I was considering a little rant about the Rainville “pledge cards” – the physical manifestation of her million-dollar-cap campaign gimmick, which now even the Free Press is sick of.

Step one — her clean campaign and $1 million election spending cap — was full of loopholes, as her Democratic opponent Sen. Peter Welch and her Republican challenger Sen. Mark Shepard were quick to point out.

Now, let’s move on to other issues that truly matter to Vermonters.

Let’s hear from Rainville on her view of ending the war in Iraq and bringing the troops home, creating more jobs for Vermonters, expanding access to quality health care and insurance, reducing American reliance on foreign oil and other energy issues, her views on the agenda of President Bush, and more.

And why are they sick of it? Rather than rant myself, let me excerpt from Philip at VDB who beat me to the punch:

Rainville’s pledge, then, is a simulation (a “walking shadow,” as Macbeth would say). She knows, for a fact, that outside groups will fund her race. She knows they will run attack ads. She knows that those groups will obscure their connections to her campaign as effectively as they possibly can.

And she knows that she can always profess to be “shocked” — as she did over the NRCC’s $21,000 poll (and accusations of push-polling) — should those expenditures come to light.

In short, the “Clean Campaign Pledge” is a stunt in the worst sense of the word. It’s not even designed to be entertaining: its purpose is to systematically mislead voters into mistaking one of Peter Welch’s greatest strengths — his work on campaign finance in Montpelier — for something more like its opposite.

So what do I mean by a set-up? Consider a few things:

Consider some facts.

Fact one: Rainville is demonstrably NOT concerned about the corrosive nature of big, dirty campaign money in politics:

Rainville collected roughly $130,000 from top GOP leaders in Washington, including many with close financial ties to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who resigned his congressional seat earlier this year amidst a growing cloud of legal problems. He officially steps down June 9.

Democrats and some Republicans have criticized Rainville for taking money from some of the same GOP leaders whom she herself criticized in a campaign kickoff speech as having “lost their way,” and as a result lost “the respect of many Americans.”

Fact two: The Rainville camp knows the pledge is full of loopholes. They’re not stupid. Which means they intend to use those loopholes, which means the pledge is bunk from the get-go.

So what’s the point, here? Short term credit with the clean elections crowd? The issue hardly resonates with workaday Vermonters. More likely its about building an “integrity” narrative around Rainville. Given that she’s running at a deficit in that department, what with her own history of accepting questionable money, as well as stammering, stuttering and backpedaling to explain herself, she needs to build herself up by doing what Republican campaigns do best – knocking others down.

So in the short term, they get to try and call Welch a no-goodnik for not signing on (and we all see how well that’s going for them).

But what if he did sign the pledge? What then?

Then the race would be on to grab more moral high ground by getting to accuse him of breaking it. At which point Rainville throws up her hands, says “we tried to be good, but that rotten, rotten Democrat has forced our hand.”

I would guess this would take two weeks at most.

Thing is, by responding to criticisms about “outside expenditures” by rhetorically including them in her thin-to-the-point-of-vaporous “pledge,” she puts herself in the position of getting to define what constitutes a violation – an unaccounted for, or unacknowledged “outside expenditure.”

Like this blog, for instance. Why not? It, of course, has nothing to do with the campaign. Nor does Vermont Daily Briefing, What’s the Point, Rational Resistance, etc. But we would make for as easy a red herring as many possibilities (hey – it’d even be a way to bring in the big nasty blogofascists into the discussion).

I doubt we’d be the first on the list of such excuses, but I can still imagine it. After all, Rainville Communications Director Brendan McKenna showed up at the blogger barbeque, so we know he’s a reader.

And he passed out his stupid little pledge cards. Just to piss people off. Real class act.

What this tells me is that he’s another one of these young turk Republican types, like his “elder” Jim Barnett. Outsiders to the political scene who thought that the political “gotcha” game looked like too much fun, and wanted to get into it just for the pleasure of playing it the nastiest way possible and patting themselves on the back. Not so much interested in ideology as sticking it to people and laughing about it over beers.

