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Alan Grayson for President?

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Politics Daily discusses the ramifications of the progressive hero making a run.

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  1. Polling generally seems to show that Democrats prefer compromisers and that the independents to whom Democrats try to appeal have a very soft spot for bipartisanship.

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    p>Contrast that with the tendency of many of us on the Left who want to see our positions sharply and forcefully espoused.

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    p>Well Grayson does that.

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    p>Last election, he got lots of funding and he lost his seat by a lot. So is there anything to be learned about liberal messaging from his loss?

    • This guy took film clips and spliced them together to make his opponent look bad. He took his lead from one of Jay Leno’s famous fake interview skits, but he was serious and voters rejected him outright.

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      • whether or not the ad in question had taken liberties with Webster’s speech is debatable. Nonetheless the overall point is that Webster is a known misogynist having introduced bills in the Florida legislature such as:
        preventing battered women from divorcing their abusive spouse;
        allowing gender-based discrimination in the granting of alimony;
        keeping battered women from obtaining health care by defining their having been battered as a pre-existing condition.
        The fact is “Taliban Dan” will do everything in his power to set back women’s rights in this country. Grayson had an obligation to point this out.  

        • whether or not the ad in question had taken liberties with Webster’s speech is debatable.

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          p>I’ll show you how Grayson would manipulate your comments above…

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          whether or not the ad in question had taken liberties with Webster’s speech is debatable. Nonetheless the overall point is that Webster is a known misogynist having introduced bills in the Florida legislature such as:
          preventing battered women from divorcing their abusive spouse;
          allowing gender-based discrimination in the granting of alimony;
          keeping battered women from obtaining health care by defining their having been battered as a pre-existing condition.
          The fact is “Taliban Dan” will do everything in his power to set back women’s rights in this country. Grayson had an obligation to point this out.

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          p>Then he would splice hem together to read…

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          Grayson had taken liberties with battered women…

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          p>But you’re ok with candidates doing this cut/paste routine with an opponent’s remarks?

        • I think he lost the middle when the story became how he edited the ad.  The only people who were offended by Webster’s fundamentalism were not going to vote for him in the first place, and lots of people on the right were energized after hearing that speech.

      • While I admire the stands Mr. Grayson took on the enormous foreclosure fraud and the banks’ manipulation of the economy, the fact is he made himself unelectable.  The major parties answer to the private bankers.  As we have seen over many years now, they decide the candidates for important office.  The rest is just a dance.

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        p>“Elections are a good deal like marriages. There’s no accounting for anyone’s taste. Every time we see a bridegroom we wonder why she ever picked him, and it’s the same with public officials.”  — Will Rogers

  2. we need someone who we know is credible, if we’re to take on Obama in a primary. If he wants to run, though, he should. Competition is a good thing.

    • Grayson ran an inept campaign and lost a winnable race. And primarying Obama is the clearest path to a conservative resurgence and a President Palin or Romney.  

      • If anything, primarying Obama is the clearest way of getting the base interested, and avoiding giving the Republican Party 6 months of free press. I’ve never seen a primary cost a party a seat before in my life, but I think I’ve seen the lack of a primary do that before….

        • I’ve never seen a primary cost a party a seat before in my life

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          p>Christine O’Donnell? Sharron Angle? There’s a couple of examples just from the past election cycle.

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          p>Perhaps it is the case that primary elections tend to help the eventual candidates more than it hurts on balance, but I haven’t really come across much hard evidence for that. On the contrary, primary challenges can and have led to weaker candidates being nominated, party splits, and draining of resources for the general election.

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          p>The Republicans have been more afflicted by this phenomenon in recent years, but it could apply to the Democrats as well.

          • I’m talking about the primary itself, not the person who’s elected.

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            p>JConway, among many others, have suggested in the past that just having a primary can cost a candidate the election — that it becomes a distraction or a money-suck or something. That’s just not the case. If the people elect a bad candidate, on the other hand….

        • Humphrey was gaining on Nixon through the end of the 1968 campaign, but the bitterness of the 1968 Democratic primary did not help him.

