Labor runs ads for Dean in Iowa

By Anonymous -
This is HUGE news. At a news conference this morning, 136 labor activists held a news conference. They endorsed Howard Dean. Tom Gillespie, president of the Iowa State Building and Trades Council, was among them. On Monday, ads will appear in the Des Moines Register. Part of the ad states that Dean is "the only candidate who will stand up for what we believe and isn't afraid of what Washington thinks."
"If we can afford to rebuild Iraq, then we can afford to rebuild our country," Gillespie said.

In response, Gephardt is already mischaracterising Dean's support of NAFTA. What Gephardt left out was Dean oft-repeated support for renegotiating those treaties to support worker and environmental protections in other countries. We are pushing hard in Iowa, folks. Look out for Gephardt's third-quarter numbers. I predict that if Dick doesn't make a strong financial showing, that the AFL-CIO will hold off on their expected endorsement. I also say that the AFL-CIO endorsement is anybody's to grab, but whomever receives it will have to possess three things: motivation, momentum, and money. And which candidate has that right now?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A fair solution to Jerusalem

By Aziz P. -
I remember reading one of the books by Tom Clancy in which Jack Ryan was credited with coming up with a solution for Middle East peace which was pointedly never actually detailed in the novel. It was just a way to give his character some foreign policy cred, but ended up like that mysterious suitcase in Pulp Fiction. I couldn't help but be reminded of that, though, when I read former New York mayor Ed Koch's innovative solution to resolving the status of Jerusalem . Instead of putting the hot-button issue of Jerusalem last on the agenda, the issue should be addressed first. If the Jerusalem question is solved, everything else should fall into place more easily. I believe there is a way to keep Jerusalem unified. I am talking not only of the old walled city, which is a very small part of the city of Jerusalem, but the whole city, east, west, north and south. [...] My suggestion is to situate the new Palestinian capital in that part of East Jerusalem that is occupied overwhelming
Read more

Conservatism's shari'a, liberalism's ijtihad

By Aziz P. -
An interesting meta-debate by intellectual conservatives over conservatism's future is playing out. It started with David Frum's Waterloo essay, which led to his political excommunication. Julian Sanchez observed that this represented an epistemic closing of the conservative mind , a thesis that was validated by the retribution visited upon Jim Manzi for daring to suggest that conservatives will achieve more persuasion by using honest, strong arguments instead of weak, emotional ones. All of this has led John Quiggin at Crooked Timber to argue most wisely that as conservatism implodes, liberalism needs to find its own rationale that is more than just "not conservatism". Quiggin has a list of priorities for the liberal movement to address, and closes with the general plea, ...the left has to stand for something more than keeping the existing order afloat with incremental improvements. We need to offer the hope of a better world as an alternative to the angry tribali
Read more