A front-page puff piece on a Dem non-candidate who is not-campaigning for Pete Stark's House seat
Ugh. And this follows on the heels of go-to Merc columnist Scott Herhold's starry-eyed hagiography in which he was so besotted by Khanna's fundraising prowess he called another potential candidate, Sen. Ellen Corbett, "Nancy"!
http://www.mercurynews.com/politics-government/ci_19922331
Ro Khanna -- a little-known Silicon Valley lawyer and former Obama administration official -- has quickly and quietly reached rarefied heights in one of politics' most crucial qualifiers for success: campaign fundraising....
The 35-year-old Fremont Democrat raked in a remarkable $1.2 million in the last three months of 2011 for a run in the 15th Congressional District, almost four times the total raised by 20-time incumbent Rep. Pete Stark and two other potential rival Democrats. In fact, his fourth-quarter sum appears to have topped all but two other House candidates across the entire nation -- with House Speaker John Boehner being one of those.
Yet Khanna promises he won't challenge Stark, the 80-year-old Fremont Democrat who says he's running again, and will probably have to wait to spend all that money in 2014. This is the kind of patience Khanna has shown in gradually cultivating Democratic contacts and capital, dating way back to when he was an intern fetching Diet Cokes for then-Vice President Al Gore's chief of staff....
Replacing "a 1970s lion of Medicare" like Stark "with someone who's got a true 21st-century global understanding and profile is very attractive," Randlett said, and giving him money two years in advance is a long-term investment in someone who could be in the House for decades to come.
"a true 21st-century global understanding and profile" is dog-whistle for "Third Way corpo-Dem all the way". The generational warafre implied by "a 1970s lion of Medicare" is unbecoming as well.
