Salon.com > Harold Ford Jr.

R.I.P. DLC

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 22:45:00 +0000

It is nearly impossible to read the news of the death of the DLC without smiling. Ben Smith reports that the longtime centirst organization may "close its doors as soon as next week." This is a fitting end:

The DLC is already showing signs of disrepair. Its website currently leads a Harold Ford op-ed from last November, titled, "Yes we can collaborate." It lists as its staff just four people, and has only one fellow. Recent tax returns weren't immediately publicly available, but returns from 2004-2008 show a decline in its budget from $2.6 million to $1.5 million, and a source said funding further dried up during the financial crisis that began nine months before Reed took over.

Haha "Yes we can collaborate." Brilliant, Harold. Nice eulogy. Of course, the DLC can go ahead and close, because they basically won.

Monday link dump: A complete dying of self

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 22:40:00 +0000

The feeling of disgust makes people more conservative, apparently. (And speaking of!)
Danielle Crittenden writes what Adam Serwer calls the worst defense of racial profiling ever.
Watch clips of Christine O'Donnell's deeply weird interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network.
The huge deficit is so huge primarily because revenues have plummeted. (So let's raise the Social Security retirement age!)
Harold Ford: Unelectable in any state but always welcome on "Meet the Press."
Everyone is laughing at the Democrats because they're "scapegoating" and "playing the blame game" and using incredible spending by unaccountable outside groups as their excuse for losing an election. But no one is bothering to judge the claims of Democrats on their merits, which is funny.

Thursday link dump: The escape chute to terra firma

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 22:30:00 +0000

Glenn Beck is not afraid of gay people.
Charlie Rangel wants you to know that he's available for your television program -- or your next house party or Bar Mitzvah!
Dan Abrams' Mediaite: Is their video use legally kosher? (No.)
Mike Allen revealed that political reporters like him literally fantasize about a deadlocked, 50-50 Senate.
Thomas Frank's last Wall Street Journal column is essential reading.
Justice Anthony Kennedy has referred Orly Taitz' request that sanctions against her be lifted to the rest of the Supreme Court.
Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski attacks his fellow judges for their unthinking elitism.
David Sirota admirably trashes Harold Ford in a radio interview, calling him "an avatar of the most powerful people in the country."
How are the self-funded super-rich candidates doing? Not great.
Rand Paul does Fox News, ditches reporter from local Fox affiliate in whose studio he taped the national hit.

Monday link dump: Embracing Harold Ford

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:04:00 +0000

In case you missed it today, the conservative American Spectator magazine published a piece by Jeffrey Lord arguing that Shirley Sherrod is a liar. Lord says Sherrod's relative Bobby Hall wasn't lynched, because he was simply beaten to death and not specifically hanged. No one really knows why this noxious bullshit was written or published. Including other Spectator contributors.
Alvin Greene is the most-covered midterm candidate in the nation, because America loves a sick spectacle. And because of South Carolina.
Rasmussen shows McCain up 20 points on Hayworth.
Jeb Bush is out there raising money and plotting to rule us all.
Daily Caller violates basic standard of journalistic ethics.
Harold Ford wrote a book! And in this book, it looks like he occasionally writes in ALL CAPS. (It also looks like this was supposed to maybe be his campaign quickie memoir, back when he was still going to run for Senate from New York.)
The GOP will never let this stupid New Black Panther Party thing go.
Would the Americans with Disabilities Act pass today? Well, for one thing, I imagine Ben Nelson would refuse to vote for it until people from Nebraska also got their own parking spaces.

Harold Ford and Ed Rollins give Obama awful advice

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:10:00 +0000

The New York Times handed over a big chunk of its Op-Ed space on Sunday to one of those silly features that inevitably pops up when a president's job approval rating falls under 50 percent: a collection of tips and observations from pundits on the subject of "How Can Obama Rebound?"

There were some well-meaning suggestions and some silly ones. But the entire exercise misses the point: the polling slide that has prompted the Times (and many others) to ask how Obama might "rebound" really doesn't have anything to do with specific agenda items Obama has and hasn't pursued, or with his communication strategy. Like every president, he's a prisoner of the economy. If and when it rebounds, so will his numbers. (To his credit, Mark Blumenthal, one of the experts the Times called upon, did make this point.)

