I think the first video in THIS SET explains why and what the centerpiece of the Republican campaign will be this fall.
PALIN (with text "Drill! Drill! Drill! underneath): [McCain] ... eventually supporting ANWR opening. Obama is way off base on all that. I think that those politicians who don't understand that we need more domestic supply of energy to flow into our hungry markets, you know, they're living in La La Land.
Obama/Biden better be ready for this. She is completely disarming and very, very effective in this energy bit. She deftly deflected the fact that McCain is doing a hard flop against his previous environmentally protective position on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Obviously the Republicans are leading with the Newt Gingrich program and taking the offensive on fuel prices. So far, they have very effectively drilled the Democrats into a corner. The fuel prices quite simply are the most potent reality of the deep failure of the Bush Administration. Gingrich has turned this around into the fault of the Democrats!
"Drill here, drill now, pay less" is a simple, appealing slogan. To unpack it requires at least ten minutes of explanation. The typical U.S. voter simply is not equipped to view the sloganeering with any skepticism. The production/consumption numbers and geopolitics of world oil simply do not suggest domestic oil drilling is any kind of route to U.S. energy independence. But the typical consumer does not see this when turning over a regular slug of cash at the local gas mart.
The Democrats have tried to inject some reality into the drilling debate. But they too promote "energy independence." I'd go as far as to say that in the long-run this is a myth. Every projection of future oil production suggests that the Middle East rapidly will become more important as a source for the U.S. and every other oil consumer no matter how much extra drilling happens on U.S. soil and in U.S. waters. The domestic drilling slogans offer no solution. The Democrats better not run away from making that clear.
People who think this veep choice automatically loses it for McCain are wrong. If the Democrats aren't careful, this woman will have them for lunch. She's capable of launching absolutely devastating attacks in what is lined up as a Republican mockery campaign. She'll be well briefed and very difficult to paint as an air-headed former beauty queen. In a match with Biden, do not expect a gaffe from her.
Still, it is the Democrats campaign to lose. If they play it right, the presence of Palin on the Republican ticket does undermine the argument that Obama is "not ready."
Here is a handy item from the NPR Fresh Air page from Tuesday's good program featuring an interview with Jonathan Oberlander, author of The Political Life of Medicare:
Comparing The Plans
McCain: He would replace the current tax-free status of health insurance coverage provided by employers with refundable tax credits worth $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to help purchase insurance. McCain would allow the sale of insurance policies across state lines, rather than state by state, as is currently the case.
Obama: He would create a new plan for those who lack other access to coverage, as well as a National Health Insurance Exchange to help pool the purchasing power of small businesses and individuals. Obama would also offer a combination of subsidies and tax credits to help make coverage more affordable. He would mandate health insurance coverage for children, but not adults. Obama would create a federally sponsored health insurance plan, similar to Medicare, that would compete with private plans for those under age 65.
If the McCain plan were to be enacted in this form, a lot of people would get very rude shocks in their paychecks: huge increases in their top-line income, but even larger deductions for taxes + premiums resulting in lower take-home pay.
I know of a local public agency where the full-time staff would each see under McCain a net loss of in take-home pay under this plan because the $5,000 credit would not quite cover the increase in taxes. Of course, not everybody gets such a full-paid plan in a state with premiums as expensive as they are in Maine. But workers who have struggled to win good benefits will be the ones hurt the worst by McCain. Furthermore, as premiums escalate, the credit would begin to fall further short in covering the tax increase.
Why aren't the Democrats singing these facts about the McCain plan and the obvious superiority of the Obama plan from the highest mountain?
One last question, does McCain's Maine co-chair, Senator Susan Collins, support this quite radical McCain plan?
Dennis Kucinich (OH-10): "It's Election Day 2008. We Democrats are giving America a wake-up call. Wake up, America. In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the neo-con artists seized the economy and have added 4 trillion dollars of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defense, three times more for gasoline and home heating oil and twice what we paid for health care.
"Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their homes, their health care, their pensions. Trillions of dollars for an unnecessary war paid with borrowed money. Tens of billions of dollars in cash and weapons disappeared into thin air, at the cost of the lives of our troops and innocent Iraqis, while all the president's oilmen are maneuvering to grab Iraq's oil.