And that, ladies and gentleman – as always – is the mentality we are dealing with. Don’t trust it.

Over at Burlington Pol, Haik likes to use “Rocky” graphics to cast Bernie Sanders in the role of underdog prizefighter. It’s compelling imagery, but in my own opinion, the campaign that is most analogous to a ring match thus far is Welch vs. Rainville, where the Welch campaign has followed a trajectory and a strategy that is easy to compare to boxing.

Welch came out to a slow start in the early months of the year (when his campaign was focused on fundraising to the near exclusion of all else). Rainville provided a few opening due to inexperience and confusion, to which Welch responded with careful, guarded jabs – never taking full advantage. Nor did he take full advantage of his position as the more experienced fighter (and as Senate President Pro Tem – sorry, can’t find a boxing analogy for that position) to go after his opponent in the early rounds for maximum advantage.

But now that the fight has been joined in earnest, Welch looks like a champ. Made unsteady by her rookie mistakes, and further set off her stride by the tentative jabs of her opposition, Rainville is on the ropes, and has been playing a rope-a-dope strategy ever since. Welch has been steady, sure and far more aggressive in these middle rounds of the match, steadily (but not excessively) pounding away and keeping her on the ropes and off balance. Clearly Welch is going for a victory on points, rather than a KO, and so far he remains in firm control of the debate.

Rainville has been flailing for an opening. She feels Welch has vulnerability through her so-called “clean campaign pledge,” phony as it is (and more on my concerns about its implications for bloggers like me in a later post), but try as she might, she can’t connect from that angle.

[And trust me, as a former hack, I’ve seen campaigns try to make these sorts of things into issues on the left and it NEVER works – even when there’s a legitimate point to be made. It’s too abstract to an electorate more worried about bread and butter issues – and who generally assume that ALL politicians deal in too much – or too DIRTY – campaign money, so what’s the point? I daresay the only reason the matter of Rainville’s own record of accepting sleazy contributions got any legs at all was NOT because the Welch campaign turned it into an issue, but rather that the Rainville campaign’s continual waffling and dissembling on the matter made it into a COMPETENCE issue]

Rainville is now been pushed into the corner by Welch, who has launched his campaign conversation series with Rainville’s primary opponent, conservative darling and State Senator Mark Shepard of Bennington County. This will continue a steady, easy pounding into Rainville’s exposed gut that will continue, even as it starts doing real long-term damage to her ability to continue the match.

[And for those who might think that Shepard is playing the role of Democratic dupe, think again. This is the best thing that could have happened to the Shepard campaign, and will show Republican primary voters that he is ready, willing and able to take the issues most near and dear to the right-wing base right to the public and the Democratic candidate. All he has to do is hold his own and his numbers against Rainville will start to rise.]

Though nowhere near being knocked out, Rainville was clearly saved by the bell. She’s now caught her breath and has come out aggressively swinging with a new assault on Welch’s defenses:

It has been confirmed that US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) will come to Vermont on behalf of Republican Martha Rainville’s US House campaign.

The potential is there for Rainville to score big standing side-by-side with the popular McCain. A lot of Vermonters like him. Still, there is serious lemonade potential here. Much of the far right GOP base – even in Vermont – loath McCain for what they see as too many compromises and points of common ground with Democrats – which is truly ludicrous when you examine the facts: The Nation:

In fact, McCain has always been far more conservative than either his supporters or detractors acknowledge. In 2004 he earned a perfect 100 percent rating from Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum and a 0 percent from NARAL. Citizens Against Government Waste dubs him a “taxpayer hero.” He has opposed extension of the assault-weapons ban, federal hate crimes legislation and the International Criminal Court. He has supported school vouchers, a missile defense shield and private accounts for Social Security. Well before 9/11 McCain advocated a new Reagan Doctrine of “rogue-state rollback.”

