Is Blago running for President?

[Radical Activist]

After reading most of his State of the State address, I have to wonder. He had some lines criticizing Washington and the policies of the national Republican Party. It sounded like a Presidential campaign speech.

Plus, everything he's doing lately is strait out of the play-it-safe playbook of either Howard Dean or Hillary Clinton. Health Insurance for kids, violence in video games, raising the minimum wage, college tuition tax credits. These are all the run of the mill issues that Gore, Hillary, Dean and DLC Democrats use to promote their national ambitions. I don't see anything original coming from Blagojevich. I recognize everything he does as the issues the national party has been running on for the last several elections. The fact that everything he does looks like a pre-packaged campaign issue makes me wonder if he's already running for President.

[Jim Sagle]

1. Anyone who describes Howard Dean as using a "play-it-safe playbook " has

bad intentions for Democrats in general.

[Radical Activist]

2. That's a completely unfair generalization.

I can understand if you like Howard Dean, but his actions as Governor and his early campaign for President are very different from the progressive and sometimes antagonistic tone he took later on. As an example, during the start of his campaign Dean thought his main issue would be the fact that he provided health care to almost every child in Vermont. That sounds like what Blago is doing, so the comparison is valid.

Any comment on the topic of my post?

[Jim Sagle]

4. How is providing health care to almost all children a play-it-safe

approach? That would seem to be not just false, but a malicious characterization.

[Radical Activist]

5. Health care for kids

was characteristic of the incremental approach being promoted by Clinton and all the moderate Democrats after universal health care failed in '93. Democrats ran on the issue in 2000 and 2002. You don't exactly take a lot of hits for providing health care for children. Its a popular, safe issue. That doesn't make it a bad issue, but I'd like to hear you argue how it isn't safe. It was the central theme of Dean's early Presidential campaign before he started talking more about the war in Iraq.

[Jim Sagle]

6. It isn't safe because it attracts the opposition of big money,

as the Clintons found out the hard way.

[Radical Activist]

7. Unless,

you run it through privately owned health insurance companies, like Dean proposed. That gets little opposition from large corporations.

[Jim Sagle]

8. Dean got LETHAL oppo from the media. How much of that was due to

his health care ideas as opposed to his stance on media reform, we'll never be in position to know.

[Radical Activist]

9. Oh please.

The media drove Dean's campaign. He got tons of great press until he lost Iowa. Stop being a Deanbot.

[Jim Sagle]

10. Fuck off.

[tritsofme]

3. He would have to win reelection by a healthy margin

To even start imagining such a thing.

And the way things look now, he'll be lucky to win by one vote.

[kevsand]

11. He's been running for president from the very beginning.

Even before he won four years ago, there was all this incredible buzz from the spin machines about how he was the young up and comer for the dems, and that the governor's mansion was just a way station on the road to national office.

[benny05]

12. Maybe

But he should be concerned about re-election this year.