Harold Ford Starts His Campaign With A Long List Of Easily Refutable Lies

Lieberman-like conservative Harold Ford

How long will Democratic campaign operative Joe Trippi be able to ride on the goodwill progressives feel for Howard Dean's? He starts his boneheaded post on why New Yorkers need a Harold Ford candidacy with "As the campaign manager for Howard Dean..." Give me a break!

He says he thinks "it's important to have independent voices in the Democratic Party," which means Harold Ford should run. In what way is one of the worst corporate shills and Wall Street patsies in the Democratic Party "an independent voice?" Jonathan Tasini, who is also running for that Senate seat, is an independent voice. Harold Ford, president of the DLC, is a Republican voice in the Democratic Party.

"Primaries," posits Trippi, "allow for real debate about issues, new solutions and new ideas, and they allow for the challenging of stale thinking that often takes hold in a party’s establishment." I agree 100%. But what does that have, by any stretch of the imagination with Harold Ford? Even where he has been at odds with the Democratic establishment-- he's anti-gay, anti-choice, pro-war, pro-torture and generally adamantly opposed to efforts that favor working families over our corporate overlords-- he's trying to curry favor with New York State Democrats by noisily doing about-faces on all those issues. His old positions were all well and good for Tennessee, where those attitudes get quite a bit of truck, but in New York... Ford has been busy re-writing history to paint himself as pro-choice and pro-gay. Unfortunately for him, his career long voting record is widely available.

Harold Ford is an independent voice in the Democratic Party the same way-- the exact same way-- Joe Lieberman is an independent voice in the Democratic Party: no way at all. If Harold Ford was white, he would have left the Democratic Party along with the rest of the reactionary Democrats who joined the GOP in the last few decades. He didn't have that option. His OpEd in yesterday's NY Post is filled with delusion. He claims people are falsifying his record. Here's his record, and here and here or is the congressional record false?

"New Yorkers deserve a free election," he asserts oh so boldly. No wonder Tennessee is so happy to not have to worry about this weasel ever coming back to plague them again!

I am pro-choice-- have always been since I entered politics almost 15 years ago. My cumulative grade with NARAL during 10 years in Congress was right at 80 percent. Any assertions to the contrary are false.

Ford has always been known as a liar. He's still a liar. NARAL doesn't even issue cumulative voting record scores. And yesterday they took issue with Ford's bullshit; Nancy Keenan, their president:

"Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. today claimed that he is pro-choice and has a cumulative record of voting with NARAL Pro-Choice America 80 percent of the time during his tenure in Congress. NARAL Pro-Choice America tracks every choice-related vote in Congress, but we don't issue cumulative percentages of lawmakers' voting records. What's clear is that Mr. Ford did not have a consistently pro-choice record during his decade in Congress. On some of the most difficult reproductive-rights issues, such as the Bush Federal Abortion Ban and the anti-choice Child Custody Protection Act, Rep. Ford cast anti-choice votes.

"In March 2009, NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC endorsed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for election to U.S. Senate in 2010.  As a member of the House and now a member of the Senate, Sen. Gillibrand has compiled a fully pro-choice voting record. We are proud to support Sen. Gillibrand's campaign and will continue to do so regardless of who considers a primary challenge to her."

Media Matters also noticed a pattern of false assertions littering Ford's pathetically deceptive OpEd-- and, as they routinely do, rebutted lie after lie, primarily by quoting Ford. For example: "No, No. I was not pro-choice at one time, we don't have votes like that in the Congress... I'm pro-life, I'm pro-life Tucker. So I mean, I don't run from that." He sure is now. We'll let you know as soon as Trippi is officially on the payroll. Meanwhile Ford is building his brand all over the media, even beyond the confines of his boosters at Morning Joe. His NY Times interview last night seemed, if only inadvertently, to emphasize that he is as far from being "one of us" as if he was from Saturn instead of Tennessee. The vice chairman of Merrill Lynch/Bank of America lives in a very different NY than the one I was born and raised in.