Two contributions are worth singling out, through, for their absurdity.

Where will Harold Ford land?

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:03:00 +0000

It didn’t matter that he’d never filed an income tax return in the state or that he’d been mulling a run for governor of Tennessee just a few months earlier; Harold Ford was a New Yorker, dammit -- and he had the helicopter flight logs and pedicure receipts to prove it.

That was the one-time Memphis congressman’s message when he suddenly began exploring a U.S. Senate bid in the Empire State two months ago, an effort that ended last night with his announcement that he wouldn’t be a candidate. (Ford blamed the bullying tactics of party bosses, which is another way of saying he was running 25 points behind Kirsten Gillibrand in polls.)

But fear not, Ford-philes: If our favorite pampered political vagabond has proven anything these last few months, it’s that even the most tenuous ties to a state can be enough to wage a serious campaign for major office. And 2010 is still young! There’s still time for him to suddenly reveal his residence in another state or two that just happens to have a major office open this year.

Harold Ford not running for Senate in N.Y.

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:47:00 +0000

Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., has decided against challenging New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in this year's Democratic primary, Salon has confirmed.

Ford had been very publicly been considering running in his adopted home state against fellow Democrat Gillibrand. The incumbent -- named to her post by Gov. David Paterson as a replacement for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- has been considered vulnerable. But Ford was probably not the ideal challenger. In a liberal state, and with Gillibrand exposed on her left flank, he was coming at her from the right.

The former congressman's foray into the race was also plagued by missteps. Among other issues, he ran into real trouble trying to shift away from some of the conservative positions he took when running in Tennesee, and he ended up looking silly at times.

Ford officially announced his decision in an op-ed slated for Tuesday's New York Times. In it, he bashes Democratic party leaders, especially those in New York's party, and says they had "campaign[ed] to bully me out of the race." But, he says, he decided not to run because he refuses "to do anything that would help Republicans win a Senate seat in New York, and give the Senate majority to the Republicans."

Colbert destroys Harold Ford

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:25:00 +0000

For the most part, despite a string of segments in which he's embarrassed elected officials, politicians tend to see an interview with Stephen Colbert as easy. As long as you can come off looking like you're in on the joke, it's not like he'll ask truly tough questions, so hey, no big deal, right?

Tell it to former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr.

Ford was on "The Colbert Report" Monday night to promote his burgeoning candidacy for Senate in New York. But the appearance probably won't do much for his poll numbers, as Colbert spent more than six minutes embarrassing the former Tennessee congressman.

It started with the host's introduction of his guest, when he joked, "Evidently, six minutes at my interview table counts as New York State residency." And things got worse from there, as Colbert made Ford look silly regarding his having changed his position on abortion and same-sex marriage, then derided him for having said he'd seen Staten Island because he'd landed there in a helicopter. "Are there other places in New York you designate as helicopter-only?" Colbert asked.

Ouch.

Watch the whole segment below.

Does Harold Ford know which state he’s running in?

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:50:00 +0000

Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., seems to be preparing to run for Senate -- he's all but made it official. Problem is, judging from an Op-Ed he wrote for Monday's New York Times, he doesn't seem to realize that he'll be running in his new home state of New York and not in Tennessee.

If Ford does decide to run, he'll be challenging incumbent Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in the Democratic primary. Gillibrand, who was appointed to the job by Gov. David Paterson after Hillary Clinton was appointed as secretary of state, wasn't a popular choice among New York Democrats, who saw her as too moderate. So she's certainly vulnerable to a primary challenge. But for some reason Ford seems determined to run at her from the right, at least on most issues.

In the Op-Ed, Ford takes a couple of positions that would seem more at home back in Tennessee, rather than in one of the country's more liberal states -- some might even be more welcome in a Republican primary than a Democratic one. Among his ideas are a tax cut for businesses, and maintaining the capital gains rate at the level it was cut to under former President Bush.

Harold Ford not getting traction in New York

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:45:00 +0000

Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., has been getting a lot of press lately, ever since he began publicly mulling a Senate bid in New York, where he now lives. But that attention hasn't yet translated into solid poll numbers -- according to a Marist poll released Friday, in a Democratic primary matchup, incumbent Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has a lead over Ford that stretches into the double-digits.

