If Charlie Crist wants to run as a Dem now, fine, but he needs to do THIS first...

[Ken Burch]

...he needs to APOLOGIZE to Kendrick Meek for ratfucking him in 2010. Otherwise, any Dem nomination Crist would seek now would be a reward for him destroying the chances of an ACTUAL Dem two years ago.

[beyurslf]

1. He needs to say "I no longer believe the things I used to believe"

not "The republican party has moved away from my views but I still tthink the same things I used to"

Bullshit. If he still has the same views, he is NOT a dem.

[Ken Burch]

2. OK..that, too.

And he should also feel obligated, at a bare minimum, to pledge to reverse Rick Scott's refusal to create the insurance exchange in Florida if he does seek the governorship.

Short of those things, it couldn't be worth electing the guy at all.

[davidn3600]

3. That's the million dollar question

Did Crist leave the GOP because he's really a liberal? Or did he leave because he can no longer win a political office as a Republican?

Just because he has a "D" after his name is meaningless if he goes to Tallahassee and acts like a Republican 90% of the time.

[OhZone]

4. People. This is the Democratic Party.

Purity tests are for the insane GOP twits. Not us. A moderate former Republican is better than a current far right Republican any day!

Go Crist!

[Ken Burch]

5. Not a "moderate" former Republican who ratfucked a progressive African-American Democrat

by running as an independent in what he always knew was an unwinnable campaign. We don't owe it to anybody to forgive that without even an expression of remorse on Crist's part. If Crist is going to be IN this party, he can't act like he's above it at the same time.

[OneAngryDemocrat]

10. Your Opinion

And it is NOT universally shared.

[cprise]

16. There's a big difference between having a minimum set of standards and enforcing "purity". n/t

[beyurslf]

21. Exactly. This is the DEM party. Not the "I used to be a republican but they got so crazy

they don't like me anymore so now I want to be a Dem but i still believe all of the terrible things I ran on when I was a republican" party.

[OhZone]

22. Still better than the worse of the evils. bt

[HooptieWagon]

6. Kendrick Meek wasn't going to win.

He was a lousy candidate, who ran a lackluster campaign. He wasn't going to beat either Rubio or Crist in a two-way race, and Crist running as an Ind didn't prevent him from winning a race he wasn't going to win anyway.

[Ken Burch]

7. Crist wasn't going to win, as far as that goes.

The fact that he trailed in every poll proved that. There was no justification for Crist's candidacy and I seriously doubt he'd have launched it if the Dem candidate had been white and yet "lackluster". Kendrick Meek did nothing to deserve being forced into a third-place finish and treated throughout as if he somehow owed it to the party to withdraw and endorse the barely-not-conservative Crist. No other Dem nominee in the whole country was ever treated like Meek was in that campaign.

Crist simply doesn't have anything special to offer.

[HooptieWagon]

8. Meek had ethics problems,

and did little campaigning outside SE Florida. In what scenerio did he deserve to win? Crist did well against Rubio, running as an Independant with limited resources against Rubio with huge GOP funding and party apparatus riding the crest of teabaggery.
Crist is not my favorite guy, he's a populist who blows with the wind. But, he wasn't unreasonable as Governor, which is a HUGE improvement over Rick Scott. The imperitive is to get Republican scum out of office, then we can tackle party purity.

[Ken Burch]

9. By abandoning Meek, the Florida Dems who backed Crist sent the message to ALL black Floridians

that they should never bother running for anything above the state legislature(that is, any position that isn't totally meaningless and powerless)-that they should "know their place". If we'd nominated anybody OTHER than Obama this year, every black voter in Florida would have stayed away from the polls...and none of the rest of the party would have had any right to complain if they had.

I doubt you'll ever see a black candidate for any statewide office in Florida again in our lifetimes...they'll just give up trying(at least within our party-they'd be perfectly justified in forming their own after the way Meek was treated), like they all would have ceased going to the polls for the national Dems forever if we'd nominated HRC in 2008(since she could only have won by cheating Obama of the nomination through trickery and had nothing to offer nonwhite voters at all). Betraying black candidates after the primary is just barely different than openly abetting segregation(make no mistake about it...the implicit basis of the Crist campaign was "ONLY a white guy can beat Rubio"-which apparently meant some OTHER white guy in the end, since Crist failed to come anywhere close to winning).

Crist had nothing to offer that could possibly have been worth sending that rejectionist message to 20% of the Florida electorate. And he will never have any right to ask any black voters anywhere to support him-at least not unless he admits he was wrong to run as an independent in 2010.

