When you stop and think about it, what’s the fuss about political party leaders telling a struggling candidate to butt out of an election race. Happens more often than a political neophyte might think.
Since I’m usually broke, I would bet my last dollar that almost every serious candidate forming an exploratory committee is told by some fat cat with ties to the party’s purse strings that he stands a snowball chance in hell of winning.
The reasons run the political gamut — lack of identity, clueless on critical issues, inexperienced, hasn’t paid his dues, lacks charisma, fails to articulate or is too fat, bald and ugly.
That is the case but a month late and my dollar short with two U.S. Senate candidates, both Democrats, in races in Pennsylvania and Florida. And, in both cases, the bearer of bad news points to the party’s mastermind, cheerleader and hatchet man, none other than former President Bill Clinton, revered as the greatest Democratic political campaigner since the invention of birth control pills.
We are led to believe it was Clinton who urged Rep. Joe Sestak to return to Washington the easy way by accepting a cabinet appointment rather than butting heads against Arlen Specter, the party leadership’s favorite by default apparently for promises of switching parties from Republican to Democrat. Sestak beat Specter in the Democratic Senate primary and now stands a chance of defeating an overrated but formidable Republican Tea Party congressional veteran, Pat Toomey.
I understand the Sestak example but think it was stupid timing and cavalier on behalf of the Obama political team and figured Clinton was smarter than just being a good soldier carrying out orders I doubt he believed in.
The Kendrick Meek fuss over word play also was dumb and impolitic but still typical under the heading “good for the Democratic Party.”
The Florida Senatorial candidate, a good man with a bucket full of political experience as an Obama liberal Democrat, is trailing so far behind in a three-way race you need the Palomar Observatory telescope to find him.
The Meek case is strictly politics. No Democrat with a pea for a brain thinks he can beat Gov. Charlie Crist or Republican Marco Rubio, a man with Tea Party support I think they will regret once he is elected for being too reasonable.
The political know-it-all geniuses have this bizarre notion that if Meek opts out of the race five days before the election voters will swarm behind the Independent and former Republican Crist. The right-wing turned against Crist for physically embracing the president at a rally touting the stimulus which Crist favored as crucial for his state. There is also the notion that if elected, Crist would join the Democratic caucus, an idea conveyed behind closed doors perhaps but not in any open forum.
Meek is no fool and I suspect his account of discussions with Clinton are true but that doesn’t matter. The die is cast. Meek saves face by staying in the race but the signal sent is you better vote for Crist as a practical manner to defeat Rubio.
Don’t feel sorry for Sestak or Meek or any politician that reaches the national stage. They have thick skin and ego almost the size of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly which are humongous.
Bill Clinton is not the villain in this movie. He’s doing what’s best for the Democratic Party from the vantage points of its leadership. But he’s wheeling and dealing in a world of leaks and believes what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas which in today’s world of media paparazzi exists only in the minds of ego-inflated former smoke-filled backroom pols.
(Bill Clinton photo courtesy postonpolitics.com; Joe Sestak therightperspective.org; Kendrick Meek, sun-sentinel.co,)
Cross posted on The Remmers Report
Comments are welcome. Link to my blogsite or go to my email address at [email protected] . Remmers’ varied career spans 26 years in the newspaper business.
Jerry Remmers worked 26 years in the newspaper business. His last 23 years was with the Evening Tribune in San Diego where assignments included reporter, assistant city editor, county and politics editor.