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May 19, 2010 06:28 PM UTC
73 Comments
Pols attacks Romanoff, the ocean is found to be wet, and other radical discoveries.
Of course we can compare this to Bennet, who apparently supports immigrants because they are cheap labor for business:
http://coloradopols.com/diary/…
Maybe you should have listened when I told you Romanoff would be shat on in the media. Today there are a dozen stories in local, state and national press about Bennet. Most are about his 15 pt lead in the PPP poll. And he has commercials running.
Romanoff has three total. Two are negative pieces about his NAFTA response.
I can see how this must he frustrating for you since you are such an ardent supporter of Andrews.
Hard to imagine Andrew flubbing a question in front of the Main Street Bagels crowd.
Pols always has the option of what stories they do and don’t post. They actively choose to post ones that favor Bennet. It’s really that simple.
Oh and I love the unbiased journalism from an unabashed Bennet supporter like Bill Grant. You notice he doesn’t actually quote Romanoff? He paraphrases what he said.
as in a writer of opinion columns. By their nature such pieces are ‘biased.’
Should we hold you to your standard of not paraphrasing (or inventing) positions?
because I can easily imagine that paraphrase meaning two different things.
Option 1: “Duh, I don’t know anything about NAFTA or immigration, drool slobber…” which is the option Grant and many posters here seem to go with.
Option 2: “I’m not sure those two things are related,” which is a polite way of saying he disagrees with the premise of the question. What if Romanoff just supports NAFTA and doesn’t think it’s on balance a bad thing? He was in the DLC after all. Maybe NAFTA is not the only motivation for Mexican immigration?
Not saying I’d agree with this, but that half-sentence paraphrase could be really misleading. The fact that illegal immigration has risen since 1994 doesn’t mean NAFTA caused it, just that NAFTA didn’t prevent it. Grant’s refusal to provide the actual quote obviously eliminates any possible nuance Romanoff’s answer might have had.
I agree with Stryker. This is a pretty silly hit piece to post here.
sxp151 beat me to it, but that’s a key point. I suspect that option 2 is really what happened. If that’s the case, then all we have here is a case of someone not granting the premise of the question.
Whatever it is – it’s a silly piece.
Sorry, but I can’t agree – I don’t know anyone credible on immigration who denies the role of NAFTA.
Correction, I know a lot of DLC types who do…
I always bring a voice recorder.
I just didn’t feel like trudging to town that day.
Option 2 wasn’t the case. According to his post below, he doesn’t deny the relationhip. So, is option 1 the only one left?
because as much as it may seem otherwise on this site, I am not actually omniscient.
In any case a decent person would write down the quote before writing a whole opinion piece on it. Failing that, a responsible blog wouldn’t repeat the opinion piece as fact.
Then I reject such an option. But I agree with your last paragraph.
how can he not be up to speed on an issue this huge? This is disturbing.
Romanoff is not and has never been particularly tuned in to progressive thought. He’s been tuned in to centrist DLC thought, not that there’s anything wrong with that other than it bumps up against the progressive AR created via the Rovian technique of disdaining the reality based world in favor of whatever created fantasy world one prefers.
The same goes for the Clintons who were never liberal. Rachel Maddow’s humorous comment that Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we ever had contains more than a grain of truth, considering NAFTA, lax financial regulation, etc. that characterized his administrations. HRC was always on board in those days. Romanoff is from the Clinton/DLC wing of the party.
He was very proud of the immigration legislation that he championed and whose proponents called the strictest in the nation at the time. Once again, nothing necessarily wrong with that except it no longer fits the desired image.
Apparently when the progressive base decides that they really, really like someone they recreate them as a progressive/liberal champion, the reality based world be damned. Hey, they have something in common with tea partiers after all.
Although it’s kind of hard to be less progressive than a Republican who’s been in the Senate for 35 years. But you know…whatever meme works to get people to believe your candidate is something he isn’t. I never really cared that Romanoff was a DLC Fellow or that he was considered a moderate by just about everyone in the Party.
What I do mind is when folks start rewriting history. I loved Angie Paccione and worked my butt off for her campaign but one area where I was deeply and privately disappointed was the special session in 2006. I really felt we had sold the Latino vote down the river in order to take an issue off the ballot in November.
Strategically, what the Dems did was brilliant. Morally, a whole lot less so and they have to live with that and that includes Andrew Romanoff and every single Democrat that voted on those measures. He wasn’t sitting there by himself when the Democratic controlled State House voted for some of the most punitive immigration “reform” that this state has seen. And frankly, after four years, it appears to have pretty much been a failure.
rewriting history for the purpose of erasing inconvenient reality by the left or right or whoever has an interest in historic amnesia… never an admirable endeavor. I don’t think that has much to do with Sestak’s victory, though. That has more to do with Dems voting for a real Dem instead of a newly minted for convenience Dem who has admitted he did it just to keep his seat because that’s really all he cares about. In those Dem voters’ shoes, I certainly can’t see myself voting for Specter instead of pretty much any actual Dem in that primary.
