Senator Obama, You're no Paul Wellstone

By: Glen Hurowitz at The Huffington Post

Chris Petersen, the president of the Iowa Farmers Union, just sent me the below message blasting Barack Obama for his attempts to paint himself as the most Paul Wellstone-like candidate in a conference call with ag supporters that has become very controversial in rural Iowa. ....

.....Would Paul Wellstone have become the Senate's single biggest Democratic advocate of expanded subsidies to the coal industry that's driving the climate crisis? Would Paul Wellstone have voted, as Obama did, to allow credit card companies to raise interest rates over 30 percent? Would Paul Wellstone have supported expanding Nafta to Peru, sending Iowa jobs overseas? Would Paul Wellstone have taken so much money from hedge fund donors? Would Paul Wellstone have left millions of Americans out of his health care plan?

Once more we find Obama trying to paint himself in broad strokes. Broad strokes that pump up his dream but deliver no details.

Our other candidates do not pretend to be other than who they are because they actually have lengthy histories of accomplishment.

Bill Richardson has been a model of the tough negotiator that will be used in graduate studies for years to come. John Edwards is a hard fighting lawyer who has continually been on the side of the little guy. Hillary Clinton is an incredibly organized and focused advocate for children, the elderly and woman.

As the farmer closes:

I knew Paul Wellstone. Paul Wellstone was a friend of mine. Some might be trying, but no one yet compares to Paul Wellstone's accomplished legacy in this election.

Full story: The Huffington Post

Thanks for bringing it here.

happy New Year Billy :toast:

I think the conference call was in response to this:

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071229/NEWS09/712290321/1001/NEWS

Farmer Garry Klicker and some other family-farm advocates say Democrat Hillary Clinton's choice of a leader of her rural campaign committee casts doubt on her credibility on small-farm issues.

Clinton picked the owner of a large-scale livestock operation who has promoted national corporate agriculture interests to be co-chairwoman of "Rural Americans for Hillary."

That's Joy Philippi, who owns a fourth-generation Nebraska family farm with 2,000 hogs. Philippi is a recent past president of the National Pork Producers Council.

"That's the poster organization for corporate agriculture," said Klicker, who owns about 120 acres in rural Bloomfield and raises about 130 cows and calves.

...but when he was alive, they ran away from him like he carried the plague.

I actually knew Paul Wellstone before he was a Senator (not intimately, but I knew him nonetheless). I worked with him on a campaign in 1988, when he was still a college professor. I was also a Wellstone delegate to the 1990 DFL convention, and was there on the floor for all seven ballots it took to win the endorsement.

Senator Obama may not be a Wellstone, but then again, neither are Edwards, or Clinton, or Biden, or Richardson, or Dodd, or Gravel, or even Kucinich (who's probably closest, ideologically and stylistically).

Maybe candidates need to stop trying to be the next Wellstone and run on their own records-- not those of someone who they wish they were.

though those are few and far between - but at least they'd be trying. It's the ones that SAY they are like Wellstone and aren't that really irk me.

This all remindes me of my fellow hacks who told me I was nuts to support Wellstone in 1990 because he didn't "have a chance" and now carry on like Paul was their dearest friend and they never considered supporting anyone else.

I remember quite clearly the party hacks in 1990 lining up behind Berg in the caucuses, and running down Wellstone like he was some kind of wingnut. Then, after they got the nomination, tney all said that he was a goner against Boschwitz. Shows you what the hacks know.

I agree with you-- I wish more elected officials would try to BE more like Wellstone, rather than just say they're like him.

He runs one of the independent groups, Democratic Courage PAC, that boosts Edwards with negative ads against other candidates, including Hillary Clinton, in fact, especially Hillary Clinton, but Obama, too. Anyone who is not John Edwards, but who climbs into the top tier can probably expect similar treatment.

Here is an ad about Hillary from Democratic Courage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVKdLtcWuFY

Enjoy :hi:

He has Denounced "all" 527 (s) ad's and Mr "911" is on this tape -seen denouncing Hillary Flip floping...