The pro-life, pro-school prayer, fiercely pro-Iraq War McCain’s record is hardly that of a liberal, and the “maverick” image which has given way to his courtship of the Religious Right was always more about campaign manuevering, rather than reality.

Regardless, it’s that same far-right GOP base that fancies Shepard. A couple well-orchestrated counter events that served to highlight that fact could actually cause a McCain event to further erode her support among this contingent, if things went just right.

In any event, as Welch continues to lead on points, Rainville is going to have to start looking for knockout opportunities as Election Day approaches.

Around Labor Day, start watching for some wild swings.

Well, shut my mouth (update): Freyne says he didn’t make the blogger BBQ, not because it wasn’t worthy, but because the World Cup finals were on. Fair enough! I rescind my yellow card.

Over at the Dorian Grays, Tarrant earns himself a new blemish with his latest web-based attack that calls Bernie a “liar” in particularly desperate fashion. This guy’s internal polling must just be in the toilet to be going so sleazy so fast. In any event, at this rate his picture will be unrecognizable by Election Day.

An excellent op-ed reprinted in the Rutland Herald by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein about Bush’s unlimited grab for power, focusing on the Hamdan case – while Kagro X’s diary at dKos brings us crashing back to Earth reflecting on the continued impotence of every other civil institution to rein him in, regardless of a simple Supreme Court decision.

The definitive blogger BBQ post is at Vermont Daily Briefing, although a lot of the major Vermont blogs have good stuff about it (I like Haik’s fun-house style pix). Lots of folks got pictures and have posted them, but I was too much of a loser to bring a camera. A participant (Anita) was kind enough to cc me the three pics she sent to Philip, but just reprinting them here as my own would be tacky. I’ve tried to spice them up to make them my own, though. Click on the link if your curious, but don’t expect much…

Here’s Philip of Vermont Daily Briefing:

Now, here’s Philip holding a severed head:

And here’s Philip holding a severed head on the Ice Planet of Hoth:

…and so on…

Comment (or don’t), and consider this an open thread.

This is what it’s come to. It’s now a good day when we can claw back to a break-even point on some of our civil liberties. From Cut to the Chase:

VPR reports this morning that Vermont has ruled that despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month saying police did not have to knock before entering a private home to search it, the Vermont state constitution offers increased protections that demand at least a knock before such search can be conducted and still have anything seized in a search (person, evidence, etc.) be used in a criminal investigation/court proceeding.

Here’s a link to the Freeps piece on the issue.

But then on the other hand, we have this news from Brattleboro via the Vermont Guardian:

About a dozen residents of the Clark-Canal neighborhood appeared last night before the Civilian Police Communication Committee regarding a July 7 complaint filed by the ALANA Community Organization.

According to the complaint, Clark-Canal resident Paul Canon told his neighbors that he is paid $30 per tape to record the activities of African Americans and Latinos. The residents said Police Officer William Davies picks up the videotapes at least twice a week from Canon’s house.

One resident of the house, Freemona Roundtree, who is black, said police came to her home at 5:30 on a Sunday morning, handcuffed her and her 22-year-old son and kept them on the porch in their nightclothes for four hours while they searched the house without a warrant. She said they found nothing, and produced a warrant hours after the search.

“I came from upstate New York to this little town to get away from what was going on. … My son has been arrested four times since we moved here,” said Roundtree.

There’d better be some serious hell to pay for this stuff. Any public employee – police or otherwise – complicit in this should be fired immediately unless there’s a damn good explanation.

I put the good news first so you’d – you know – have a second or so to celebrate. Not to sound glum, but I’m seriously looking forward to some victories, myself. We need more good news.

Mark July 30th on your calendar. Phase 2 of the grassroots impeachment movement is about to be formally launched. From the Times Argus:

Sheehan is scheduled to speak at rallies in Brattleboro and Montpelier on July 30 as part of a push for municipalities in Vermont and neighboring states to pass impeachment resolutions against the president.

