What is important is that on these key issues Fallon will vote the right way.

As for refusing to sign a loyalty pledge in 2002, I’m completely behind that. Being a good Democrat is more than just having a D behind your name and Fallon recognizes it.

Furthermore, we’re less than a month into this campaign and Boswell has completely bypassed any opportunity to be positive, so he can smear Fallon. If he doesn’t have a single positive thing to say about himself, why should we have anything positive to say about him?

I’ll ask you one question - what would Ed Fallon do for down-ballot Democrats in the 3rd District?

I think Fallon would be good for down-ticket dems. Harkin will be nearly unchallenged. Boswell is completely motivating. Fallon is a candidate that people can get excited to come out to vote for.

Well, I don’t think “turnout” is exactly the question. The Presidential contest will do the most for turnout. For example, will Fallon be able to go into a rural swing district and help raise dough for down ballot candidates.

Also, since Fallon refuses PAC money - will he refuse to cooperate with the coordinated campaign that is at least partially funded by labor and other interest groups? How is he going to fund a turnout operation? How can his campaign be coordinated with down ballot races if he won’t participate in the coordinated campaign?

“Geraldine” is probably old enough to remember this time, but in case not, let me remind you that Gore was the Clinton administration’s main point man for getting NAFTA passed. Most famously, he debated Ross Perot on that issue on CNN. Gore was associated with the “Rubinomics” economic policies that many progressives disagreed with. The Clinton administration’s embrace of welfare reform also hurt Gore by association.

Nader first ran for president in 1996 and already got about 1 percent of the vote because so many liberals were mad about the way Clinton was governing.

Let me make clear that I voted for Gore in 2000 and encouraged my friends to do so. I agree that Fallon made a mistake, as he has acknowledged many times.

But to cite that mistake as equivalent to Boswell’s many betrayals of Democratic values is absurd.

You may disagree with some of Leonard Boswell’s votes, I disagree with some of Leonard Boswell’s votes too. But Leonard Boswell never did anything to put George Bush in the White House and has worked to elect Democrats for county, state and federal offices in Iowa for decades.

I’m not sure how you define Democratic values but if helping put George Bush in the White House isn’t a betrayal of Democratic values, I’m not sure what is.

When can we say enough is enough about this Nader business? Fallon’s endorsement of Nader in no way helped Gore lose. In fact, Gore won the election; if anyone, blame Bush Co. and the media for giving the election to Bush. Or Nader, if you wish. But did Fallon’s endorsement of Nader in Iowa really have any effect on the candidate’s performance in Florida?

Though this of course touches one of the big contradictions behind Fallon. If Ed Fallon actively stumping the state for Nader made no difference in how Al Gore did in Iowa, then doesn’t that make Fallon an ineffectual, fringe candidate supporting non-entity? But if Fallon did make an impact in Al Gore’s performance in Iowa that justifies descriptions of him as a major Iowa progressive. However, it also directly implicates him in helping to make George Bush President and keeping the most important American environmentalist since Rachel Carson out of the White House. You can’t have it both ways.

You have to look at Fallon’s path from “fringe candidate supporting non-entity” to his current position in the Iowa Democratic Party. Nader probably said it well on Anderson Cooper 360 yesterday: “I’m a fighter for justice, Anderson. When there’s perennial injustice, you have got to keep going after it, whether inside the electoral arena, or getting progressive forces inside the Democratic Party to take over and replace the corporate Democrats.”

I blogged in detail about my take on the idea that Nader cost Gore the election here, if you’re interested (and hope you are, it’s interesting to read opposing progressive views on all this):
http://amesprogressive.org/2008/02/26/blogs/gavin/the-nader-haters-come-out-to-play/

http://www.equalitygiving.org/