The site had Edwards' picture plastered at the top and the only campaign link was to Edwards' campaign website. Hurowitz has donated to Edwards and his name was on an endorsement list issued by the Edwards campaign. Hurowitz since distanced Democratic Courage from Edwards, but anybody who remembers when it began knows perfectly well this is a pro-Edwards group.

where he voted against a Wellstone bill.

Here's the quote:
"He didn’t vote with Paul Wellstone"

And from that, this Edwards supporter goes into a ridiculous negative attack.

Read the OP

because Obama never compared himself to Wellstone.

"President of the Iowa Farmers Union"...?:kick:

Wow! He is competing with Hillary to be the corporate candidate.

Hillary And Obama Get The Health-Care Money

Corporate money is naturally not bestowed equally and without ideological selectivity across the field of Democratic candidates. It’s not only because his national polling numbers are below Hillary Clinton’s (who gets 1 in every 4 campaign dollars from the health-care industry) and Barack Obama’s (who gets 1 in 5 of the industry’s donation dollars) that John Edwards (1 in 20 health-care dollars) is less supported by the health-care sector than the two Democratic front-runners. It’s also because Edwards has consistently criticized his “corporate Democratic” rivals for giving giant insurance and drug companies “a seat at the table” and for preparing to “negotiate and promise way to universal health care.” He claims to believe that granting the big corporate players a role in shaping and passing health care reform dooms the process and that the only way to win meaningful change is to “fight and beat the special corporate interests again and again.” (If that’s really his attitude, left progressives might well ask, then why doesn’t he advance the obvious, popular, and social-democratic solution—single-payer?) Along with his “populist” tendency to highlight themes of economic inequality, poverty, and undue corporate influence on what he calls “the broken game” of U.S. policy and politics, such rhetoric makes the former corporation-beating trial lawyer Edwards seem like something of a wild card to big corporate political financiers within and beyond the health-care sector.

The insurance industry certainly sees Edwards as the most likely of the leading Democratic candidates to move towards single-payer—a policy he has at least once (at an AFL-CIO Health Care summit last spring in Las Vegas) partially praised—if he attained the presidency. “Over time,” Edwards promotional literature in Iowa says, his health care plan “could evolve into a single-payer approach.” The “ultimate insider” Hillary Clinton (a former corporate lawyer who represented large corporations against the medical claims of injured workers and consumers) and the business-accommodating Barack Obama strike corporate “election investors” as better bets to follow the usual Democratic practice of tempering populace-pleasing campaign bluster with “proper,” “real- world” deference to existing social and political hierarchies and priorities.

http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/15933

he has more special interest funding than Obama.

Unions represent me although I have never belonged to one.

trial lawyers and wall street to be special interests.

When lawyers report their profession in conjunction with political donations, they don't specify trial lawyer. There are lawyers of all kinds. Further, criminal lawyers and lawyers who practice in probate or children's courts do trials but aren't trial lawyers. Further, trial lawyers include lawyers who defend corporations. Are you a lawyer? Because if you were you would realize that many lawyers are not trial lawyers. There are, for example appellate lawyers who probably don't count among trial lawyers. They may or may not work for corporations, but they do not do the kinds of trials that we consider to be the trials of trial lawyers.

by the large margins that the press is predicting. Obama seems very nervous at this point. He is lashing out. That kind of destroys his nice guy image and it is that image that appeals to a lot of his supporters.

Obama was the one trying to compare himself to Wellstone.

Another example of a DUer who doesn't read posts before commenting.

If I misinterpreted your intent I apologize.

But Hillary is still no Wellstone. If she were, she'd have my full support. :)

I hope Obama gets reamed tomorrow. That would be sweet.

:kick: and recommend

criticizing an Edwards vote in which Edwards did not vote with Wellstone.

I knew Paul Wellstone. He was my advisor my freshman year. He was a great man. The current field of candidates falls short, IMHO, if they aspire to be like Paul and carry on his legacy.