Dan DeWalt, a Newfane selectman who organized a Town Meeting Day impeachment resolution, said Sheehan’s appearance at the rallies will be a “call to arms” for the movement to remove Bush from office.

“What we saw a few months ago was the embryonic beginning of a revolution,” DeWalt said. “Vermont is now part of the national stage on the issue of impeachment and the votes at our town meetings have been inspiring others across the country.”

DeWalt has been tireless about this, even when the rest of us have been, well…tired. Thanks for keeping this going Dan, while the rest of us mere mortals catch our breath. Keep watching this space, as GMD will keep updates a-flowin’…

Quick update on Leahy’s strong words regarding Sen Liberman’s decision to bolt the Democratic Party if reformer candidate Ned Lamont bests him in the primary: VPR has the transcript of their report from last week online:

(Leahy) “I’m disappointed that he’s talking about running as an independent. He’s always run as a Democrat. He has a special responsibility as the Democrat’s nominee for vice president. He’s always had the support of the Democratic party. He ought to be willing to run as a Democrat. He’ll either win or lose the nomination, but if he doesn’t win the nomination then I would fully expect the Democratic party to support whoever does win it.”

Straightforward, clear, and not too patient with Joe. When asked if announcing his intention to run as an Independent if he loses the primary has hurt him with Democrats:

(Leahy) “I think it did and I think it should. I mean, I’ve had people running against me in primaries and I was proud to run as a Democrat.”

But most interesting of all:

Leahy says he’ll support the winner of the Democratic primary and he plans to raise funds to help that candidate win election in November.

If Lieberman loses the primary, follows through with his threat, and can manage to actively engage the support of folks like Salazar who’ve indicated they will support Lieberman regardless, we could see this boil over into a real caucus schism played out on the Connecticut campaign trail.

Ouch. And all because Joe wants to have it all at any cost. The Republicans can have him as far as I’m concerned.

Democracy for Vermont, the local group that emerged from Howard Dean’s Presidential campaign (and not directly associated with Democracy for America, although the organizations are virtually indistinguishable at most of the Vermont meet-ups outside the Burlington DFA office), has endorsed Windsor Senator Matt Dunne in the Democratic primary for Lieutenant Governor against Burlington Representative John Tracy. This comes as no real surprise as Dunne has been courting the attentions of DFV for some time, and reportedly Tracy has shown little interest.

DFV had been pushing (and will continue to push in January) action on impeachment from the state legislature, and while Dunne had gone to some lengths to avoid the issue completely, Tracy had shown willingness to engage (albeit, not in the way impeachment proponents would have liked). But if Tracy had created an opening for himself with DFV by virtue of his presence, he did little to follow through afterwards.

As a distinct entity from DFA, DFV represents a small, but very committed and geographically diverse population of activists that, though largely Dems, include many self-identified Progressives and Independents. The endorsement clearly has the potential to further enhance Dunne’s apparent advantage over Tracy in the field.

When in Vermont could you have a Burlington event of around 100 people in a very public location (immediately surrounded by hundreds more) a mere three months before Election Day, where participants include the Democratic candidates for Governor and US House, as well as both Primary candidates for Lieutenant Governor, two sitting state Representatives and a Dem candidate for Chittenden County State’s Attorney, also – the Communications Director and Field Organizer for the Republican Candidate for US House, and a slew of activists (Democratic, Republican, Progressive and Independent), all mixing together over food and drinks (and football) — and yet not see a single reporter from the quote-unquote “major” Traditional Media outlets (e.g. the AP, Vermont News Bureau, Free Press, Rutland Herald, Times Argus, etc)?…

Click for the answer…

…why, when it’s a gathering of bloggers, of course!!!!

That’s right, with the exception of Shay Totten of the Vermont Guardian (who is busily putting the nontraditional back into the Traditional Media, god bless him), they all missed the wildly successful spectacle that was the 1st Annual VDB/GMD Hamburger Summit. Not even Freyne of Seven Days could be bothered to wander over. Many there were rather surprised.