"Borrowed money to bomb bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. No money to rebuild bridges in America. Money to start a hot war with Iran. Now we have another cold war with Russia, while the American economy has become a game of Russian roulette.
"If there was an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging and misappropriating, this administration would take the gold. World records for violations of national and international laws. They want another four-year term to continue to alienate our allies, spend our children's inheritance and hollow out our economy.
"We can't afford another Republican administration. Wake up, America. The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing.
"Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America. Multinational corporations took over our trade policies, factories are closing, good paying jobs lost.
"Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more. War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration wants to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America. Weapons contractors want more. An Iran war will cost 5 to 10 trillion dollars.
"This administration can tap our phones. They can't tap our creative spirit. They can open our mail. They can't open economic opportunities. They can track our every move. They lost track of the economy while the cost of food, gasoline and electricity skyrockets. They skillfully played our post-9/11 fears and allowed the few to profit at the expense of the many. Every day we get the color orange, while the oil companies, the insurance companies, the speculators, the war contractors get the color green.
"Wake up, America. This is not a call for you to take a new direction from right to left. This is call for you to go from down to up. Up with the rights of workers. Up with wages. Up with fair trade. Up with creating millions of good paying jobs, rebuilding our bridges, ports and water systems. Up with creating millions of sustainable energy jobs to lower the cost of energy, lower carbon emissions and protect the environment.
"Up with health care for all. Up with education for all. Up with home ownership. Up with guaranteed retirement benefits. Up with peace. Up with prosperity. Up with the Democratic Party. Up with Obama-Biden.
"Wake up, America. Wake up, America. Wake up, America."
I stand here today at the crosscurrents of that history - knowing that my piece of the American Dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me.
Michelle Obama, Aug. 25, 2008
Certainly I liked the speech Michelle Obama delivered at the Democratic National Convention Monday night. She's a huge credit to the Obama operation.
The speech was very personal. It focused on family and personal relations and her late father's struggle against a debilitating disease. The hard times were overcome through gritty individual perseverance of folks who "weren't asking for a handout or a shortcut," and "smiling and laughing" all the while.
Look, I'm not really going to criticize her story. I liked the speech and she was brilliant. But I do want to discuss the manner in which she dips into the upcoming forty-fifth anniversary (this Thursday) of the March on Washington and the Martin Luther King "I Have a Dream" speech. She cites not one word of King. Maybe Senator Obama will do so in his nomination acceptance speech on Thursday, I don't know.
Even though Michelle does say that getting to "what our world should look like" has required "people who stood up and marched and risked everything they had," and that "we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be," she avoids dwelling on the act of people organizing and uniting for the cause of justice. She does not cite any sources of injustice either. Just what is it that makes the world not look as it should?
King had an awful lot to say about that on August 28, 1963:
MLK: In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
Forty-five years later that promissory note is still marked in default for de facto segregated, vastly under-funded communities all over America while foreign wars rage on and corporate ripoffs flourish. I'll be watching the Democrats to see if there is even the slightest sense left in 'em to address any of this. I have my doubts. It seems like to be on-message, Democrats must eschew mention of economic starvation of poor communities and the now hyper-aggravated divide of society's resources into the pockets of the rich.
At that link, there also is surprisingly good ad in response from Obama. If the McCain campaign wants to play a Rovian script attacking Obama as an un-American, un-patriotic "celebrity" (a "critical psychological, character-based foundation to support a very disparate set of accusations," according to a posting at The Democratic Stratigist), I think that McCain's mansions are totally fair game. Good for Obama in getting a response out so quick.
See also HERE for an entertaining trip around to McCain's residences.
They must see the damage possible from the houses gaffe because the McCain campaign has responded with the POW card: "'This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison,' spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post."
Okey doke. If that's how they're going to deal with everything, isn't it fair to start questioning if the POW years had a lasting negative effect on McCain's fitness for high office when he can't even remember how many mansions he has?
Obama is sinking in the polls like a rock. She will be perceived as the strongest choice to boost him over the widest area while rekindling the primary fires of last spring. Plus, for some strange reason I can't fathom, she'll be seen as the "experience" Obama needs at his side for dealing with the mean and nasty Russians now suddenly focused in the frame and contributing to McCain's rise. Of course, that perception of her "experience" is based on the Bill Clinton presidency and her cultivation of a Thatcheresque pose.
