Are SD’s Pressler Voters — Thinking They Are Voting for Clean Politics — Helping Elect The Most Corrupt Politician in SD History?

In perhaps the most interesting U.S. Senate race in the nation this year, South Dakota Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rounds could actually win on Tuesday, even though he is currently so overwhelmingly unpopular in South Dakota that he probably cannot piece together 40% of the vote.

Mr. Rounds, a former Governor, may win, even though he is so deeply intertwined in the state’s EB-5 scandal that he could face charges that would not allow him to serve out his term in the U.S. Senate.

How could South Dakotans allow the scandal-ridden Rounds to win and drag the state through such an embarassing scenario?

Larry_PresslerHere’s how:  About 18% of South Dakotans who currently say they will vote for former Republican U.S. Senator Larry Pressler are making it impossible for second place Democrat Rick Weiland to get enough of the anti-Rounds votes to defeat Rounds.  Even though polls consistently show Pressler is running a distant third,  some swing voters have been attracted to Pressler, in part because he has promoted himself as the only member of Congress who was cleared during the 1978 ABSCAM sting operation. In the minds of many Pressler supporters, their vote for Pressler is a vote for a cleaner brand of politics.

But in an odd twist, votes for third place Pressler are giving scandal-tainted Rounds a chance to win despite the scandal.  Polls show that Pressler supporters’ second choice is Weiland, not Rounds, by an overwhelming 3-to-1 margin.    Weiland has earned the respect of many Pressler supporters by stressing the need to get big money out of politics, outworking his opponents on a tour of all 311 of South Dakota’s towns, and showing independence from his own party’s leaders.

If the roughly 18% of South Dakotans who currently support Pressler give their vote to someone who will be a distant third place finisher, it looks like they will effectively allow Rounds to win.   But if some Pressler supporters reconsider between now and Tuesday, and give their votes to second place Weiland instead of third place Pressler, the anti-Rounds vote could be consolidated enough to defeat Rounds.

Think about that for a minute.  How ironic would it be if Pressler supporters, who are convinced they are standing up against corrupt politics, end up inadvertently assuring the election of someone who could go down as the most corrupt politician in South Dakota history?

Conservative Pressler Would Ban Abortions, While 68% of South Dakotans Support Keeping Them Legal

In an increasingly interesting and competitive U.S. Senate campaign in South Dakota, former Republican U.S. Senator Larry Pressler, now running as an Independent, is consistently portrayed by the news reporters as a “moderate.”

It’s ludicrous to characterize Pressler as a “moderate.” After all, his most recent votes in the U.S. Senate were 100% against women, teachers, students, gays and workers, he has voted for cuts in Social Security and Medicare, and he stilll speaks out about wanting to cut those programs even more in the future.

Pressler_Would_Overturn_Roe_Vs_Wade_-_YouTubePressler has also said in no uncertain terms during this current campaign that he would make abortion illegal.
Not regulated, mind you.  Not scaled back.  Illegal.  He would overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that has kept abortion a legal option since 1972.

After Pressler banned abortions, he would allow states to make abortion legal again if they choose, but we all know that many states would keep abortion illegal, and make millions of women into criminals and victims of botched back alley abortions.

Even in a red state like South Dakota, banning abortion is not a mainstream position.  In the most recent polling I could find on this issue, a Sioux Falls Argus Leader survey, only 25% of South Dakotans say that abortion should be illegal.

Instead, an overwhelming 68% of South Dakotans want to keep abortion legal, either “legal and the decision to have an abortion should be made by the woman without government interference (34%),” or “legal but restricted to very specific circumstances, such as rape, incest or to save the life of the mother (34%).”

This idea that the news media mindlessly calls anyone who camouflages themselves with an “Independent” label a “moderate” shows just how shallow political reporting has gotten.  Politicians who make abortion illegal, cut Social Security and Medicare and vote 100% against women, teachers gays, students and workers are hardly “moderate.” They are, by any reasonable definition, on the far right.