Me? I would’ve been shocked if any had showed. The TM guys really really really have little use for bloggers. Buncha amateurs steppin on their toes.

But then, that’s what makes us so darn special.

So, I got no pictures, ’cause I’m a loser, but there will be shots a plenty on What’s the Point, iBrattleboro, and VDB, and I will link like crazy (especially to the big group blogger picture. What a hoot!)

Thanks to all who came. It was a blast meeting folks, and we’ll see you next year…

A news item you may have overlooked in Seven Days:

Luna, who is six months pregnant, says she and several of her friends arrived at [the Burlington bar Red Square] shortly after 9 p.m. for a performance by Mamadou, a Senegalese rhythm guitarist. She claims she was asked to leave at about 10:30; a bouncer told her that the policy was in place to protect pregnant women from being jostled by dancers or injured in a fight.

“I have a right to be there, and I don’t want other pregnant women to be restricted just because we have a belly,” she notes, adding she plans to report the incident to the Vermont Human Rights Commission.

Nice thought, but you’d have just as much of a chance if you were a Democrat appealing to the US Supreme Court for a fair election recount. This is the new, improved Jim Douglas Human Rights Commission, remember?

The Associated Press analyzed commission numbers for the 10 years from fiscal 1996 through June 2005, when Dean appointees were the majority for all but the last three months. Numbers of cases referred to the full commission ranged from a high of 75 in 1996 to a low of 28 in 2001.

The panel found grounds for continuing the case in as much as 56 percent of the 1999 cases to a low of 18 percent in 2001. Over the 10 years, the commission found possible discrimination in an average of 31.7 percent of cases.

In the first 10 months of fiscal 2006, when Douglas appointees were a majority, 26 cases went to the commission and it found potential discrimination in one. When no settlement was reached in that one and the commission was asked to sue, it refused.

But I digress…

Let’s return to the news report at hand…

So, let’s have a stupid-off, shall we? After all, both “sides” go straight to that word, so there must be stupid in here somewhere, yes?

But Red Square owner Martti Matheson says that the whole incident has been blown out of proportion. He insists that Red Square has “absolutely” never had a policy barring pregnant women in the bar — before 10 p.m. or after. “If we see someone who’s obviously pregnant, we might tell them that we think it might not be healthy” to be on the dance floor, Matheson says. “But we’d definitely never tell someone to leave. That would just be stupid.”

…and…

“He told us that we didn’t understand the risks of being pregnant,” says Luna. “I found it very offensive, discriminatory and stupid.“

So…ready to vote..?

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Found this document on the Rainville website:

(I’d be curious if anyone has received this document personally, or knows of someone who has. I think we’d all be curious as to the context in which it’s been applied…)

This is hardly a particularly shocking or press-stopping document (unless it is being used to directly solicit support from National Guard lists, which it sure as hell seems the Rainville camp is illegally using), but I think it’s interesting to juxtapose this advice against Rainville’s unabashed exploitation of her own uniform and office to raise her stature before her official announcement, and long after her exploratory committee had raised money above and beyond the spirit, if not the letter, of the law (I wish someone would tell her it’s not an exlporatory committee anymore – when GMD gets hits from her campaign, it still shows up as “Rainville exploratory”). All that political fundraising and activity just made it clear that she was biding her time and milking what military-themed press she could to advance her ambitions (and of course, while at the same time, communications-director-to-be Brendan McKenna was using the Rutland Herald as a propoganda tool to this same purpose).

Ah well. I suppose I should be gentle, given the upcoming political “all-star break” that Sunday’s blogger BBQ has become, what with right wing bloggers and Rainville staff intending to join the festivities.

Tell you what, in the interest of peace and harmony, I’ll say how appreciative I am that – despite what I may think of some of her behavior vis-a-vis the uniform – Rainville has not yet gone down the negative attack route. Take a look at her Dorain Gray portrait (and compare that with Douglas’s, and th already rather grueome image of Rich Tarrant!). Let’s hope this is a sign that she intends to do her part to keep this one out of the mud.