In Washington's 8th, Democratic challenger and Red-to-Blue candidate Suzan DelBene is about eight points down to three term incumbent Dave Reichert. This district is in play. We should pay attention.
Recently, Congressman Reichert "clarified", to Robert Mak of King TV in Seattle, his up until now confusing opposition to Wall Street reform.
See the quote after the break.
Robert Mak: “There may be some shortcomings, but, uh, what did you oppose in terms of strict regulations on financial institutions or derivatives? I mean, what exactly about those proposals did you not like?”
Congressman Dave Reichert: “Well, I think that, uh, you know, overall, when you take a look at the financial reform, what, what, uh, the politics of the whole thing is, is, uh, I think is, uh, pretty obvious to people. So what you try to do is, uh, divide, uh, Democrats and Republicans and say, ‘Okay. This is a reform bill, uhm, to, uh, to address the fat cats on Wall Street,’ and, everyone agrees that needs to happen.
“Uhm, so, uh, when, when, and I do agree that, uh, you’ve gotta have financial reform, but what we haven’t done in this area is take a look at the current laws, rules and regulations that we have on the books. When Mr. Madoff was discovered, uh, years, years later, he wasn’t held accountable for all those years he was ripping off the American people, and he wasn’t held accountable. So one of the things we need to do is take a look at the laws that we have. Why wasn’t Mr. Madoff held accountable? I don’t think that’s been established yet, and let’s hold those people accountable.
“So what I, what I oppose in this around financial, uh, issue, uh, is, regulations, is that, uhm, I don’t want to see us to the way that we’ve gone with health care. What I want to see is - and by that I mean, health care, uhm, is now, is passed, it’s government-run system. And so when government steps in, there’s too much power in this bill. So we give a czar all this power. So Fannie and Freddie, and now we have a czar that’s in control here, a whole new government program and department that’s been established, more taxpayer dollars being spent, and, and for what?”
Thanks for the clarification, Dave.
This is what we are up against. Reichert, who in his own words "struggled" through high school, spent two years at some obscure bible college, followed by 20 years not catching the Green River Killer, managed to somehow leverage that failure into the King County Sheriff's post followed by a seat in Congress.
DelBene has a degree in biology from Reed College and an MBA from the University of Washington. Unlike Reichert, who has never drawn a private sector paycheck, DelBene has spent her career in private business building companies and hiring people. For this she is derided as inexperienced. She is also brilliant. Reichert? You be the judge.
Suzan's biggest problem is name recognition. Her advantage is that Reichert doesn't taker her challenge seriously. She could use some netroots love.
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