Gah, Schumer and Souza! Enough lock-step already!

Schumer gave us Mukasey. For that, he should be primaried.

Good evening, Julia.

More better Dems!

Unlike [Blagojevich], [Schumer] understands the subtle difference between a senator’s seat and a senator’s soul: the first one you buy; the second one you sell.

Brilliant.

NYT says Cuomo is just a tad irritated that Ms Kennedy is now considered the front runner.

Schumer. Again. ugh
Will the voters of NY not rid our Senate of this clown?
But since I’m at least partially responsible for inflicting DiFi on the nation, I guess I can’t scream to loudly.
My humble apologies, folks.

Good evening, Julia.

The sad thing is, Suozzi’s a fairly competent executive. He’s just (stop me if this sounds familiar) the son of a very prominent NYS political family who saw a chance to hop to the front of the line.

If they do, can they please advise the state of Montana so that we can rid ourselves of the odious Max Baucus (second most popular politician in the state)?

I’m not a fan of the direction that people who owed Schumer for his fundraising prowess took in the last session, let’s just say.

Yeah? Try Snarlin on for size :/

Isn’t it? I’ve always liked that blog.

OT: OUr local TV is just covering the Ken Starr/Prop story…news does travel fast.

welp, humans being as they are, no surprise there.

Oh, I don’t doubt it. Teddy’s long been of the opinion that Ms. Kennedy is partly, at least, jumping in because the family doesn’t want Cuomo in the seat after his and her cousin’s unpleasant divorce.

Frankly, this last election is the first time I voted for him, and he’s run a lot.

Yup. Schumer and Feinstein.

Who’s going after Feinstein’s seat?

I’m guessing not. He doesn’t exactly work for us these days. Nobody else is likely to find the money to run against him.

Dr, Dick, I hear you.

tw3k – I kinda like Arlen. He may always bend over for Chimpy in the end, but he makes better noises than Dems before he finally folds.

the funny thing is that’s _exactly_ how Vito Fossella got his start. He was a Democrat from a prominent Democratic family who got offered a deal by a Republican fixer, and the rest was history. In his first race, he never actually said what party he was running for.

That made me wheeze :(

biddness is biddness.

Ain’t that the truth.

The best way to de-inflict DiFi on America would be to support her gubernatorial bid. Asked yesterday at a fundraising dinner for Glide Memorial Church if her Intelligence Chair means she cannot run for governor of California, she replied, “It means nothing of the kind.”

Hmm.

Are you prepared to take one for Team America and work to elect DiFi governor, newt?

Teddy meaning me and not her uncle.

And unfortunately, that is exactly who Schumer and Baucus represent.

Dianne will appoint Gavin Newsom to the seat when she’s elected Governor.

Politically Coyote-Ugly.

Let me think of which party hack the CA Dems will put up against the Goopers…

I’ll get back to you on that one.

Wha?! That. Makes. No. Sense.

DiFi 4 Guv!!!111

I would like that. He certainly isn’t lacking in guts on some of the issues we care about.

There’s another Teddy?

Teddy indeed meaning you and not her uncle.

Color me… what the the new phrase? Oh yeah, ’surprised!’

Teddy is right. She can do much less harm. But the bitter taste of supporting her?
It’s a tough call.

I have not been impressed with the PR campaign Princess Caroline has run so far. I would expect better from Bloomberg, Schumer & Lieberman’s fixer and, frankly, imagine she must be much worse than what we’ve actually seen. I think she feels she’s entitled; it’s probably a full-time job to prep her to appear otherwise.

And it’s not really working.

I’m for Buffalo’s Byron Brown, on the basis of alliteration alone.

wtf, teddy. wtff?
governor?

shit…

Maybe we could convince Max to run for governor of Montana??? Schweitzer will be termed out…
Nah. Never work. Montana is not like California and Max has too much power in Washington. 8-(

men born without spinal columns

Joan Walsh is asking a good question at Salon – is Caroline Kennedy pro-choice????

great question.

central prerequisite for a leadership position in the Senate Democrats.

still catlick.

I put up some video a while back of Arlen giving AbuG and Mukasey a real case of the red-ass. He just obliterated them both in successive Judiciary hearings.

Yes, he gave Chimpy what he wanted. But he also exposed their fuckery more illustriously than any Democrat would dare, possibly excluding Whitehouse. It was geek-porn for the C-Span crowd.

