Democratic leaders in the U.S. House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Caucus Chairman John Larson, have sent out to their troops a memo that outlines the general defense House members will be using during the election season to deflect impertinent charges from their Republicans opponents.
The memo is about two pages long, considerably less than the 2,319 page Dodd-Frank Bill that reorganizes American enterprise or the 1,990 page Health Care Bill that, for the first time in U.S. history, compels young American citizens to purchase a product, health insurance, they may not want or need. Given the brevity of the letter, Connecticut’s Democratic U.S. congressional delegation might even read it. Most congresspersons, including the issuers of the memo, neglected to read either the Health Care or the Dodd-Frank bill in it’s entirety, and Pelosi famously quipped about one or the other or both of them that they would have to be passed so that House members who voted for them would know what’s in them.
The campaign to-do memo is recorded below for posterity:
July 30, 2010
Dear Democratic Colleague:
Now it is time to define the choice America faces. We are moving America forward, not back.
You have worked tirelessly for 19 months to move America forward, begin to restore Main Street values, and create jobs here at home. We are on track to create more net new jobs this year than President Bush created over his entire eight-year term. Our advocacy for Americans who work for a living— in the face of relentless opposition by Wall Street and the big bankers, Big Oil, and the health insurance industry— has defined our Caucus.
We will move America forward in a New Direction, toward a more broadly shared prosperity—investing in America’s small businesses, clean energy jobs, and middle-class families. We will revitalize a manufacturing base that shrunk by 4.6 million American jobs under the last Administration—because when we Make it in America, we lead the world. And we will bring down our deficit by putting Americans back to work and making the difficult decisions that were deferred over the last decade.
We are not going back to the same failed Bush policies that cost us more than 8 million jobs—and threatened to destroy 8 million more without our intervention, according to independent economists. We are not going back to failed policies that exploded our deficit in order to give tax breaks to those who don’t need them—and those whose recklessness caused the mess we are in.
Americans living paycheck to paycheck—or without a paycheck—can’t afford to go back.
We must use the coming weeks to make this choice crystal clear. The President will be leading the charge. We want the power of all of our voices to convey these messages, so we ask you to plan public events and media interactions in your district around weekly themes—if they work for you. We will be driving these messages at the national level.
August 2—Fighting For The Middle Class: “Make it in America” Week
We are wrapping up a Congressional work period with a series of bills to promote a Make it in America manufacturing revival. Members can also highlight Recovery Act jobs in your districts. Republicans in Congress have sided incessantly with big corporations shipping jobs overseas and Wall Street bankers who helped cause the meltdown.
August 9 – Fighting for the Middle Class: Protecting Social Security Week
The 75th anniversary of Social Security is August 14. Members can highlight how, once again, this bedrock promise is under assault from Congressional Republicans seeking to privatize and cut Social Security that Americans have earned. Democrats will protect and strengthen Social Security.
August 16 – Fighting for the Middle Class: Consumer Protection Week
As students head back to college and families head out for back-to-school shopping, it’s a good time to highlight the strong consumer protections enacted by this Congress. Republicans sided with the Big Banks over students when we made college more affordable. Republicans fought a first-ever consumer protection agency and split over a Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights. And as we continue the drumbeat on the Patient’s Bill of Rights giving Americans and their doctors control over their health care, Republicans would repeal long overdue protections for Americans if they get sick or have a pre-existing condition.
August 23—Fighting for the Middle Class: Small Business Week
Our economic recovery must be powered by small businesses. This Congress has enacted 8 separate tax cuts for small businesses, made health insurance more affordable, and fought to get credit flowing—time and again, over Republican opposition. This week, Senate Republicans moved to block billions of dollars of private-sector lending for small businesses.
August 30—Troops & Veterans Week
Since 2007, a Democratic-led Congress has made historic investments in services for our veterans. After eight years of insufficient support under Republicans, since 2007, we have increased funding for veterans health care and benefits by 70 percent, providing over 10,000 new claims processors to reduce case backlogs, 3,389 doctors, 14,316 nurses, 145 community-based outpatient clinics, and 92 new vet centers. We have improved troop pay and equipment, and improved conditions for military families. Around the August 31st deadline to get combat troops out of Iraq, Members can focus on the promise being kept.
September 6—Fighting for the Middle Class: “Make it in America”
In September, we will keep working on legislation to rebuild American manufacturing and make America the world’s leader in innovative technologies, after a decade of damage to our economy. Members can highlight our top priority—creating jobs here in America— as we head back for the next work period.
Please find enclosed two pocket cards to help you deliver this message. The first is our main argument, Moving America Forward, Not Back; and the second is Protecting Social Security at 75 Years. You should have already received a pocket card on Make it in America, our manufacturing strategy; as well as our message on national security.
Thank you for your service, for your leadership, and for representing working Americans in some of the most important debates of our era. Please have a productive and pleasant District Work Period. We look forward to seeing you, in your districts and in September.
