Dick Durbin isn’t going to be running for reelection in 2026, when he’ll be 82. He’s been in Congress since 1983; he’s earned a rest. Among those looking to run for that plum Sente seat include Rep Raja Krishnamoorthi— who has already built a rapidly increasing $16.4 million warchest— Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, Rep. Nikki Budzinski, Rep Lauren Underwood, Attorney General Kwame Raoul (who would much rather be governor), Lt. Gov Juliana Stratton, Comptroller Susana Mendoza, Treasurer Michael Frerichs, Rep Robin Kelly… and, whispered front-runner, Rahm Emanuel. Ready to work your ass off to make sure Emanuel never gets into the Senate? I am. But not everyone, it turns out has the same low opinion of Emanuel that we do.
There’s a guy running for Congress on Long Island— he wants to win the Democratic nomination and then take on GOP freshman Nick LaLota in Suffolk County— who is a Rahm admirer. That’s John Avlon, who got a shitload of endorsements this week, even though he doesn’t live on Long Island, including from conservative-leaning Tom Suozzi, corruption-drenched Greg Meeks and AIPAC pet Dan Goldman… the trio joining New York’s (and Nassau County’s) incompetent conservaDem Party chair Jay Jacobs.
A former long-time Rudy Giuliani speech-writer, Daily Beast columnist and CNN commentator, Avlon once asked Will More Democrats Follow Rahm Emanuel in Chicago and Take On Unions? Yep… a union hating Democrat running for Congress in New York. He was urging more Democrats to follow Emanuel’s lead and declare independence from labor unions. Avlon was all excited about sending unions a new message, “that it’s a new day.”
His anti-union perspective isn’t the only 3-alarm fire warning us that if he gets into Congress we’ll have another Kyrsten Sinema/Joe Manchin to contend with. “The other area where good policy requires political courage is pension reform,” he wrote using the one-dimensional conservative framing that is his trademark. He’s always most comfortable when, like Emanuel, when he’s attacking progressives. “Union rhetoric,” he sneered, “in the face of attempts to take on these issues can sometimes go beyond tough talk in defense of self-interest to the dishonest and demagogic. One example occurred when Chicago Teachers Union Delegate Jay Rehak told Erin Burnett on CNN’s OutFront that ‘the mayor has an active attempt to destroy schools and destroy communities’ and accused him— Emanuel— of ‘attacking the middle class since he got in.’… In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie [another Avlon role model and hero] proved that he could take on the public sector unions and win the fight in the court of public opinion, closing budget gaps without raising taxes and gaining significant concessions on teacher tenure reforms. The sometimes ugly union protests were not successful in demonizing him among the independents who outnumber registered Democrats or Republicans in the Garden State. Even Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker [the third in Avlon’s years-long quartet of worshipped conservative heroes, the4th being Paul Ryan], who quickly proved more clumsy and polarizing than Christie, survived a recall attempt by a larger number of votes than he was initially elected with, despite an existential full court press by labor unions.”
“Solving the pension problem is one of the country’s great challenges and Democrats must actively engage,” says Jim Kessler, co-founder of the centrist Democratic think tank, Third Way. “It’s time to stop pretending that the math works or that the problem will solve itself.”
The question for Democrats on a national level is whether they will try to develop signature policy approaches for pension reform and education reform, or whether they will try to be as intransigent on the subject of unions as Republicans are on low-taxes-at-all-costs and fealty to the religious right. Seen in the right light, this is actually an opportunity to do well while doing good. Just as a southern Democrat like Lyndon Johnson was able to deliver on civil rights and Bill Clinton was able to achieve welfare reform by working with House Republicans, there is an opportunity for Democrats to forge responsible, balanced policy on these issues that can pass. The more rigidly ideological alternatives from Republicans will simultaneously be more polarizing, more punishing, and have less chance to pass.
But if national Democrats don’t follow Rahm’s lead and allow play-to-the-base politics to constrain their policy options, they may well find centrist and independent voters looking to Republicans for clear solutions on these fast-moving fiscal crisis— even if President Obama wins the election this fall. Because this is not about personality, it is about practical policy. And ultimately, it’s about leadership.
