WILL NETROOTS TAKE ON HILLARY?
JONATHAN Tasini has less than a month to become New York's Ned Lamont. The Democratic primary is on Sept. 12, he's at 13 percent in the polls and he's just had his best fund-raising week ever online.
However, as Primary Day approaches, the "netroots" have yet to make the Tasini campaign a cause célèbre, with all the money and press attention that doing so would mean. This, despite the fact that the centrist, Iraq-War-supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton, presumptive frontrunner for the '08 Democratic presidential nomination, should by all rights be a much juicier target for the "progressive" Left than the washed-up Joe Lieberman ever was or could hope to be.
Tasini, a union leader and organizer turned anti-war protest candidate, has some ideas as to why: Essentially, it all boils down to a lack of backbone on the part of progressives nationwide.
"Many progressives fear confronting my opponent's machine - which does take names and does keep lists," Tasini told me over lunch in the West Village last week. "People are hedging their bets - Washington is a place that hinges on access." Otherwise, Tasini said, "Why take on Joe Lieberman and not Hillary Clinton?"
He certainly has a point. If the progressive movement is really set on seizing control of the Democratic Party, Lieberman has always been an odd choice of targets - a has-been who lost bids for the presidency and vice presidency and who's serving out his time in the Senate until he can retire in some graceful fashion.
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/nys_lamont_wannabe_opedcolumnists_ryan_sager.htm(please limit your snips of articles to 4 paragraghs
as per the Democratic Underground copyright rules)
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(39 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
