FL-18: Ros-Lehtinen's economic knowledge leaves out Great Depression

Thanks to the Miami Beach Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club we have some better understanding of how poor our representation in Congress is. My representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, now over 20 years in the US House, spoke to us last Tuesday and put out a ton of verbiage revealing how little she and her Republican colleagues understand of economics.

Her main theme was the deficit, and if you look at these clips you’ll see that she wants to freeze spending, and to do it now. She apparently hasn’t heard that the Great Depression of the 1930s was on the road to recovery in FDR’s first term until he was nagged to distraction by criticism of his spending, and so his administration put on the brakes and then came the double-dip of 1937, I believe. I’m not even looking it up -- it’s such common knowledge. But not among today’s Republicans. Their mantra is stop deficits now. NOW!

OK, we know that the family budget should be balanced. But that’s not really applicable to running the world’s biggest economy, and families, too, have to borrow for major expenditures. Ros-Lehtinen led off her  speech with the stop-deficit talking point, and then in the Q-and-A she was given two chances to modify it, but instead she mischaracterized economic thought.

No, Congresswoman, no economists think that deficits are OK, as you say. They may say that deficits are necessary to help end a recession, but then you’re supposed to get to a balance of income and outgo.

Anyway, check out this clip. Note that she’s reading from a paper but still says clearly false things about the national debt and the size of President Obama’s budget proposal in relation to the national debt.




It has taken me forever to process this, and I apologize. New computer gear slowed me down, plus winter visitors from the frozen North.

Inspiration to finish came Saturday evening as C-Span replayed another Republican member of the US House, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, the deputy whip of her party. She had done the Friday morning call-in program, and my, was she an eloquent spouter of the party line, leading with the deficit. I was struck by the way her message was identical to what Ros-Lehtinen had said on Tuesday in Miami Beach.

The Republicans all have been told what to say. This is the balky line we will hear until the Obama administration brings out the hammers of logic and a disciplined majority.

Blackburn was asked what should happen in the summit President Obama has called for Feb. 25, and I was stunned to hear her say that the Tennessee governor should be called in to explain how health care should be run. Yes -- she wants to go back to Year Zero and start from scratch.

I think this is going to be one heck of a year in the US Congress, and we should gear up to let even our Republican members of Congress know what we think of their no-knothing, er, know-nothing way of representation.

Blackburn said there would be town halls during this break for Presidents Day. We should find out where the Republicans are appearing and let them know their knowledge of economics gets an F.

Thanks, by the way, to Ros-Lehtinen for coming out and speaking to the general public in Miami Beach. There are more good clips of her talk that I’ll try to grind out. She has been in the US House since 1988, and my member of Congress since 2002, and this is the first appearance I know of outside her usual friendly circle.

The first question to her was about her husband Dexter Lehtinen and his legal work for the Miccosukee Indian tribe, which does a lot of business with the federal government, and whether that might be a conflict of interest.

“It’s about ethics,” the questioner, Mike Burke, cried when she didn’t know what he was asking about. Ethics? She didn’t know, just like her economics. I’ll try to get this clip up, too.

Final note: While the rest of you were glued to the screen watching the snow games, your blogger was editing his crude video and looking at C-Span. Such is devotion.

Our office moves from Doral to Miami Beach

The U-Haul is full. Moving on Friday morning to 801 Arthur Godfrey Drive in Miami Beach. Volunteers welcome to help unload and fill the new office. Call 305-477-4994 if need more details.

The photo shows Dave Patlak, interim operations director, and Daisy Black, our first vice chair. Also working were Kristin Wipior and Barbara Schwartz,stalwart volunteers. Your blogger ran the camera and a hand truck.

