Angus King gets a warm front-page DC tonguebath in today’s Post:
PORTLAND, Maine — Angus King, a popular former Maine governor and the favorite to become the state’s next U.S. senator, thinks the way to win an election in 2012 is to stake out the middle ground, crusade against partisanship and present himself as a devout independent.
It is a bold strategy in this hyperpartisan age, and the depths of his moderation are captured by two photographs positioned side by side at his campaign headquarters: one of Ronald Reagan, the other of Robert F. Kennedy.
King’s moderation is so “deep” that he has a dog and a cat, he’s a fan of the Red Sox and the Yankees, and he’ll be changing his name to “August Mid-Level-Manager” once the election is over. He will truly be every man and woman after his post-election vaginaplasty makes him our first hermaphrodite Senator. Just don’t ask this motherfucker how he’s going to vote:
With the balance of power in the Senate decided by a close margin, King’s unwillingness to commit to one side or the other has scrambled the calculus in Washington and brought him a lot of attention.
donovong
He is obviously non-partisan. Which simply means he will sell his vote to the highest bidder.
JPL
@donovong: That was my thought also. Show me the money!
Baud
WaPo sucks, but we need King to win.
owlbear1
I’m sure once Fox finishes hacking his phone we’ll know more.
Waynski
It’s frustrating, but it behooves Senators from states with small electoral votes to be fence sitters, unless you’re from a state that insists on voting against it’s own interests (i.e., almost every Southern state, Kansas, etc.). Republicans don’t put up with that crap. They let Olympia Snowe play footsie with the Dems long enough get what they wnated and then she’d vote against us, every time. They’d better remember that.
Anya
I think he’ll caucus with the Dems. He said as much to Tweety. When tweety tried to press him to state that he will not ally with any party, he said that will make him ineffective. I think he’s reasonable and he will be much better than the senator from West Virginia.
c u n d gulag
Oh, goody!
Now Joe Manchin will have someone to him help sharpen the Democrat back-stabbing knives.
Zandar
Maverick!
Ken B.
King supports Obama in 2012, Bush in 2000.
Ben Cisco
@Anya: That’s no low bar, that’s a sewer pipe.
Besides, in a tight economy one looks for
griftpatronagetributeincome where one can. That latinum ain’t gonna earn itself, you know.MattF
I’m on the “It’s called ‘politics’, son,” side on this one. King is, in fact, a moderate. He is, in fact, from a small state. Positive coverage from national media is to his advantage. He’d be an idiot not to court attention from the Post. The fair question to ask now is what the Dems should do.
Baud
@MattF:
Many of the Dem front-runners in Maine declined to run once King got in because of concerns about splitting the vote. That’s how they ended up with their current tea party governor. Last I heard, King was really popular in Maine.
Groucho48
Guess we can pencil him in to the Evan Bayh slot.
mistermix
@MattF: I think King is shrewd to do what he did, it’s the Post’s kissing up to King that turned my stomach.
Linda Featheringill
OT:
WaPo is crying [chortling?] over Obama’s terrible month. I don’t think it’s been that bad.
The economy is big and bad and we don’t know what Europe is going to do. On the other hand, 2% growth is a lot better than 2% contraction, like SOME countries I could mention. Besides, Obama has Krugman on his side.
Nobody says all the right things all the time. That’s not always politically fatal. Look at Bush.
Administrations are large, complex beasts. Good happens and bad happens. The current administration is pretty scandal free. Little storms will come and go and people will just move on.
And on and on. No, I cannot yet assess the affect of Wisconsin, but I don’t believe anyone else can, either. And there’s some other stuff that I’m not sure about but the entire WaPo staff is not omniscient, either.
Perhaps all the noise at WaPo is just wish fulfillment.
Raven
@Linda Featheringill:
h
o
r
s
e
r
a
c
e
MattF
@Linda Featheringill: It’s irritating, but they have to put words in all the political news columns. Otherwise they’d have to run a “Romney Lies” headline every day, and that would be impolite.
Linda Featheringill
@Raven:
You’re probably right.
JPL
@Linda Featheringill: How much coverage will the Post give if Gabby’s seat remains in democratic hands? hmmm
Lurking Canadian
“Principled centrists” always vote with te GOP. They just agonize over it first.
keestadoll
SteveM
This is why I never laughed at Americans Elect — if AE had managed to come up with a plausible candidate, he’d be getting tongued even harder right now by the press. If AE announced today, “Fuck our stupid process, we’re declaring Jeb Bush our candidate by fiat,” he’d be in a horserace with Romney and Obama by the 4th of July, just for all the adoring press he’d be getting, even if (or perhaps because) he’s a wingnut in centrist clothing.
