Sirota: If This Becomes the Face of the Democrat Party, Say Goodbye to the Dem Party

[mogrovejo]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/if-this-becomes-the-face_b_440502.html

David Sirota
Newspaper columnist, radio host (AM760), bestselling author



Posted: January 28, 2010 01:07 PM

If This Becomes the Face of the Democratic Party, Say Goodbye to the Democratic Party


Illinois' U.S. Senate Democratic primary is coming up in less than a week, and it poses a potentially enormous problem for the Democratic Party, in Illinois and therefore nationally. That "therefore" is important: Because President Obama is from Illinois, and because Republicans have invested so much time and resources trying to nationalize the concept of the corrupt "Chicago politician," whoever ends up the Democratic nominee for Obama's old seat will likely be made by the GOP into a face of the Democratic Party as a whole.


That's why the candidacy of Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is so problematic. Holding a slight lead in the polls against other Democratic challengers, he has become a poster child for everything that is wrong with the American economy -- everything that the Republican Party's right-wing populism desperately needs to find traction. Here's what I mean (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=36887&seenIt=1):

Broadway Bank, the troubled Chicago lender owned by the family of Illinois Treasurer and U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias, has entered into a consent order with banking regulators requiring it to raise tens of millions in capital, stop paying dividends to the family without regulatory approval, and hire an outside party to evaluate the bank's senior management.
The Jan. 26 consent order with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Illinois Division of Banking comes less than a week before Mr. Giannoulias -- Broadway's chief lender and then vice-president from 2002 to 2006 -- must face voters in the Democratic primary for the Senate seat previously held by President Barack Obama.
He's faced criticism, principally from former city Inspector General David Hoffman, who's running against him, for his past role at the bank and the $70 million in dividends the family took out of the bank in 2007 and 2008 as the real estate crisis was becoming apparent.
Bloomberg News (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-28/banking-past-haunts-obama-friend-who-wants-his-old-senate-seat.html) shows just how mortally dangerous to the Democratic Party Giannoulias would be if he wins the nomination:

Banking Past Haunts Obama Friend Who Wants His Old Senate Seat
"Bankers don't need another vote in the United States Senate -- they've got plenty," Obama said Jan. 17 in Boston, signaling a broader strategy to tie Republicans to Wall Street greed.
In the (Illinois) race to fill Obama's old Senate seat, the banker in question is a Democrat, Alexi Giannoulias, a presidential friend whose family's bank once held deposits for an Obama campaign committee...
Giannoulias, 33, a former senior loan officer and bank vice president, now serves as treasurer of Illinois...Giannoulias said he now owns 3.6 percent of the bank...
The $1.2 billion community bank, founded in 1979, has been part of Giannoulias's public profile since he won election in 2006 because it made loans to a bookmaker as well as convicted Illinois influence peddler Antoin "Tony" Rezko.
According to the latest poll by Public Policy Polling (http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2010/01/illinois-senate-primary-poll.html), 32 percent of likely Democratic primary voters say they will support Giannoulias as compared with 20 percent who say they plan to support former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman and 18 percent who say they plan to support former Chicago Urban League president Cheryle Jackson. So it's still a very close and fluid race, with many undecideds.
As these stories make clear, if Giannoulias is the winner, we can expect to hear for the next year about how the Democratic Party is so corrupt it is now promoting a scandal-plagued banker to fill Obama's old Senate seat. While Giannoulias leads likely Republican nominee Mark Kirk in one early poll, you better believe those polls will change in a general-election battle that focuses in on this banking theme.


Thus, if Giannoulias, it would be a clear disaster. He is literally the walking personification of all that the public clearly despises right now -- an Establishment politician closely connected to the industry that has destroyed the economy.



With him as the nominee, Democrats could lose yet another senate seat, and more broadly, they could lose any national high ground they need to reclaim. At a time when the Democratic Party desperately needs to reclaim the populist economic mantle and prevent Republicans from being able to mount their own right-wing populist campaign, Giannoulias would become the face of a Democratic Party that has already become increasingly synonymous in voters minds with the most hated aspects of the financial industry.


I'm not endorsing any of the other candidates, and I have absolutely no personal stake in the outcome of this primary election, other than hoping it doesn't destroy the Democratic Party I've worked with and for over the last decade. Maybe that party I once worked with and for is already totally destroyed -- I have a sneaking suspicion that it is. But maybe not. That's precisely why I write this: To point out that if this particular candidate becomes the new face of the Democratic Party, the "maybe not part" could easily disappear.

[mogrovejo]

Yesterday, Axelrod/Obama's friend and political ally Alexi Giannoulias won the Democrat Primary in Illinois.

[mogrovejo]

Illinois Senate Race Worries Democrats Anew (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/us/04illinois.html?hp)

CHICAGO — Alexi Giannoulias (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/alexi_giannoulias/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the treasurer of Illinois and a basketball-playing friend of President Obama (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per)’s, won the Democratic primary here on Tuesday for the Senate seat once held by Mr. Obama. But his victory was hardly the free throw some had expected, setting off a new round of worrying among Democrats that the reliably Democratic seat might be picked off by Republicans in November.