David Plouffe to Democrats: "Fight like hell... and do what the American people sent us to Washington to do"

By Christopher Hass - Jan 24th, 2010 at 1:03 pm EST
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/obamaforamerica/gGGxgQ
In today's Washington Post, Obama for America campaign manager David Plouffe penned an op-ed in which he admits that the Democratic Party received a resounding "wake-up call" from the Massachusetts special election on Tuesday, but he argues that the way forward is to continue to fight, and to show American people that they are capable of doing the hard things that voters sent them to Washington to do.
"[The 2010 midterms] will be a tough election for our party and for many Republican incumbents as well. Instead of fearing what may happen, let's prove that we have more than just the brains to govern -- that we have the guts to govern. Let's fight like hell, not because we want to preserve our status, but because we sincerely believe too many everyday Americans will continue to lose if Republicans and special interests win."
Plouffe also outlines a few key principles the Democrats can use to be successful in this November, the first of which is passing a meaningful health insurance reform package without delay. He also urges Democrats to focus on job creation, and to do a better job articulating the positive impact American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on the economy.
Finally, Plouffe urges Democratic candidates to "run great campaigns," citing many of the same core organizing principles that proved to be so effective during the Obama campaign:
"Our campaigns can leave no stone unturned, from believing in the power of grass-roots volunteers and voter registration, to using technology and data innovatively, to raising money -- especially with big corporate interests now freed up to dump hundreds of millions of dollars to elect those who will do their bidding. Democratic candidates must do everything well. Each one must make sure that the first-time voters from 2008 living in your state or district -- more than 15 million nationwide -- are in their sights. Build a relationship with those voters, organize them and educate them. On Nov. 3, many races are sure to be decided by just a few thousand if not a few hundred votes. These voters can make the difference. We have to show them that their 2008 votes mattered, and passing health insurance reform is one way to start.
...If Democrats will show the country we can lead when it's hard, we may not have perfect election results, but November will be nothing like the nightmare that talking heads have forecast."
Read the full op-ed...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012204216.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Guest blogger makes sense of US economy and politics

The author, Santiago Leon, is chair of the Issues Committee of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party

By Santiago Leon

Happy New Year!
Like most of us, I have been giving some thought to how our economy was run into the ditch. I thought you might be interested in some of my conclusions.

MAKING SENSE OF OUR ECONOMY

Over the years, it has been the pattern that Republicans got more campaign contributions from business, and Democrats from other sources. In recent times, however, both parties have been bankrolled by business interests, the difference being that the Democrats got more money from Wall Street, and the Republicans from the oil industry. This was certainly the case in the most recent presidential election. See for example:
http://debatebothsides.com/showthread.php?65889-On-eve-of-%E2%80%9CSuper-Tuesday%E2%80%9D-primaries-Wall-Street-casts-the-money-ballot

For a long time I thought it was nice that the Democrats got money from Wall Street -- my interpretation was that there were progressive people on Wall Street who understood the need for responsible government. I am sure that many progressive Democrats would not have shared this perspective in the first place, and in the last year or so I have come to look at things differently. It is now apparent that the economic policies of both the Democratic and the Republican parties, and perhaps those of the Democrats more than those of the Republicans, have been guided in major part by the influence of Wall Street, which has centered on the expansion of its own profits.

Moreover, it has become apparent that the economic policies designed by Wall Street have done serious damage to the American economy, damage which will not easily be repaired. This damage takes numerous forms including the loss of income and competitive position, but also lasting damage to individuals in the form of both short-term and long-term impacts on health. See for example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/health/09sick.html
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/abstract/153/5/529

The direct damage which our political leadership has inflicted on our economy falls into two categories: the offshoring of manufacturing and the deregulation of the financial system. These two developments interacted to produce our recent financial disasters.

How did this happen?

HOW ECONOMIC POLICIES PRODUCED THE GREAT RECESSION

First, the offshoring of manufacturing led to enormous trade deficits and lower real incomes for American middle-class families. Families took a number of steps to maintain their standard of living: first women returned to the work force, and then families went into debt using credit cards and mortgages. The federal government also got into the act: as families' financial situation deteriorated, people demanded tax cuts. In addition, declining real incomes meant that recessions were recurrent, and the federal government found itself under pressure to engage in deficit spending to keep the economy going, with the result that the cumulative federal deficit rose (of course, George W. Bush waging wars in the Middle East while cutting taxes did not help).