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          p>Certainly the challenge in 1980 did not help Carter. The Reagan campaign even ran quotes or clips from Kennedy in the the general.

          • But if you have to go all that way back to find a possible example (though I think it’s a bad one — no way was Carter going to win a second term), I think my point is made.

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            p>I wasn’t trying to make the point that primaries are always beneficial. I’m only making the point that primaries are more likely to help a party than to hinder it. Keeping the other party from getting all that free press alone is worth it, but so is the opportunity to get the grassroots growing and oiling ‘the machine’ before the general.

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            p>I also think primaries are unavoidable (and they almost always are, if there’s someone willing to go through the process of getting their papers in), and the quickest way to turn off a contingent of a party to the point where they’ll stay on the sidelines during the general is a big Screaming Match to get their candidate to pull out before the primary’s over. So, insofar as that occurs, the notion that ‘primaries are bad for a party’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy. They’re only going to be bad if the party’s elites throw a conniption over an ‘upstart’ challenger.

            • As far as I know, then, no Presidents have faced primary opponents during your lifetime. So the bold-faced certainty with which you arrive at your ringing conclusion lacks factual substantiation.

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              p>And yes, we saw some advantage to the Clinton-Obama debates in spring, 2008, but that’s very different from a primary challenge to Mr. Obama now. Political campaigns always get a bit personal; candidates always get a bit desperate. Now I know this is as ancient as Pericles, but Carter really was tarnished by Kennedy’s campaign in a way that hurt him. I still remember thinking that Reagan was just too crazy and extreme to win. Kind of like Palin or Huckabee winning today.

              • including state races with a presumptive favorite in which those presumptive favorites either lost the primary (and their opponent won) or the presumptive got through the primary relatively unscathed and went on to win in the general.

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                p>I’ve never seen a presumptive favorite win the primary but be ‘hurt’ by it to the point that they go on to lose the general. I’m sure, if you dig deep enough, you may find examples — but I’m also sure I’ll find more examples in which primaries didn’t hurt or even helped.

                • State legislature races in lopsidedly Democratic Massachusetts are indicative of how high-stakes Presidential races in the more evenly divided U.S. are going to play out. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that state rep or senate races would be more illustrative than Kennedy-Carter-Reagan or McCarthy/Kennedy-LBJ/HHH-Nixon — even if they both occurred before the Life of Ryan.

                • I seem to remember a particular candidate or two in 2006 riling up the Sky-is-Falling establishment that wanted to protect things for the ‘favored’ candidate. Of course, the primary, in that election, was widely seen as why the Republican candidate never got any traction.

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                  p>If you still disagree… will you at least concede the fact that they’re a) inevitable and b) it’s worse for the establishment to turn off the primary candidate’s supporters (which may often be comprised of a lot of base voters) by telling that candidate to get out, than it is for them to just take the darn race seriously and win it outright? One method risks a long and bitter fight, in which the opposition digs its heals in and may be uninterested in the party’s sake after the primary’s over, whereas the other one — an honest fight — will at least drive up the energy and free press and keep the race positive.

                • Romney wasn’t running in 2006.

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                  p>At the Presidential level, primary challenges are hardly inevitable since during L.O.R., they have occurred precisely once. (Buchanan-Bush in 1992) Serious, non-Kucinich/non-Stassen* candidates require tons of funds anyway.

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                  p>My question is whether such challenges are in our interests or not. The empirical evidence, thus, far has been negative. The party wherein the primary occurred has lost on the three most recent occasions. Granted, that evidence is certainly insufficient to render a permanent judgment.

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                  p>About the Establishment’s opinions I’m less concerned.

                  *Sorry, Stassen was pre-L.O.R.

                • You would do better to think of King and Dukakis defeating one another, successively, but nevertheless keeping the governor’s office in Democratic hands.

          • was due more to the disastrous Chicago convention, the unpopularity of the war (which Humphrey, as VP, couldn’t easily disavow) and the overall strife in the land.  Add a little Southern Strategy and play political games with peace talks in the last week of the campaign, as Nixon did, and you win.  Humphrey, though he ultimately lost, was right in that election in October, long after the primaries.