– Loveland

The Three S’s Of How Democrat Weiland Could Win The SD Senate Seat This Fall

Could a progressive Democrat really win the U.S. Senate seat in a bright red state that gave Mitt Romney 58% of the vote?

Maybe, because of an unprecedented aligning of the political stars.  Democratic South Dakota Senate candidate Rick Weiland is within 6 points of defeating  former Republican Governor Mike Rounds.  Remarkably, the extremely well-known former Governor Rounds has remained stuck for months at just 40 percent support.

If Weiland can remind moderates and progressives that former GOP U.S. Senator Larry Pressler, who is currently trying to sweet talk non-conservatives, has an extremely conservative voting record, Weiland could win the seat with under 45 percent of the vote.  Because independent candidates’ support typically shrinks in the closing days of a campaign, peeling away Pressler’s non-conservative support is certainly within Weiland’s grasp.

In South Dakota?  How could that be?  There are three primary reasons:

  • Pressler_Reagan_BushSEGMENTATION.  First, there’s simple electoral math.  There are three prominent conservative GOP officeholders  on the November ballot — a former GOP state legislator with Tea Party support (Gordon Howie), former GOP Governor (Mike Rounds) and former GOP U.S. Senator (Larry Pressler).  That divides South Dakota conservatives in three, which is thrice as nice for the lone Democrat on the ballot.
  • Rick_Weiland_311_townsSHOE-LEATHER.  Second, by all accounts Weiland is running circles around his opponents.  In recent months, Rick “Everywhere Man” Weiland became the first candidate in South Dakota history to campaign in all 311 South Dakota towns, many of them multiple times.  In a state with only a few hundred thousand voters, those personal connections, and the work ethic they represent, matter.  Meanwhile the embattled Rounds has been jetting around the nation raising money from wealthy non-South Dakotans, and staying away from debates, while the long-retired Pressler has kept his nostalgia tour on a relatively leisurely schedule.
  • Rick_Weiland_EB-5_adSCANDAL.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is something called EB-5. EB-5 is a federal program that lets wealthy foreign businesspeople cut to the front of the green card line, if they fork over a half million dollars to a local business venture.    The “auctioning citizenship” aspect of EB-5 is extremely unpopular in itself, and Rounds administered South Dakota’s version of EB-5 in a way that allowed a Rounds supporter to run the program, hire himself to profit from the program that he was running, and screw up the program in ways that are incompetent at best and criminal at worst.  The result:  State and federal investigations, a steady stream of news media probing and red hot criticism from politicians of all parties, all aimed at the besieged Rounds.

For Democrats desperate for U.S. Senate electoral wins in a tough political environment, it’s quite possible that this equation could work:  Segmentation + Shoe-leather + Scandal = Senate Seat.  It could happen, if Weiland is able to raise enough money to get his message out and defend himself down the home stretch.

– Loveland

Conservative Pressler Attempts Facelift For SD Senate Race

Pressler_Reagan_BushOne of the more brazen political facelifts in recent memory is being attempted in South Dakota, where a ballot crowded with conservatives is causing conservative Senator Larry Pressler (R-SD, 1979-1997) to attempt to convince voters that he is now a moderate.

The former Republican U.S. Senator’s most recent television ad features this claim:

“I believe in taking the best ideas from both parties…”

That spin sells well with moderates.  But Pressler’s claim will come as a huge surprise to non-conservative policy advocates, given that Pressler’s most recent voting record ratings show him rejecting almost all non-conservative ideas:

  • National Education Association:  Pressler voted against their positions 100% of the time.
  • National Council of Senior Citizens:  Pressler voted against their positions 90% of the time.
  • NARAL Pro Choice America:  Pressler voted against their positions 100% of the time.
  • Human Rights Campaign:  Pressler voted against their positions 100% of the time.
  • United Food and Commercial Workers:  Pressler voted against their positions 100% of the time.
  • Coalition to Stop Gun Violence:  Pressler voted against their positions 100% of the time.
  • National Public Health Association:  Pressler voted against their positions 100% of the time.
  • United States Students Association:  Pressler voted against their positions 100% of the time.
  • Children’s Defense Fund:  Pressler voted against their positions 89% of the time.
  • Human Rights Campaign:  Pressler voted against their positions 100% of the time.
  • National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:  Pressler voted against their positions 100% of the time.
  • American Association of University Women:  Pressler voted 100% against their positions.