Lower real incomes and higher household debt would have been bad enough by themselves. However, an increasingly concentrated and deregulated financial system added to the problem. First, the mortgage market became much more volatile. In the past, home mortgages were made by local lenders who kept the loans in their portfolios. As a result, lenders were careful about whom they lent to and about the value of the properties that secured the loans. In recent years, however, those who were originating the mortgage loans sold them immediately to wholesalers who repackaged the individual mortgages into securities.

The buyers of the mortgage-based securities were sure that home prices would never fall, and that homeowners would almost never fail to make their mortgage payments. As a result, the demand for the securities was so strong that the wholesalers asked few questions about what they were buying. The resulting strong market for mortgage-based securities had two effects: it lowered the quality of the mortgage loans and also fueled a run-up in the prices of real estate. The mortgage-based securities were bought in large blocks, which concentrated the risk of default. Ultimately, the real estate price bubble burst, with predictable consequences for the holders of the securities and for companies such as AIG which had issued guarantees on those securities. The federal government then bailed out all the investors and speculators (on the pretext that they were "too big to fail"), massively increasing its own debt in the process.

GETTING INTO DETAILS: SOME RECENT ARTICLES

1. THE OFFSHORING OF MANUFACTURING
Several recent articles have done an excellent job of clarifying the process by which the American economy has been damaged. One set of articles relates to the offshoring of our manufacturing base. This is a special report of The American Prospect entitled "Made in the USA: Reviving American Manufacturing Before It Is Too Late." You can see all the articles at: http://prospect.org/cs/special_report

I would particularly recommend two articles. The first, "The Plight of American Manufacturing," by Richard McCormack, sums up where we are.
http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_plight_of_american_manufacturing

Here is an excerpt:
=======
America's economic elite has long argued that the country does not need an industrial base. The economies in states such as California and Michigan that have lost their industrial base, however, belie that claim. Without an industrial base, an increase in consumer spending, which pulled the country out of past recessions, will not put Americans back to work [because the consumer dollars will be spent in China]. Without an industrial base, the nation's trade deficit will continue to grow. Without an industrial base, there will be no economic ladder for a generation of immigrants, stranded in low-paying service-sector jobs. Without an industrial base, the United States will be increasingly dependent on foreign manufacturers even for its key military technology.

For American manufacturers, the bad years didn't begin with the banking crisis of 2008. Indeed, the U.S. manufacturing sector never emerged from the 2001 recession, which coincided with China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Since 2001, the country has lost 42,400 factories, including 36 percent of factories that employ more than 1,000 workers (which declined from 1,479 to 947), and 38 percent of factories that employ between 500 and 999 employees (from 3,198 to 1,972). An additional 90,000
manufacturing companies are now at risk of going out of business.

[Of course, even with Miami's trade- and service-based economy, we have experienced the offshoring of manufacturing as the garment and medical device industries have moved jobs to other countries.]
=========

A second article, "Industrial Policy: The Road Not Taken," by Jeff Faux, helps us to understand the politics of how we got here. http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=industrial_policy_the_road_not_taken_

Here is an excerpt, which summarizes not only the policy debate but the relationship between Wall Street, economics departments and "free trade" views :
======
Over the next decade [starting in 1976], a widening circle elaborated the case for a conscious nurturing of a high-wage road to future prosperity as an alternative to the low-wage road on which the country was traveling. Analysts at the Business Roundtable on the International Economy at the University of California, Berkeley, insisted that we had something to learn from the Japanese. Robert Reich, a lawyer, and Ira Magaziner, a business consultant, argued that sectoral policies were essential for growth. Labor economists at the Economic Policy Institute showed how the erosion of wages from the manufacturing sector was spreading throughout the labor force. Economists Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison wrote a book whose title, “The Deindustrialization of America,” became the iconic phrase in the policy debate.

