I know I’m not the only one struggling with the choice in Tuesday’s primary, but I’m wondering if other people are having trouble for the same reasons I am.
As I’ve said, it really boils down to three candidates for me, Dunne, Racine and Shumlin. I like all three of them a lot, but haven’t made my final choice yet.
Who else is struggling. What makes the decision difficult for you? What do you consider to be the biggest strengths and weaknesses of your choices?
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Last night’s Countdown had a fairly extensive interview with Dean last night and he continually fails to get it. Dean keeps referencing a compromise and getting everyone to talk together about it.
Here’s the problem: there has already been a review process for this site. It’s called zoning. While Dean may have good intent, he’s buying into what basically boils down to a right-wing scheme to gin up controversy where there should be none.
Oblermann does try to push him on this issue, asking him if the civil rights movement should have simply engaged in dialogue– Dean’s primary response is that if a lot of people oppose the community center, some of them must be reasonable and we should engage them and respect their point of view.
Dean’s wrong. We have to stop coddling bigotry, even unintentional, well intended bigotry. It’s dangerous to allow this nonsense to move on under cover of Dean calling it an honest point of view. Even with Dean’s positive intent, his response does not sufficiently distinguish him from those who have intentionally created this controversy.
I might be wrong about this, but I think Matt Dunne just managed put a good scare into Dubie. Check out these words from Dubie’s campaign manager Corry Bliss:
“We can only assume Matt Dunne is frustrated with the failings of his own campaign and is grasping at straws,” said Dubie campaign manager Corry Bliss. “[Dunne’s] campaign must be faltering, as he realizes his plans for raising taxes and creating dozens of new government programs are only turning voters away.”
Dubie’s been fairly quiet about his potential opponent this far. Those words don’t read to me like someone confident. Confident people don’t need to bluster about. They read to me like someone who feels challenged and threatened.
I expect this sort of nonsense from Republicans. I don’t expect it from Howard Dean:
I’ve got to believe there has to be a compromise here. This isn’t about the rights of Muslims to have a worship…or Jews or Christians or anybody else to have a place to worship, or anyplace, or Ground Zero. This is something that we ought to be able to work out with people of good faith, and we have to understand that it is a real affront to people who lost their lives, including Muslims. That site doesn’t belong to any particular religion, it belongs to all Americans, and all faiths, so I think a good, reasonable compromise could be worked out without violating the principle that people ought to be able to worship as they see fit.
GOODMAN: You’re calling for a compromise, so are you calling for the mosque to be moved?
DEAN: Well, I think another site would be a better idea, again, but I’d look to do that with the cooperation of the people who are trying to build the mosque. I believe that the people who are trying to build the mosque are trying to do something that’s good, but there’s no point in starting off and trying to do something that’s good if it’s going to meet with an enormous resistance from a lot of folks.
Dude. Seriously?
If there’s one thing that offends me more than bigotry it’s idiocy.
Update: Per Talking Points Memo, referencing Sam Stein’s followup:
Dean says the Cordoba House proponents are being inflexible. And maybe they are. But he also makes clear that he takes “the congregation at its word that it is a moderate congregation trying to heal the wounds of 9/11.” Only there’s no congregation. It’s a investment group (Soho Properties) and a Muslim non-profit (the Cordoba Initiative) trying put this together. Ahh, never mind. But he does point out that “best way to heal the wounds is not to have a court battle, but to sit down and try to work things out.” Good point, only there’s no Court battle. It’s done. They got the approval. Maybe someone will get Mayor Bloomberg ginned up about Muslim plot to make us all eat Halal food. But there’s no court battle.
Doing your homework. What a concept …
[Facepalm]
Vermont comes with a level of access to state government that I’ve not seen in other states. When I lived in Rhode Island, I occasionally had very brief and fleeting interactions with legislators and politicians. The night Clinton got elected President, I got to meet now Senator Jack Reed in an elevator and tell him how much I admired and respected him. That’s about as much as you get.
Vermont’s a bit different. This season, I’ve had extended conversations with Peter Shumlin and Matt Dunne. Last year, I talked with Doug Racine and Floyd Nease at length at our blogger summit. When I criticized Challenges for Change a few months ago, I got an e-mail from speaker Smith.
This is so outside of the realm of what I tend to expect, but this access has left me in the position of not just choosing between abstracts and figures who give speeches but choosing between people with whom I’ve had extended conversations and have a bit of admiration and respect for.
I will say that I wish I’d had this opportunity with Markowitz, and because I’ve never met the woman and never had a chance to see how she interacts when I challenge her directly, I don’t have a read on her and I just don’t feel confident supporting her at this point. I truly respect that she may end up making an excellent governor and I’m open to that. If she wins the nomination, she has my full support.
But I’m not going to talk further about her here because I’m not writing about the abstracts. I’m writing about what I know best: what I’ve seen directly and witnessed with my eyes.
So, between the three candidates with whom I’ve had extended conversations, who are Shumlin, Racine and Dunne and why I’m having so much trouble choosing:
With respect to fund raising, this is Racine’s weakest point by far, and honestly it concerns me. Dunne’s powerful fund raising machine has actually shocked me in terms of its abilities, and I think that can be turned to great advantage in the general. Shumlin is just very, very good at talking to people, interacting with them and getting them to support him. In Dunne’s case, I think it’s superior organization that’s leading to strong fund raising. In Shumlin’s, I think it’s primarily just force of personality.
