, if anything, this press release might mean? What is a useful move in response to this poll in order to advance a progressive agenda?
And, to repeat, is there a proactive strategy that might usefully compliment a reactive response?
Glad to help
"And, to repeat, is there a proactive strategy that might usefully compliment a reactive response?"
I'm glad to have provided a topic that piques your interest with the poll I mentioned. I fully support and look forward to your post proactively critiquing the poll. Your questions are excellent.
And to repeat, I'm sure if you consider it you might come up with further proactive strategies that might usefully compliment [sic] your reactive responses.
Here's a proactive strategy from me... How are the fires out your way?
"400 leading Beltway influencers"?!
Say, why don't we just let them pick the President for us, never find the Vice President!
Oh, wait....
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
By using StrategyOne
the parties can skip the expensive and upsetting primaries - No More Unhappy MI & FL Voters! - and dispense with most of the convention, just go straight to the acceptance speeches.
Hell, let's hire them to replace the general election. Think of all the problems - like voter caging and electronic machine corruption and hanging chads - that we won't have to worry about.
How much worse, really, could the outcome be compared to 2000 and 2004?
Well, I'll keep it simple.
Obama, nor his campaign, have had any problem rushing to a reporter to inform us that something they don't like being said is false.
So if this VP name-throwing is wildly false...we should hear from Bill Burton by tomorrow. No?
If they're indeed not trail ballooning these individuals or others.
We should hear some whining from them about it.
yup-they're pushing all these balloons--
and there's an old law about giving the media something new every single day so you get more coverage--and he's not doing it about issues at all, so this is what he's got--this and attacks on McCain.
Nah
My guess is that since "the best European tour in the history of the entire universe" was actually a flop in the States, the Obama campaign needs to find something about themselves for the press to talk about it. I find it odd that the media is being told about these potential Veeps rather than them actually trying to figure out who is under consideration. Last time, reporters were looking for clandestine trips and trying to get photos. Not so much this time.
click on Lambert's link quick
because it will probably be pulled before the evening is over
I'm happy to reject and renounce Feld
Yuck!
Bet that does get pulled.
I'm researching and finding widespread disappointment in Kaine
on the environment, having picked this as a key measure for Virginia where his record should be clear. Feld is wrong on Iraq, but so far I'm finding that his disillusionment with Kaine's conservation actions and relations with industry is broadly shared.
Let's call a spade a spade again, Leah -- Obama would NOT
seriously consider HRC on the ticket.
It would be bold, thoughtful, and the right thing to do, as you so aptly note below:
But out there can still be heard the voices of those who said HRC was staying in the race waiting for BHO to get shot, and they'll be even louder if she's on the ticket.
If that's coming from within the party, how do Democrats hope to overcome the legacy of assassinated leaders like the Kennedy brothers and MLK Jr.?
We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
About Kaine links...
Meetings and classes all day long. Will post link tomorrow.
I'll hold you to that, NoTime :-)
I was an activist until a few years ago and have completely lost sight of VA politics. Would love help coming up to date, and would be overjoyed to be proved wrong about Kaine. It's not looking good so far, though, I gotta tell you, which is a grave disappointment to me.
This is not influencing my assessment of Kaine as VP, but I would be deeply hurt to see Kaine turn Virginia back over into GOP hands and his particularly heinous GOP lieutenant governor. One year is all they need to dismantle crucial programs. I've sacrified a great deal personally to document the GOP atrocities here to help pave the way for Dem leadership. For Kaine to walk away from our hard work would be a slap in the face.
Each time the GOP takes the reins here, permanent devastation is done to our environment and economy. I don't think I could forgive Obama or Kaine for doing this to Virginia.