Best regards,
Nancy Pelosi
Speaker
Steny Hoyer
Majority Leader
James E. Clyburn
Majority Whip
John Larson
In addition to the memo, Larson is sending around a to-do card that might fit snugly into a wallet or purse, so that Democrats on the campaign trail can whip it out if ever they are asked a pointed question by Rick Green – which is not too likely.
The memo reads:
Be Bold, be bold, but not too bold Lest the marrow of thy bones run cold
Responding to this traitorous abandonment of his party, one imagines a stalwart Democrat whose ancestors did vote for FDR responding: “Someone lock the barn door before this horses’ ass gets a chance to sneak back in,” the beer infused anti-Green Democrat drinking to the health of departing U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd and praising God for having gerrymandered Larson's 1st District.
I'm endorsing Lisa Wilson-Foley of Avon for lieutenant governor in the Republican primary. A Foley-Foley ticket would be fun, wouldn't it?
But that's not the reason why I'm endorsing her. The reason is Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, the other candidate.
As documented extensively by Al Robinson's great HatCityBlog, Boughton's fundraising has raised eyebrows. Even more troubling is Boughton's anti-immigrant policies and practices.
Boughton('s) ...record on immigration enforcement in Danbury and racial profiling, however, is so troubling that we could not in good conscience recommend him for this job. And he is inconsistent in his description of how illegal immigration even affects his city, on one hand saying that it is a drain on services, on the other bragging that Danbury has the lowest crime and unemployment in the state despite the presence of between 5,000 and 11,000 “illegals.”
Boughton hasn't exactly been a a fountain of veracity, either, as telling the truth seems to be an elusive concept for him.
Primaries are coming to a close in less than a week. It can’t happen soon enough.
Primaries are a distortion medium. People will have noticed that while general elections are matter, primaries are anti-matter. A Democratic politician blown to the left in a primary has only a few months before the general election to make his way to the right, and the same drama occurs among Republicans, though the motion is in the opposite direction. It is said on these occasions that Democrats, courting unions and progressives in the primary, find it necessary to address themselves in the general election to moderates within their party, as well as unaffiliated voters. Republicans, drifting right during primaries, face the same conundrum. Promises made during primaries are often abandoned during general elections. All this shape shifting distorts politics.
But what’s the alternative? That IS the problem. From the point of view of party people, the alternative – doing away with primaries – is unthinkable, and perhaps undoable. So, we are stuck with the beast. Not only are primaries a distortion medium; they are a distraction, and a dangerous one at that.
Primaries invite members of the same church, sitting practically in the same pew, to attack each other tooth and claw, with predictable results.
Take the gubernatorial race in Connecticut as a case in point. On the Democratic side, we see Ned Lamont and Dan Malloy making personal attacks upon each other, instead of more profitably addressing themselves to the issues. Malloy has said for years in his self promotion activities as mayor of Stamford that he helped to draw about 5,000 jobs into the city. Very likely, his intervention DID result in companies moving into Stamford during the late boom, bringing jobs with them. During the primary campaign, Lamont, hoping to dress himself in the garb of a Democrat whose principal interest is job growth, discovered a net loss of jobs in Stamford that might be attributed to Malloy.
He salivated.
Now, a net loss in jobs over a period of years does not necessarily mean that Malloy had not been instrumental in attracting business to Stamford; in fact, the net job loss may have been 5,000 jobs less had Malloy not intervened to attract businesses to his city. But never mind all that. In a primary in which the two contestants do not differ greatly on issues that matter, some means must be found to distinguish between the two – and so we get misleading attack ads, poisonous, meretriciously edited UTube clips, highly partisan bloggers with their brains on fire, trackers shadowing primary contestants hoping they might be able to record for some future attack ad a verbal slip or a hypocritical assertion, and all the rest of the political detritus thrown to the surface by a largely successful attack on the traditional two party system. Remember, primaries were DESIGNED to sap the party system. They have been successful. And, of course, campaign finance regulations are a godsend.
What to make of the claim that primaries are good?
They ARE good. Democratic primaries are good for Republicans, and Republican primaries are good for Democrats. No Republican cares much when Lamont bites off Malloy’s ear in a primary. The same is true on the Democratic side. Republican primary attacks on, say, Linda McMahon boost the prospects of her likely Democratic Party opponent in the general election.
Jonathan Kantrowitz, an intelligent progressive blogger who has taken a sudden interest in Rob Simmons’ on-again-off-again campaign, candidly admits that quarrels among Republican primary opponents make him dizzy with joy. Simmons is now cool on committing troops to Afghanistan, or so he claims in his latest ad, which has made him attractive to anti-war progressives. Even Blumenthal, these days, appears to be banging the war drums in sinc with President Barack Obama’s plans in Afghanistan, leaving progressive to clutch at the straws Simmons holds out to them.
