Jim Messina, the asshole who’s heading Obama’s reelection campaign:
“It was a major harbinger to me, when Obama hired him, that we were not going to get ‘change we can believe in,’” says Ken Toole, a former Democratic state senator and public service commissioner in Montana. “Messina has a lot of talents, but he’s extremely conservative in his views on how to do politics. He’s got a tried-and-true triangulation methodology, and that’s never gonna change.” The Democratic National Committee declined to make Messina available for an interview.
[…] After the 2010 election, Messina spoke at the winter meeting of the Democracy Alliance, a group of wealthy progressive funders. He gave two PowerPoint presentations, including one on the administration’s accomplishments—the stimulus, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, healthcare and financial reform. The other was on what was still to come—immigration reform, the START treaty, repealing DADT. “Jim, you’re missing a word,” one donor told him during the Q&A.
“What word?” Messina responded.
“The word ‘jobs,’” the donor said.
“Messina got a lot of tough questions from people who used to love him,” says one person who was in the audience. “It was like a room of scorned lovers.”
Go read it, be prepared.
Jim Messina was Baucus’s chief of staff and was sent or was asked for by Obama to be Obama’s point man for the health insurance profit protection act.
He is corporatist to his bones. Now, if he’s Obama’s man at the DNC, it means he pleased Obama well with the outcome for guaranteeing big health industry players their profits and protection from government negotiation for lower health care costs. And he’s at the DNC to keep other Dems in line and to please the big corporations and Uberwealthy.
Sing it, jawbone.
I just can’t wait to see how they plan to woo the base.
Base? What base???
So, it’s challenger or lose, as I see it.
Obama will win. The whole thing pisses me off mightily and makes me feel helpless. Messina is yet another example of why we can only change things from the outside, slowly and painfully. Check out this new Jeff Cohen thing: http://rootsaction.org/
Not to be cynical, Cay, but I’m looking for who funds Roots Action, and all I can come with is Action for a Progressive Future, which looks like a D front group.