Steve Novick voted for Nader? Gasp.
Last week, Jeff Merkley made some remarks which clarified why the better choice in the race between Merkley and Steve Novick to battle Gordon Smith for the Senate seat from Oregon is, indeed, Steve Novick.
Apparently Jeff Merkley is happy to be a Democratic Party Apparatuck, Get along to get along. This route does have some of its advantages. The means of legislative (and indeed executive) government needs to be some unholy mixture of working with the “Powers that Be” and calling such out. The problem with the former is that it inspires a certain amount of timidity. The latter model has its problems — the “Powers that Be” have a certain amount of, um, power to shuttle things, after all — but within this framework, you have to solve the pressing problem of the Democrats first.
The words went to the effect of pointing to Novick’s praise of Ralph Nader voters in 1998, an alluding to his vote for the candidate in 1996 by way of dishonestly suggesting he did so in 2000. As well in pointing to a certain level of ambivalence in the candidacies of Clinton and Obama. To which I have to say, Good for Novick. Really. It’s a Senate I used to sometimes view as being compose of Russ Feingold and 99 others, which means that if things settle in with your Harry Reid — Tom Daschle component of managing a caucus, you need someone to counteract your Ken Salazars.
Absent any compelling reason Merkley would be more electible than Novick, and I cannot find any, Novick has to be your man… Oregon, so far as I can tell, being the seventh most likely Republican Senate seat to go over to the Democratic side. Which, if I had to guess, is about where the races settle between the donkey party winning and the Elephant party winning.
March 15th, 2008 at 9:13 am
If you think that Jeff Merkley is a go a long get along kind of democrat you clearly haven’t paid attention to the legislature. With only one vote to spare Merkley twisted the arms of moderate democrats and led the most progressive legislative session in decades.
But dissing Democrats is no way to get them elected. Novick’s statement that he will be disappointed in either Democratic Presidential candidate just helps John McCain.
Furthermore, Oregon isn’t as blue as people think. Gore won Oregon by less than 7,000 votes. Novick is running a Nader like campaign, attacking Democrats and running to the far far left which is not going to fly with moderate D’s and nonaffiliated voters in the crucial Portland suburbs.
Finally, I am a big Russ Feingold fan as well but unlike Steve Novick, Feingold has class when he brings up issues that moderates aren’t taking up. Feingold understands that dividing progressives like Novick is doing with his negative attacks on Merkley is how we got in this mess.
March 15th, 2008 at 9:29 am
To characterize Jeff Merkley as a “get along to get along” (the actual phrase begins with “go” not “get”) candidate flat out either hasn’t been paying attention or is lying through his/her teeth. A “go along to get along” politician would never have “burned bridges” as the Oregonian’s Jeff Mapes says that Jeff Merkley did in trying to get a bill through the Oregon senate. – http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2008/02/how_the_legislature_did_cont.html
Novick, like Nader, is about dividing progressives. It’s antithetical to what being a progressive is all about. Which is why it didn’t work for Nader and why it won’t work for Novick.
How does Novick constantly trash-talking other Democrats help rid us of GOP rule? How does it help anyone other than Gordon Smith/John McCain or Ralph Nader?
March 15th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Novick, like Nader, is about dividing the progressives. This strategy of divide and conquer is what’s caused progressives to lose in past elections. Jeff is not divisive. He is a uniter – as is shown in his track record in the house.
March 15th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
nader is always a “spoiler” in elections… he has no merit
March 16th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I’ll get to the others’ concerns later…
But, um, revenire. Do you have any thoughts on the on-going Internet debate which is waging in the blogosphere (kind of… sort of…) over who is the “21st Century version of” You Know Who… Ralph Nader or Ron Paul, and their dualing supporters.
March 17th, 2008 at 6:27 am
the on-going internet debate? sorry larouche doesn’t let us get on the net except to allmusic (cat power), amazon, cnn, the turkish journal of gastroenterology, ebay, iranian sites in english that feature jeffrey, and a couple of others and this site (of course he does let us read his own sites, in other languages ONLY because no one understands him anyway)
personally nader’s supporters are being sucked into a game, always have been — he makes some valid points, like anyone, but is not and has never been serious about being the president
nader is run to spoil — to take votes away
even you must see presidential campaigns are orchestrated — it wasn’t larouche that contended vote fraud in florida (it was gore: although larouche has contended vote fraud before and had the machines seized in several states — i believe this was ’80 or ’84 and the judge said “yeah, you’re right but you would not have won anyway”)
i’ve seen vote fraud in action in california with hispanics being intimidated out of voting and i have also seen it in districts where there are more larouche people running for office than anyone else and more larouche voters too and yet they lost — now, larouche is part of the democratic party of los angeles (the largest democratic party in the usa)
so i don’t know is your answer — nader will take votes away from any democrat running so why is he running? to make a point? what point? listen to him… what does he say? what are his stands? get the drugs out of tap water? clean air? who is for dirty air? and so on…
nader is being trotted out to take votes away from a democrat unless he bows out
diebold is got the fix in anyway don’t they?