On many days, he is driven to an NBC television studio in a chauffeured car. He and his wife, Emily, a 29-year-old fashion executive, live a few blocks from the Lexington Avenue subway line in the Flatiron district. But Mr. Ford said he takes the subway only occasionally in the winter, to avoid the cold when he cannot hail a cab.

Asked whether he had visited all five boroughs, he mentioned taking a helicopter ride across the city with fellow executives, at the invitation of Raymond W. Kelly, New York City’s police commissioner. “The only place I have not spent considerable time is Staten Island,” he said, adding that “I landed there in the helicopter, so I can say yes.”

Asked about his baseball loyalties, he responded: “I am a Yankees fan,” and added that he had yet to visit Citi Field, the home of the Mets.

He has breakfast most mornings at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, and he receives regular pedicures. (He described them as treatment for a foot condition.)

Mr. Ford declined to discuss what he is paid by the bank, but publicly available data suggests that he earns at least $1 million a year. Asked what role outsize pay packages played in fueling the financial crisis, Mr. Ford said he objected to capping executive compensation on Wall Street. “I am a capitalist,” he said. “I believe that people take risk, and there are rewards if they do well; they should lose if they don’t.”

What risk did he take that merits the kind of excessive salary he's getting from Merrill Lynch, which clearly hopes he'll follow Rahm Emanuel's footsteps into power where he can serve their interests? I guess the helicopter rides over the other 4 boroughs could be a risk-- or maybe the pedicures could result in an infection. Blecchhh. Kirsten Gillibrand is looking better by the minute.

Let me finish this discussion by quoting a couple of relevent paragraphs from Glenn Hurowitz's excellent book, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party about why Ford is viewed-- even by other ConservaDems-- as a complete and toxic loser. The short version: inauthentic, then, now, always.

In a December 15, 2006 article, the cognitive scientist George Lakoff, famous for his groundbreaking works Don’t Think of an Elephant and Moral Politics, analyzed how Democrats could win in the south. He compared the loss of Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr. to the surprise win of North Carolina congressman Heath Shuler, who ousted long-time arch-conservative Charles Taylor. Lakoff notes that while both Ford and Shuler were anti-choice, anti gay marriage, and anti-gun control, they presented themselves in very different ways. Lakoff cites an NPR interview in which reporter Melissa Block asked Shuler if his conservative positions on social issues would “fit in” with the Democratic Party. “It isn't about, necessarily, the social issues,” Shuler replied. “It's about protecting American families and American jobs, making sure that we increase the minimum wage and that we do things that encompass the entire nation and that will bring our nation together… [making] sure that we protect our country, and our God’s great creation, be good stewards of the land, and start providing health care that everyone can afford.” Shuler’s response deemphasized those issues on which he was more conservative and instead emphasized the progressive agenda that helped get him elected. And he stuck to that once he started casting votes-- sticking with his party on 92 percent of party loyalty votes; lower than average, but still quite high).

Ford, in contrast, tried to win by convincing voters that he was the more conservative option, basing his platform on conservative issues and a conservative framework. “He ran enthusiastically using conservative code words,” Lakoff writes. "Personal responsibility, strong moral values, character education, pro-family, a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, eliminate abortion, and so on. He was trying to convince good ‘ol boy Tennesseans that he was one of them… he didn’t come across as authentic, and authenticity is the name of the game.”

Ford played the “Who’s more conservative?” game-- not surprisingly, the real conservative Republican won. Meanwhile other red staters (like Montana’s Jon Tester) were able to take advantage of the anti-Republican climate by running on a progressive agenda and emphasize their differences with Bush and the Republicans. So while Tester beat a heavily-financed incumbent in a state more Republican than Tennessee, Ford couldn’t do it even though his race was an open seat. 