I’d have voted for him any day over Specter and I don’t even like the guy.
I can’t quite warm up to him either. There’s something that feels so rehearsed and a little smarmy in his delivery. The Mr. Rogers routine doesn’t match his underlings’ in the Navy or in his present office, description of him as an incredible, whip cracking hard ass. But hey, if he supports our issues, we don’t have to be in love with him. We do need to block a fringe crazy R majority and they almost all come under that category now. Maybe a little whip cracking in the next session wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
and he couldn’t even play along–he was so busy shoving his talking points down everybody’s throat. That’s when I realized I found him too smarmy by half (good word, BlueCat, you nailed it there.)
Well, that and I know a couple of folks that used to work for him and they both thought he was a huge asshole–maybe it’s his military background.
But yeah, I’ll take him over Toomey any day and I think we have a good shot at keeping this Senate seat with him as the nominee. If I only voted for people I loved, I’d never vote.
He has brought a lot of little pieces of legislation near and dear to my heart in the last year with regard to financial fraud and malfeasance.
One of them is to impose liability on Lawyers for enabling fraud. It attempts to undue one of my least favorite SC rulings of the last few years–Stoneridge Partners.
I know he is an opportunist, but he has been working on issues important to me and I don’t know who will pick up the torch.
I’d have voted for Sestak but quite frankly, I like Specter much better. So, folks can hang us both. 🙂
He may be a douchebag and an opportunist, but he has also been a reliable moderate, bucking the GOP (when he was one) on the issues I care about.
I worry that Sestak will screw up in the general. The thought of Toomey getting elected makes my stomach turn.
The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.
Sestak had a hard race against Specter and executed perfectly. With the primary over, he’s got a good bounce against Toomey and I think he’ll capitalize on it.
Also, Specter is being a good sport (so was Sestak, really) and I believe he dislikes Toomey enough to be active in the race.
The Washington political establishment is rocked last night and Coloradopols focuses on this crap?
Maybe Pols should give a try at how last night’s results impact Obama endorsed, DSCC beloved, Wall Street money taking Mr. Bennet and former Speaker, base beloved, fundraising challenged Mr. Romanoff? Oh yeah, that does fit into the script, sorry.
What grown-ups are saying:
From Mike Allen’s “Playbook”
GAME CHANGE: THE ACTIVIST WINGS IN BOTH PARTIES HAVE OFFICIALLY WON — THEY DON’T NEED WASHINGTON ANYMORE. Jim VandeHei: ‘Washington politicians should be scared as hell this morning because the message of the past year is clear: Cut the crap or lose your job. Specter was running as a self-admitted opportunist: I am a Democrat because that’s the only way I can win. Gone. McConnell and company made it unmistakably clear they wanted Rand Paul defeated by the establishment machine. He crushed the D.C. candidate. This city is about to become more divided and nasty, if you can believe it. Regardless of who wins, the Pennsylvania senator will not be a centrist like Specter; Utah won’t have Bob Bennett brokering quiet deals; and Rand Paul, if he wins, will give us another Jim DeMint.
‘This election marked the official end of establishment dominance. Lawmakers don’t need the backing of presidents, campaign committees and political parties: They have tea parties, the Internet and cable. Power now comes from being able to tap into the Tea Party movement, from being a regular on Fox News, creating a fundraising apparatus that is out of your traditional leadership PAC or party committee. And so if Rand Paul comes here, not only will he not be beholden to the establishment — he would come in here with outright hostility to the establishment. Power will come from the outside. So he would be even more tethered to the outside. He wouldn’t even have flexibility to become an establishment politician.’
don’t upset them silverandblue. Pointing out what real news sources do makes Pols cry.
Such finality.
KY: Even though Rand Paul is widely described as the “Tea Party” candidate (and campaigned as such), a quick look at his platform reveals that he’s a pretty conventional right wing Republican. To the degree he’s a “Tea Party” candidate, that’s more of a stylistic designation than anything based on policy (which I think is true of the whole “movement” as a whole).
PA: Sestak and Specter actually are two sides of the same coin. While Sestak was dubbed the “progressive” candidate in the race, the reality is that Sestak’s a fairly moderate Democrat. Sestak’s win, to me, is proof that you can’t be an 80-year-old switching parties for purely mercenary reason (FWIW, I supported Sestak).