gotta go back to a paper ballot and if you let diebold etc run the show protest in the streets
ever wonder why home foreclosures increase, nearly 4000 american men and women are dead in useless wars, millions of jobs are lost, health care is denied over 45 million americans and the ones that have it better have the right kind and americans don’t get off their behinds and put an end to the atrocities?
americans, on the main, sit and watch their own destruction
why?
they watch their pensions go the way of the dinosaur
they watch their children die, or get wounded, in wars
they watch their relatives and friends die because they don’t have health care
i could go on but you get the point and don’t tell me you don’t
the american population is “out of it” okay? demoralized, beaten down, drugged up (and i don’t mean the drinking water — we don’t know the levels there > i mean how many are on SSRIs and benzodiazepines? 100s of 1000s easy)
the american population has the nation it deserves or it would do something about it
you would
blogging won’t do it — it is not the real thing > it is like masturbating with a blow-up doll >> just not like with a real woman is it? lol, i wouldn’t know but perhaps some of the larouche-haters (i call them the “jumper brigrade”) might know
larouche is bad
say it 1000 times and then again 1000 times
except he has a plan to stop foreclosures and more and more states are adopting it
he had a plan to save all the automotive jobs
all along he has had workable concrete plans to resurrect this nation from its own self-destruction
they didn’t work
why?
because the american people would have rather “had” bush as “president” and it was orchestrated so
if the american population knew the truth about larouche, even in their slumber-like state, larouche would have been president in 1980 or one of the countless years he ran and you know it
the media either slandered him as an extremist neo-nazi and/or painted him as a crazy man (usually both) except when reagan passed the sdi and then the media came to ther fusion energy foundation for an explanation
so don’t “um” me Big Man because you can’t handle it
you have a blog and can blog away but it really is like marching a hate machine into the sun
March 18th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Um. In part I just wanted to make sure the Jeff Merkley supporters knew where you were coming from.
In your last go around on this site, I made this comment to a comment of yours — “All 2 of them!” — about the number of blogs detailing anything about Larouche. Your response was to just look it up, and you will see Larouche being discussed, oh hoo hoo.
Yes. You have famed Sex columnist Dan Savage asking how many chromosomes must be missing for a person to become a followerer of Larouche, and you have people ripping either Nader or Paul as “the 21st Century Version of Lyndon Larouche” — note the past tense.
The truth about Larouche can be found loud on clear. Including in your comments, actually — see “Thought He’d back in April”.
Incidentally:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEEDD1730F93AA25751C0A967958260
March 23rd, 2008 at 5:50 pm
the truth is our brains are removed and in place of them we get super-brains… that is why we are so successful
i am on the moon, guarding earth, so excuse the latency issues but i am here for you in case you feel the need to jump off a bridge or in front of a car
how is the duggan deal going?
dennis king? you are here… why don’t you tell us all about how you are using a mother of a dead man who jumped in front of a car because he was mentally unstable
come on dennis, you can do it
i worry about you… i wonder if you will jump yourself
don’t do it!!
pray for forgiveness and atone for your sins
come clean… it will feel good and you can become human (perhaps)
the angels have been telling me it might be too late but i don’t believe them
March 23rd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
dan savage? lol
you really are crazy aren’t you? the “famed” sex columnist?
ha ha ha, that made my day
he is a guy who gives people advice on how to do this or do that — you know?
he gives advice on how to shove things into places they don’t belong etc.
i have read him Big Man so don’t lie now
he is admired by you?
i’d love a list of your other “heroes”
dan savage, ha… i will admit i wish my name was reverend savage
http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=dan+savage&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f
priceless
yes, savage is a political commentator — he is up there with rush and larry king, that guy with the beard blitzer and others
he’s no colbert
you had your thinking cap on the day you posted that one Big Boy (i have reduced you to Big Boy from Big Man because you’re sloppy and childish, like a toddler)
March 24th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Might I also add that Dan Savage also licked Gary Bauer’s doorknob. Really.