Many are upset with what Deeds said about the public option during the debate with McDonnell. Some have gone so far as to advocate not voting for him. Others have chosen to use this occasion to criticize him on a host of issues. Here I note that some - not all - of those making the harshest remarks were not supporters of Deeds in the primary. One is someone who challenged me in May on my endorsement of Deeds, and has challenged me since on how I can continue to support him.
In this post, originally put at at Blue Commonwealth and also cross-posted at Daily Kos, I will explain why I still support him, and why I think the reaction on the public option is overblown.
I know some will strongly disagree. And others will say that it does not matter, because he can no longer win. I will attempt to address that as well.
The first part of this is a reworking of something I posted on a Virginia bloggers list as the debate about the debate was ongoing.
I knew up front, when I endorse Creigh in early May, that he is not always the most fluent speaker and sometimes mangles what he wants to
say. Nevertheless I supported him over Terry and Brian because I thought he would make the best governor. I have no reason to regret my choice or my reasoning.
Let me go through a couple of points. I do not believe thatin supporting Creigh how I am sacrificing my credibility, long term or short term. I will disagree with him on key issues, just like I disagreed with Jim Webb on some key issues, and just like I strongly disagree with Obama on education, which until recently was my most important issue (more about what is momentarily). That did not keep me from supporting them, I saw Obama mangle things - calling Bill Ayers some English professor when he damn well knew that Ayers is a distinguished professor of education who is an expert on urban
education, which is why he was on the same board as Obama.
There is much to criticize about the campaign. The one time I had a real concern I spoke directly with Creigh and I am more than satisfied
with the result. I know some of the people involved with running the campaign were not happy with what I did.
That said, the money the Democratic Governors Association, under the leadership of Nathan Daschle, spent attacking McDonnell back in May was
wasted, and would be far more useful now, when Creigh is getting clobbered on television.
Let's take the specific issue of the debate, of public option. That a public official misspeaks and has to correct is not in itself a disqualifier - it did not prevent Ronald Reagan from being elected and reelected, even though periodically, as his chief of staff Don Regan said, others had to come behind and pick up after the elephant. It did not keep either Bush from getting electing, nor the younger one from getting reelected. In each case they had during the campaign sufficient resources to get their message out.
Would I prefer that Creigh not periodically misspeak? Yep, but some people who speak smoothly are lying through their teeth - that should hardly be the standard we use.
I said that education is no longer my most important issue. HealthCARE is - and that includes nutrition. Since volunteering at Wise in
July my focus has changed.
At the urging of others, including my wife, I wasted the time and effort in entering the Post pundit contest - I do not expect to be
picked. I chose to focus on health care. And what I want is this
universal coverage NOW, at affordable costs.
How we pay for it is irrelevant. That is a mechanism to an end.
Were I the King of the World I would simply make Medicare available for all, and pay for it through general revenues, as probably the
quickest way to reach the goal. I think maintaining the profit motive at the expense of lives and health is immoral.
But in insisting on that I would gain nothing, and give opponents of reform all the ammunition they need to undercut the current opportunity. Then we would face disaster, in health and economically.
A public option is a way of achieving what I want. It may well be the best way. But I note that Germany has universal coverage that is
affordable with no public option (and as Rep. Grayson pointed out, no medical bankruptcies) - instead they have very strict oversight and regulation of private insurance providers. I could live with that if it gave the means to the goal of universal access to affordable health care.
Thus I am not absolutely committed to the public option.
Nor, might I note, is the President, as some of his key staffers made clear over the weekend. Thus when stated as he actually believes,
Creigh's position on this issue is much closer to that of the President, in a campaign where he has often been criticized for putting distance between himself and the President.
I suspect that some will strongly disagree with my position. It's a free nation.
I can respect passion and disagreement. I have far less tolerance for those who want to burn down the house - and these words are aimed at anyone whose reaction to the debate is to advocate not voting for Creigh Deeds and abandoning the Governor's office to Bob McDonnell. It is not yet a done deal that McDonnell will win, and clearly the White House and labor still have hopes, the former having committed the President to appear on Deeds' behalf in Norfolk (which is in Bobby Scott's 3rd Congressional district and which has the heaviest concentration of African-Americans) on Tuesday, and the latter which is doing extensive phonebanking already and has plans to ramp that up and do door knocking as well: Bob McDonnell is hostile to labor. And abandoning Deeds is also tantamount to abandoning down ballot races, such as the Attorney General's race, where Republican Ken Cuccinelli wants to turn the office into a bastion to advocate for social issues even as he says he does not believe in collective bargaining even in the private sector. It means not only giving up hope of winning the House of Delegates, but possibly of losing some seats already held.
Many are unhappy with the consultants around Deeds. Consultants are an unfortunate reality of political campaigns. Many are detrimental to the causes and candidates they purport to advance.
And yes, ultimately the candidate is responsible for his or her campaign.
But throwing up one's hands in despair, or announcing that all is lost, or turning one's disagreement and disappointment into personal
attacks and vendettas is neither going to advance the causes some hold so dear nor prevent the kinds of disaster that can loom as a result of
a campaign being undercut.
I purport to speak for no one except myself. I am not abandoning Creigh. And I have very little patience or tolerance for those who will make personal attacks such as some of what I have seen in the past couple of days. I do not care how prominent their voices may be, nor does it matter whether or not they live in the Old Dominion. I do, and I know how important this race is.
So do an increasing number of papers around the Commonwealth. Many know of the strong endorsement Deeds received from the Washington Post. Let me offer selections from two more.
