Megan is correct. Ford is not the type of Senator that we need in Congress to pass the bills we need. If he enters the race it is incumbent on us to ensure he makes an early exit. He has played his policies mostly for his own carrier as opposed to his constituents. One should at least do both.
Harold Ford, apparently feeling that New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s problem is that she just not conservative enough for true-blue New York, is apparently contemplating a run at her in the primaries. Progressives should hope he fails.
Four years ago, popular centrist Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford took at shot at becoming the first black Senator
from the South since Reconstruction, a mere year after he finally got old enough to run and four years after he attempted to take on Nancy Pelosi for the coveted spot of Democratic Minority Leader. He failed, and more or less faded away from the political scene. Apparently, with time has not come wisdom.
Ford’s record as a Congressman is hardly the stuff liberals’ dreams are made of: he voted for constitutional amendments banning flag burning and allowing prayer in schools; calls himself pro-life and advocates for a federal ban on all abortions; voted for legislation limiting gun manufacturers’ liability in the courts; voted for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage; and criticized the Obama Administration on pursuing health care reform during a recession like a good little Republican. Today, he refused to say whether he would have even voted for health care, though he’s apparently flip-flopped on a federal ban on abortions now that he’s running in New York. And that’s to say nothing of his many other conservative votes on everything from the PATRIOT Act to REAL ID to the Partial Birth Abortion Ban to the Iraq War and, of all horrible things, to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo. His record reads like a conservative even as he swears he’s a Democrat.
Apparently, Ford didn’t get the memo that New Yorkers aren’t looking for someone more conservative than Gillibrand, the upstate New Yorker whose appointment to the seat by the even-more-unpopular governor, David Paterson, upset the New York electoral applecart. Despite widespread eye-rolling, Ford is marching ahead with his nascent campaign, hiring more staffers and refusing to be "bullied or intimidated" out of his second Senatorial bid in the last four years in a state he only recently opted to make his home. Apparently, he’s heard of Hillary Clinton and Robert F. Kennedy–not that he agrees with them on policy issues–and decided New York was a great place to re-launch the political career he short-circuited by running for Senate a little, shall we say, prematurely. CONTINUED
Megan Carpentier: Why Harold Ford Should Not Be New York’s Junior Senator – Politics – Air America