Despite Ford’s disastrous strategy and defeat, James Carville actually spearheaded a campaign to make him DNC chair and replace Howard Dean (who had been largely responsible for the 50 state strategy of distributing resources around the country that helped relative dark horses like Shuler and Tester to win), where he could bring his losing politics to the nation. Fortunately, the Democrats actually in charge of electing the DNC chief decided they didn’t want a loser to replace a winner, and kept Dean on. But the Democratic Leadership Council had no such compunctions about hiring a loser. And so on January 25, 2007 the DLC named the Ford to be its head. It was a perfect match between an organization that had brought a failing strategy to the Democratic Party and a man who had ridden their failing strategy to actual defeat-- and apparently hadn’t learned his lesson.

Political quick hits (4): Who's out of the new administration, who's in, and who's in between?

by Ken

1. No room at the inn for Governor Dean

"Howard Dean was never afraid to challenge the established ways of the Democratic Party in Washington. That doesn't win you many friends in this town."

-- Joe Trippi, campaign manager for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential bid

Howard Dean always knew his time as chairman of the Democratic National Committee was going to end after this election. I find it hard to imagine that he would want to do such a thankless job any longer.

I guess the job hasn't been entirely thankless. Even washingtonpost.com's Chris Cillizza managed to come up with an impressive list of accomplishments in his "The Fix" piece today on Governor Dean's curious position as the Inauguration approaches: on the outside looking in. His 50-state strategy really did lay the groundwork for the resurgence of the party in places where it had been invisible as far back as anyone can recall, and in both concept and execution his 2004 presidential bid surely provided a framework for the Obama campaign. And Chris gave us the above quote from Joe Trippi.

Dean, it turns out, pitched himself for secretary of health and human services, and it seems to me that he was splendidly suited to the job. But there's that nasty current that he's not a "team player," in presumed contrast with HHS Sec'y-designate Tom Daschle, who is likely to team-play us into a corporatist version of health-care reform that Dean would never have stood still for. (He's not a team player, after all.)

Similarly, when we hear that Rahm Emanuel scorned Dean's refusal to engage in fund-raising, when all accounts I've heard indicate that he did a smashing job raising money for the DNC, isn't it likely that what we're really being told is that Dean didn't like fund-raising the way Master Rahm does it, in cahoots with the corporate bribers he's shaking down? And maybe that in distributing those funds Dean worried about the good of the party and the country rather than his own personal benefit and aggrandizement?

Of course, as we know, and let's say it all together now: Governor Dean isn't a team player. Am I the only one thinking it's maybe kind of a shame that it isn't his team the others are being recruited to play on?


2. Ray LaHood has President-elect Obama's, er, confidence -- or something

It turns out that we haven't been the only ones waiting to find out just what qualifications retiring Rep. Ray LaHood brings to the office of secretary of transportation -- beyond the nice things he has said about trains. Certain trains, anyway. (We know, for example, that he has no interest in the high-speed rail systems that are a transit mainstay in other parts of the world.) Our pal Al Kamen has been wondering too.

LaHood for Transportation? It Wasn't That Long a Stretch.

There was much surprise last week when President-elect Barack Obama selected outgoing Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) for secretary of transportation. After all, LaHood isn't an expert on transportation matters.

His district is pretty rural and not known for having great transportation problems -- save for when Capponi's Restaurant in Toluca closes on the weekends and diners head down the road to Minonk. Won't hardly see a traffic light for miles.

And okay, so maybe his congressional district isn't a passenger rail hub. (If you ask Amtrak for an itinerary from Washington to Peoria, the largest city in his district, you're offered a 17 1/2 -hour train ride to Indianapolis and then a four-hour wait for a bus to take you on a four-hour trip to the bus station at the Peoria airport.)

On the plus side, LaHood is on the House Appropriations Committee, so he knows how to spend money, he defends earmarks, and he's no doubt been to O'Hare Airport, so at least he's got air travel experience.

Still, there had been chatter for a while that LaHood was thinking of setting up shop at a law firm here in Washington when his term ends next month. So when word spread last week that incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had called LaHood on Tuesday to offer him the job, the cognoscenti were taken aback.