Booger
Angus King is like a 40 degree day…
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
What really irks me isn’t King, or King’s politics (he’s better than Snowe, but worse than a real Democrat would be, but as long as he’s running we’re stuck with him), it’s that some asshole got paid for writing the sentence above.
redshirt
King’s great, and will be better than many of you think. Closer to Bernie Sanders than Manchin.
kd bart
He’s Tom Friedman’s Dream Senator
handsmile
@redshirt:
Good to have input from an actual Mainer, who has knowledge of King’s actions as Governor and his post-gubernatorial career. From what I understand, the state Democratic party was satisfied with King’s bona fides in the scramble for a candidate following Olympia Snowe’s resignation announcement.
As to the House elections, are Democrats Chellie Pingree and Michael Michaud comfortable in their reelection bids or is the GOP/Tea Party brewing up some knuckle-dragger who could plausibly put that in jeopardy?
Patricia Kayden
“King’s moderation is so “deep” that he has a dog and a cat”
Now that’s hilarious!
Davis X. Machina
@redshirt:
The hell he is. Only true in the sense that a ham sandwich is closer to Bernie Sanders than Joe Manchin.
Resolutely pro-business, if not quite in a Baldwin-Felts kind of way. A kinder, gentler enemy than Walker of public employee unions.
A paid-up member of the panacaea of the month club, especially in education — the Maine one-kid-one-laptop initiative is one of his signal accomplishments as governor.
He even has Tom Friedman’s moustache. Have you ever seen them together in a photograph?
Two men, one moustache.
Davis X. Machina
@Davis X. Machina: I blew my link…. Try here, from Digby.
redshirt
@Davis X. Machina: I only meant the reference in regards his “Independent” candidacy. He’s going to be a better, more reliable Democratic vote than Manchin is.
handsmile
Davis X. Machina:
I was hoping you would weigh in on this subject, as the other resident Mainer hereabouts (at least that I’m aware of.)
Setting aside the matter of cold cuts, if Sanders and Manchin represent the polar opposites of Democratic (or Democratic-caucusing) Senators, where would you place King on that continuum? There is no shortage of “pro-business” Democrats in the Senate.
And if you’d care to reply, any answer to my question to redshirt re House elections?
redshirt
@handsmile: I believe both congressional Dems are comfortably in the lead. But I have not been able to find any polling to back that up.
The Republic of Stupidity
Sounds like the 2nd coming of Joe Lieberman to me…
SteveM
@Davis X. Machina:
Ewww. Some mental images you can’t unsee.
Davis X. Machina
Re the House, Pingree wins in a walk.
Michaud gets a scare — everything comes late to this state, we had the ’70’s in the ’80s and the Tea Party is still strong-ish. Michaud’s ties to the unions — he’s still paying dues as a paper-mill worker, so far as I know — plays right into one of the Tea Party’s bugaboos.
King will be good on every non-economic issue. And terrible on all the others.
Sen. Tom Friedman.
Bulworth
Bold!
Mnemosyne
@Davis X. Machina:
I dunno, that sounds like the kind of thing that every Democrat (myself included) was saying from 2003 on — why are we wasting money on these stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan when we need it for programs here at home?
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
To harp a little more on my point about the coverage King gets… So I don’t know much of anything about King. I don’t live in Maine, and never have. But I do get the Washington Post, so I know a little about that, and from what I can see, King fits right into their beliefs about how partisanship is what’s taking down the country, and if only both sides could come together in comity and amity, then all would be well and all out troubles would be behind us.
But, as so many here have pointed out, they don’t care what the policies themselves are, only that both sides should meet in the sensible middle. I guess Broder was the worst, but he seems to have infected everybody at the Post before he died, or at least everybody but maybe Eugene Robinson and Harold Meyerson.
And, as others have brought up, bipartisanship for its own sake is meaningless. It only has meaning to the degree that you know–or care–what the policies themselves are.
Here’s an example. It would surely bring bitter tears to the eyes of Fred Hiatt and Richard Cohen, and somewhere, I swear, I can hear David Broder moaning piteously from beyond the grave, but it’s an example that makes my point, so I’m going with it. Back before the 50’s, congressmen were bringing up anti-lynching bills fairly often. They always went down. Now, I can only guess that Broder and Hiatt would have deplored lynching; but, on the other hand, it was unseemly for these presumptuous congressmen to always be trying to tell southern states how to handle their serious problem with lusty, well-endowed, oversexed colored folk.