I first met Doug Racine at a poverty forum. It was a fairly amazing experience and gave me great confidence in his ability to govern and lead on issues that are extremely important to me. If Racine becomes our nominee, I’d have no concern whatsoever advocating for him. I am also deeply respectful of his willingness to be open and direct about the tough choices in ways I don’t see other candidates (save for Bartlett) doing. That makes me lean in his direction in a major way. Whereas Shumlin is extremely optimistic about how we can get things done (and I do think he’s got some good ideas), I get the sense from him that he’s more big picture and grand idea than small detail. I don’t see that as a problem as much as it just doesn’t make me as enthusiastic.
My biggest concern with Racine, aside from the money issue, is one that is hopelessly vague: when I see him at events this year (and I haven’t gone to many) I don’t get the feeling that he’s enthusiastic about them. But I’ve only seen him at a few forums this year, and maybe I just caught him on off days, but it makes me worry that he’s not excited about this race. From Shumlin and Dunne I see excitement. From Racine I see a great deal of confidence and ability, but not as much enthusiasm. This makes me think he’d make a great governor but I’m not convinced he’d make a great candidate in the general election.
My biggest concern with Shumlin is an echo of what I wrote before. When I met with him briefly a few weeks ago, he asked if I liked his ad on early education. I said “no.” He wanted to know why and we talked about it a bit. My biggest concern was that I didn’t get the sense that the ads focus on universal preK might end up causing child care providers to think they were putting him out of business. Peter reacted with surprise at my reaction, and I got the sense that he got it but I also felt kind of dismissed, as though what he said was more to placate me and he didn’t remember what his ad actually said. That particular issue makes me question his depth of understanding. Like I said, I think he’s big picture guy, but I’m fine tooth comb detail girl, so that’s important to me.
But that said, I think Shumlin’s charisma is phenomenal, and just having a conversation with the guy, I want to support him, and that psychology and charisma goes a long way in an election. So my support for him is the flip of that of Racine: I think he’d make a stronger candidate but I don’t know that he’d make as good a governor.
Which brings us to Matt Dunne.
Watching Matt for me is like watching a time lapse video of several years over the course of a matter of minutes. When I look at the difference between how he did at the forum I live blogged last month (he did well, but not spectacularly well) and the depth and detail of what I’ve seen since, I’m extremely impressed. I like Matt. He’s personable and he has charisma. My biggest concern about him is what I would have loved about him twenty years ago: his idealism. He talks about technological innovation, which I think is important, but he talks about it as though it’s a cure-all. I’ve been fairly heavily involved in “technological innovation” at the state level. It sounds great on paper, but easily turns into bloated, expensive, waste, much of which is spent out of state and ends up costing us far more than we expect it to. So this concerns me and I worry about this. But from the campaign point of view, what Matt lacks in the over the top personality that Shumlin has, he makes up for in spades with a fund raising apparatus that’s formidable.
So that’s it. I haven’t decided yet. I like them all. I like different things about them and have different concerns about each of them. But none of these concerns are major. They’re more “well, ideally what I’d like is…” I mean, ideally, I’d like my next car to have keyless entry but it’s not like I’d pass on a great vehicle just because it didn’t.
And that’s it for me: Dunne, Shumlin, Racine: these are people I would trust to be governor and do a good, possibly great, job at it. These are people I think could wage a serious effort against Brian Dubie and have a very strong shot at beating him. And maybe that’s the problem: it’s not that the candidates have weaknesses but that the choices are so good this time around that I have to focus on the weaknesses to differentiate between them.
So yeah, I still haven’t made up my mind.
Anyone want to take a stab at convincing me?
Loading ...From their endorsement:
Shumlin is a realist who fully understands the state’s struggles in the midst of a multi-year revenue shortfall. He has the experience to know that Vermont has passed the point where Montpelier can continue to balance the budget simply by cutting more or by hoping for an economic turnaround to restore revenues. He has the integrity to tell Vermonters about the hard work and sacrifices ahead.
What’s on your mind?
This is a live stream of the debate, which started at noon:
It’s bad enough that the content of the articles can sometimes leave something to be desired…
Doug Racine has been trying out a new line lately.
…but the headlines are a bit of a problem as well.
I don’t mean to be a pain. I am willing to let errors of grammar, syntax and spelling slide from time to time. I know we make them here on our blog often enough. We, however, are not a major media outlet. We are not paid professionals. We do not have decades of service, nor do we have a reputation to maintain.
And when we do this…
…well we’ll correct it.
Admittedly, it is not quite as bad as this…
…but since that’s just sports, I find it hard to care.
Other headlines I’ve seen from the Herald:
That, by the way, is just in the last week.
Maybe it’s just the online edition; I never see the actual paper version of this particular old media outlet. But really, can’t we at least get the basic grammar of the headlines correct?
Is that too much to ask?
Meet Paul Millman of Chroma Technologies. He says something I’ve known to be true for a long time but it’s fairly amazing to hear someone representing a corporation actually say it:
Anyone who claims that high taxes are driving good businesses out of Vermont needs to see this video. Anyone who claims that taxation is the problem doesn’t understand the first thing about business.