But policy debates are rarely settled on their philosophical merits alone. To a large degree, the conflict within the policy class was a proxy for the conflict of interests among those with power and money at stake. For example, the State Department, representing the foreign-policy establishment, which favored helping foreign industries to capture U.S. markets as a way to gain Cold War allies, was opposed.

More important was the hostility of the Treasury Department, which represented the interests of financiers [i.e. Wall Street] who were against giving the government power to guide private investment in ways that would serve the interests of American producers, rather than American global investors. It was one thing for the government to subsidize capital with tax breaks, loan guarantees, and bondholder bailouts. But for the government to do it on some systematic and thought-out basis -- that was the road to socialism, if not worse. America's financial elite was also aware that if manufacturing industries were to shrink, so would the political power of the strongest American unions.

The industrial-policy debate consummated the marriage of Wall Street and the mainstream economics profession that continues today. For believers in the neoclassical synthesis, financial markets are easy to romanticize; buyers and sellers reacting almost instantaneously to minute price changes that are supposed to reflect all of the available information on businesses, about which neither buyer nor seller has to know anything at all. This simulated perfect market lent itself to the mathematical models needed to gain tenure and win Nobel Prizes in economics. And global investors, like neoclassical economists, are free-traders, indifferent to where exactly investment goes, so long as it maximizes what economists call efficiency -- and financiers call profit.

A dowry helped. Wall Street firms contributed funding to friendly economics departments and think tanks and gave consultant contracts to economists to build models showing that their exotic derivatives were low-risk bargains.
=====

2. THE DEREGULATION OF THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM

The best article I have seen on the deregulation of the financial system is a profile of John Dugan, of whom I had never heard before, but who turns out to have played a leading role in that process. The article is "A Master of Disaster," by Zach Carter, and appears on The Nation magazine's web site at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100104/carter

Dugan, while employed at the Treasury Department under George H. W. Bush, oversaw the preparation of a 750-page book which advocated, among other policy changes, allowing banks to expand into multiple states without incurring additional regulatory oversight, allowing relatively safe commercial banks to merge with riskier investment banks and insurance companies, and allowing commercial firms such as General Electric to own a bank. (Of course, we have experienced the effects of interstate banking here in Miami, where the majority of bank deposits have moved from local or regional banks to national banks. Among the effects have been reduced local employment in the banking sector and a diminishing pool of local institutions with a vested interest in the community to provide civic leadership and charitable contributions.)

Dugan's recommendations were ultimately enacted by a Democratic Congress under Bill Clinton's leadership and laid the groundwork for our recent financial disasters. One aspect of the results is summarized in the following excerpt:
=====

"There were two pieces of legislation that facilitated our migration toward too big to fail... Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, which permitted banks to grow across state lines, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which eliminated the separation of commercial and investment banking," said Kansas City Federal Reserve president Thomas Hoenig in an August 6 speech before the Kansas Bankers Association. "Since 1990, the largest twenty institutions grew from controlling about 35 percent of industry assets to controlling 70 percent of assets today."
=======

However, Dugan's contributions to the current catastrophe are not merely intellectual:  "As head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency [to which he was appointed by George W. Bush in 2005], Dugan played a leading role in gutting the consumer protection system, allowing big banks to take outrageous risks on the predatory mortgages that led to millions of foreclosures." The details of how he did this, which included asserting federal pre-emption to prevent states from regulating mortgage lenders and enacting consumer protections, are morbidly fascinating.

It is astonishing that in view of all the damage he has done, Dugan still has his job (this seems comparable to keeping Brownie at FEMA after New Orleans). Dugan's term expires in 2010; however, Barack Obama has the power to remove him at any time. The fact that Obama has not done so is indicative of the degree of influence exercised by Citigroup and its ilk.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

I have no hope for the Republican Party for the time being: it has, for example, played no constructive role in anything that has happened in Washington for the past year. I am hopeful, however, that the grass roots of the Democratic Party can push the party and its elected officials to take a more responsible approach to managing our economy, and to escape the gravitational pull of Wall Street.

I think that the effort to re-orient our politics to the needs of the average American will be made much easier if we can reform our system of campaign financing, so that our elected officials of both parties do not have to depend on Wall Street (or the oil industry) to finance their campaigns. A bill has been introduced in Congress and the Senate to provide for public financing of congressional campaigns. You can read about it at: http://www.fairelectionsnow.org/

Public financing is necessary, but not sufficient. Clearly, in Miami as elsewhere, the electorate has a long way to go before it understands the issues well enough to hold its officials to account. Perhaps in the course of making the case for public campaign financing, we can bring more voters up to speed on the high cost of privately financed elections and their results in the form of national economic policies determined by, and
for the short-term benefit of, a small segment of our society.

A little video from the Miami-Dade Democrats' holiday party

We called it Florida Blue and had some fun.



Looking forward to a powerful year of campaigning for the 2010 midterm election. We have a lot of good candidates and a new chairman, Richard Lydecker, who promises the party will be a valuable partner in getting Democrats elected.

Wondering which lying brands to boycott? An answer

Wishes come true, sometimes. Today while driving I idly wondered how to put pressure on the backers of the lying liars on Fox News. Hmm, how to organize a boycott of the advertisers …

An hour later I’m home and browsing my email and here’s one from Democrats.com (The “Aggressive Progressives,” they call themselves. This is close to but NOT the Democratic Party, which uses the .org suffix). They have an email form that sends a blast to all the advertisers and tells them I’m not buying their stuff while they advertise on Fox News.

Bingo, I’m signed up. Here’s the list of advertisers as of Aug. 9, i.e. yesterday.

Some of these may be kinda hard to separate from my daily life, like AARP, Apple, Brita Filter, Nexium, US Postal Service (!). But I’m gonna start NOW.

Current Advertisers (8/9/09)
60Plus.org
AARP Insurance
Accu Chek Aviva
ADT Security
Ally Bank (allybank.com)
Apple
Avodart
Brita Filter
Broadbive Security
Conservatives for Patients Rights
Ditech (ditech.com)
Forex.com
Golden Corral
Healthy Choice
HSBC Life Insurance
Mens Warehouse
Mercedes-Benz
Metastock
Nexium
Pepboys
Radio Shack
Rapid Wash
Red Lobster
Sargento Cheese
Super8 motels (super8.com)
Superior Gold Group
United Healthcare Insurance
United States Postal Service
Wallstreet Journal
Weitz&Luxemburg

Check it out. There’s already a fairly long list of advertisers who have given up on Fox News. In fact, this campaign has been going on for quite a while. Gulp. uh, when do we win?

We have to take the view that all this is commercial. The lies, the network that blasts them out, the advertisers who pay too much to have their message associated with the lies – all commercial ventures. We have to take our commercial steps, too, in addition to our voting, community organizing, sign-making, demonstrating, thinking.

Test run: Widget to find Democratic town halls

At the top of the right column is a new element: a widget to let readers find town halls or other events being held by Democratic officials. Why? Maybe the event needs extra friendly attendees to keep the unfriendlies from appearing to be the majority.

This was invented, I gather, by the brilliant people at Fire Dog Lake. I heard about it via an email.

My suspicious mind can imagine ways to misuse this widget, so let's consider this a test run.

Michael Jackson was a Democrat

That is the import of the photo caption showing him airborne while performing at a DNC benefit concert. This link is to a New York Times slide show on his career.