Source:  Project Vote Smart

Voting records speak louder than ad claims, and this not the voting record of a moderate.  This is not the voting record of someone who “takes the best ideas from both parties,” unless you believe conservatives have 99% of the best ideas, which of course makes you an ultra-conservative.

So why is long-time conservative Pressler trying to masquerade as a moderate in 2014?

Necessity.  There are two other conservatives – Republican Mike Rounds and Tea Party-backed former Republican state legislator Gordon Howie — joining the historically conservative Pressler on the ballot. Pressler is running a pretty distant third place behind increasingly strong Democrat Rick Weiland and Rounds, and he apparently doesn’t like the mathematics associated with splitting the conservative vote three ways.  So instead of running again as a conservative, Pressler is giving himself a moderate facelift, and hoping South Dakota moderates will somehow forget his conservative voting record in the U.S. Senate.

It’s understandable how South Dakota voters might forget the voting record of someone who has been out of office for almost two decades.  It’s a little more difficult to understand how the South Dakota news media, many of whom covered Pressler and know all about his conservative voting record, could neglect to expose a facelift that would put Michael Jackson to shame.

– Loveland

Will Singing SD Senate Candidate Be The Next Wellstone?

Mike_Rounds_jetFormer South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds (R-Pierre), has been running for U.S. Senate the modern way.  The conservative insurance executive been  jetting around the country to raise  money from ultra-wealthy donors.  Governor Rounds also has the billionaire Koch Brothers as covert sidekicks, bringing their dark money to the state to do his dirty work.

Rick_Weiland_on_the_roadMeanwhile, Rounds’ Democratic opponent Rick Weiland has been campaigning the old fashioned way.  He is staying grounded, traveling the dusty byways in a minivan.  Weiland is the first candidate in South Dakota history to campaign face-to-face in all of the state’s 311 towns.  A couple of them are not metropolises.

Getting to all 311 towns is not just an impressive tactical feat, it’s also serves as a statement about the candidate’s values.  In a state that prides itself on hard work and personal connections, South Dakotans are noticing the hardest working man in the political business.

At one point, Weiland tried to get Rounds to join him on the gravel roads.   He challenged Rounds to reject big national money and discourage dark money, and to replace wall-to-wall campaign ads with a lengthy series of Lincoln-Douglas style debates in small towns around the state. Rounds rejected Weiland’s suggestion, and returned to the fundraising circuit.

To stress his populist “Take It Back” campaign theme on the road, Weiland sometimes belts out parody songs in an imperfect voice. When you are being badly outspent, you need to get creative to get noticed and remembered.  Weiland has long liked to relax by making music with his family and friends, so a few months back he rounded them up to videotape  a well-received parody of “I’ve Been Everywhere” to chronicle his epic campaign journey.  Today, Weiland released a parody sung to the tune of Miller’s “King of the Road.” An excerpt of the lyrics:

My vote’s not for sale or rent,
I just won’t listen to the one percent.
I’m not campaignin’ in corporate jets,
I’m meetin’ voters in luncheonettes.
I’ve been in three hundred and eleven towns.
Still lookin’ for that guy named Rounds.
I’m goin’ everywhere I can, man. Bring on the road!

Rick_Weiland_singingCorny?  You betcha.  But it’s on-message, fun and unique enough to get noticed and remembered amidst the election season media clutter.   The self-deprecating Weiland readily acknowledges he is no threat to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, but he is determined to connect with South Dakotans on a deeper level than Rounds’ formulaic political ads do. (In one of his pre-fabricated TV ads,  Rounds famously imported stock photography of faux Dakotans, including one woman from, ahem, Paris, France.)

