Voices of Experience
Deval Patrick backers shun Obama, flock to Hillary Clinton. It’s an experience thing. No Clinton comment on that experience thing, but a fascinating development nonetheless. Boston Herald:
Despite Gov. Deval Patrick’s strong backing of Barack Obama, many of Patrick’s most ardent campaign supporters are opting for Hillary Clinton for president instead, with some saying the governor’s own early struggles show the risks of electing a political newcomer.
“It underscores the need to elect someone who doesn’t have to learn on the job,” state Rep. Kay Kahn (D-Newton) said of Patrick’s early performance. “We need a president who can hit the ground running, and I think Hillary Clinton can do that.”
Kahn, who hosted fund-raisers for Patrick in 2006, is among 17 state lawmakers who supported his gubernatorial campaign, but now have decided to back Clinton for president. Clinton supporters cite the number of defections as proof the New York senator is attracting top Democrats who value political grit and experience over inspiring rhetoric.
But Obama backers downplay the significance of those endorsements, saying they have picked up fresh support from U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and a number of other state pols. They also point out that Patrick remains popular among voters, with the governor’s polling showing that voters believe he works hard and is right on the issues.
…
A spokesman for Patrick countered that the governor has attracted several new Obama supporters who were not with him for governor …
However, some of Patrick’s liberal defectors said his rocky start on Beacon Hill played a key role in their support for Clinton. “We’ve now seen firsthand what happens when you put someone in office who lacks experience, but has extraordinarily inspiring rhetoric,” said one lawmaker who asked for anonymity. “The inspiring rhetoric is compelling and appealing, but what has that gotten us?”
Others said their decision to support Clinton had nothing to do with Patrick. “My support for Hillary goes back to 1992,” Wolf said. “She’s very smart and very experienced. My decision has to do with her, and not with anything else.”
OK, maybe a little comment on that Clinton experience thing.
Readers will recall Obama stumped for Patrick, Patrick stumped for Obama. Two up-and-coming lefty black pols, with a post-civil rights mantle, short on experience. Hey, look what Crittenden wrote about that in the Boston Herald in November, 2006:
It’s that time of the election cycle when we get ready to take one for the team. I’m talking about conservatives. Here in Taxachusetts.
Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank and Mike Dukakis. Gay marriage and Willie Horton. The strictest gun controls in the nation, and gun violence is skyrocketing. John Kerry, still reporting for duty.
We all know the jokes, we’ve heard them all before. People are always amazed to learn that conservatives live here in Massachusetts. They wonder what that can be like. It can be galling to think that, in presidential elections, your vote doesn’t count.
It is nothing more than a symbolic gesture, to let the world know, for example, that more than a third of John Kerry’s voting constituents prefered a Republican from Texas.
But to view the national stage from Massachusetts is to know the bitter truth that our state plays an important role in America’s political theater. Every two years, bluest blue Massachusetts sends in the clowns. We show America what could be and America generally sees it and acts accordingly: runs in the other direction.
From Kerry’s insulting jibes at our troops, to the efforts by Kennedy and others in our delegation to undermine a wartime presidency and give Euro-style socialism a foot-hold in the New World, Massachusetts gives America its bogeymen.
We have a Democratic legislature here by default.
The hapless local GOP has been unable to muster challengers in any significant numbers, despite 16 years of managing to shoehorn a mixed bag of Republicans into the governor’s office. Even blue Mass. voters have wanted someone to put the brakes on. But that would appear to be over.
With the likely election of Deval Patrick as governor, we’ll give America a brave new Dukakis, not to mention an advance glance at an Obama administration. Watch and learn. It is perhaps the best 2008 gift we, Massachusetts, could give the GOP.
More Kennedy. More Kerry – no way he’s going quietly; his Web site now sports a Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial saying his dumb troops-dumb Bush joke was “right either way.” A rasher of Patrick. Frank in the Democratic House leadership. What more could a Republican candidate in 2008 ask for?
Among the GOP candidates in 2008 is likely to be Mitt Romney . . . another ironic Democratic gift to the nation. He gets trashed here at home for making Massachusetts jokes in Iowa and South Carolina. It could be his strongest suit. Mitt emerges from the Democratic wilderness, bruised and bedraggled from ridiculous combat with legislators who, for example, ignore lawful petitions in constitutional conventions to avoid giving the voters a say.
Mitt made his bones tilting at Ted 12 years ago – the most serious threat the Bay State’s 800-pound gorilla has faced in decades (this year’s challenger didn’t have a prayer).
Democratic control of Congress, should it come to pass on Tuesday, will offer America the spectacle writ large that Massachusetts offers in miniature. It won’t be the worst thing that could happen.
Speaker-hopeful Nancy Pelosi, suddenly faced with the prospect of actual responsibility, is begging her minions to keep a lid on it. You know they won’t be able to. As they engage in the destructive practice of investigating every spurious claim of rights-trampling that already has been hashed over repeatedly, we will get a sneak peak at the Democratic vision for America.
An America eager to ingratiate itself with the world and embrace any bizarre fringe cause that emerges. This is what we live with in Massachusetts. We hope for the occasional upset, so we can show America, see, we’re not all like that. There are rational, normal people here.
But this year, it looks like we’ll be taking another one for the team.
Assorted nitwits called that bold-faced comment racism, apparently unaware of the close ties and mutual stumping of Obama and Patrick. I suppose this latest development makes the abovementioned Hillary backers racists, too. As we’ve seen, one of the potential hazards of a black candidacy or presidency, thanks to kneejerk PC attacks of that kind, is the threat that legitimate political discussion will be stifled.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:00 am Comments (2) on Thursday, January 31, 2008
2 Responses to “Voices of Experience”
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January 31st, 2008 at 3:08 pm
“Rep. Kay Kahn (D-Newton)”
Like my sister-in-law, a bitter middle aged woman of a certain class, and a Hillary supporter.
My brother, who really doesn’t care about politics, was making haste yesterday to get an absentee ballot so he could vote for Obama.
As far as I am concerned, the choice between Hillary and Hussein, is a choice between cancer and polio*.
First it is best to keep in mind that they are both left-wing socialists.
It is true that Husein would need on the job training and would like Kennedy (Bay of Pigs, Berlin Wall) and Clinton (Somalia, WTC-93), make some horrendous mistakes.
But the Clintons’ real experience is in graft, corruption and lying. The damage they would do would be as bad or worse.
*”Salt Of The Earth” by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards.
Lets drink to the hard working people
Lets drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Lets drink to the salt of the earth
Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Say a prayer for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth
***
Raise your glass to the hard working people
Lets drink to the uncounted heads
Lets think of the wavering millions
Who need leaders but get gamblers instead
Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio
March 8th, 2008 at 11:50 am
[...] No shortage of irony in this experience thing. [...]