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            p>In 1980, Ryan is right that Carter was in trouble to begin with, and the Republicans put up a very effective campaigner.  It’s chicken and egg: do candidates lose because they’ve been marred by a divisive primary or are they primaried because they’ve irritated their base enough that they’ll have trouble winning anyway?

            • I said that Ryan’s assertions further up had no empirical backing and that the closest examples were all negative.

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              p>To prove me wrong, you have to come up with examples that are positive.

      • McCain won this district.
        How many Republican congressional districts did a Democrat win this year?
        Please stay with the facts.

        • Obama won this district 52 – 47; however, Bush won it twice. The point that it is a historically Republican district stands.

          • And I’m sure that Obama’s very special campaign helped a very outspoken liberal like Grayson ride to victory in 2008 by a 52-48 margin in the district (by winning only the county that includes Orlando, but nothing else).  

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            p>I love Grayson, but I think that his races have been a result of waves, not masterful campaigning by either candidate.

          • The Democrats may or may not need more people like Alan Grayson to shake things up, but it’s hardly straying from the facts that Grayson ran an inept campaign.

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            p>Florida’s 8th District is R+2 overall, having voted for Obama in 2008 and Bush in 2004, as you note. It is, in other words, pretty representative of the country as a whole, with a slightly more Republican lean. Yet Grayson ran a politically tone-deaf campaign that completely did not fit his district, making himself an easy target for the “extremist” label. I’m not sure why anyone would line up behind someone who gives such easy political ammunition to his opponents.

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            p>And keep in mind Grayson actually lost his swing district by a landslide — something approaching 20 points (56%-38% or thereabouts). He may have lost anyway given how many Democrats lost in swing or Republican-leaning districts in 2010, but there’s not much doubt that his terrible campaign had something to do with him not just losing, but getting blown out.

            • It had nothing to do with his progressive/left wing voting record. Tom Perrellio, similarly ran in an R leaning district as an unapologetic progressive and ran much closer to his Republican opponent, and its because he ran an honest and effective campaign. I am sorry I want to beat Republicans as much as the next man, but we don’t need to adopt Lee Atwater/Karl Rove style politics to do it. The video was completely edited out of context and what made it worse is that Webster did have positions civil libertarians and feminists should be concerned about, and Grayson could have attacked those honestly. Instead he created a strawman that backfired and made Grayson look petty and dishonest and allowed the media to give him a pass on the issues where he really was out of the mainstream. Just inept. The worst part about this election is how many races, particularly the ones I was involved in in IL, that could’ve gone the other way with better tactics. The progressive message was not the problem, it was tone deaf candidates.  

            • his own ads killed him. They were pretty damn horrible. I think the fact that people liked his outspokenness fed his ego to the point where he took it too far.  

            • it would be futile to run a primary opponent against Obama.  It’s always tough to unseat an incumbent of your own party, but in this case it’s doubly tough.  Many Dem primary voters in key states are African-American and Obama’s support among them remains pretty high.  My guess is that a primary challenger could not win over enough of those voters to be competitive.

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              p>But the very fact that anyone’s talking about a primary challenge from the left shows how bad Obama’s been.  He may win in 2012, but he’ll do it without the donations and campaiging I provided last time.  I suspect a lot of the younger voters who were enthusiastic about him in 2008 will not be so interested in the campaign this time around.

    • …but recent history shows us (Buchanan ’92 / Kennedy ’80 / Reagan ’76) that when a sitting President is challenged in a primary, the party splits and the other side wins.  Advocating for a primary challenge for Obama is the same as advocating for a GOP win in’12…is that what you want?

      • …but beware the correlation=causation trap.  Renomination should not be the entitlement of the incumbent.

        • There needs to be some thought about long and short term consequences.  Buchanan, and Kennedy in ’80 in particular, really did their parties quite a bit of damage, and accomplished almost nothing.  Reagan produced a divided loss in 1976, but laid the groundwork for rather successful GOP run at the presidential level.

