The Snake

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

(crossposted from CobaltVA)

With the Virginia Democratic primary one week from this Tuesday, I want first to serve notice that, regardless of its outcome, folks shouldn’t look for apologies from me for my conduct, ‘cuz there ain’t gonna be none.

Huffington Post:

One person who typifies all that was wrong with the Democratic Party over the previous decade was former DNC Chairman — and big money fundraiser — Terry McAuliffe. Under his leadership, the DNC atrophied after the 2000 elections and suffered through one of its most disastrous runs in a generation (2001-2005) when it gave President Bush a majority in both houses of Congress (handing back the Senate to the GOP in 2002), lost ground in the state houses, and wholly failed to push back on the Bush-Cheney war machine.

More below the fold…including bribery. Was it justifiable in that instance?

Or, might some say:

Whoa. McAuliffe was “concerned” that Nader would “cost John Kerry the election as he did Al Gore.” So that justifies election tampering and attempted bribery?

I’ll leave that up to you.

Jump.

Back to the piece I linked from HuffPo, which originally appeared on Political Base:

So, I guess it should come as no surprise when McAuliffe is exposed for being every bit the shady backroom dealer we expected:

Consumer activist Ralph Nader accused Terry McAuliffe Thursday of orchestrating an effort to remove him from the presidential ballot in 2004 when McAuliffe was chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

   Nader said that McAuliffe offered him an unspecified amount of money to campaign in 31 states if Nader would agree to pull his campaign in 19 battleground states.

Granted, I feel not an iota of good will towards the reckless and ego-maniacal Nader for all he did to torpedo the excellent candidate we had in 2000 in the form of Al Gore (and who to this day Nader argues was insignificantly better than Bush). But Nader’s accusation goes to the heart of the good ol’ boy politics that McAuliffe represents and the very type which Obama sought to push out of the DNC’s inner circle.

And that expresses, perfectly, why in this race, I feel a level of antipathy toward a Democratic candidate that I have never before experienced. Even what I thought of Hillary by-God Clinton can’t compare with what I feel for one of the two men most responsible for her running the game the way he did.

lawyer Theresa Amato charges that on June 23, 2004, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe promised unspecified “resources” to Ralph Nader’s 2004 presidential campaign, if Nader would agree not to run in 19 so-called “battleground” states. Chairman McAuliffe also said that the DNC supported litigation to remove Nader from the ballot in those states, including a lawsuit filed in Arizona that same day…Earlier this year, candidate McAuliffe told WTOP radio’s Mark Plotkin that “anyone is entitled to run for office,” and “the more people who run for office, the better it is.”  McAuliffe’s campaign blog also claims that he stands for “getting people engaged in the democratic process.”

So, which is it, Terry? It can be one or the other, but it can’t be both. I say TMac sprayed a gout of snake oil onto WTOP’s air with that disingenuous statement.

Not that that surprises me. In the least.

Mark Nickolas

a Democratic member from Helena, MT (Managing Editor, Political Base)

concludes his Political Base posting with some pretty strong words:

I certainly don’t want the GOP to take back the Virginia Governor’s Mansion, after the impressive runs by Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. But it sure will be hard to root for McAuliffe if he survives his primary, and I’m one Democrat who won’t shed a tear if his distasteful, good ol’ boy style of politics gets smacked down once again by his Republican opponent.

Until Democrats stop embracing conviction-less, big money pariahs like McAuliffe, and ignore the lessons of 2008, I’d rather lose a few more elections than continue to embrace these scoundrels. I guess I prematurely hoped that we had finally turned the page on these remnants of our recently bleak past.

I’ll say a few prayers and hope Virginia Democrats come to their senses before June 9 and nominate a Democrat who doesn’t leave the stench of good ol’ boy politics, win or lose. Though, I’m guessing they won’t be answered this time…

Now, me…I’ll shed all my tears on June 9th if Virginia Democrats don’t, as Nickolas puts it, “come to their senses.” Then, in November, if we end up with Bob McDonnell in the governor’s mansion……..I’ll drag this piece of tunage out again.

Here’s hoping that I’ll wake up a week from Wednesday morning and find that I won’t need it.