To embrace Crist without his apology to Kendrick Meek is to tell black voters to go to hell forever in Florida...to tell them they don't matter to the party there at all and never will.

As to why Meek "deserved to win&quot or, at least, deserved the unqualified support of his OWN party)...he was THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE. Why, in this one situation and this one situation alone, did that not matter? And if so many Dems thought Crist was so freaking wonderful, why didn't they just talk him into standing in OUR primary? Do you not see how insulting it was to a huge section of the Florida Democratic coalition to say "it doesn't MATTER that we've got our own candidate...this is DIFFERENT"?

We both know there was NO situation in which that would have happened in the Dem Senate nominee had been white.

[rppper]

11. Just my .02 here, but....

Meeks ran a bad campaign....someone else stated this above...no one knew him outside south Florida...Christ didn't even have Meek's resources and still had better numbers statewide....

[Ken Burch]

13. (deleted post title-realized I shouldn't have gone there)

Last edited Sun Dec 9, 2012, 11:43 AM - Edit history (1)

Once the White Centrist got in, Meek had no chance of getting enough resources to campaign throughout the state. He was basically doomed by that from the start. Now his career is over and Rubio won anyway...and after Meek was treated, would YOU want the job of trying to recruit black candidates for the Florida Dems? They've all now been given the message...above the races that don't matter(i.e., the state legislature and a throwaway Congressional seat or two)they shouldn't even bother. They now know that if any of them DO win a statewide primary, the, er "mainstream" wing of the party will abandon them-which means that no black Dem from Florida will ever become a national figure, since you can't do that if all you're allowed to have a chance to do is be in the state legislature(i.e., the chamber of nothingness).

[rppper]

17. Do these names ring a bell?

Alcee Hastings, Corrine Brown, Frederica Wilson.....they didn't seem a lot of problems getting elected....

Rubio had been out polling Meeks from the get go....don't lay the blame on Crist or democrats that saw that Meeks had no chance. Crist was always a moderate, middle of the road politician, r or d....and frankly, he wasn't a bad governor.

I'm not sure what you're implying with that snarky opening line either....if its any of your business I'm an agnostic, but I pray...I've been on this site since 2001 and you're the first person to ever question me about it.....blame auto spell on an iPhone before you flap your gums and try to be some wise ass...it wasn't Needed to make whatever point you were trying to make....

[Ken Burch]

18. I wasn't meaning the "Christ" thing as a personal attack..sorry.

The thought was that it might have reflected your feelings towards Crist...it was mainly intended as a joke, and if I'd known you well enough to know you are sensitive about matters pertaining to spirituality, I never would have gone there. My bad. Sorry. OK?

And as to the names you mentioned...that's two Congressional seats and a powerless, irrelevant state senator. Which, thanks to Meek's treatment, every black Dem in Florida will now take to represent as far as any of them are allowed to go...because what happened to Meek will be done unto any African-American Democrat in the Sunshine state who gets "above his station".

[HooptieWagon]

20. Hogwash.

Florida Dems voted overwhelmingly for Obama in '08 and '12.

You can keep repeating your tired meme until your blue in the face, that doesn't make it true. The facts are that Meek's situation was self-inflicted. He was virtually given his Congressional seat by his mother. His Congressional career was short and undistinguished. He had several ethics issues. He was little-known outside his congressional district, and did little campaigning to correct that. He raised little money, and spent even less. He stood no chance, he didn't earn Dems votes, and he shouldn't be guarranteed a vote just because of a D after his name when he's such a poor candidate running an even worse campaign. Hell, he was so bad DU even set aside the "support all Dems" policy in recognition he was a poor candidate with zero chance, and voting for Crist at least made it more difficult for Rubio to win.

[JI7]

12. no he doesn't

[Ken Burch]

15. Yes he does...what he did to Kendrick Meek was wrong

and it COULD have cost Obama Florida. Black voters there did come through, but we really had no right to ask them to bother after what went down in '10. No greater good was served by what Crist did...and the fact that he lost badly proved he never COULD have won anyway.

Crist SHOULD have just filed for the Dem primary. There was no excuse for him coming in later. None at all. He lost by almost twenty freaking points to Rubio.

[RudynJack]

14. No politician is ever going to apologize

for campaigning, no matter how much they should.

That said, I'm not sure Crist has much of a future in politics no matter what he does. He may try for the Senate at some point, but I don't see him winning. But I've been wrong a whole lotta times before, so anything's possible. Except an apology - that won't happen.