"Higher taxes, higher gas prices, economic disaster."
Whoa. This is some powerful stuff McCain is peddling. Ads with a message very similar to this one are running in southern Maine, probably because of the proximity to swing state New Hampshire. It's traditional anti-tax technique coupled with deft transferrance of the harms of decades of Republicanism away from the Republicans. Basically the idea is to hang the last eight years around Obama's neck. Ridiculous? Of course.
The gas prices actually constitute a huge levy on the public for Bush's wars. But will Obama attack back in kind with a strong enough counter-message that it is actually McCain who wants to continue the wars ad infinitum? I haven't seen it yet.
Obama has tried to explain that his economic plan intends a mild restructuring of taxes so the rich pay a few cents more. That would be a step in the right direction. But he better get out there with a strong "fairness" message while drawing a picture of McCain as purveyor of endless war. Otherwise, these ads will set in and Obama will have no hope of shaking enough voters free from the grip of the Republican confusion machine.
More commentary just out describes the weakness of the recent Obama campaign in the face of this Republican onslaught: Progressives Sound Alarm About Obama Campaign. With McCain so inconsistent and so lacking in solutions, the disturbing trend is that, according to Josh Marshall, "The lack of any consistent lines of attack against McCain is becoming palpable."
I couldn't agree more. For evidence about what is happening, go look at the erosion over at the 538 poll tracker. Now the fellow who runs that site is arguing that Obama has a great ground game and that somehow shows the campaign is also great. However, the erosion in the polls is unmistakable. If this is turning into the August disaster that was the Swiftboated Kerry campaign of four years ago remains to be seen. But if I was hoping beyond all hope for an Obama presidency, I'd be worried.
He must think the taking of Iraq was just a natural gift of God:
One of the hardest things for Americans to accept is that our country used its power to invade, conquer, occupy and eviscerate someone else's country while causing untold suffering of millions of its people. In the mind of McCain, this taking simply does not register as an invasion. H/T Think Progress.
"Patronizing" ad from Republican incumbent Senator Norm Coleman
Former entertainer Al Franken: Is he "serious"?
We're on a visit to my home state and it's hard to miss the politics. While recent polling has both Maine and Minnesota "likely GOP" in the senate contests, it appears there is a much more vigorous campaign already going on out here.
Just a couple of observations. The huge problem for Franken is that he is still trying to convince people he's "serious." That's deadly at this point, I would think.
Coleman, for his part, has pounced. The campaign as far as he's concerned is all about the quality of Franken as a real Minnesota human being. Franken is disqualified on the basis of some tax irregularities and off-color satire he'd written years ago. But the ad! I agree with the Air America people that it's patronizing. Any decent Minnesotan should be offended and it should backfire on Coleman. If the ad doesn't backfire, Minnesotans will for six more years have the senator they deserve.
Franken's videos have real issues in them. I think they're pretty good. More HERE.
State Rep. Tardy in badly distorted op-ed calls for expanded oil drilling, while Senator Collins plays with "speculation," but does not name those who rigged the markets (Hint: It was McCain advisers.)
Were Republicans thinking ahead when House Republican Leader Josh Tardy was chosen to serve as vice chair with co-chairs Senator Olympia Snowe and Senator Susan Collins in Senator John McCain's Maine presidential campaign? Tardy is the foil for national Republican talking points, issuing an unqualified, unabashed pro-drilling editorial last week in the Thursday edition of the Bangor Daily News. This allows Collins and the campaign for Republicans in Maine to straddle both sides of the oil drilling issue while Collins makes herself look tough on oil futures speculators. It's a delicate tightrope they are walking.
Senator Collins in the past has opposed opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling and recently has pushed out word that she "is opposed to drilling off the coast of Maine because it would be harmful to the state's fishing industry" in a Susan Sharon report on MPBN last week. Collins evidently also flops more standard Republican. According to MPBN she believes,
the nation should be energy independent by 2020. To do that means expediting applications for oil and exploration on federal lands where it has already been approved. It also means more drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile, Collins Saturday had an editorial in the BDN that attacks speculators in rigged oil futures trading markets (but not the characters that did the rigging). There she has nothing at all to say about drilling.