But maybe they shouldn't have been. Obama did, after all, pledge to put Republicans in his Cabinet. We're told that when Obama and LaHood ran into each other on the House floor this past spring, LaHood went over to him and Obama said, "You're at the top of my list." Earlier, after Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004 and was planning to visit Peoria, he reached out to LaHood, who helped set up his schedule. Then there were those bipartisan lunches with Emanuel.

In retrospect, seems pretty obvious that LaHood was a solid contender for a top Cabinet post.

3. Why are the wingnuts targeting Hilda Solis?

People who pay attention to such things are chattering today about how Labor Secretary-designate Hilda Solis, an outspoken liberal from California, has been drawing fire from the Drum-Beating Right like no other Obama appointee this side of Attorney General-designate Eric Holder.

It's worthy of note that neither Solis nor Holder has the kind of political base that political "players" might be afraid to outrage. What's more, by coincidence no doubt, neither is what you would call a white male. Still, this doesn't explain why they would be automatic targets -- just why the Right wouldn't have much apprehension about targeting them.

The best guess in Solis's case seems to be her strong support for the Employee Free Choice Act. As Howie and I have noted frequently, EFCA, which if passed would greatly increase the opportunity of workers who want union representation to have it, not only enrages the hard-core anti-union Right but actually scares them. The fear is that a dramatic upsurge in union organizing (and I'm hearing "conservative" estimates of adding 20 million union workers to the rolls in the first year), which would likely produce large-scale infusions of cash into Democratic coffers. As Nevada Sen. John Ensign famously put it, "It would make Republicans the minority party for the next 40 to 50 years."

A more general theory I'm hearing is that the targeting of Solis is simply another stage in the Right's all-out war on labor unions.


4. And speaking of Eric Holder --

The wingnuts will have to work just a bit harder to obstruct his nomination. David Ingram reports on BLT (The Blog of LegalTimes):

Prosecutor in Marc Rich Case Endorses Holder

One of the prosecutors in the criminal case against commodities trader Marc Rich says that Eric Holder Jr. shouldn’t be disqualified from the job of attorney general because of his involvement in Rich’s pardon.

In a letter released today by the Senate Judiciary Committee, James Comey endorses Holder as President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for the nation’s top law enforcement official. Comey was in charge of the Rich case from 1987 to 1993 when he was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York.

Comey later served as a U.S. attorney and then deputy attorney general -- two positions that Holder has also held -- and Comey wrote that his Justice Department service reinforced his opposition to the Rich pardon.

“From that experience, I have come to believe that Mr. Holder’s role in the Rich and [Rich co-worker Pincus] Green pardons was a huge misjudgment, one for which he has, appropriately, paid dearly in reputation,” Comey wrote to Judiciary’s Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).

The letter continues:

Yet I hope very much he is confirmed. I know a lot of good people who have made significant mistakes. I think Mr. Holder’s may actually make him a better steward of the Department of Justice because he has learned a hard lesson about protecting the integrity of that great institution from political fixers. I’m not suggesting errors of judgment are qualification for high office, but in this case, where the nominee is a smart, decent, humble man, who knows and loves the Department and has demonstrated his commitment to the rule of law across an entire career, the error should not disqualify him. Eric Holder should be confirmed as Attorney General.

Jim Comey, you'll recall, is one of the legal good guys -- possibly the only person to serve with honor in a position of authority in the Bush Justice Dept. He actually came out of his service with his reputation not only intact but actually enhanced.

Let me add a reminder that the charge against Rich in connection with the Rich pardon is almost always incorrectly made. He did not in fact give a "neutral leaning towards favorable" recommendation. What he said was that he was "neutral, learning towards favorable if there were foreign policy benefits that would be reaped by granting the pardon," based on information he had that the Israeli prime minister was supporting the pardon. The colleague who provides this reminder comments, "That strikes me as a big 'if,' especially since the GOP has spent the last eight years telling us that the President's view of foreign policy is ultimate trump card in policy debates."

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