To the surprise of many, the South Dakota U.S. Senate race is in play. A May 2014 Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey shows  Governor Rounds, a long time political institution in the state, stalled out with just 40% support, while the lesser known Weiland is already within striking distance at 28%. In a small state where only a few hundred thousand people will vote in a non-presidential election, Weiland’s hyper-local approach to campaigning could make a difference.  The Koch Brothers would not have set up shop in a deep red state if they thought their guy Rounds was safe.

But can Weiland’s unabashedly populist message really sell in a solidly conservative state? The PPP survey says it can.  It found that South Dakotans, by a 15-point margin, prefer Weiland’s “Medicare for all” proposal to Rounds’ call to eliminate the Affordable Care Act. By a 24-point margin, South Dakota voters also reject Rounds’ embrace of the scorched earth federal budget proposed by conservative Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI).

The wild card issue in the race could be something called EB-5.  Rounds continues to take on heavy tri-partisan criticism for his championing of the state’s scandal-plagued EB-5 program, a controversial economic development initiative that allows wealthy foreign investors to jump to the head of the citizenship line.  A steady stream of news coverage has focused on missing money, the death of a key figure, and a number of investigations.

Finally, Weiland could further close the gap as three prominent conservative candidates on the November ballot carve up South Dakota’s  conservative vote.   Former Governor Rounds,  former Republican U.S. Senator Larry Pressler (I-Sioux Falls), and former Republican State Senator Gordon Howie (I-Rapid City, Tea Party-backed) are all competing for conservative voters.  Political chameleon Pressler occasionally tries to impersonate a moderate, but with a 100% conservative rating from American Conservative Union in his last year in the Senate, the news media shouldn’t let him get away with that.  With a fragmented conservative electorate, a lone Democrat on the ballot could eke out a victory in November.

Despite all of this, some still are writing off Weiland. In the July before election day, nobody in Minnesota thought Paul Wellstone or Jesse Ventura had a chance to win either. But a populist message and an entertaining approach helped both of them sneak up on their opponents.  Could the warbling Weiland be the next upper midwestern candidate to use a similar approach to shock the world?

– Loveland

Will Progressives Step Up To Support An Unapologetic “Class Warrior?”

class_warfare_buffet_quoteFor the last several years, too many political debates have gone roughly like this:

A progressive pol points out the obvious, that wealth is getting too concentrated, and that the wealthy donors are controlling the political system as a means to accumulate still more wealth.

Then, conservatives, moderates and conservative-controlled news outlets cry in unison “Class warfare,” and “both sides do it.”

Then, the progressive politician timidly drops the subject, and agrees to their risk averse consultants’ demands that they henceforth sugar coat their campaign rhetoric.

This familiar scenario has played out hundreds of times over many decades, and that is why the United States now has the most unequal distribution of wealth of any advanced economy in the world.

Let that fact sink in for a moment.  The home of the American dream now has the most unequal distribution of wealth of any advanced economy in the world.  Is that really okay with us?

It’s not okay with South Dakota U.S. Senate candidate Rick Weiland.  He looks to be a rare exception to the rule of political cowardice in the face of, gasp, “class warfare” accusations.

From the beginning, Weiland’s “Take It Back” campaign has been focused on battling the influence of big money.  For instance, he has said that the first bill he will introduce in Congress will be a constitutional amendment to limit campaign donations and spending.  The language of the amendment specifically calls out the need to limit the excessive influence of the wealthy.

This is not okay with the blog Constant Commoner, which is a more thoughtful than most conservative blog in South Dakota.  In a piece titled “The Problem With Prairie Populism, Rick Weiland Style,” the Commoner recently shot this across candidate Weiland’s bow.