I don’t think it’s part of his schpiel any longer, but he used to brag to anyone who would listen that he was a co-founder, with DC grifter Nancy Jacobson, Joe Lieberman, David Frum and Mark McKinnon, of No Labels and served as the toxic group’s first executive director. In 2010 Justin Elliott <> interviewed him for Salon, the week after the group launched, quickly starting to advocate for a deficit commission to push for entitlement reform (which is what he says when he means cutting Social Security and Medicare).
He always loves calling progressives “the far left,” as if there was something like that in Congress, and equating them with the actual “far right.” He suggested “Take a look at any political position out there, even the most supposedly polarized like the culture war issues. You'll find that the activists on the far left and the far right are deeply, sincerely divided on issues like abortion and gay rights. Now, No Labels hasn't gotten into social issues. But what I do know is that consistently, over 60-70 percent of Americans broadly believe the same things. ‘Safe, legal and rare’ on abortion, for example. You look at the ‘don't ask, don't tell’ debate and you see similar numbers. It's a larger issue that frequently we're presented with a harsh and I believe largely artificial view of a country that is deeply divided, when I think the truth is that Americans are largely narrowly divided. When the screamers and the activists dominate the debate, they offer these harshly diametrically opposed, unbridgeable chasm policy choices that don't reflect the full spectrum of choices that exist or the actual way that Americans think.”
It seems like he spent his whole life in politics advocating for cutting Social Security and Medicare— which makes one wonder why all those Democrats have endorsed him. As a CNN commentator, he always glorified “welfare reform” and pushed right-wing priorities like his beloved “entitlement reform.” This one was from 2010: “Exit polls found that 39 percent of Americans said reducing the deficit was the No. 1 priority for the next Congress. Candidate Obama talked about restoring fiscal responsibility consistently on the campaign trail and in a prominent pre-inauguration meeting with the Washington Post editorial board he endorsed entitlement reform. Now is the time to take the lead on this issue, offering Obama the chance to pull the ultimate Nixon-in-China move in a courageous way that could bring down both the deficit and the debt. Any other solution, such as an agenda consisting of only cuts to discretionary spending, is just empty political rhetoric because it can't possibly solve the long-term deficits. Leading on entitlement reform would be an act of historic leadership that would help Obama re-center himself with the electorate.” He was also a big fan of “expanded off-shore drilling. Obama,” he wrote, “should essentially update and endorse McCain's energy plan from the 2008 campaign and present it together with his one-time rival, now liberated from re-election challenges from the right.”
Two years later, he was singing the praises of Mitt Romney running mate and would-be Medicare privatizer Paul Ryan. He could hardly contain his enthusiasm, defining himself in the process. “Forget all the talk about the risk-averse Mitt Romney and his policy-free campaign. Romney just embraced a man whose deficit reduction plans are impressively specific— and controversial… Ryan has not been content to just demagogue the deficit and debt. He’s had the courage to put specific plans on paper that would actually deal with the problem… Ryan’s budget plan is serious and breathtaking in its scope. It seeks to take Republican rhetoric about reducing long-term deficits and debts and put it into specific policies. Conservatives applaud the combination of vision and details in the plan, which would reset the government’s relationship with individuals on issues like Medicare, moving toward privatization. Ryan believes such changes are necessary to prevent Medicare from becoming insolvent over the long term. But for all Ryan’s deficit hawk credentials, he did not vote for the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson plan, despite serving on the commission— a serious disappointment. Liberals find the plans ideologically odious— and therein lies the debate we’ll be having over the next three months. It makes this election a real choice between competing philosophies of government— and that’s a healthy debate to have during a presidential election... This ticket will invigorate the Romney campaign among the base in terms of both style and substance… But Romney’s surprising pick of Paul Ryan shows seriousness about governing and adds policy depth to his campaign. As a sign of the kind of president Mitt Romney might be, it is impressive and confident. And hopefully it will represent a decisive shift in this presidential election— away from ‘attack and distract’ and towards seriousness and substance.”
Ok, thanks in great part to Ryan’s plans, Obama won every single swing state, including Florida, Ohio and Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin— and won the electoral college 332 to 206.
After working as the Giuliani campaign’s speech writer—and before he helped found No Labels— he worked at the right-wing think tank, the Manhattan Institute. Now’s he’s tried to backtrack… So voters have no way of knowing what he stands for and how he will vote if he gets elected.
The other Democrat in the race is Nancy Goroff; she’s a much better choice. You might want to look at this: