Former title: NY-Sen: How to Lose a Senate Seat to the Republicans
I wrote yesterday about a very dismaying hit job currently taking form in New York. The incident involves a dishonest tactic in which a senatorial candidate, longtime Congressional Progressive Caucus member Carolyn Maloney, is being alluded to as racist in several local newspapers and at least one diary here by advocates of former Blue Dog Coalition member Kirsten Gillibrand, who is also competing for the senate seat.
I will post the incident giving rise to this charge in full below the fold.
The "controversy" involved Maloney's retelling of an activist's reaction to some questionable rhetoric and policies which Kirsten Gillibrand espoused previous to her appointment to the seat.
From a recent Maloney interview:
There is Carolyn Maloney, ripping into Kirsten Gillibrand broad and hard for voting against the two stimulus bills and for changing her positions on several core Democratic issues, sounding out her case on the fly as, "It’s the NRA, it’s immigration, it’s all these other things. In fact, I got a call from someone from Puerto Rico, said [Gillibrand] went to Puerto Rico and came out for English-only [education]. And he said, ‘It was like saying n—r to a Puerto Rican,’" she said, using the full racial slur. "I don’t know—I don’t know if that’s true or not. I just called. I’m just throwing that out. All of her—well, what does she stand for?"
This resulted in known and early Gillibrand endorser Al Sharpton alluding to racism on the part of...Carolyn Maloney. Yes, that's right, articulating harsh undocumented immigration policies which include advocating English as an Official Language as well as restricting services available to undocumented immigrants is somehow fine. But recalling an inartfully stated sloppy analogy when explaining someone's outrage about those policies, well that's just racist.
I admire Sharpton, but I'm not buying it. And I hope that unlike Paterson, he chooses to refrain from misspending his credibility in service of a cohort of conservative Dems who likely had little admiration for Sharpton previous to his ability to assist in the senatorial primary.
***********************************************************************
Perhaps Maloney should have self-edited when retelling the Puerto Rican activist's disgust with newly minted "progressive" Kirsten Gillibrand's recent usage of GOP wedge issue politics before Gillibrand began her current evolution into a candidate more attractive to NY Dem voters. Surely Maloney should have refrained from repeating this activist's sloppy analogy word for word. Absolutely.
But the current attack is beyond the pale given the context.
Tactics like this can result in a splintered party and a lost seat. Tactics like this inadvertantly assist the GOP. This hit job not only smears the polling frontrunner for the Democratic primary, but features a controversial figure, Sharpton (who courtesy of his longstanding endorsement of Gillibrand with a key consultant working directly on Gillibrand's campaign) engaging in an unattractive and (at least in my opinion) transparently political and cynical accusation.
Kirsten Gillibrand and her advocates should stick with attempting to explain that she has completely reversed her prior immigration stances and has backed away from her former antics. She can explain that while perhaps doesn't have the best record ideologically, she's arguably the most viable candidate in that she appeals to conservatives statewide. But please keep it clean. Stop with the Palin analogies. Stop with the attacks on progressive women and smearing. We're all still Dems.