AR: This is probably your best parallel, SNB – and even here, it falls apart. Sen. Blanche Lincoln had alienated several key constituencies – women and labor being the biggest ones – with her consistent votes against their policy priorities. This led to labor (among others) recruiting AR LG Bill Halter into the race, and groups like Emily’s LIST refusing to support Lincoln. Again, FWIW, Halter was one of Clinton’s most conservative aides in the ’90s (I have this from people who worked with him in the White House), and would likely be a swing vote in the Senate.
The problem with your take isn’t the narrative, actually. To the degree that such a narrative exists, it is broadly anti-incumbent, and all else being equal, Bennet is actually affected by it – see the various Rasmussen polls that have him losing to either Ken Buck or Jane Norton (I refuse to consider Tom Wiens a serious candidate any longer).
However, that dynamic hasn’t carried over to the Democratic primary race. Looking at yesterday’s PPP cross tabs, conservatives, moderate and liberals are all apparently satisfied with Bennet, supporting him by margins ranging from 11 to 18 points.
While there are many reasons why that’s the case, chief among them must be the fact that so far, Romanoff has failed to make any case whatsoever as to why Democratic primary voters should fire Bennet and hire him instead.
That’s the key, plain and simple.
a couple months out, Specter was winning pretty handily. Halter was losing in the polls through the election. Perhaps it brings in larger questions about polling methodology.
It shows that polls a couple of months out are largely meaningless, except as a baseline for future measures of momentum.
Motion in the polls is more important than absolute numbers.
The point being you can interpret a lot of these however you want. Your point about momentum is valid. Also valid is that Bennet’s unfavorables continue to be much higher than Romanoff, who is generally liked. As the primary gets closer, those favorables will help Romanoff.
Roguestaffer is attempting to say that Romanoff being down in this poll is a sign that he’s on his way out. You could have said the same about Sestak two months ago.
Certainly not the most recent PPP poll. It only measured favorables for Romanoff, job performance for Bennet.
Roguestaffer’s last two paragraphs are spot on, by the way.
This discussion will end soon enough when Bennet is our official candidate. The minds of the diehard AR supporters won’t be changed until then but so what? AR is toast, State Assembly notwithstanding. And no, that doesn’t mean that Bennet delegates won’t bother to show. We’ll be there and we won’t lose any sleep over the last hurrah Romanoff “victory”.
On a larger note, one of the biggest reasons for Sestak’s win was the fact that he hoarded his resources until the very end. That hoarding of resources was a smart move, because he then could bombard the state with ads like this one:
Can Romanoff make the same move? Unlikely. For one, Sestak had several million in the bank (around 4-6 million, if memory serves me correctly. Specter, furthermore, had a longstanding history as a Republican officeholder in PA (which allowed Sestak to make ads like the one above).
If Romanoff pulls this off, at this point in the race, it’ll be more because of something Bennet did or didn’t do, which then allows Romanoff to make the case that Democratic primary voters should fire Bennet and hire him instead. That hasn’t happened yet – and I’m not ruling out that it happens (see Blumenthal, Dick; Spitzer, Eliot) – but what that something would be isn’t clear to me.
If he can generate the media budget, when AR runs those ads with Bush slobbering all over Bennet, AR is going to make up a lot of ground.
Bill Grant is mistaken. I did not dismiss or deny any relationship between NAFTA and the flow of undocumented workers. In fact, I said I appreciated his point and invited his thoughts. In numerous speeches and in a position paper on my website, I discuss the need to address the root causes of illegal immigration, including the need for economic development abroad.
I respect Mr. Grant and his decision to support my opponent. He is certainly within his rights to promote candidates of his choice, as he has done before:
The Sentinel would have been wise, however, to identify Mr. Grant as a Bennet delegate and to fact-check its opinion columns.
You’re losing.
Assuming the Romanoff campaign is correct (and I would bet that they have the list of delegates for each camp ready for Saturday), Grant being a delegate for Bennet is a bit of an issue here. He’s speaking with a voice of authority being part of the paper, but not mentioning his own involvement/bias.
Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.
Even — especially — opinion columnists should disclose something like that.
Bill Grant and the Sentinel got it all wrong, is that pretty much what you’re saying? Amazing how that keeps happening to your campaign. Downright…unbelievable.
Your campaign will have slandered every journalist that wrote a story that wasn’t in your favor by the end of this primary. Susan Greene, Ernest Lunig and now the author of an OPINION piece!
Way to go, #4. Start fights with journalists.
