How DARE YOU invoke the name of the great Pat Moynihan in trying to sell your snake oil to New Yorkers. Writing in the ultra right wing snot rag New York Post you said:
In the spirit of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who once held this Senate seat, I hope we all will welcome a debate about who's best to work for New York.
Do you really think the people are going to see the Moynihan name and think YOU are the guy to fill his size 28 shoes? YOU of all people?
Here is Moynihan sir:
Brought up in a poor neighborhood, he shined shoes, attended various public, private, and parochial schools, and ultimately graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in Harlem. He and his brother spent most of their childhood summers at his grandfather's farm in Bluffton, Indiana. After high school, Moynihan worked as a longshoreman before entering City College of New York (CCNY), which at that time provided free higher education. After a year at CCNY, he joined the United States Navy, receiving V-12 officer training at Tufts University, where he graduated with a B.A. He was on active duty from 1944 to 1947, last serving as gunnery officer of the USS Quirinus. He received an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, also at Tufts. Moynihan then studied as a Fulbright fellow at the London School of Economics. Many years later, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Tufts.
You got that? SHOE SHINE BOY. HARLEM. LONGSHOREMAN. CITY COLLEGE. NAVAL OFFICER. TUFTS. The LSE. THAT, sir, is a TRUE NEW YORKER. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one of the great intellectuals of the United States Senate. But before that, he did this:
Moynihan was an Assistant Secretary of Labor for policy in the Kennedy Administration and in the early part of the Lyndon Johnson Administration. In that capacity, he did not have operational responsibilities, allowing him to devote all of his time to trying to formulate national policy for what would become the War on Poverty.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan devoted his entire life's work as a public servant to ending poverty in the black community, sometimes taking contrarian positions to orthodoxy. On many of those issues, he was proven quite correct over time, but nobody doubted his sincerity. Why? Because he GREW UP IN HARLEM. Because he spent years and years in close study and application of policy. Because he was a real like public intellectual in the true sense of the word. But that isn't all,
A liberal, he voted against the death penalty, the flag desecration amendment,[15] the balanced budget amendment, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, the Defense of Marriage Act, the Communications Decency Act, and the North American Free Trade Agreement. He was critical of proposals to replace the progressive income tax with a flat tax. Moynihan surprised many in 1991 when he voted against authorization of the Gulf War. Despite his earlier writings on the negative effects of the welfare state, he surprised many people again by voting against welfare reform in 1996. He was sharply critical of the bill and certain Democrats who crossed party lines to support it.
All issues in which you took the EXACT OPPOSITE POSITION.
So, if New Yorkers want to invoke the spirit of Moynihan, you're about as unlikely a conjurer as could be found.
Update:Meeks shoots him down:
"I think Kirsten Gillibrand is going to be the next senator from New York. She is now and she will continue to be."
Meeks is an important signal sender. His district is also very, very important when it comes to the Democratic base vote. Without Meeks, Ford has a much tougher row to hoe.
Gov. Paterson also weighed in:
"I would suggest he would look for another state to run a primary."
And so did Assemblyman Keith Wright of Harlem:
"You can't just come off the planet Krypton and say, 'I am running for Senate.'
"I know it's been done before, but those people had the last names of Kennedy and Clinton."
Ford is sending out feelers to Black leaders around the state, as I've been hearing from the grapevine. I've made my position to people I know very, very clear: Ford is unacceptable.