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          p>I don’t know that I can isolate anything to help distinguish the two in advance, though, so I’m inclined to view primary challenges as singularly self-destructive for the party engaging in it.

      • with or without a primary. Obama will be in trouble regardless when the best argument in his favor is “the Republicans are even worse!”

        • Please offer me some evidence that “the party is split”, preferably something other than the fact that you and a couple friends don’t like Obama.

          • http://www.aolnews.com/2010/10…

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            p>Done by Associated Press-Knowledge Networks (don’t know anything about the latter, but surely AP has some credibility)

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            Among Democrats, 47 percent say Obama should be challenged for the 2012 nomination and 51 percent say he should not be opposed.

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            p>I’m flattered to think that the President was referring mainly to me here when he criticized the “professional left”. I’m not a political professional and had no idea I had such influence.

    • Bachman lives in an alternate, fact-free universe. What is it about Grayson, specifically, that makes such a comparison possible?
      You’ve added absolutely nothing to this discussion. This is a drive-by hit and makes you look clownish.  

      • Both of them believe their own.

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        p>It’s the externals where they meld. How do you not see that? Sure, each come forth from very different conerstones of ideology. But the styles….

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        p>It’s a symptom of the degradation of discourse. Liking Grayson over Bachmann does not remove the requisite critique.

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        p>I try not to wear beer goggles, when possible.

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        p>PS. It ain’t a joke, but it is framed with a grin. You get ulcers when you do politics with your ass in a knot.

        • We spent a fair amount of time on BMG trying to pick apart the Coakley loss last January. Was she a bad candidate? Was Brown a very gifted one? Had the electorate shifted?

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          p>With Grayson, I sometimes found myself agreeing in a kind of fist-pumping fashion. Other times, I’d cringed as I watched his smirky responses to Republicans. Contrast, say, Howard Dean who can be as direct but who doesn’t smirk.

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          p>But I wasn’t watching his re-election campaign. Did Grayson suffer from rhetorical excess? Was it cringe-worthy? How?

          • When I watch this sort of thing:

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            p>I wonder why Progressives feel Anthony Weiner isn’t a better choice to champion their cause?

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            p>Imho, it ain’t even close.

              • on what it means to be progressive. Further, what makes a progressive “real” is a concept that makes me uneasy. Though, to be in the ballpark, Lieberman is not. No matter what he did on DADT.

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                p>That said, Weiner blends passion with solidly grounded counter arguements to the disconnected, disjointed, specious spin of the GOP.

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                p>If I was “King of the Dems,” we would do more of this:

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                p>Much more.

    • Is that a joke?  That sort of false equivalence is such bs.  

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      p>Bachmann is an extremely ignorant theocrat, and very fervent in her ignorance.  Grayson is well-educated, smart, and just uses hyperbole when attacking the other side (though everything he says is based in fact).  They are not similar.  

  4. Another reason a primary challenge to Obama would make little sense — at least without his political standing falling considerably from where it is now — is that the Democratic Party coalition at large is still firmly supportive of the President. Most of the current unrest comes from one specific part of the coalition — mostly white, highly-educated, strong liberals who are very active in politics. This is an important part of the Democratic coalition, to be sure, but one that is relatively small and not as important as other Democratic-aligned groups among which Obama still enjoys extremely high approval ratings — such as African-Americans.

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    p>In the past, legitimate primary challenges to sitting presidents occur only when the party coalition has frayed to the extent that a challenger has a decent chance of piecing together disgruntled coalition members. That clearly is not the case right now, so it’s highly unlikely that a primary challenge would achieve either the goal of replacing Obama or successfully “pushing him to the left” (or whatever secondary goal a primary challenge might have).

  5. If I were to support a primary it would probably be Howard Dean.  It also sounds like he didn’t run a good campaign.  How does this fit into the idea that the fighting liberals are supposed to have a better chance than a Blue Dog?

    • He has a track record as an actual Democrat, and he did a fantastic job winning elections as DNC chairman.

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      p>He had a phenomenal showing in 2004 considering his inexperience.