With four others on the ballot, Mr. Giannoulias won 39 percent of the Democratic vote, or, as Republicans preferred to describe it on Wednesday, lost 61 percent of it. A little-known former federal prosecutor who had never run for office, David Hoffman, came within six percentage points of Mr. Giannoulias.


With much on the line here, including the symbolism of the president’s home state possibly slipping away, some Democrats were concerned that the party had played into the game plan of the Republicans, who chose Representative Mark Steven Kirk, a centrist-leaning suburbanite who hopes to appeal to the state’s independent voters and even some moderate Democrats.


Already Wednesday morning, the National Republican Senatorial Committee had issued a Web video mocking Mr. Giannoulias, 33, for what it described as questionable loans made by his family’s bank, his ties to Rod R. Blagojevich (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/rod_r_blagojevich/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the indicted former governor of Illinois, and more.


“Is this change we can believe in?” the video asks.

(...)

Republicans hold no statewide offices in Illinois and have a clear voter disadvantage (more than 900,000 voted in the Democratic primary for the Senate on Tuesday while about 740,000 voted on the Republican side), but many sounded gleeful on Wednesday.



“This came out about as well — with Alexi limping across the finish line — as it could have,” said Pat Brady, the state’s Republican chairman.
During the primary, Mr. Giannoulias found himself answering criticism of his handling as state treasurer of a college savings program (which sustained $150 million in losses, some of which has been recouped) and of loans made by Broadway Bank, his family’s bank where he worked as a lending officer before entering politics.
Among others who were lent money, Mr. Giannoulias’s opponents noted, was Antoin Rezko (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/antoin_rezko/index.html?inline=nyt-per), a real estate developer and political fund-raiser whose ties to them — and whose conviction for fraud and bribery — have embarrassed more than a few Illinois politicians.



And the notion that Republicans may lump in Mr. Giannoulias as part of this state’s Democratic troubled political establishment, given the embarrassments involving Mr. Blagojevich (whose corruption trial will begin right in the middle of this campaign season) and others, worries some Democrats as they think ahead to November.


In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Giannoulias said that he had not worked at his family’s bank for four years and that, like thousands of American family businesses, his was “not immune” to challenges created by “bad decisions in Washington, D.C., and lax oversight on Wall Street.”


“It’s telling,” Mr. Giannoulias said of Mr. Kirk, “that while I’m talking about ideas and creating jobs in Illinois, he’s focused on ridiculous political attacks. What people are looking for is someone who is talking about ideas.”
(...)
On Wednesday, Mr. Kirk, whose Congressional district has supported Democrats in recent presidential elections, said he saw two movements afoot here at once. He said he observed a broad sense of discontent with government bailouts and spending that played out last month in Massachusetts when a Republican won the Senate seat long held by the late Edward M. Kennedy (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/edward_m_kennedy/index.html?inline=nyt-per), a Democrat. And he said he recognized an anger, unique to Illinois, over the state’s political dysfunction in recent years.
“Underneath every issue in Illinois is corruption,” he said. “The one-party state is not working.”

[mogrovejo]

eocJHtBVLyI

[Winehole23]

In the end, any issue is good to write indignant platitudes about nothing.

[mogrovejo]

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/il_kirk_46_giannoulias_40_rasm.php

It seems the Democrats have messed up in the primary. Anyone from Illinois who can chime in?

[Winehole23]

It seems the Democrats have messed up in the primary.Quelle horreur.Tell your auntie all about it.


Anyone from Illinois who can chime in?This Texan says your bullshit sucks.

[ChumpDumper]

Our economy was destroyed?

False premise.

Back to the drawing board.

[mogrovejo]

Was Kirk's margin of victory a surprise? Ill. is a fertile ground for centrist republicans like him, especially the Chicago suburbs. But this story is interesting and can explain his comfortable win:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32502.html


The widely anticipated civil war within the Republican Party is off to a decidedly dull start.

Defying predictions from last year, early evidence suggests that party leaders and even most grass-roots activists are more interested in winning elections than in ideological bloodletting.



Scott Brown has become the toast of Republicans nationally by winning Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in Massachusetts even though he supports abortion rights. Conversely, Republican Bob McDonnell defied predictions that he was too far to the right to attract moderate voters to win a landslide in the Virginia governor’s race.

[mogrovejo]

The Ill. Dems are going through a rough patch:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/elections/2029016,scott-cohen-arrest-020410.article



Scott Lee Cohen -- a pawnbroker who shocked state Democratic leaders Tuesday night by winning the party's nomination for lieutenant governor -- was arrested about four-and-a-half years ago and accused of holding a knife to a former live-in girlfriend's neck, newly obtained court records show.
The misdemeanor charge against Cohen was dropped weeks later when the woman -- who had just been found guilty of prostitution -- failed to show up to testify, according to those records.


http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2029953,cohen-quinn-knife-quit-020410.article



Gov. Quinn said today that if his running-mate, Scott Lee Cohen, can't adequately explain the charges against him — that he held a knife to the throat of a prostitute ex-girlfriend — then "he should step aside" as the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor.
Cohen responded that he has “no intention of stepping down or stepping aside.”