You know, except for the water rights deal (which is kind of like saying “except for that, how did you like the play, Mrs Lincoln”) DiFi might not be a bad governor. I expect she knows how to talk to Rs in language Arnold hasn’t mastered; she would sign the marriage bill; she would work to fix what’s structurally wrong with California as her legacy.

Of course, she’s a corporatist, but any governor we elect will be, frankly. Hilda Solis was our best shot at a progressive governor; isn’t it interesting that she’s been appointed to the Obama Cabinet at a time when she could have provided a real challenge to DiFi?

It’s time we had a female Governor, embarrassingly past time, actually. And shed carries an authority in the state that would give her the clout to get things done.

(Sorry, Julia — just like a Californian to try to highjack a perfectly decent New York politics thread!)

I’m all in favor of getting senators to run for governor. It gets them out of the senate, where they have lots of power but no job, into a place where they have a real job to do but few tools to do it. I wonder whether Corzine is having buyer’s remorse.

Well, given what Rangel said, I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t to make us all feel relieved if they give us Suozzi after all. After all, his dad is Paterson’s dad’s partner (and their former managing partner works for the Governor now)

Does Caroline have any policy positions at all?

Where are my manners. Good evening Julia! I always like reading about NYS politics. Though I live here, I am a neophyte in that arcane world.

You like that?

If DiFi wasn’t gonna go, I like Jackie Speier for that job. But one House term does not a Governor make. She is hugely qualified and pretty Progressive for someone who replaced Lantos.

Max might actually be fairly effective as governor here. I just don’t see him giving up the power he has in Washington. It is one thing to do that if you are just a little fish in a big pond, but he is a big fish in the big pond. Unfortunately, he is unbeatable here. No Dem will seriously challenge him and even the Rethugs only put up token resistance.

lol, aw comeon, take one for the team :D

Given that Schumer has more money than god, no one can beat him either.

I’m fascinated by your state. It’s as byzantine as mine is.

Be ironic, though, wouldn’t it, what with all the buzz about Kennedys and who supported who during the primaries, if an Obama cabinet pick was clearing the decks for a Democrat to defeat Mr. Shriver?

whaddya mean? Ronnie Raygun didn’t have ANY experience before he got elected guv of the 5th largest world economy. Almost anyone who has done anything else is more qualified than him…

except for w and palin.

ouch

Ice storm photos from NH.

Mother nature at her finest.

-G

Oh, I suspect not. But the gossipy details of our our politics are fun, although maybe not enough to justify the time I spend on them.

And hey.

Despite her new blonde streaks, DiFi’s not young — she’ll be 77 on Election Day 2010. So, the LtGov’s seat might be all the more important in that election. Speier ran for it once before; I bet there will be jockeying for it again if DiFi wins, as people might see her as a one-term Gov (altho I bet she won’t)

I very much agree with you. Potentially a decent governor, even if she is a halfhearted Dem and a lousy senator.

Well, that’s because he’s really an R in D’s clothing. The R’s only put up token resistance because they know that. The Dems are too afraid of losing the D on the back of his chair when it comes to counting the caucus. If there was a Blue Dog group in the Senate he would be the charter member of it.

That’s gorgeous. I hope you didn’t lose a lot of trees, though. Are you getting snow?

I’m saying that once she took the House seat, she seems to have thrown off her CA aspirations.

I think she’d be great.

Which is why I have been saying for ten years that he needs to spend more time with his family.

well.. we could always get her in there earlier by recalling arnie ;-P

I sand ‘who had done anything else’. Palin hasn’t really done anything. Except pop out babies and contribute to the corruption in her state. W – let’s see, ran how many corporations into the ground? He had done nothing either before he was elected guv of Texas except drink and snort coke.

Ahhh, I get your point. LOL!

sweet dreams pups! i’m out.

God, there were tens of thousands of trees destroyed. I saw an old family friends house with a hundred foot pine that missed it by about 20 feet. Didn’t miss the truck and the car in the driveway…they were about cleaved in half.

Down to about 26,000 without power, including 2 next door neighbors and one brother. Day 9 for them.

We got about 7 inches of powdery snow. A cakewalk.

-G

Night!

Does Caroline have any policy positions at all?

I think she is for motherhood.

Don’t you think this state is kind of split personality? We have a Rethug in Congress, a real Dem and a fake one in the Senate, a Dem gov, one house Dem and one Rethug. What’s up?

What do you think Jon Tester’s chances of being re-elected are? The only reason he won is because his lovely opponent was dissing those fire-fighters. And a few other foot-and-mouth-disease opportunities.

I suspect that she is in favor of apple pie as well.

just got here, sorry to be late to the tea party,
but Teddy said @2 what my initial thought was/is.

after MUCKasssy, schumer can take the boat out with Fredo, as far as I’m concerned.

what i want to know is this: other than Tejas (with which we are all by now OVERLY FAMILIAR) and Chitown, which we’re getting in the face experience with, and NY which is always and has always been front and center POLITICS, who else do we need to watch out for.

I ask cause I KNEW Tejas was gonna be ROUGH, i knew bout chitown and NY, but here are 47 other states. do we have 47 other “situations” we need to be on top of? I also “know” CO cause I’m there, and pretty much about NM cause I’m there too, and we all (unfortunately) got it on AK. So what other state (not counting the Plantation Caucus) do we need to be ready to “duck the shoe” and pay attention to?
or is the simple answer, “all 50″?
sheeeeesh
for all you great informed and awesome “always been there” folk:

THIS COULD TAKE A LIFE TIME!!!!

This was a very common scene. Lots of old trees were hammered hard. As were the youngins too.

Saw tons of huge pines that fell right over, roots and all.

-G

We got about 6″ mid-Hudson, and nothing in the ice storm right near me, though some areas not too far away were more affected.

Beautiful but deadly. My cousin sent me a video a few years ago when they had one like that and you could hear the snapping of limbs coming off trees. They were without power for 2 weeks.

She wrote a book about the Fourth Amendment?

It rips my heart out to see big trees taken out like that. I love trees (maybe more than people, or at least some people).

Night, tw3k

Does Caroline have any policy positions at all?

I think she is for motherhood.

She co-wrote a few nicely-reasoned books on civil liberties and constitutional rights.

Honestly, I’d be tickled if Obama chose her to the the head of the NEA. I just don’t see that much in her past that qualifies her to navigate the Senate.

Actually think Tester has a great chance of getting re-elected. He polls third behind Schweitzer and Baucus which is really good for such a newcomer.

As to the “split personality”, it is a bit weird. I think part of it is that so many Montanans hate and fear the government and they really want a divided government so that it is dysfunctional. That situation is exacerbated by term limits which have driven out most of the better and more experienced politicians in the state. On the Rethug side, they are down to the really shallow end of the gene pool and the knuckle dragging mouth breathers. This next session of the Leg should be a doozy.

Well the last one had me ROFLMAO. Rethugs are always yelling about cutting taxes and giving money back to the poor taxpayers. So Schweitzer did. And talk about scream and howl! I thought I would just die.

confused – I’ve spent most of the fall at work, so excuse my ignorance – are Schweitzer and Baucus running? How is third good?

Honestly, I’d be tickled if Obama chose her to the the head of the NEA.

An excellent choice.
Truly, why, at this time in her life would she embrace electoral politics? She can do thousands of rewarding things, most if not all for which she is qualified. Seems a waste of her energy, trying to cement a legacy, churning out commercials and fund-raising dinners.

Schweitzer was just re-elected for his final term. Baucus was re-elected this time as well.

Schweitzer is very popular. Baucus has a lock on his Senate seat for as long as he wants it.

Jon Tester is an organic farmer, not rich, who has a ‘funny’ haircut (they actually used that in a campaign ad against him when he ran) and he was one of the two really really close Senate races in 2006 (Webb was the other one). And for a red state – he’s a really progressive Dem. So it’s very good for him to be in third place. Here anyway.

OK. The local newspaper ran a survey on the popularity of various politicians in the state. The top 4 are (in order): Gov. Brian Schweitzer, US Sen. Max Baucus, US Sen. John Tester, and US Rep. Denny Rehberg. All three are currently unbeatable in their positions with approval ratings over 60%. Baucus and Schweitzer just easily won re-elction, so are not up again for a while. With his current popularity, Tester should trounce anybody the Rethugs throw at him, but he has four more years and things could change.

And if Tester is in third behind Baucus and Schweitzer then that means he is ahead of our Rethug Congresscritter Denny Rehburg. Wow.

My thought exactly.

It’s the power thing.

So, why is it exactly that we are a ‘red’ state?

ah. Thanks (and to lokywoky too). I miss the nuances outside of my own state sometimes.

What’s the population of Montana? Is it the state with the lowest per square mile population, or is that Alaska?

I’m really glad Bobby said no. They would just tear him apart on the campaign trail, and if your heart is not in politics, you shouldn’t do it. He is happy where he is and doing a lot of good work. Very smart to stay put.

Alaska is – but we are right behind them. We have about 830,000 people and we are the fourth largest in area, behind Alaska, Texas, and California.

From the bottom, population density
Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, etc

We are a “historically red state” – at least for the last 12 years or so when the Rethugs dominated state politics. That is clearly changing, though more people still identify as Republican than Democrat. Of course just about everybody in Montana claims to be an independent, even though there are really only about 12 authentic independents in the entire state. Everybody else clearly aligns with one of the political parties and just refuses to admit it.

Agreed.
And as someone said here, I believe it was yesterday, Bobby’s kids are so much cooler than Jack’s.

Montana has about 960,000 people and has the third lowest population density in the nation (behind Alaska and Wyoming). Makes any and all distance and density sensitive services (like roads and education) extremely expensive.

I noticed that but it sure didn’t look that way in the election results. The State Dem party doesn’t seem to be very functional either. Did you get a load of that idiot that won the primary? Refused to campaign. Wouldn’t raise any money. Didn’t want to be interviewed. Expected to sit at home and just magically he was going to beat Denny. What a joke.

According to OpenLeft:

[Kennedy] didn’t support a Democrat in 2005. Fernando Ferrer, the Democratic candidate and first Latino ever nominated for citywide office, says she didn’t support him. And one source recalls seeing her at a Women for Bloomberg event, though Stu Loeser, the mayor’s press secretary, says she was not a member of the group.

True. Bobby’s kids have had some problems, including Bobby Jr. But they have all seemed to find their footing and are doing well, both for themselves and their families and for the country as well. And most of them are doing it fairly quietly, but very competently.

…Stu Loeser, the mayor’s press secretary, says she was not a member of the group.

Not even a clever dodge.

Dems are in almost as bad shape as the Rethugs with term limits. Also, they were out in the cold so long that they don’t really have the party structure and the stable of candidates. Most sane Dems did not want to challenge Rehberg when they were doomed to lose. I have some hope that the organizing efforts for the Obama campaign and the 50 state project, as well as independent operations like Forward Montana can help rebuild the state infrastructure.

Ya know, there is a third party in this country, the Rich Party. Bloomberg epitomizes it, but there are many members, all of them “elected” officials. No voters belong to this party.

And really, if Caroline had done virtually anything but except a Senate seat in NY, we would be talking about what a fantastic appointment to ~insert Obama sub-cabinet slot here~ she is.

I have a niece who is retired from teaching English at NYC public schools. Caroline’s goodwill ambassador post was strictly a fundraising one. My niece never saw any sign that Caroline was the slightest bit interested in education policy. Suspect she’d be the same kind of senator. Good at fundraising and not particularly interested in the substance.

“sub-cabinet slot”

A “first lady” type slot, like her mother?

jeez
Some cause she could lend her very good name to without having to politic. There are thousands of them, where her part-time participation would be useful to her, her President, and the Nation.

From what has been said here (and I don’t pay much attention to her otherwise), I would say she probably would make a good upper level appointee in justice.

More from OpenLeft, villagernyc:

Picking Caroline Kennedy to succeed Hillary Clinton as Senator from New York might actually send a contradictory message to Americans, the world, but perhaps more importantly, to the children of New York state. It could, inadvertently impact the spirit of the message that the election of Barack Obama reaffirmed, that hopeful seed our parents plant when they tell us while we’re still young and naive, that anyone, regardless of race, income and yes, name, can be elected to high office in the United States.

Choosing Caroline Kennedy as the Senator from New York, based on nothing more than her good deeds that are boosted by familial association, dilutes that message, and at least on the surface, seems to say that like Royalty, position is indeed an attribute, even a card of entitlement in American politics.

Is she a lawyer?

And why, just out of curiosity, are we trying to figure out what Caroline should do with the rest of her life. Rhetorical Q. If she were you or me, no one would spend a nanosecond caring what happened to us for the rest of our lives, how we “contributed” or even if we did.

Yeah, and that gets back to my comment about Bobby Jr. He has always said that he wasn’t interested in politics. And he stayed out.

Being a politician is (I think) a kind of calling – it’s in your blood. It has to be. Anyone who can put up with all the crap of campaigning for office, the constant fund-raising, media-bashing and questioning, damned if you do or don’t and all the rest of it really has to WANT this.

Someone just starting out this late? I question it. All of us wondered about Reagan when he ran for governor. He won because of his personality on the campaign trail. (His personality in person was far less than stellar – my step-daughter worked in his first administration so we heard all about it!)

But most politicians do start right out of college – doing things political, doing stuff to enhance their ‘political’ resumes, etc. So I do think it is reasonable to question Caroline’s commitment to this. Yeah, it’s easy to get appointed to something and not have to run, but in this case – whoever gets it will have to run again every two years – just like a Rep!

Harvard, Columbia Law.

She is a constitutional lawyer with a degree from Columbia and apparently some expertise in the 4th amendment. Rather useful expertise to have at this point in time.

Yes, she specialized in constitutional law.

And admitted to the Bar in both New York and DC.

Welcome to the Kingdom of Suozzi-land?

Yep. Bobby Jr. is all public service without the cesspool.

Well, see, that’s why I think something appointed in the arts or the humanities would be perfect. We always get so much noise on those, whether it’s if the arts and humanities should be funded at all, or if they should only be funded on a strictly bowdlerized basis to only support arts nobody disapproves of.

It’d be a lot harder for the Senate to argue with a Chairman Kennedy, who after all has been on the board of the Kennedy Center and any number of committees named after her family.

I don’t really get why she’s trying for this. I suspect it’s because her uncle wants her to, and he’s the only patriarch she’s got left.

Think I will turn in. Take care all.

Reagan was in “politics” a lot earlier than his run for gov. He was a union pol, iirc.

Heh. Another path not followed. Guess that tells you something, again.

You guys really got hammered up there.
That looks so much like Ohio did a few years ago after a lotta rain and then a tornado.

Right. Seemingly too smart to be captured into the family legacy business, she is right for nearly everything but that. And I can’t shake the feeling that she has little clue what she is walking into, but someone in her position has to know better.

You are correct. I had forgotten that in the dim recesses of my tired little mind.

I wonder…Ted’s legacy. Maybe she thinks that by being there she can help him with his ‘farewell’ project of universal health care. Ted is doing well considering what he has undergone in the past few months, but he is impaired. How much remains to be seen, and I have no idea his prognosis. My late husband died from the same kind of tumor – although in a different location in the brain. So it is not good and his age is against him.

Maybe she isn’t planning on running in 2010 – that health care thing will either be done by then or it won’t be going anywhere no matter who is backing it by then.

It just may be a Kennedy legacy project – only not hers.

Perhaps. But to someone who craves privacy, as she seems to have done all her adult life, being a defense lawyer or prosecutor wouldn’t fit very well. Family star power like that, in a courtroom?

She may well have tremendous legal acumen that we would never know about, lending it to more worthy pursuits. Until now.

The point being that Caroline’s appointment to senator would not represent anything that she has done previously, but merely an appointment of privilege.

As I said on an earlier thread, if she ran for election (and I have no doubt that she could win though her lack of interaction with the press on her upstate fly-by casts doubt on her political skills) we’d be stuck. But appointment, yuck.

If she craves privacy, WTF is she doing asking to be appointed senator? As I said, her past life is revealing and we should (more important, Gov. Paterson should) pay attention.

If she is on the two-year plan, I could almost see it. But it’s a waste of that seat beyond that, and I don’t think the Goopers will cut the Dems any slack on health care legislation just because Caroline is one of 59 Dems there.

Oh, and newtonusr, I suspect Caroline would be very sensitive to ridicule. All her 2010 opponent would need to do was dub her “Princess Caroline.”

Unfortunately, we are ’stuck’ with the appointment process for a whole bunch of Senate seats since that is the method of replacement when someone resigns. So far there is Obama, Biden, Clinton, Salazar, who else I can’t remember. If Obama keeps raiding the Senate there will be more appointed people there than elected ones. Oh, he’s running out of cabinet posts. *g*

Exactly. Precisely. Why this, and why now?

And I agree with part of your 128 – sensitive to criticism, but personally – but anyone who tried to come at her with ridicule would get clobbered.

So, the U.S. senate is the most useless political body on the face of the earth, filled with absolutely power hungry, otherwise bereft of any redeeming features, laughingly-referred-to as human beings. What does that say about Obama’s cabinet?

