This will be a brief diary. The Huffington Post reports that groups like Move On and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee(PCCC) have started petitions and webpages to urge Deval Patrick to appoint Barney Frank as the interim Senator to replace John Kerry.
As a Massachusetts Democrat, and as a active voter, I approve of Frank being my Senator for five months. Frank served honorably in Congress, and he would be a strong voice for the voiceless in the coming months.
The Huffington Post article has some details on why Frank is a great pick:
On Wednesday, the PCCC launched a website, www.appointbarneyfrank.com, promoting its own petition. The organization is also mobilizing its 25,000 members in Massachusetts with an email announcing the petition.
Both groups offer Frank's staunch defense of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as the main reason for their support.
On a more personal note, since I watched the Last Word last night and saw Lawrence O'Donnell's Rewrite, I extend a mea culpa for not even considering O'Donnell as a potential choice for the position. O'Donnell himself pointed out that he worked under the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York and thus would certainly have the requesite Senate knowledge on Day 1 and he certainly has key experience as far as knowing the ins and out of the Senate Finance Committee. O'Donnell is of course originally from Boston, but now lives in Los Angeles(that is what he said last night) so I don't know if O'Donnell would be tripped up by the residency requirements.
It is sort of fun thinking of hypothetical posts for the MSNBC crew. Somehow I think that O'Donnell wouldn't give up his show for five months(although seeing Barney Frank fill his shoes would be fun to imagine) and so O'Donnell's bid for an appointment is likely moot.