Where Weiland’s message is out-of-synch with reality is the way it lumps wealthy interests into some sort of monolithic, unified political juggernaut bent on making life miserable for ordinary Americans.  This actually is way off the mark. The politics of big money simply don’t congeal that way.   CNBC’s Robert Frank writes a nice critique and analysis of the study I reference and calls attention to the fact that for every right wing rich guy promoting schemes that Democrats abhor, there’s probably a wealthy leftie advocating the opposite. As Frank notes, for every Koch there’s a Buffett.

Historically, this is the point when progressive politicians would always obediently slink back to the mushy middle of American politics, like a scolded lapdog who had been caught pissing the Persian rug.  But Weiland didn’t do that.  Instead, he went right back onto the  blogger’s home turf to politely but assertively call bullshit:

Warren Buffet understands big money’s total triumph in public argumentation perfectly when he says, “There’s class warfare all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

I’m sure Mr. Buffet has met Mr. Soros, and knows full well of the wide range of opinions within the billionaires club.  But Mr. Buffet also understands the bottom line, and knows that the actual, factual distribution of wealth is the bottom line.

I agree with Warren Buffet.  I believe the bottom line proves that the “big money” big foot against which I am campaigning hard not only exists, but is the fundamentally incorrect and unfair set of policy assumptions which must be slain before we can hope to right our course.

It is not true that the right to buy politicians is big monies free speech right.

It is not true that granting tax free status to offshore profits, and billionaires grand kids piggy banks, or bundling bad mortgages, helps spur productive economic growth.

The results of these untruths, propagated by our refusal to challenge the ascendant political myths of big money, are stunting our economy and defrauding our middle class.

Like Seymour’s plant in Little Shop of Horrors, their myths have been allowed to grow unchecked for far too long, and they must be pruned.

That is why I am campaigning against “big money.”

I’ve been waiting for a long time to see a courageous politician under pressure from the defenders of the status quo reply: “Class warfare? Hell yes I’m engaging in class warfare, on behalf of 99% of the rest of us!”

Everywhere_Man_-_YouTubeToday I saw it, and it was said exceptionally well.  Weiland is not only an unapologetic “class warrior,” but his campaign carries the optimistic tone of a “happy warrior,” in the tradition of Minnesota’s happy warrior Hubert Humphrey.

Finally, here’s a gritty leader who has a strong enough spine to declare himself an unrepentant class warrior, and he’s doing it in a wicked tough environment – a deep red state versus a billionaire-backed conservative Governor.  If  progressives around the country don’t step up to financially support this kind of progressive eloquence and courage under political fire, and instead continue to fund the same old milquetoast  timidity they have for decades, well, then they deserve what they have been getting from Congress.

– Loveland

Paul Begala: Wry Wing Politics Devotee

Okay, call me a rube, but my obscure little blog doesn’t get linked everyday in Tweets by national talking heads like Paul Begala.  So when it happens, I have to take a moment to feel self-important, before I slink back to my dark  corner of the world.

Begala_tweets_wry_wing_politics

 

Yes, Paul (I call him “Paul” now) links to among the least unique posts I’ve ever penned.  (And trust me, there is plenty of competition for that honor.)  Yes, it is surely his first and last visit to WWP.  Yes, this happened because of Rick Weiland’s great work, not mine.

But still, a sideways glance from Paul freakin’ Begala makes a backwater gadfly’s little heart go pitter-patter, and page views go through the roof.

I’m thinking I’m probably now on his holiday card list, right?

South Dakota’s Rick Weiland: A Different Kind of U.S. Senate Candidate

Most U.S. Senate candidates spend all of their time traveling to Wall Street, K Street, LaSalle Street, Montgomery Street, and Federal Street to beg for money from millionaires and billionaires who demand obedience after they’re elected.

Most U.S. Senate candidates produce phony cookie cutter ads whose stock photography make them all look and sound the same.

So, it’s refreshing to see at least one U.S. Senate candidate, South Dakota’s Rick Weiland, running a very different kind of campaign, on Main Streets running to reform Wall Street.    Three hundred and eleven South Dakota Main Streets, to be precise.