There is no Democratic primary for the U.S. senate seat soon to be left vacant by a retiring Chris Dodd. So far, Republicans have had to rely on the self destructive tendencies of present Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic Party endorsed candidate. And in this, they have not been disappointed. Blumenthal has rusted up somewhat since he last engaged in a real political campaign, though he has, in the course of his 20 year run as attorney general, become adept at self-promotion. Owing to recent embarrassments – Blumenthal claimed falsely to have served in Vietnam, an almost certain poison pill for other ambitious American politicians – his handlers have kept him from the public arena, a strategy that is not likely to eradicate the rust spots.
In the general election, in any case, politics will return to normalcy, and there are some who hope against hope that we then may get on with important discussions of the issues. The danger is that all the personal attacks during the primaries will be internalized. Political parties have feelings too.
What should the issues be in the general gubernatorial campaign?
In less than two weeks, dazed Republicans and Democrats will go to the polls and choose their respective nominees for governor. The Democrat will be either Dan Malloy or Ned Lamont. The Republican will be either Tom Foley or Mike Fedele, currently the state’s Lieutenant Governor.
Foley’s strong suit is that he has no organic attachments to a Republican Party that has been unable, owing to its small numbers in the legislature, to reform public policy. The governor also has been far less effective in this regard than, say, Republican Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. Foley is a fresh face and a fresh mind, a businessman of some accomplishments. Fedele, also an accomplished businessman, has been tied to the apron strings of present Governor Jodi Rell, a popular chief executive who has been unable to shake the view of her, promoted by Democrats, as a caretaker governor.
The most severe problem facing an incoming Republican or Democratic governor is the state’s insolvency. Christie, confronting a comparable challenge – New Jersey has the heaviest debt load of any state -- waged a straight up conservative campaign in which he vowed to reduce his state’s debts though spending cuts. As governor, he has largely lived up to his pledges, incurring the undying enmity of the governing class and New Jersey’s influential media outlets.
In a hard fought campaign, Christie prevailed over multi-millionaire Jon Corzine.
Having inherited a $2.2 billion deficit and a projected deficit of $10.7 billion, relative to the state's $29.3 billion budget, he attacked and closed the $2,2 billion gap by accepting 375 of 378 suggested freezes and spending cuts; in eight weeks in office, he cut $13 billion. Property taxes in New Jersey, as in Connecticut, rise in direct proportion to increases in teacher’s salaries and benefits. Christie proposed a 2.5 cap on annual increases and then proceeded to ask teacher unions to make sacrifices, including unpaid furloughs and reductions on benefits. There was considerable push back on every front. Here is a post-campaign Governor Christie jousting with a reporter:
Watching Christie operate, many Republicans are asking themselves: Can we order up a likeminded governor in Connecticut? Do either of the prospective Republican candidates have the whatchacallits to follow Christie where courageous moderate Republican governors have never gone before?
The general impression among most voters is that many Democrats are holding on and waiting for changing circumstances, a national recovery from a deepening recession, to lift all the state’s boats. Other less sanguine Democrats pray that the windy effusions of one of the two Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls may change once the primary distortion medium is put behind him.
In the Republican Primary for Attorney General, NARAL Pro-Choice CT PAC has endorsed Ross Garber. Garber faces anti-choice challenger Martha Dean who has been endorsed by the anti-choice Family Institute of Connecticut (FIC).
“Ross Garber promises to enforce the laws of Connecticut,” said PAC Chair Cari Pierdes. “It is extremely important that the next Attorney General of the state of Connecticut remain pro-choice”.
Garber has represented businesses and individuals throughout the country before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in federal criminal investigations and in connection with enforcement actions by several state attorneys general.
Notably, he represented former Gov. John G. Rowland's office when Rowland was the subject of a criminal investigation and threatened with impeachment. He has advised other high-profile political figures in criminal investigations and defended an accountant in a mafia racketeering case.
"Some people are hired guns," Dean said in an interview. "Just like prostitutes, you know?"
Really Martha? Your failure to see the difference between a prostitute and an attorney representing a client is appalling.
Dean clearly intended to attack Garber. However, I view her comments as an attack on the legal profession. The idea that lawyers are prostitutes is both untrue and insulting.
....Perpetuating the notion that lawyers are prostitutes for political gain demeans the legal profession. It’s appalling coming from the mouth of an attorney who is seeking to become the State’s top attorney.
I was already prepared to endorse Rob Simmons in the Republican primary for Governor, based not only on his record as a moderate, pro-choice Republican congressman, despite his unfortunate and discontinued dalliance with the Tea Partiers, but also on the total lack of qualifications of his opponents.
But now he has sealed the deal, advocating for an almost complete withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan:
Video is from Paul Bass, New Haven Independent, a great on-line newspaper which I read every day.
What courage, what common sense, what integrity! Honestly, if he wins the primary I will be in a real quandary in the general election - that's how important this issue is to me.