Of course, assuming that the U.S. offshore and Arctic Refuge drilling bans have any significant effect at all on world oil prices is pure madness. For the record, I believe that some of these areas will be opened up and may deliver fabulous profits some day to a few lucky lessees. But these areas in question are very, very unlikely to produce finds on the scale even of the North Sea, for example. In fact, if you look into the reference for the figures Tardy cites--from a controversial Department of Interior inventory of U.S. oil & gas resources--you'll discover the numbers are totally ethereal.
Tardy writes,
In 2005, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act that required the Department of the Interior to inventory oil resources that could be found both onshore and offshore in U.S. territory. Interior reported back that we have an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil sitting off our coast. We also have 53 billion barrels onshore. That’s a total of 139 billion barrels, more than the proven reserves of Iran or Iraq or Russia or Venezuela or Nigeria or even Kuwait. Moreover, America’s Outer Continental Shelf also is estimated to contain some 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That’s a tremendous resource base, and we need it.
The numbers evidently come from a table on page vii of the report. The column cited is called Undiscovered Resources (Mean amount). That is not a "proved" resource base! But note Tardy's use of the word "have." By definition, we do not yet "have" undiscovered oil.
Tardy then distorts wildly the meaning of these numbers when in the very next line when he compares them to the "proven reserves" of Iran, Iraq, Russia, and so on.
I don't live in the 1st Congressional District any more, haven't since the time Tom Andrews held that House seat. But I do have some remarks on the 2008 Democratic primary race for the 1st District seat being vacated by Representative Tom Allen from an anti-nuclear-war point of view.
Because I see a disturbing trend in the Democratic approach to the politics of nuclear proliferation, I will focus on statements 1st District candidate Ethan Strimling gave during the Maine Public Broadcasting radio debate a couple of weeks ago. AUDIO CLIP:
STRIMLING: I have been a long-time activist against nuclear weapons. I have been a long-time activist trying to make sure we do not spread nuclear weapons around the planet. So I sponsored a bill to have the State of Maine divest its funds from Iran. [emphasis added]
Let's stop right there. Ethan Strimling thinks IRAN is the nation most problematic with regard to nuclear proliferation, hence the only one deserving any mention at all in a discussion about spreading "nuclear weapons around the planet"? I think this shows just how debased politics in the arena of foreign and military policy has become both locally and nationally.
The tone and emphasis of these anti-Iran statements and policy proposals by Ethan Strimling are all wrong. Why? For example, I discussed here how putting the advanced nuclear arsenal currently possessed by Israel on the table out in the open, and furthermore addressing the U.S.-Israeli threatening posture toward Iran would be a logical place to approach Mideast tensions and nuclear disarmament. Unlike Israel, Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and, according to U.S. intelligence agencies in the National Intelligence Estimate (pdf) made public in December 2007, "Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." To my naive mind, it is extremely puzzling that we are talking about Iran while we bury out of view Israel's full-blown nuclear triad that is pointed mainly at non-nuclear-weapons states like Iran.
The disarmament logic of this vigorous yet highly dubious program of escalating punitive anti-Iranian economic sanctions escapes me. But not only is it endorsed by Strimling, so too it was by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee during a strongly pro-Israel speech last week. Among others, one of sanctions currently making the rounds in Congress is the Ackerman-Pence resolution that would try to cut off Iran’s imports of gasoline.
It's curious how gasoline is proposed as a cudgel against Iran. The result cannot be nuclear disarmament. If anything, a cutoff will entrench hardliners and make proliferation more likely. So, why do this?
I won't really try to answer that here. I'll save that for another post. But in researching this question, I'd point toward pre-Iraq-invasion neoconservative thought that I wrote about way back in March 2003. Obviously, the result of the U.S. Iraq invasion has been a strengthening of Iran's geostrategic position. I see these economic sanctions as a misguided attempt to destabilize Iran politically and perhaps taunt it into actions that could become an excuse for U.S. or Israeli military retaliation.
Maybe Iran hawks in the U.S. or Israel see this as a way to reverse the blown results of U.S. Iraq policy by punishing the people of Iran. In that way, it is not unlike the failed attack on the Iraqi populace during the 13-year Iraq sanctions regime from 1991 to 2003.