UPDATE:

I’m too old to have been a big fan of the Jackson Five or Michael Jackson, but I remember the disco craze that I joined into heartily and danced like crazy for some decades in lounges and living rooms in three or four foreign countries, in addition to the United States. Some of that was Michael Jackson’s music, wasn’t it, my fellow disco-dancers? So I take his passing as a moment to turn away from the lurid stuff of his life and to appreciate the enjoyment he provided to millions, perhaps billions.

There are a lot of videos out there. This one was the most fun for me.

That video came to light by following links in this illuminating post at Huffington Post by Deepak Chopra, who was a friend of Michael Jackson’s. Therein find a link to a Huffington post by his son Gotham who at a tender age also was a friend of Michael Jackson and traveled with him. Chopra father and son seem to be saying that Michael Jackson was after song lyrics and friendship, enough said.

Meek/Burns/Gelber US Senate politics at JJ meeting

Dan Gelber is stepping back. Kevin Burns is not. Kendrick Meek is confident of the Democratic nomination to run against whomever the Republicans put up for the US Senate seat being vacated by Mel Martinez.

UPDATE: Just learning at midnight Monday about a new entry in the US Senate race: Corrine Brown, U.S. Rep. from Jacksonville (FL-3) says she's considering a race for this seat.
ALSO: The Gelber campaign used my video of Gelber (see below) in a message to people in the Gelber Facebook group. Cool to be linked. It's also on the Broward New Times blog, where you also can see a snip on Corrine Brown.

That’s a bunch of names, and even more will enter the picture. Aside from the jockeying personalities and ambitions, the thing that stands out is a drive by many Florida Democrats to avoid divisive primaries in the 2010 elections – midterms in the presidential cycle but the year to elect the governor and the three other state cabinet officers. No incumbents seek re-election for the first time in over 130 years. Democrats are ambitious to grab all four so-called statewide offices – they only hold one now – and elect a Democrat to the US Senate.

This would be a tremendous state coup for Democrats on the heels of taking Florida’s 27 electoral votes for Barack Obama last November. But it goes against the typical history of midterm losses by the president’s party, and may not be possible anyhow unless the national economy brightens and makes voters more happy with Democrats. The Republicans, after all, also are trying to avoid tough primaries, though Marco Rubio, the deeply conservative former State House speaker, shows no sign of leaving the Senate field to Gov. Charlie Crist, the empty suit.

What do I know about the Republicans, anyway?

Here’s the way this played out among Democrats in public Saturday at the day of training and campaigning that was part of the Florida Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Day in the luxe venue of the newly renovated Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach.

Dan Gelber, 48, my state senator (District 35), said he had walked a few hundred yards to the meeting from his Miami Beach home. Finding coffee at the GLBT Caucus room, he told this blogger he was likely to step back from the US Senate race and was talking to people about running for state attorney general. He’s a former federal prosecutor, one highlight in a busy resume of politics and public service, but his ambition in this direction runs up against another rising Democrat, state Sen. Dave Aronberg (FL-27), 38, who’s perhaps even more in need of a bigger job than Gelber. Gelber is early in his first state Senate term, while Aronberg is in his second and last. Term limits, Ta DA!

Some say Florida Democrats don’t have a deep bench of candidates. Gelber and Aronberg are evidence for the other view: that talent is abundant. Unfortunately, attorney general is a natural office for each of them.

Now I’ve mixed the race for state attorney general in with the US Senate. Let’s go back to the senatorial possibilities.

The hapless Mel Martinez announced last year, after being cashiered as head of the Republican Party, that he wouldn’t run for re-election to US Senate. The Democratic scramble started back in December when Gelber said he was thinking of the Senate. A month later Meek, 42, in his fourth term in the US House (FL-17), made the first official step into the race, and Gelber officially announced for US Senate soon thereafter. In February Kevin Burns, mayor of North Miami, launched his bid. This made the Democratic race an entirely Miami-Dade County affair, though the three are a diverse set, Meek being African-American, Gelber Jewish, and Burns gay, in a 26-year relationship and having an adopted, charming daughter. Hey, we’re Democrats. So what if it’s Florida and some parts of the state are still in the Deep South. I can’t help but think … Anyway. Get over it.