This video, shot and editied by the candidate’s son Nick, and song, performed by the candidate with family members and friends, isn’t the slickest thing you’ll ever see.  It might even be a little corny for some of you hipsters.  But it’s also a rare breath of fresh air in an all too polluted political atmosphere.

SD Senate Challenger Shows How Obama Should Have Led On Health Care Reform

rick_weiland_head_shot-2President Obama and his supporters have struggled mightily to market the byzantine Affordable Care Act (ACA) reforms to the public.  But by uttering three simple words – “Medicare for all” –  U.S. Senate candidate Rick Weiland in neighboring South Dakota is showing President Obama how it should have been done way back in 2008.

The “Medicare For All” approach that Weiland proposed last week is much easier to sell than the ACA.  The Associated Press reports:

Weiland has proposed that citizens of any age be allowed to buy into Medicare, which now is generally open only to people 65 and older, as an alternative to private health insurance plans.

“People understand Medicare,” Weiland told The Argus Leader. “It works, it’s efficient, and all this other stuff that they’re having now to focus on is extremely complicated, and they don’t understand it.”

Clear.  Concise.  Compelling.  The same can’t be said about most ACA-related rhetoric.

Obama Framed Up The Wrong Comparison

In the book Predictably Irrational,  Dan Ariely, a psychology and behavioral economics professor, examines how we make choices.  One of the phenomena Ariely describes is research showing that humans tend to judge their environment in relation to things that are comparable.

For instance, let’s say you give newlyweds the choice of three honeymoon options – Paris with free breakfast included, Rome with free breakfast included, and Rome with no breakfast included.  Because the two Rome options are comparable, most will gravitate away from the single Paris option.  We are attracted to comparability.

The Comparability Obama Offered.  With that research in mind, consider what President Obama and congressional Democrats did on health reform in 2008.  He believed that Americans needed to have a system that was comparable with what they were familiar with, our American system of private insurers and private health care providers.  So, from 2008 to 2010, Obama framed the health care reform debate as the choice of two comparable things:

Private-centered status quo model.  The pre-2010 status quo system of private insurers and private health care providers.

vs.

Private-centered model, coupled with reforms..  The status quo system of private insurers and health care providers coupled with complicated reforms.

Affordable_Care_Act_infographic-2The ACA reforms were enormously complex, mostly because the underlying pre-2010 status quo health care system was so decentralized and entangled.  Obama’s reforms were narrowly enacted in 2010, primarily because the status quo was so overwhelmingly unpopular.

The Comparability Obama Should Have Offered.  But what if Obama had framed up  a different kind of comparable choice for the American people?  While it’s true that Americans are familiar with private health insurance, they are also familiar with Medicare.  So why didn’t Obama frame the debate up as a choice between these two comparable things:

Medicare for some.  A status quo system where Medicare is available only to seniors.

vs.

Medicare for all.  A new system where Medicare is available to everyone who wants it.

The Political Advantages of Medicare for All

Obama didn’t go with Medicare For All, presumably because he was afraid that Republicans would castigate it as “government run health care” and “socialism.”

As it turned out, the Republican spin machine was determined to characterize anything Obama proposed as “government run health care” and “socialism.” After all, it uses those terms to describe the ACA, which is  absurd, because the ACA relies on private insurers and private caregivers without permitting a single government-run option in the mix.

President Obama was never going to avoid this “government run health care” political attack , so there was no good reason to allow it to shape the proposal.

Moreover, Medicare happens to be “government run health care” that Americans really like.  About 56 percent of Medicare recipients give it a rating of 9 or 10 on a 0-10 scale, while only about 40 percent of Americans enrolled in private health insurance gave their plans such a high rating. An amazing 70% of Medicare recipients say they always get access to needed health care, while only 51% of people with private insurance say that.

A 2007 Associated Press/Yahoo survey showed that about two-thirds of Americans (65%) agreed that “the United States should adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers.”

So demonizing the specific (“Medicare”) would have been much more politically difficult for Republicans than demonizing the abstract (“government run health care” or “socialism”).

