Rep. Kendrick Meek is not seeking reelection to the House. He is pursuing the Democratic nomination for one of Florida’s two U.S. Senate seats. The Hill makes an interesting catch:
Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.) on Wednesday abruptly withdrew his support from a controversial trade bill and legislation to create a single-payer health insurance system.
The decision to remove himself as co-sponsor of the two bills suggests that Meek is moving to the political center…
…As is required by House rules when backing away from legislation that a lawmaker has previously supported, Meek announced on the floor on Wednesday that he was removing his name from a bill requiring the review and renegotiation of U.S. trade agreements, which has won the support of nearly half the House Democratic Caucus.
The Hill reported on Wednesday that the bill had gained 124 co-sponsors and would put pressure on President Barack Obama’s administration as it prepares for an important World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in November.
Meek also dropped his sponsorship from Rep. John Conyers Jr.’s (D-Mich.) bill to create a single-payer health insurance system. That legislation has 87 co-sponsors.
I don’t like to lecture supporters of single-payer health care. I am a supporter of single-payer health care. But this move shows how a politician can support it when they represent a safe House seat, but go running away from it when they have to run state-wide. Same for trade policy, apparently. Single-payer is just not a policy that can win support from our Congress. We can barely pass a cobbled together public option.
In any case, there is another interesting bit in that Hill piece.
Polling released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University showed Meek trailing Gov. Charlie Crist (R) 51-31 in a potential general election match-up, but leading former state House Speaker Marco Rubio (R) 36-33.
If Meek, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, can win state-wide in a southern state like Florida, that would be another big sign that racism is declining as an obstacle to political power for African-Americans in this country. I think I can count on one hand how many blacks have won state-wide elections for federal offices and governor. Yet, there Meek is polling ahead of the conservative champion in the GOP’s Florida primary. The rabid base of the Republican Party seems convinced that their Palinistic tea-bagging shock troops are popular and will win elections where moderates fail. But there just isn’t any evidence for that. If they nominate Gov. Crist as their senate candidate, they’ll probably win in a walk and not even have to spend too much money doing it. If they nominate Rubio, they could easily lose the seat to a second-tier candidate.
Not jack your post Booman but what are your thoughts on Obama pushing for trigger option? http://www.americablog.com/2009/10/now-that-house-and-senate-are-both.html
It doesn’t fit with anything else that is going on. Sounds like a typical Politico hit-job. Remember, too, that just because something is supported by one part of the WH, it isn’t necessarily supported by everyone there. For whatever reason, Obama had been hiding his fingerprints in this from the beginning. They have not been willing to publicly commit to one course of action prior to having it demonstrated that they have the support for it. He doesn’t want to be boxed in.
The real battle has always been to pass something thru the Senate and try to fight for the best deal possible in conference when momentum is overwhelming. So, the House is where the battle is. In the Senate, Obama wants to pass something, but he doesn’t want to piss a lot of senators off where they’ll be disinclined to vote for the conference report.
If there is any validity to this report, it’s because they’re still not convinced they have 60 votes for Reid’s plan, or because they don’t want to be seen as the heavies that ditched all the work to bring on Snowe.
The reason I am confident that they are working for a public option is what I’m seeing in the House, which is a full-court press for Medicare Plus-5. They wouldn’t send Pelosi out to do that if they were going to go with a shitty trigger.
Booman, sorry in another Southern state Deeds looks like he’s losing to McDonnell, who’s not exactly a moderate. I didn’t follow the Dem primary closely, but I thought Deeds was the non-McAuliffe and more of a real Democrat. If you’re following that one, why’s he doing so badly?
If McDonnell wins and moderate Repubs lose elsewhere it’s just gonna drive us deeper into public displays of utter insanity.
Deeds is pretty conservative. I haven’t been following the race except to watch the polls. I get the impression that Deeds isn’t the hottest retail politician. Beyond that, the GOP base is much more energized than the Dem base.
Being from Virginia, I can tell you exactly why he’s polling the way he is:
He’s not exciting the base whatsoever. Look, there’s a time when you run to the center, and there’s a time where you run to your base. Obviously, Meek is pretty liberal, so it’d make sense for him to run slightly to the center in a state-wide election in a state like Florida, especially, as Booman noted, because of his race.
However, Virginia is now a swing-state, transitioning from a solid-red. This race will be all about turn-out, and when you have this moron saying he will hold “opting out” of health care reform if need be…DURING THE DEBATE…it’s obvious his campaign isn’t very well advised or organized. I know it’s not organized because I’ve barely had any knocks on my door from canvassers. As a matter of fact, I’ve had canvassers come to my friends’ apartment, but not mine. That’s really odd; I’d expect them to target me because I volunteered for Obama from the primaries to November 4th at a rate of 40 hours per week. Yet I’ve not had a single phone call to my house or a knock on my door.
I’m not motivated to volunteer for this guy, either. I may have volunteered for Moran, but not for Deeds. I voted for Moran in the primary; he was the strongest candidate. Deeds won the primary by sneaking by as Moran and Terry fought each other. Now that they’re out of the picture, it’s apparent how horribly run his campaign truly is.
The guy is toast, and it’s sad because Virginia has consistently been the best governed state since Mark Warner. The last Republican governor we have had destroyed the state’s budget, and made our good education system go down in what seems to be a short amount of time; no small feet from any shitty Republican. I expect this theocrat to make things even worse.
Way to go, Deeds.
Meek sounds like he’s going to have trouble exciting the base. I wonder if that will give the Reps more confidence to nominate the wingnut extremist? Hope so.
I really don’t see how Meek does himself any good by making an obvious political calculation like this. He just comes off as a cynical flipflopper. Does no pol ever learn anything from history? How hard would it have been for him to say well, like Obama says, single-payer would be the best option if we were starting from scratch, and I’m proud of standing up for the improbable dream. Here in the world of real politics, though, I’m also proud of what Congress is doing to fix our broken healthcare system and I’ll work my butt off to make sure it meets and exceeds its promise.
Or something. As it stands, one has to wonder whether Meek is his given name or something he took on when he became a Democrat.
I don’t think that follows at all. By backtracking from formerly liberal positions, Meek is simply utilizing the flip side of racism as a route to a semblance of power: there is always room for a handful of pliant Negro tokens in the corrupt corners of the white power structure.
This has traditionally been called the Uncle Tom approach, but I think it’s much better to think of it as the Colin Powell approach, after the useful idiot who began his career spearheading the whitewash of the My Lai massacre and ended it by pitching our most egregious war of aggression to the UN — then as now using troops disproportionately picked from among the poor and racial minorities. Or Dubya’s first Secretary, Roderick Paige, who put a smiling black face on the infamous No Child Left Behind program with all of its elaborate mechanisms to make sure it’s okay to leave minority children behind. Or Roland Burris who, before achieving fresh notoriety as Rod Blagojevich’s corrupt Senate appointment, knowingly tried to execute an innocent man — conveniently, a Hispanic teenager — in order to maintain his tough-on-crime image as an Attorney General.
Who will be hurt the most by watered-down health care provisions? My guess is that it won’t be the affluent white Medicare recipients who comprise one of the larger voting blocs in Florida.
Having the existing unjust power structure propped up by the occasional black man does not represent progress in any way. It merely gives cover for the entrenched interests to say, “See? We’re not racist. We have lots of black tools.”