POLITICS & STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Note, this post is not about what's happened today in the state to our west (enough already with the MSM yammering the last few days!), and although racism is playing out in the current Democratic presidential, it's not about that either.

Earlier this week I received an invitation from Anthony Pollina to events taking place this week. Supposedly tomorrow he'll make if official that he's running for governor.

We Can Do Better is splashed across the invitation. I don't think we can with Mr Pollina.

Broadsides 10 March 2008

Please, can anyone out there other than the fawning Vermont media think anything other than “loser” when the name Anthony Pollina is mentioned? I can’t. And for good reason, too. He’s a loser. He loses elections (many of them). He loses in his issue efforts (many of them). And he even loses in court when – oddly – he challenged his rare victory with campaign finance reform. I guess it must have felt weird for him to actually win something so he went to court to fight it. Good for you, Tony. Keep that record clean.

We all know about Pollina’s electoral losing. He’s something like 0-for-5. But Pollina seems to get energized by losing the way most politicians are energized by winning. The average politician, for example, begins with a lower office, wins, aims higher, wins and so forth. Not Pollina. He aims high, starting with a run for Congress, loses, and then just keeps aiming high for jobs like governor (a couple of times) and keeps losing. What’s worse is that each time he loses – and loses big – Pollina acts like he won. “Wow, I’m up to over 20% of the vote! Wait’ll next time!”

Pollina and the Dems

Michael continues in the 3/10 post, writing about this new group of Democrats for Pollina (United because Jim Douglas has got to go!)

It’s a not-so-veiled attempt to “prove” that Pollina is getting gobs of support from mainstream Dems in his Prog bid for the governorship. The group is officially launching a “write-in” campaign for Pollina in the Democratic primary in September. Since Pollina will be on the Prog’s primary ballot, he can’t be on the Dems’.

After a bit of simple research, Michael has written in a post yesterday that a good number of those "Democrats" are actually Progressives in documented leadership positions in their towns.

A quick look at some of the names on the list certainly makes the whole thing look rather suspect. I noticed, for example, that Grace Gershuny is listed as a “Dem for Pollina.” But Gershuny is also listed as the Groton town chair for the Progressive Party at the party’s website. Oops.

Strange indeed. But, hell, in Burllington, we have Progs cavorting with Republicans.

We all know that life is complicated, but so is politics in Vermont!