I wasn’t thinking of her ‘influence’ on the GOPers. I was thinking more in terms of her being a quiet ‘personal assistant’ to Teddy – which he would totally resent if she was just there hovering. But if she is a sitting Senator and asked Reid for the committee that is in charge of the health care thing I have no doubt that he would give it to her. That way she could be there and ‘help’ without Teddy being all in a fluff about it. And if she said she was speaking for him there would be no questions.

And yes, it would be a waste of a seat after that – but I am beginning to think that is what is going on. She is very smart – and a motive such as this – family loyalty – kind of trumps everything else. And she will never say a word about it if it is true because then the whole point would become moot.

I don’t know that she would win. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend managed to lose an overwhelmingly Democratic state to a man who was an enforcer for Newt Gingrich because she wasn’t willing to engage, even when her opponent was flinging filth at her.

Happily, he’s gone now, but she didn’t beat him.

Any person who runs for POTUS fits that description as well – they kind of have to be that way to want that particular job. So…you were saying?

Sounds like she had Kerry’s people running her.

I didn’t know about, or I don’t remember Kathleen getting beat.

Wow Three Diggs in Almost two hours! This must be a record!!! /s

And yet — when our nation wrestled mightily with BushCheneyCo’s transgressions of the Fourth Amendment, about which Caroline Kennedy has written, where was she? Where are her public statements on warrantless wiretapping? Where are her condemnations of Alberto Gonzales for not knowing that the Fourth Amendment mentions warrants? Where is her contribution to the public dialogue on FISA and its gutting by David Addington?

A public-minded person with expertise in the Fourth Amendment has had extraordinary opportunities to speak up during the past eight years. Has Caroline Kennedy?

You and my niece agree, perhaps for somewhat different, but related reasons. I’m just going by the polls. From what I hear, the bum’s rush pressure on Paterson to appoint her is that she is so “electable.” If it is demonstrable that is innacurate, perhaps we could get Paterson to reconsider. (Or the appoint the “he” to which an earlier link alluded).

Shit, I’d love there to be more women in all high levels. But not ones who are not committed. Disadvantaged groups need to find reps who are better, and therefore will stand the tests they will be put to, rather than annointed ones who might prove to have feet of clay. The Rs are masters of that. Guess the Ds can’t help but copy.

Contritely Dugg.

But Teddy how many other Constitutional Laywers were/are complacent and said nothing??

The Illinois legislature is considering a bill to change their state’s procedures right now, for obvious reasons. Given Paterson’s accidental governorship, could be really object to a similar bill to have a quick special election to fill the term until 2012? I think, at this point, he might almost welcome such!

Obama is the first prez in recent times to be so obvious about appointing ego-enhanced senators to even more exhalted positions. Those in the know would realize that most cabinets have been crafted that way, but the players have been more obscure than just picking blowhard senators.

There are only two sitting Senators in Obama’s Cabinet, I think — Salazar and Clinton. The other vacancies are due to Obama and Biden.

No talk of that yet.

es has late late nite upstairs

4% of the senate going to the executive branch seems like a lot to me.

at the risk of committing blasphemy, I’m not sure how different this is from the Palin choice. Yes, Kennedy’s better educated and smarter than Palin is. I’m still not sure what advantage she has over the candidates who have been working in politics for decades before she got involved.

Schumer gave us Mukasey.

I don’t know if he was warned not to, but he was gently
advised to pick someone else. I guess he just didn’t realize
Mukasey was tight with the Bushies or that he was weak and
would slide over to the dark side once in office.

I remember a hearing where Schumer was very angry about things
Mukasey had done (or not done) and I think it was pretty much
sincere anger.

In any event here we are and the way forward demands less
emotional connections to past disasters and more hard work.

It looks like Kennedy is seriously in search of a senate seat.
If she can make it there yada yada yada.

heh

And shed carries an authority in the state that would give her the clout to get things done.

Given their political situation I think Arnold will have some difficulty. Once people get to know you and see your work the lustre wears off.

But, DiFi isn’t so charismatic. So, I think the race is neither a gimme or impossible. It would be a very interesting fight I think.

Arnold is term-limited; his next race (in 2010) may be against Boxer for the Senate, but it’s unlikely he could get through a GOP primary to face her.

From my lowly position I can easily understand someone desiring political power and realizing they have no chance to get it. But an appointment…that would be a shortcut, at least until the next election. By then the public would have some sense of whether that person is an embarrassment or adequate or stellar. But then campaigning would absolutely be necessary and some people are better at it than others. I don’t know about the fundraising so much.