The results, which show 43 percent of New York Democrats saying they would vote for Gillibrand in the primary and just 24 percent reporting that they would cast their ballot for Ford, don't suggest that a Gillibrand victory is inevitable, though. The primary isn't for another eight months and fully one third of New York Democrats remain undecided.

Ford's problem isn't that people think Gillibrand's doing a particularly great job -- just 24 percent of all registered voters and 31 percent of registered Democrats rate the junior Senator's performance as "good" or "excellent." The bigger issue for Ford right now is that 52 percent of Democrats in the Empire State don't have much of an impression of him one way or the other; fortunately for him, that's an issue he has some time to deal with.

In op-ed, Ford confirms Senate rumors

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:41:00 +0000

It's official: Former Rep. Harold Ford is "strongly considering running for the United States Senate" in New York.

Well, really, it was official when he started staffing up, but on Tuesday, Ford took to the pages of the New York Post to pen an op-ed that makes it officially official.

"[O]ur best as a nation has always come when we test our ideas and ourselves, and when we trust competition to refine the steel of our convictions and the truth of our arguments," Ford wrote, continuing:

Some have already questioned whether I should be running.

Others are falsifying my record in public life.

New Yorkers deserve a free election.

New Yorkers expect a politics where politicians do what's right based on independent judgment, free of political bosses trying to dictate.

And New Yorkers want an honest and serious debate about how to grow our economy, create new jobs downstate and upstate and keep New York state and our country safe.

Harold Ford can be whoever you want him to be

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:45:00 +0000

Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn, is a big supporter of same-sex marriage. Which is odd, because when he represented Tennessee in the House, and when he ran for Senate there, he was a vocal opponent of it, even cutting a 2006 ad in which he specifically denied a charge that he favored it.

But now Ford is pretty actively considering challenging Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., in a Democratic primary this year. Considering New York's Democratic politics, Ford has to get to the left on at least some issues, and fast, and he's apparently chosen this one. Might be hard to get voters in a state where this has been an issue lately to take him seriously, though, considering that while he was in the House, Ford voted in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have amended the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage nationwide.

Look out, New York, here comes Harold Ford

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:30:00 +0000

Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., won't be "bullied or intimidated" out of a race for Senate in New York. That, at least, is what his new spokesman is saying, and that in and of itself is a sign that Ford really might be serious about mounting a primary challenge to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

In addition to the spokesman Ben Smith reports that Ford has also hired a fairly prominent pollster, Doug Schoen, and Bradley Tusk, who was the campaign manager for New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg last year. And it looks like they're gearing up for a fight; here's the full statement that the spokesman, Davidson Goldin, put out:

Harold is not going to be bullied or intimidated. It's good for New York to have a dialogue. It’s good to have credible candidates exploring this race. So what are they so afraid of?

Let’s be clear: New York needs a senator who will fight for jobs fight to improve our economy, fight for small business and have the independence to stand up and do what’s right for our state, regardless of what the party bosses in Albany or Washington want.

Harold Ford crusades to save the Democrats

Sat, 09 Nov 2002 18:52:00 +0000

With Democrats relegated to the sidelines of power by the GOP's midterm election triumph, the race to succeed Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., as House minority leader may be as much excitement as the party sees until its 2004 presidential contenders step forward.

Early Friday, it looked as though it wasn't going to be much of a race. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the current No. 2 in the House leadership, seemed poised for a promotion. Her chief rival, Rep. Martin Frost, D-Texas, conceded as much, dropping out of the race on Friday, and throwing his support behind her.

And then Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., called Don Imus.

In a 6 a.m. phone call, which Imus took live on his nationally syndicated radio program, Ford announced that he would challenge Pelosi for the top spot. The ambitious Ford is an anomaly in several ways: at 32 the youngest Democrat in Congress, he is also perhaps its most conservative black member, as attested by his membership in the conservative group the Blue Dogs. Ford was among those who appeared on the White House steps with President Bush to voice his support for the resolution authorizing force in Iraq. He is also the only member of Congress to make People Magazine's list of 50 sexiest people, in case it turns out beefcake is what the Democrats need to reverse their recent decline.