You’re right – Romanoff’s team should just roll over. If any reporter doesn’t report something accurately, they should stay silent – don’t correct the facts. If a Bennet shill passes off their attack on Romanoff as un-biased “reporting,” they should leave that alone too. If Romanoff’s personal character is attacked, he should stay silent. Of course, then he’d be attacked for not standing up and fighting back.
Good thing Bennet’s camp has never gone after the media coverage. That is, unless you count Kid Kincaid going after Mario, accusing him of lying and demanding he spin Bennet’s namby pamby statement into that of a hero. That got front-paged and ridiculed here didn’t it? Oh wait, no – there was only silence. At least Romanoff has the character to stand up and post publicly what he has to say – here, on his site and everywhere else. Meanwhile, Kid Kincaid and Sen Bennet hide behind Rahm’s skirt and won’t publicly post what they send to the media or the smears they have their surrogates using to attack Andrew.
Bill Grant has never passed off his column as “reporting.”
It’s an op-ed piece and it’s on the opinion page.
Mario wrote a diary here?
I can’t find it. If he did and did a good job, I think it would have a good chance of getting frontpaged.
Since Mario DIDN’T write about it here, we only have his ranting on his show to give us a vague clue as to what happened.
I’d love to hear the details, but I haven’t seen it posted as a diary for discussion.
when innuendo and passion are better for ratings. And easier and more fun. I’ve never listened to Mario- never have a radio on in the afteroon.
Innuendo and passion are of course the only thing this whole post is based upon. Easy and fun!
is based on an editorial that appeared in one of Colorado’s primary print media outlets.
The Mario stuff is impossible to react to.
WTF? His campaign claimed to be misquoted and said the reporter was biased.
I can’t remember any politician above the level of block captain who hasn’t done the same. The Romanoff campaign was at least polite about it.
Besides, even an opinion columnist shouldn’t really lie, although it’s generally not a firing offense.
You’re right.
The point I was trying to make is that picking fights with people that buy ink by the barrel isn’t wise. If you get bad press, bury it. Its been a constant problem for his campaign. For example, he contested something that this opinion columnist wrote. He says one thing happened, AR says another. Today his voting history on immigration is revisited.
Romanoff made an accusation at the debate that clearly isn’t accurate. Ernest Lunig does some fact checking and writes an article. Instead of letting it go, Teicher writes a response in which he accuses the Bennet campaign of manufacturing the story for Lunig. And….another couple of stories come out about it.
Photoshopgate, anyone?
Accusing reporters of being in cahoots with Bennet is no way to win friends and influence people.
The problem isn’t economic development in Mexico, perse. It’s the distribution of wealth.
Additionally, Mexico approaches failed state status due to the failed war on drugs.
3 options are available for the drug war and it’s violence.
1. live with it and continue to pour billions into failed interdiction and high incarceration rates in the USA (along with inner city violence)
2. legalize narcotics
3. Get militarily involved in Mexico.
It appears that option 1 will prevail.
I think legalizing narcotics, and seriously considering issuing North American green cards in which the worker pays taxes in the country that the worker receives wages would resolve the issue.
This scenario will probably never come to pass.
Great observation! Yes, the per capita income in Mexico isn’t bad at all. A lot better than many other nations. But as the old joke goes about Bill Gates walking into the bar and the average income skyrocketing……
I remember walking in Los Mochis, Mexico, past a tortilleria. In the front window were big bags of flour clearly marked Product of USA.
Every one of those bags represents some fraction of a Mexican farmer not being able to compete with John Deere and deciding to head for El Norte.
In Hermosillo (Sinaloa?)there is a large Ford plant, making cars and parts for both Mexico and the US. If you’ve ever been to a US UAW plant, you’ve seen that the parking lot is huge to accommodate all the worker’s cars. But in Hermosillo, the parking lot is insignificant. And I would guess used mostly by managers.
Mexican villages have been decimated by NAFTA and illegal immigration to the US. Working age men are gone, and weirdly, money flows back and some nice homes are built with no visible source of income for the family! The villages are no longer self sustaining, but just like a drug addict, need that El Norte money to exist. And if the immigrant(s)return because of lack of work here, there still isn’t any in the village(s).
Everyone loses, ultimately, with NAFTA and illegal immigration. The core problem is the income disparity of Mexico with the US and Canada. Notice that there is relatively little friction and social displacement between us and Canada.
NAFTa drives manufacturing jobs South and farm labor North
but one that doesn’t even hold water. Referencing immigration info from 2008 misses the fact that illegal immigration has dropped significantly during the past several years, NAFTA or not.
http://www.cis.org/IllegalImmi…
And then criticizing the Romanoff campaign response – just bizarre.