All three showed up at the Netroots Coalition training session Saturday morning and spoke briefly, setting wheels in motion. Here are video links to clips of their talks. Text summaries soon thereafter.

Key words from Gelber:

• “Every time we get involved with divisive primaries, we lose.”
• In recent election cycles, “there’s really only been one (Democratic) candidate who’s won, Alex Sink. Guess what – she didn’t have a primary. … I’m in this US Senate race. But I will likely be taking sort of a step back in this race….”
• “I do think this cycle is going to be (about) how disciplined we are going to be as Democrats. Whether we can put together a group that delivers change, really changes the face of our state.”

Kevin Burns was the only enthusiastic proponent of primaries. “I love primaries,” he told the Netroots crowd, while cautioning that a primary should be “responsible.” He contrasted a good primary with the Republicans’ usual tactic of special interests anointing someone to be the nominee.

That doesn’t make Burns a front-runner, however. Meek seems to have that position. But it’s a long time before the primary in August next year.

Gelber and others talked about a 2010 slate – the US Senate, plus the state leadership offices of governor, attorney general, chief financial officer and commissioner of agriculture and consumer affairs. (The lieutenant governor is elected as a team with the governor.)

In the evening, at the banquet before over 1,000 people, Gelber made it more official, saying in his podium speech, “I’m going to step back from my US Senate bid and consider other seats in the (state) cabinet.”

This won the best ovation of the evening. There was prolonged applause and many rose to their feet. Neither Alex Sink, the gubernatorial nominee, nor keynoter Tim Kaine, governor of Virginia and head of the DNC, got prolonged applause. After Kendrick Meek spoke and didn’t acknowledge that Gelber had, in effect, withdrawn (What does “step back” mean, anyway?), Bob Graham, the wise old Florida Democrat, with vast experience as governor and prominent US senator, seemed to depart from his text to thank Gelber, and praised his “courageous, unifying and patriotic statement.”

Now came Alex Sink to the podium after Graham’s introduction. Unchallenged for the Democratic nomination for governor, she gave a speech rich in platitudes until she got to her growing up on a farm. The chatty audience finally hushed and seemed enthralled by her description of how she learned self-reliance and a “love of numbers” from helping her father with the farm accounts. She wrote the checks, and it seemed that soon she was head of the Bank of America in Florida, and now on the threshold of the governor’s office.

She’s facing Bill McCollum, whose distinguishing feature is having run for office a ton of times without seeming to become especially smart or effective. Now he’s the state attorney general, term-limited, so he’s up or out of office.

On Sunday morning Gelber sent an email to supporters announcing again that he’s “stepping back” from the US Senate race, and that he’d been talking with Bob Graham, Alex Sink and US Sen. Bill Nelson about a “slate of candidates” for 2010.

The text of his email:

As you may know I have decided to step back from my U.S. Senate bid. I wanted to let you know the reasons.

When Governor Crist announced he would be a candidate for US Senate, he created a domino effect that opened up every seat on the cabinet. At a time when our state is facing its greatest challenges, ironically, we have our greatest uncertainty and dislocation. But I believe this is also an opportunity – the chance to set a new course that avoids the mistakes of the past and tracks a better future for our families.

It makes little sense -- when we do face the prospect of real change in Florida -- for me to participate in a potentially divisive primary for U.S. Senate that will only serve to diminish our chances against a very formidable and well-known Republican nominee.

I also believe that we have a historic opportunity here in Florida to reshape the political landscape and more importantly, bring fundamental change to Tallahassee. I have had a number of conversations with Senators Graham and Nelson, and CFO Alex Sink, about how we can best unify our party and move forward with a slate of candidates that can communicate our vision for a better Florida, and I look forward to continuing these discussions. I would like to hear your thoughts as you have been a good supporter and friend, and I value your opinion. You can reach me at dan@dangelber.com.

