I’m sorry for yet another Gillibrand diary, but the search for the Hillary seat and Gillibrand selection have greatly interested me in recent weeks and I’ve been following them closely.
Like a lot of people, I’m still not sure what to make of her exactly. At first I was optimistic. She was, by all accounts, a smart, likable, effective and honest representative. Her record was never liberal, but she had a few fairly progressive stances mixed with some very conservative stances, making her hard to pin down. But like many, I’d written her centrist/moderate outlook and Blue Dog membership as justified pragmatism; the only way she could take and hold a fairly Republican district, thereby allowing her to support Democrats on issues where she did adhere to the party line. Further, the switch on gay rights seemed to represent the beginning of her predicted shift to left, adjusting to her new statewide constituency, hopefully culminating in a broadly liberal, Hillary Clinton-style outlook on the issues. She’ll never be a firebrand, but there’s only ever a handful of those on either side of the aisle, so I don’t automatically expect that of her. If this all happens, and it still could, her star can continue to rise and I will like her.
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