Could Obama have passed a “Medicare For All” bill?  Expanding the nation’s most popular health plan was certainly possible.   After all, knowing that two-thirds of Americans support Medicare for All, what politician of either party would want to take to the stump arguing:

“For your parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends, Medicare is terrific.   I’ll fight to the death to protect it for them.  But for the rest of you,  I am blocking you from accessing  Medicare.  Medicare for YOU would be radical socialism that would lead to horrific health problems.”

Huh?  That would be a head-spinning political argument to sell.

Still, because the insurance lobby is so strong, maybe Congress would have rejected Medicare for All, against the wishes of two-thirds of their constituents.  But if Obama had made  Medicare for All the starting point for the debate, the compromise at the end of the process may have been more progressive, such as a private-dominated marketplace with a Medicare-like public option impacting market competition.

Incumbents who voted for the ACA in 2010 need to defend that confusing law in the 2014 mid-term elections, and the ACA is certainly a vast improvement over the pre-ACA status quo that Republicans have effectively embraced by not offering alternatives for reducing the rate of uninsurance and outlawing preexisting condition bans.  The ACA, for all its warts, is the most significant health care reform since the creation of Medicare.

But even in a neon red state like South Dakota, challengers like Mr. Weiland are wise to adopt the clear, concise and compelling “Medicare for All” rallying call, just as Obama and congressional Democrats should have done back in  2008.

Loveland

Note:  This post was featured in MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.

Which MN Candidates Will Sign The Pull-The-Plug Pledge?

Pull_the_plugAs a general matter, I despise campaign pledges.  Candidates are continually badgered by interest groups to pledge in writing that they will always do X, or never do Y.

The Problem With Pledges

The problem with most pledges is the “always” or “never” parts of them.  The world changes, and policy positions therefore sometimes need to change with them.

  • Pledging to not increase taxes today may make sense at one point in history, but a few years later the circumstances may have changed dramatically.
  • Pledging to support a policy or project now may make sense, but not after surprising new information surfaces.
  • Pledging to tax millionaires may make sense at a time when they’re not paying their fair share, but not a few years later when circumstances may have changed.

So sometimes making policy shifts isn’t  a sign of weakness or dishonesty, as pledge enforcers often claim.  Sometimes, shifting is a sign of courage, vision and integrity.

That’s why I don’t like most campaign pledges.

Pull-the-Plug Pledge

But I came across a pledge the other day that fits our times, and has an infinite shelf life.  South Dakota congressional candidate Rick Weiland challenged all congressional candidates to sign this simple pledge:

“I hereby pledge that, if elected to represent you, I will never vote to shut down your government, or to place your government in default, in order to force it to act, or to prevent it from acting, on unrelated issues.” 

As a voter, I want to know where every Minnesota congressional candidate stands on this Pull-The-Plug Pledge.

Flat_line-2If there are candidates out there who think it is acceptable from them to pull the plug on the American people’s government and economy, that is their right.  But it’s also the right of the overwhelming 72% percent of Americans who oppose the Republicans’ current plug-pulling scheme to be forewarned of a congressional candidate’s position on that  issue, so that they can vote with their eyes wide open.

Yes, Americans and their policymakers must always be able to make their government a different size and shape as future circumstances dictate.  This pledge doesn’t prevent them from having such flexibility. It simply says it’s not acceptable to completely pull the plug on the American economy and government.

So, Tim Walz, Mike Benson, John Kline, Mike Obermuller, Paula Overby, Betty McCollum, Keith Ellison, Erik Paulsen, Tom Emmer, Rhonda Sivarajah, Phil Krinkie, John Pederson, Judy Adams, Collin Pederson, Rick Nolan, Stewart Mills III, Monti Moreno, Chris Dahlberg, Mike McFadden, Julianne Ortman, Jim Abeler, and Al Franken, will you sign the Pull-The-Plug Pledge?

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured in Politics in Minnesota‘s Best of the Blogs.