Without further detail I'll just conclude that while these kind of sanctions cause odd market complications and distortions, they are ineffective for the stated purpose. They are aimed at a government with an infant nuclear program and no active weapons effort. Hardly can they be seen as serious anti-proliferation measures. In my opinion, Ethan Strimling evidently unwittingly has signed onto a neoconservative destabilization program against Iran masked by a sincere desire "to make sure we do not spread nuclear weapons around the planet."
What makes no sense to me about this distorted position staked out by Ethan Strimling is that he and I both cut our teeth in anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid divestment activism in the same place: the Maine Peace Action Committee at the University of Maine. Strimling came a couple years after I had left the University, so we really did not know each other except through a few mutual friends. But anyway, his position on these Iran sanctions is doubly puzzling because I know that learning environment. It supposedly teaches you not to be taken in by these kinds of political distortions.
So if a political campaign were to deal honestly with nuclear weapons and other real military issues, not blinded by fear of Iran, what would be discussed?
It's just prior to the Maine Democratic State Convention, so let's review the mainline Party position on Israel. This position is so reactionary that the slightest whiff of "evenhandedness" with respect to Israel and Palestine will be shot down in an instant. So it is good to have a firm grasp of what we are dealing with: unquestioning pro-Israel commitments the Party and its presumptive headline candidate endorse.
There usually is a minor scuffle when a few platform amendments are brought up to express evenhandedness and suggest that Israel may not always be the good guys in white hats to whom America must shovel boatloads of advanced weaponry and prodigious financial aid that ends up supporting settlement development. We'll see what happens with that, but usually the debate is squelched rather quickly.
Ensure a Strong U.S.-Israel Partnership: Barack Obama strongly supports the U.S.-Israel relationship, believes that our first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the security of Israel, America's strongest ally in the Middle East. Obama supports this closeness, stating that that the United States would never distance itself from Israel.
Support Israel's Right to Self Defense: During the July 2006 Lebanon war, Barack Obama stood up strongly for Israel's right to defend itself from Hezbollah raids and rocket attacks, cosponsoring a Senate resolution against Iran and Syria's involvement in the war, and insisting that Israel should not be pressured into a ceasefire that did not deal with the threat of Hezbollah missiles. He believes strongly in Israel's right to protect its citizens.
Support Foreign Assistance to Israel: Barack Obama has consistently supported foreign assistance to Israel. He defends and supports the annual foreign aid package that involves both military and economic assistance to Israel and has advocated increased foreign aid budgets to ensure that these funding priorities are met. He has called for continuing U.S. cooperation with Israel in the development of missile defense systems.
So, could Obama turn even further right on Israel? Well, he told an audience last week at a Boca Raton, Florida synagogue that his commitment to Israel's security was "unshakable", in addition to "incontrovertible", as described above. He even threw in what sounded like some of his famous denouncement, this time in the direction of former president Jimmy Carter. Lately Carter has been talking to Palestinians, in particular leaders of the hated elected Hamas government in Gaza. And uttering just yesterday the unspeakable truth that Israel possesses "150 or more" nuclear weapons itself.
It seems to me that no useful diplomacy Obama or anyone else could bring to bear will be possible until the U.S.-supported rouge Israeli arsenal is officially acknowledged and placed on the negotiating table.
Basically, again, what Gerald said. Seems this "forum" just was an opportunity for Senator Susan Collins to "tout" herself.
Sen. Collins touts bipartisan record By Bill Trotter - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - Bangor Daily News
BANGOR, Maine - When time came Monday morning to talk about the specifics of America’s policies overseas, Sen. Susan Collins started off on an issue she has mentioned before and is likely to mention again in the months leading up to the Senate election this fall: bipartisanship.
The Republican incumbent cited her work in 2004 on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee with Sen. Joe Lieberman, a former Democrat who became an independent in 2006, as an example of how bipartisanship can get things done. She and Lieberman, the committee's ranking minority member, had set about to implement reform recommended by the bipartisan Sept. 11 Commission.
"This [resulting] legislation brought about the most sweeping changes in our intelligence community in more than 50 years," Collins told approximately 65 people who gathered Monday morning at Bangor Public Library for the Bangor Foreign Policy Forum. "I strongly believe we need more of that approach in Washington."