First, from The News & Record of South Boston, which opined
Deeds is among the General Assembly’s most respected and likeable figures, a man of humble origins who claims the support of moderate Republicans and Democrats alike.
His ambitions for the next four years are rooted in reality — modest enough to be believable, and smart enough to be worth the money and energy required for implementation. Deeds would make room in the beleaguered state budget to double the size of the Governor’s Opportunity Fund, a seed pool of investment for new and expanding companies (Deeds wrote legislation creating the fund as a member of the General Assembly; his opponent, Mr. McDonnell has voted in the past to defund the program). Deeds would greatly expand college scholarships for Virginia students willing to give back two years in public service careers. On transportation, perhaps the state’s most vexing challenge, Deeds has shown an admirable willingness to face facts. He has vowed to seek a bipartisan solution to the traffic gridlock that is dragging down the wealthiest swaths of the state — Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads — which together do so much to foot the bill for education, law enforcement and many other services in the rest of the Commonwealth. Deeds has refused to rule out new taxes for transportation, although he has insisted that the legislature be a partner to progress rather than a stumbling block.
Deeds’ honesty and pragmatism stand in sharp contrast to his opponent, Mr. McDonnell, whose blizzard of so-called "innovative" ideas to manage state government fall within the spectrum of the unrealistic to the truly dangerous.
McDonnell would privatize the role of the public sector in ways that will prove difficult to undo once the inevitable disappointments set in; the state’s current fiasco with the privatization of IT services is a mere warmup to life under a McDonnell administration. On an issue of special concern in Southside Virginia — uranium mining — McDonnell barely conceals his ardor for corporate profits at the expense of public safety and welfare.
and which concluded their endorsement like this:
The vote on Nov. 3 is Virginia’s best chance — maybe its last chance — to distinguish between a pragmatic and intelligent future course of action and its mirror opposite: smoke-and-mirrors policies and ideological zealotry of the sort that McDonnell has trafficked in since entering politics. It’s not even a close call. In the governor’s race, the News & Record strongly endorses Creigh Deeds as Virginia’s best hope for a better, fairer and more prosperous future.
It is not even a close call - and this editorial was written AFTER the debate which contained the remarks that so upset some.
The other is from The Richmond Free Press, (apologize I cannot give a direct link for the editorial), the major African American paper in the Commonwealth. Allow me to quote from their powerful editorial. They note they did not endorse Deeds in the primary. They then write
In our endorsement editorial in the primary, we lauded Virginia for its "huge progressive step when it voted for Barack Obama and contributed to his historic win for the presidency." We also observed that the Obama victory "marked a phenomenal break with the past" and that "We must keep up this momentum of hope and change: Not only for Virginia, but for the future of the Nation."
We feel strongly that Sen. Deeds is convincingly committed to reinforcing this momentum. Conversely, we know that Bob McDonnell's ultimate ambition is to throw a monkey wrench into progressive movements.
Let me skip ahead to this:
Creigh Deeds is an authentic, decent man, with moderate sensibilities. With a self-effacing demeanor that often defies the hype found in much of today's politics, Sen. Deeds is a real, unpretentious, regular guy who takes responsibility for what he says and does. He reminds us of Harry Truman.
More important, Sen. Deeds' record shows that he has come to embrace many views and aspirations that are usually expressed in Virginia's growing urban communities. He is pro-education and pro-public safety. His opposition to the display of unquestionably racist Confederate flag on the state license plates reflects a man who values tolerance and respect for American principles. We also are impressed with his pledge to bring economic justice to Virginia. ("As Governor, I'll make it a personal commitment to aggressively recruit more minority-owned businesses for government contracts," he wrote in a letter to the Free Press. "We will exceed the Kaine administration's goals for state contract expenditures that go to these businesses.")
And what they have to say about Bob McDonnell highly critical:
Again, no surprise, Mr. McDonnell exudes intolerance, although he has done his best to smooth over and obscure his true identity. Reflecting his education at the radically conservative Regent University, Mr. McDonnell exploits every chance he gets to fight a culture war in the Commonwealth, pitting Old South, fundamentalist views against the new perspectives of a New Virginia desperately aspiring to move forward, not backward.
Even though he wrote his law school dissertation some 20 years ago as a 34-year old adult, the hard core, polarizing and outdated views expressed in that unscholarly dissertation continued to bubble up in his role in public life. Those views disapproved of and disparaged, among other people, working women. His line of thinking about women's rights is consistent of those of Pat Robertson and Virginia Supreme Court Justice Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr.,-- an outstanding, tightly riveted trio of conservative ideologues.
I believe what we should be doing now is help Creigh Deeds in getting out his message, and providing a contrast with his opponent. The more we are able to do that, the more winnable this race will become. To not try with every ounce of our strength is to surrender the field to someone truly frightening.
I do not want to abandon the progess we have made in Virginia under two Democratic governors. Our last Republican governor, Gilmore, almost bankrupted the state. The proposals made by McDonnell seem to point in a similar direction, and as an educator seem to bespeak a total lack of support for public education, given that he would attempt to fund transportation in part by removing money from the general fund currently directed towards education.
I have expressed what I feel about this race. I remain a strong supporter of Creigh Deeds. And I hope even if you disagree with him - perhaps strongly - on some issues, you recognize that he is vastly superior to his opponent. He is a fundamentally decent man, who listens to others, who will work with others on behalf of ALL of the residents (note - I did not narrow it to citizens) of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Peace.