But NAFTA was followed by a sharp increase in illegal immigration. Recent declines have more to do with the economic problems in the US.
As I said above, that is considered fact by everyone besides Rs who deny everything they find inconvenient, and DLCers who don’t want to throw Clinton under the bus.
That’s D.L.C., check the roster of Colorado graduates. In 2009.
Not much there about Clinton, the DLC, etc, etc. The so-called test-flunking was in reference to the alleged connection between NAFTA and increased illegal immigration, and in that context Pols cited dated information about immigration’s increase. I believe it’s important to acknowledge that it has decreased in recent years – while NAFTA is still in effect, as far as I know.
Illegal immigration did not increase following the passage of NAFTA, then?
Andrew Romanoff is not a 2009 DLC graduate, then?
Illegal immigration DID increase after NAFTA, NAFTA was a direct factor in that increase, and the recent decrease in illegal immigration is because the US economy tanked and there were fewer jobs. This is not difficult to understand IMO, and one does not negate the other.
for a problem that has remained unsolved for decades, s/he’s usually trying to sell you something you don’t want to buy.
Romanoff doesn’t deny that there’s a relationship between NAFTA and the flow of undocumented workers, which I guess is a negative way of saying that he admits there is a relationship between the two?
Or is he giving a version of “no comment” on the issue (“I neither admit nor deny…”).
Nafta drives manufacturing jobs South, and farm labor North.
.
Then everyone can read it and see that he’s unelectable. There’s one or two aspects that can be leveraged into extremely effective ad hominems.
Naifs here somehow assume Ken Buck is going to pass on those easy shots, low-hanging fruit.
I don’t think so.
.
But the fact is, YOU’RE unelectable. That was borne out by experience.
Your prognostications about who else might be electable tend to be colored somewhat by your own history.
That is, they’re completely wrong.
.
Having chosen to step into the arena, and then getting battered to a pulp, twice, my opinion is no longer relevant.
I assume you hold all losers to that standard.
But what about that 50-word bio ? Try writing it without mentioning clues to his vulnerabilities.
Just because AR is too polite to mention them, that doesn’t mean that the conservative 527’s that have spent over $1 Million trashing Jane Norton won’t bring those issues up.
.
Ivy league lawyer with gov’t and private sector experience. Former practicing attorney, finance/turn around talent, Mayoral Chief of Staff, School superintendent who was reported to be on President Obama’s short list for Secretary of Education before he was appointed to the Senate seat to fill a vacancy in 2009.
That means he might be intelligent, which would certainly keep Barron X and the people he knows from voting for him. It’s like a big red flashing vulnerability clue!
Here, I’ll try:
“Michael Bennet: A man, who’s not too old, who can comb his hair and knot a tie when his wife helps. He’s got a purty mouth, and he likes to say ‘reform’ and stand in front of mountains.”
There, I just won the election for you.
A “he says”, “she says” story regarding what Romanoff said about the relationship between NAFTA and illegal immigration is really missing the big picture. Sure, NAFTA is one factor in illegal immigration, but there are many others as well.
The bigger issue is that both Romanoff and Bennett support CIR (Comprehensive Immigration Reform) while more and more Americans are against amnesty and support stronger enforcement of immigration law. In fact, 55% of Colorado voters support Arizona’s immigration enforcement bill 1070, while a much smaller % are against it.
I have stated before that, in an effort to court Latino voters through promises of amnesty, the Dream Act, and by opposing common sense enforcement measures like requiring all employers to utilize the E-verify system, the Democrats have alienated a lot of moderate voters; including Democrats and unafilliated voters.
The Democrats have become the party of cheap labor and illegal immigrants, while ignoring American workers and mainstream America.
This is much more of a threat to Democrats in November elections then whether a candidate believes whether NAFTA is a major cause of illegal immigration.
On the Republican/conservative side you have Joe and Josephina Sixpack who (I think correctly) see many of their jobs going to illegal and legal immigrants, to say nothing of the “Press 1 for English” types of things. The other side are the Cheap Labor Republicans and business people who want cheap labor. See: Swift meatpacking.
On the Democratic/liberal side you have “We all are God’s chillun, so y’all come now, heah?” and the Future Hispanic Voters running up against the old labor unions and those of us who understand that unskilled labor is a commodity item. The more labor, the lower its cost. The SEUI has grown at the expense of the old unions that often represented janitors like the Teamsters.
But even some of those old unions are starting to cave in to what they see as inevitable.
Mi dos centavos. Oops, I mean, my two cents.
It’s a wedge issue that divides both parties.
To the argument that the majority wants to “crack down”, I respond by the Constitution of the USA protects individuals against majority rule when majority rule violates the rights of individuals.