Tim Kaine, in his keynote speech, promised to pay a lot of attention to Florida campaigns and said his DNC will “invest” in our 2010 Senate race. Kaine waxed philosophical in describing how hard it was to know when one’s political “moment” was in bloom and when it was past. “We’ll be measured by what we do in this moment ... You don’t know how long a moment will last … We’ve got to do as much as we can.”

A few more words on that slate for the state offices. Who might be in the other state cabinet slots? One delightful surprise was to learn that Annette Taddeo is considering a run to succeed Alex Sink as chief financial officer. Taddeo ran a strong campaign for US House District 18 (my district) but lost to the entrenched Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in 2008. Taddeo is a successful businesswoman in her own right and would be a credible occupant of the CFO portfolio.

She, too, appeared at the Netroots session and spoke after Gelber, Aronberg and Burns had left.

“This was not my idea,” she said of the CFO draft, but went on, “I am considering it. I am talking to people ... it’s a very difficult decision. I just went through a very grueling campaign.”

She said she’d never run again without party backing, as she did in the ’08 congressional campaign. This was something I saw from medium close-up, and while it was tough on her, it made me and many others admire her grit as much as her intelligence, talent and charm.

So, check it out, the website to draft Annette Taddeo for CFO.

And here’s a link to the Miami Herald’s story, which didn’t have any reporting from the Netroots meeting.

A link to an earlier post here on this topic.

Steinberg: Senate race likely to be Meek vs. Crist

At the Miami Beach Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club, State Rep. Richard Steinberg was asked about the race for governor now erupting in Florida, and he gave a strong endorsement of Alex Sink, currently the chief financial officer of the state. Sink is a “brilliant woman,” he said, while the leading Republican, Attorney General Bill McCollum, is just a career politician.

Without being asked, Steinberg went on to volunteer that he thought the US Senate race would be between US Rep. Kendrick Meek (FL-17) and Gov. Charlie Crist. Hmm, methinks, what about Dan Gelber, Steinberg’s precedessor in State House District 106 and now State Senator for District 35? Gelber, Steinberg said, maybe would run for some other office.

This analysis jibes nicely with what’s on the front page of Tuesday’s Miami Herald, a story that says both parties are rallying behind supposed front-runners to avoid nasty primary fights. The Herald story is mostly about the Republican leadership all standing behind Bill McCollum but the Democrats do make some appearances, notably, regarding Gelber, as saying he might switch and run for attorney general.

My feeling is: what’s the rush? The primary and election are not this year – they’re way off in 2010, next year, a year and a half away for the general election. There’s certainly nothing wrong with politicians adjusting their sights as the targets on the firing range move and shake, but having the party load all its support onto one candidate at this early stage ignores the safety of waiting a while to see what develops.

Maybe someone’s slogan will really catch on and the race will look different in a year. What if this recession is really a depression and Charlie Crist takes a well-justified beating as Florida develops a 20-percent unemployment rate while he ignores his gubernatorial duties to campaign for US Senate? I’m fine with letting the Republicans make a strategic error by jumping early, but I’d prefer that the Democratic Party looks wise and patient.

Crist will face this and worse

The Democrats are getting ready for Charlie Crist to go in either direction.

Florida enjoying youth wave in politics

This is heartening news – more young people drawn into political activism in Florida. This particular story in the St. Pete Times is about the Tampa Bay area, but I’d guess it will apply to most of the state. Note that it’s not only Democrats who have been energized by our youngish presidential candidate. The Republicans are on to this, too.

I have a comment pending there to toot Dade’s horn, since we elected 29-year-old BJ Chiszar to be chair of the county party leadership body, the Democratic Executive Committee. We have plenty of wise old gray heads and new blood, too.