Staff shakeups and switcheroos have begun, with session's end marking the unofficial kickoff of the full bore campaign season in Vermont.
First to go was Adam Quinn, Finance Director for the Vermont Democratic Party, and a veteran of statewide campaigns in Vermont and Montana (Quinn has been picked up as the new National Field Director for Democracy for America). Following on his heels is the departure of VDP Executive Director Jill Krowinski to manage the Symington campaign. Joining her on the all-but-guaranteed Democratic nominee's campaign will be Drew Hudson, former Communications Director for VPIRG, and most recently with MoveOn.org. Also leaving the VDP office soon for the Maine Dems will be Technology Director Reid DeWolfe.
Over in the Lieutenant Governor contest, former columnist Peter Freyne has been active in the preliminaries of as-yet-unannounced candidate Deb Richter's campaign, and word is he will be onboard the formal operation in an official capacity (as to a "professional" capacity, who knows... the fact is, Lite Guv campaigns in Vermont don't usually have budgetary capacity for multiple staffers, and its hard to imagine Freyne as a full-blown campaign manager, as opposed to a communications person. We'll see.)
Instead, let's focus on the other possible slogans the GOP could have picked. ASD has a list of registered slogans that provide all sorts of alternate possibilities:
I like EMLA's "numbs the pain," because it accurately reflects the short-term effect of us all getting drunk and crying into our drinks should McCain win in November.
Francis is one of the roughly 130 women in the Vermont prison system who will spend Mother's Day separated from their children. For Francis and many jailed mothers, their challenge, beyond staying sober and not reoffending, is maintaining their parental bonds and making sure they remain intact after their release.
With the female prison population in Vermont having grown exponentially in the past 10 years, more women are finding themselves in Francis' position - struggling to be good mothers while behind bars.
The article goes on to note that many of the mothers who are in jail are there for crimes related to substance abuse problems and I'm at the point where I question whether or not jail does these women or their families any good. I'm not arguing for a removal of the prison system, but I am wondering if drug-related crimes might be better dealt with through treatment facilities with an active interest in, when possible and appropriate, keeping families together.
There will be something like 600-plus delegates pledged to Obama at the Vermont Democratic Party's State Convention in Barre on May 24. Of those, 110 are declared candidates for the six open district-level slots to represent Vermont's Obama voters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. If every candidate gets two minutes of air time, that's three-plus hours of listening to impassioned people say, "I'm just so fired up, and I've worked so hard to get here."
So I heard an interesting take this evening at our County Committee meeting. A young woman who worked the phones, stood in the cold at the honk & waves, and brought the signs to the Maple Fest Parade, told us why she wanted to go to Denver to help nominate Barack Obama. She's biracial, moved here despite her family's concern that she would be terribly isolated in the whitest state in the US, and she wants to show the rest of the country that there's more to Vermont than skiing, ice cream, and being the whitest state in the country.
(Updated due to current announcement. - promoted by JulieWaters)
Just got this rather spartan PR from the Dems:
Symington to make Announcement
Montpelier, VT - Gaye Symington will make an announcement at the Statehouse on Monday, May 12.
WHEN: Monday, May 12 - 10 a.m.
WHERE: Vermont Statehouse Steps
Three guesses what that announcement's gonna be.
UPDATED: Symington is making it official right at this moment. You can stream the audio of it right now (live stream of the speech, which will be just WDEV radio once the speech is over) at this link --julie
This video clip is spreading around the blogosphere like a wildfire. It's some old footage of Bill O'Reilly on Inside Edition, a cheesy 90's tabloid show.
Watch how Bill O' reacts when he can't read the teleprompter.
Back when I was supporting Edwards, one of my major concerns with Obama was in his support for "clean coal." I wrote about it at the time, over at Green Mountain Daily. Here's what I wrote:
There's a great diary over at MyDD which outlines some serious problems with an energy bill which is cosponsored by Obama. The first is a bill to support liquid coal. From the diary:
We don't know how to sequester mass quantities of carbon dioxide created during coal liquefaction yet. Even once we figure that process out--a solution that will no doubt reduce the net energy output of the coal to fuel process itself--we've still got a dirty fuel that increases greenhouse emissions compared to petroleum.
There's also a draft bill up for discussion that includes a provision which will screw us, as Vermonters, over, along with a lot of other states.