Let's stop right there. The reality is that the so-called intelligence "reform" she "touts" is a rump bureaucracy permanently subordinate to Pentagon prerogatives. Collins may posture as creator of some great new post-9/11 security apparatus, but the truth is she was kept on a short leash by Rumsfeld and more powerful Congressional Pentagon operatives, like former House Armed Services Committee Chair Duncan Hunter. As some may recall, Collins's original work could not pass in December 2004 until the Pentagon was satisfied its turf was protected.
Later, the original Director of National Intelligence (DNI, the key position established by the legislation), Jon Negroponte, left the job for an ostensible downgrade to Deputy Secretary of State under Condoleezza Rice with "disappointment" expressed by Collins. The structure established by the Collins-Lieberman legislation left the DNI hampered by having "little control" over its own budget.
It's not hard to see that the 2004 legislation was little more than an annoyance for the Bush Administration, and they figured out how to fold it in, now under the hand of retired Admiral and national-security-contractor-friendly J. Michael McConnell, late of the "international consulting" firm, Booz Allen Hamilton. For example, Bush has crippled the Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board included in the law, again to the "disappointment" of Senators Collins and Lieberman. Is there a pattern here?
With a little work, it should be easy to demonstrate to Maine voters that Senator Susan Collins has not been able to use her power effectively. She has been a very subservient figure within the operations the Bush government conducts.
Except it's not strong enough and doesn't say Collins helped start the war
This was the Tom Allen press release this morning:
Dear Eric,
We have high standards for Senators from Maine, and we have high standards when it comes to the campaigns that are run here too. That’s why we intend to have a healthy debate on the issues. I believe the people of Maine deserve a debate on the important issues facing Maine.
This race is already one of the most closely watched across the nation. And the level of interest by third party groups looms large.
By law, my campaign staff and I are prohibited from having any contact with these third party groups, so we cannot go to them directly with the request I am making of them publicly:
If you plan to attack Senator Collins – don’t. That won’t help your cause and it has no place in the conversation I intend to have with the voters of Maine.
If you want to help bring change to Maine and America, stick to the issues and talk about my record and my plans to solve our problems.
If you plan to run advertisements in Maine about this race, do it positively and factually.
Our campaign has no place for the politics of personal destruction, and we will publicly denounce any negative radio or television advertisement by a third party mentioning my opponent by name or referencing her.
I believe there is too much at stake to allow this race to be undermined by third party groups using negative personal attacks on Susan Collins or me.
My sincere hope is that all third parties – those who favor Susan Collins and those who favor me – will limit their television and radio advertising to positive messages about their favorite candidate.
I respect Susan Collins, and I know she cares about Maine. But Susan Collins and I have fundamentally different views on the most important issues facing this country today -- on economic policy, on our policy in Iraq, on health care and on energy policy. I look forward to a vigorous debate on those and other issues that matter to the people of Maine.
Susan Collins and I see this world differently and in the last 12 years have made very different choices for Maine. The voters of Maine deserve an honest discussion about these differences, and about our competing visions for our country and our state. We cannot allow third party groups to poison this important debate.
I sincerely hope that Susan Collins will join us in a substantive conversation and agree with me that negative ads from third parties attacking either of us have no place in this debate. I hope that Susan Collins agrees to the rules we have adopted.
Thank you for all that you do. Remember, together we can change the direction of Maine and America.
Sincerley,
Tom
I'm not against the notion that the campaign should be respectful. For example, the Collins ad attacking Tom Allen for being supported by moveon.org that slimed the peace movement in the process is my definition of a dirty campaign that should be avoided. But with this declaration, Tom opens himself to charges of hypocrisy on any sort of sharp and direct criticism of Collin's record that he or anyone else might make. There will never be enough opening to deconstruct Collin's obfuscations of her role as a player in the Bush/Republican agenda. The campaign will rapidly devolve into trivialities about highly questionable small business ratings and voting record perfection. Collins will be free to perform mockery of Tom Allen in the manner suggested above, but Tom won't be able to touch her in any hard-hitting way on the war, like is done in the pretty strong anti-war ad above. This statement is a bad idea.
Maine Owl is a comment & nature photography blog. It is written by The Owl, a long-time peace & justice activist now residing in the Bangor, Maine area...