Now, no doubt, since white southerners wanted to lynch blacks at their every whim, and since busybody northerners and uppity black people wanted to outlaw lynching altogether, the answer must have lain somewhere between, preferably halfway between. I caan only guess that Hiatt would have commended any bill setting the quota for yearly lynchings at half of what white southerners would have wanted; or maybe, a good bill would have mandated only maiming innocent blacks, rather than them. The point is, though, that neither side should get what it wants. That is fair; that is bipartisan; that is sensible.
To bring up an even more uncivil example, I can only guess that Hiatt and Broder and Cohen would have bemoaned the incivility of those dreadful people who were saying all those nasty, nasty things about Hitler in the early 30’s in Germany. Sure, Hitler was a little uncouth, but he understood how dangerous the unions were, with their budget-breaking pensions and 40 hour workweeks and all; and he had the right idea about the communists, after all, even if he was a little, well, tactless in his choice of words. And later on, well, Hitler said he wasn’t killing any Jews; opponents said he was slaughtering them. Sureley that means he was only inconveniencing them a little; after all, inconvenience is about halfway between being left alone and slaughter.
I can’t believe that the writers at the Post ever let that piece by Ornstein and Mann see the light of day…
ThresherK
@Linda Featheringill: I read every month there as a terrible month for Obama.
Right below the WaPos coverage of our chocolate ration being increased from 30 grams to 25 grams a day.
feebog
I know this thread is focusing on the WaPo article, but as far as I am concerned, Angus King is good news for the Democrats. The Republicans need four seats to flip the senate. If King wins, that takes it up to 5. If Elizabeth Warren wins, that’s six. Republicans won’t make that number.
MomSense
Pingree is fine in the first district. Michaud is in a tough fight in the 2nd District especially now that Democratic stronghold Waterville (home of Colby College) was redistricted to the 1st CD.
King will be great on environmental issues, choice, education, marriage equality, pay equity for women, and immigration.
I think he will be fine on veterans issues and foreign policy. I was troubled by his treatment of public sector unions while governor so I would not be optimistic about EFCA.
MomSense
Oh and when it comes to Social Security and Medicare I wouldn’t worry about it.
You can say what you want about them when you are not in office, but when you represent the oldest state in the Union you would be a fool to threaten Social Security and Medicare. He is no fool.
We do need to bring Medicare costs down as we all know and ObamaCares was the first step in that direction. I don’t see King endorsing a voucher system. I do think he would endorse more provider side cost containment.
Davis X. Machina
@MomSense: I suspect King would endorse vouchers if they’re not too stingy. He loooooooves ‘market-based solutions’.
Daulnay
Obama attracted some voters because he talked favorably about bipartisanship and cooperation. Few citizens think hyperpartisanship helps our country, so King’s stance helps him.
We’re all aware that bitter partisanship brings down republics and democracies, that’s why Washington warned against it, and the Federalist papers discuss it so much. People like King can help bring both sides — or the crazier side — back towards moderation.
Much as we may not like it, the Dems don’t command a large majority in the electorate even though the Repubs have gone off the deep end. We need more people like King to peel those non-Democrats away from the Republicans; many of those voters are more anti-Democrat than pro-Republican at this point (or anti-black, in the South), and would jump ship the instant an alternative shows up.
FlipYrWhig
Even with DXM’s unflattering descriptions, King sounds like at least as good a Democrat as Mark Warner or Tom Carper.
FlipYrWhig
@Daulnay: Or, to put it another way, if Democrats are to have any kind of majority, it’ll have to be by including politicians with the profiles of King et al, because liberal and populist Democrats can’t get to 50%+1 on their own. Take the Democrats, add what used to be the “liberal Republicans,” then add the budget-balancing technocrats on top of that, and you’re almost there. Bad for ideological consistency, but good for thwarting the Republican Götterdämmerung.
handsmile
Late in returning here (European football beckons), but thanks MomSense, DXM, and redshirt for your insights. Informed opinion makes fulminating less fun, but perhaps is more helpful.
MomSense
@Davis x Machina
I highly doubt it. He already stated his support for ObamaCares and called the GOP budget plan “a disaster”. He has stated his opposition to defunding Planned Parenthood.
Doesn’t sound like he supports Ryan’s voucher scheme to me.
We have to be careful about vilifying all business people.
MomSense
boston.com/news/politics/articles/2012/04/09/in_senate_race_maines_king_is_critical_of_gop/
This is what he said about the Ryan budget.
He saved his most heated comments, however, for the Republican budget plan — often known for its architect, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. — that would effectively transform Medicare into a voucher program.
“It’s a disaster. In a finite number of years, seniors will be back to where they were in 1955, which is sick and unable to get treatment,” King said. “I don’t know what they’re thinking. Except, I think that proposal represents a strain of thinking that goes back to — they want to get rid of Social Security and Medicare.”