As discussed previously, the two gubernatorial candidates on the left are probably the two politicians in the state in the biggest ruts. They each have some bad communications patterns that have long set in, and as such, a lot of voters have some have drawn some pretty stark conclusions. The prize may go to whichever one can demonstrate enough perspective, discipline and humility to recognize (or be forced to recognize) these ruts and step out of them, surprising voters with a political re-introduction that brings them in line with their own rhetoric.
So far, the signals are mixed from Gaye Symington. Her speech at the Curtis awards suggested she is taking those steps, but her public response to the stimulus package suggested she is still deep in a sort of self-destructive, political victimization complex.
In the case of Pollina, however, the signals are not so mixed. When I have waxed analytical - even to the point of straining optimistic credulity - on this site, it has always been with an implied assumption that Pollina would be manifesting the "let's work together" mantra of his ambassadors. And yet, in repeated public appearences, he seems to consistently revert to form, with his own simplistic, fringe-candidate-style victimhood, indifference to consistency in his words, and consistently indulged impulse to smack around "The Democrats" in terms both hypocritical and outright disingenuous. In other words, for many of us who simply don't trust him (regardless of his occasionally inconsistent stances on issues), he has made no effort to demonstrate to us that he is now trustworthy. He seems for all the world to remain openly scornful of those who would question his demand (not a request - a demand, as we'll see below) that voters anoint him.
At Anthony Pollina's appearance on the Mark Johnson Show last week, Johnson asked him pointedly about the idea floated at this site:
The plan here is to keep Douglas below 50%, forcing the final vote into the Legislature, where lawmakers give the nod to the number two vote getter. To make this work, the logic would have to be promoted ASAP and steadily, in order for it to gain exposure in the press and legitimacy among the public. The reasoning would be similar to the logic behind IRV, which the public has already been somewhat primed with. The winner should have a majority. If a majority rejects the Governor, the third place candidate agrees to essentially recuse themselves from the running and throw their support behind the second place winner - and by extension, their electoral support follows. The legislature then has a consistent rationale for picking the number two.
It should be noted that Johnson refers to this as an idea being floated by "The Democrats," a conceit he repeated uncritically during his appearance on Vermont This Week as well. Now I understand when Progressives make assumptions like this, as the Progs - like the Repubs - are a more top-down, command-and-control institution than the Democratic Party, which can become a virtual free-for-all, but from someone like Johnson, I think it is journalistic laziness. With only one exception, every prominent Democrat I've talked to about the idea has rejected it outright, so if you're going to lazily default to some shorthand about what "The Democrats" think, this idea ain't it (maybe he - like some folks - have decided that this blog is some sort of secret mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, which - although it may fit into the sort of simplistic grand Dem machine conspiracy narrative that makes it easier not to actually look reality in the face and think critically - is patently laughable).
In any event, here is the exchange with the salient response:
Who caught last night's Saturday Night Live? I'm reading that Clinton supporters around the country are in a tissy over last night's skit. See for yourself whether SNL went over the line.
(Unconfirmed) word is that longtime single-payer advocate Dr. Deb Richter will be challenging Brian Dubie for the Lieutenant Governor's office this year, running on the Democratic ticket.
There has been recent speculation in the traditional media that Richter was considering such a run - including considering whether to run as a Democrat or a Progressive, but word is circulating rapidly that she is ready to move forward with her candidacy.
And I can think of no better endorsement than the one offered by GMD front pager Caoimhin Laochdha in the comments of a diary I wrote some time back, musing about possible women candidates for Governor:
I'd vote for her in a heartbeat.
For almost twenty years, Vermont has primarily faced two major problems. (1) The health care crises facing our broken medical system and (2) everything else government does.
One Democratic physician already proved to be an extremely adept Governor at handling the "everything else." A Governor Richter might be our best chance to finally and seriously address the biggest, most difficult and most serious problem:
- facing Vermont's economy,
- pressuring the state's budget,
- driving state property and income taxes,
- exploding the cost of human capital for state employers, and
-creating one of the biggest threats to our quality of life.
Without health, you have nothing. Without a functioning and manageable health care system, we are only treading water - at best - trying to handle every other state problem.
Dr. Richter is extremely capable and qualified. Her life's work and Vermont's most pressing need just happen to be the same thing.
