Apparently, Harold Ford, Jr., just formally announced that he is a candidate for the United States Senate seat for Tennessee that will be decided in 2006 when Frist leaves.
Now, a lot of people on Kos and on the left side of the blogosphere have expressed admiration for Ford. In my opinion, Harold Ford, Jr., is a slick, glib, opportunistic, self-serving, dishonest, self-hating and African American-betraying piece of DLC fecal extrement.
Now before you all jump on me for saying this, let me set forth the reasons for my position:
1. I am a big fan of the online progressive publication "The Black Commentator." They have written countless numbers of exposes upon exactly who and what Harold Ford is and what a weasel he is. Here is one I recommend, but you can find others as well:
http://www.blackcommentator.com/79/79_fr_ford.html
2. I lived in Memphis for one year. That time was long enough to become acquainted with the Ford family political machine that holds sway among the black community in Memphis. The Fords have only one agenda: Themselves. Indeed, the only reason Junior is where he is, is becaue his father, Harold Ford, Sr., a man who had held the Congressional seat in Memphis for years, purposely stepped out of the way to let his son run in his place. And based upon his father's name recognition, Junior was elected to Congress. (Ford, Sr., for anyone from Memphis, has a notorious reputation as the type of old "machine-politician" that Daley was in Chicago. I think that Senior knew that he could never go farther in politics than Congress, but that he groomed his son to go farther than he himself could ever go.) For the Fords, politics IS the family business.
They are an opportunistic bunch of people who play upon the justified racial animosities and distrust of the black community in Memphis toward whites to KEEP THEMSELVES IN POWER. They know that a lot of blacks will only vote for them because they themselves are black. Knowing this, they work the black community to their full advantage, and in doing so, they consistently sell out the interests of that community in terms of a progressive persective. "The Black Commentator" article sets forth just some of the examples of how Harold Ford, Jr. epitomizes this.
3. I now live in Nashville. It has been no secret that Ford was one of Kerry's earliest supporters in Tennessee. Knowing what Ford is about, I think he did this precisely so that he could hitch his wagon to what he perceived to be Kerry's rising star (How wrong he was. Dean almost embarrassed Kerry during the primaries because Kerry was such a spineless and uninspiring candidate. And even after Kerry cheated in Iowa and New Hampshire to steal the nomination from Dean and his supporters, Kerry once again showed what a piss-poor candidate he was by losing to one of the worst presidents in American history.)
In any event, Ford came to one of the first public fora sponsored by the Music Row Democrats and spoke. During that speech he tried to rationalize his vote for the Iraq War: "We were wrong. We thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, but we were wrong. We were misled."
(The DLC-ers weren't misled. They ALL knew better. They just voted for the war for a whole bunch of OTHER reasons.)
In any event, a few minutes later in that same speech Ford said, "I believe that we are safer with Saddam gone."
I wanted to ask the SOB how we could be safer with Saddam gone, when the evidence showed that a) He had no WMD and b) he had no Al Queda ties.
The piont is, he contradicted himself logically in his speech by mouthing nothing but conventional, DLC-talking point, platitudes that made no logical sense.
During that same MRD meeting last spring, Ford had the nerve to caution moderation in Democrats' criticism of Bush (the typical DLC approach.) He even went on to shame Democrats who were too angry with Bush, saying that anger wasn't going to get the Democratic Party anywhere.
Soon after Ford said this, someone in the audience got up during the audience participation Q & A session, and right to his face said, "I don't know about you, Congressman Ford, but I AM ANGRY. And I'm not going to apologize for it. After seeing what Bush has done over the last three years, how can anyone help but be angry?"
The 200 + people in attendance, at that point, gave that woman a rousing ovation, and Ford, momentarily was left looking like the fool he is.
Look, Ford probably will be the Dems' Senate candidate in 2006. But let's be clear: The man has no principles other than furthering his own ambitions. It's sad to me that in Tennessee, this is the best that the Democrats will be able to do in terms of fielding a Senate candidate in 2006.
Oh, let me just say one other thing: Ford is slick. He knows how to present himself. He is a smooth public speaker. And he IS smart in a very shrewd, and self-serving way. After all, he did graduate from the University of Michigan law school, one of the nation's top five law schools. Thus, to the gullible, unsophisticated, and uninformed, the surface impression he has learned to convey is very appealing.
But these qualities are precisely what make Ford so dangerous because they allow him to seduce the gullible and uninformed, while the whole time he uses them and betrays their interests for his own self serving purposes.
Once again, I submit this: Harold Ford is a piece of dung, and his slick, seductive outward appearance and impressions notwithstanding, he epitomizes all that is wrong with the Democratic Party today.