      • Definitely Dean was the best DNC Chair we have had in decades, and he gets far too little credit form the press for the great job he did laying the groundwork for the 06 and 08 victories. He gets too little credit from the beltway establishment because he literally rebuilt state based grassroots parties all over the country making us competitive in 50 states again and really a national party again. He gets too little credit from progressives for tailoring those efforts and candidates to the states political character, aka running libertarian or moderate leaning candidates out West and in the South to be more competitive.

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        p>But if he wants to help this President and progressives he should primary Kane and retake his old job and make that election competitive. No need to primary the President IMO, it will only hurt him and the progressive cause. Elect more democrats, primary DINOs in districts where there could feasibly be a progressive (looking at you Lynchie) and focus on rebuilding the grassroots party. Remember our party is still bottom up, and the way to free it and this President from corporate friendly centrism is to get engaged with the party. Not to disengage from it, and certainly not to back a fools errand primary or third party.  

        • Kaine declared this weekend that no “serious” primary would be forthcoming in 2012 — about equivalent to a referee declaring that the New England Patriots wouldn’t really have much of a problem in two weeks from now.

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          p>Unfortunately, it’s tough to pick a chair against the wishes of the president, and with so many other things (see RI-Gov), Obama is a lot more concerned about helping his friends than building his party.

          • Chaffee is a dyed in the wool liberal except on free trade, and was running to the left of the RI Dem. If anything Obama was in rare form backing a progressive in a competitive race against another Democrat.

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            p>Also considering Kaine was appointed by Obama, was on his shortlit, and is a huge Obama loyalist, that shouldn’t be a surprise. Also its his job as part of the party to ensure there is no primary and that the President and the party can remain in power.

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            p>Are you really so disappointed that you support a primary challenger? Especially considering your preferred primary candidate in 08 would’ve governed to the right of Obama, particularly on national security and health care?  

            • Obama isn’t a “progressive”, he’s a Democrat.  Typically, the Democrat endorses a high-profile Democrat, not someone who spent most of his lifetime as a Republican and has a track record to the right of the Democrat running, campaign promises notwithstanding.

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              p>I suppose Kaine, if he wants to talk a very narrow view, could see his job not as governing the Democratic Party for the general good, but as a racket for whoever gave him the power.  

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              p>I am so disappointed that, as with most any Democrat, I support the idea of the incumbent answering questions about the many failures of politics and policy over the last two years.  It worries me when an incumbent feels earning the voters’ trust is beneath him.  And I’m not really sure how Richardson would have governed to the right of Obama on health care and national security, considering he was well to the left on the environment, education, and taxation.  

              • You ended up being a Hillary supporter so it was she I was referring to. I always thought Bill Richardson was the most qualified and policy articulate of our candidates, but I knew Obama would be unbeatable.

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                p>Anyway Kaine has got to go, though I must say in two years Obama has done far more good for the country than eight years of Dubya or eight years of Clinton. Progressives need to learn that governance requires patience and it is accomplished in gradual steps. Its hard for us to have that these days since we have spent a generation in the political wilderness.

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                p>I would agree that Obama has an arrogant and a hubristic streak and doesn’t seem to care about honoring promises or reaching out to his supporters, and he is taking them for granted in a misguided effort to win over swing voters. And he has a history in his political life of being a blank, inoffensive canvas, for people to place their hopes in. When around conservatives, he talks like them. When around liberals, he talks like them. And he does so in a way that makes him appear above the fray, moderate, and reasonable. Unfortunately these are passionate times and we need the President to start getting passionate about the policies he cares about and seeing them through. I am tired of him winging it and assuming his personal charm and vast intelligence will automatically lead to greatness. That streak needs to go, and one would’ve hoped this lost election, which he is apparently blaming on the left not loving him enough, could’ve been that wake up call. No question the buck stops there, and to me its not a question of right or left, but of leadership and vacillation; weakness and strength. And I could care less if he leads from the left, the center-left, the center, or even the right a little bit, I just want him to lead. And thats where my frustration lies because he isn’t doing it at all.  

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