Daily Loaf

The Florida Democratic Party hosted its annual state conference over the weekend at a Disney resort in Lake Buena Vista.  This reporter was there for some of the events, including a debate between Dan Gelber and Dave Aronberg, the aspiring candidates to be the Party’s nominee for Attorney General next year.  I’ll be writing a separate post on that later today.

Saturday, the conference was filled with speeches from some of the party’s leaders, including the woman that so many Dems have their hopes on for next year to be the next governor, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink.  In her address Saturday night, she lit into her possible GOP opponent next year, Bill McCollum, saying, “”A career politician like Bill McCollum only talks about jobs and growth, but a leader like me creates jobs and growth. McCollum pretends to have all the answers, a leader asks the right questions.  He puts on a performance. A leader demands performance. He measures results by the polls he takes, I measure results by the progress we make.”

Download the report here.

That’s quite possibly the strongest rhetoric employed so far by the CFO in her campaign against the current Attorney General, but if you can’t get the grass roots of your party faithful up and cheering at your state party’s convention, when can you?

I didn’t arrive at the Conference until around noon on Saturday, which meant I missed appearances by Senator Bill Nelson and Congressman Alan Grayson, who has, pardon the cliche, become a rock star with Florida Democrats after having said Republicans want sick people to “die quickly” two weeks ago.

On Saturday, he said the GOP should be called “The Selfish Party,” and the 2,000 or so delegates in the hall ate it up.

Saturday morning Senator Bill Nelson addressed the crowd, and there were many in the audience who got up when he spoke, calling out “health care now! “  In the Senate Finance Committee, of which he is a member, Nelson did vote on an amendment sponsored by New York Senator Charles Schumer, and on Saturday he told the delegates and others in attendance that “I have heard you loud and clear” on the issue.  Nelson’s Committee votes on their bill tomorrow.

As a Quinnipiac Poll released last month revealed, Florida Democrats are solidly behind a government-sponsored public health care option in any bill that ultimately comes out of the Congress this year, so it’s perhaps no surprise Nelson is getting with the program.

Yet the Democrats’ potential standard-bearer, gubernatorial candidate Sink, still has not expressed her opinion on the matter.

Before I discuss yesterday’s national public affairs programs, can I chide NBC’s Ann Curry today for her interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday?

Madame Secretary was interviewed by Curry, who asked her expected questions on Afghanistan, the Middle East, etc.  But then came “Do you still want to run for President?”  Mind you, this question was set up by Curry, who claimed that there have been rumblings that Clinton has been “marginalized” in the Obama White House.

Clinton called that assessment “absurd.”

She also said she does not want to run for President, but is actually looking forward to retirement.

Hillary’s purportedly lingering presidential ambition has become somewhat of a theme promulgated by media heavyweights, none bigger than Tina Brown, now with the Daily Beast website.  In fact, the folks at the site immediately put up that interview on their site today.

Brown is writing a book on Hillary (and Bill) called The Clinton Chronicles, due out next year.  I’m not the first person to speculate that Brown is using the power of her website to perpetuate this drama about the Secretary of State somehow being frustrated by a lack of power in the administration. (Didn’t Brown write earlier this year something about “It’s time to let Hillary take off her burqa?” Yes, she did).

The theory (which some hardcore Hillary supporters still believe) goes that a disgruntled Hillary will end up taking on Obama for the Democratic nomination in 2012.

When asked point blank if she was thinking of running for president (not against Obama, but just at some point in her lifetime after coming close to winning the Democratic nomination in 2008), Clinton responded, ” I’m looking forward to retirement at some point.”

One would think this would end the speculation, and we could get on to all of the issues that Clinton herself is working on internationally as the chief diplomat in this crazy world.  But nah, it’s more fun to think she’s still bitter at losing the nomination, when in fact her job gives her an incredible amount of power.

On to the Sunday programs.  Lots of discussion about the troop levels and strategies the administration is still engaged in regarding what to do in Afghanistan.

John McCain on CNN’s State of the Union insisted he didn’t want to rush President Obama regarding his decision on this very question. “But we do have the strategy that can be adjusted to Afghanistan,” he said, referring to the surge in Iraq, which did quell the sectarian violence in that nation two years ago.

McCain actually sounded more reasonable than he has in a while.  Unlike many of his GOP brethren, he refused to take a cheap shot at Obama being named the Nobel Peace Prize winner, saying “I’m sure the president has even more to live up to.  But as Americans, we’re proud.”

McCain was on his best behavior, perhaps a bit chagrined after reading NY Times columnist Frank Rich rip into  him for many of his comments about Afghanistan, and how off the mark he was when it came to Iraq.

A Time Magazine piece just published also mentions:

McCain has declined to join bipartisan talks on climate change, though he has written similar legislation in the past.

Maybe that explains why it’s not McCain, but his good friend in the Senate, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, who teamed up with John Kerry to write an op-ed in Sunday’s NY Times on how a cap and trade energy bill can still come out of the Senate in the next few months, before negotiators from throughout the world sit down this December for a new international agreement on global warming.  Kerry has worked with McCain and Joe Lieberman on similar legislation in the past.  Why doesn’t McCain believe in this anymore?

Over on Fox News Sunday, there was a spirited discussion about the economy and the effects of the $787 billion stimulus bill.

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm (who is related by marriage to Tampa City Councilwoman Mary Mulhern)  put up a spirited defense of the legislation, saying, “Clearly the stimulus has helped.”  But she added, “Clearly some states need more help. There aren’t jobs on the back side right now.  We need to be able to extend unemployment benefits.”

She was seconded on that call by respected economist Mark Zandi, who has been a strong nonpartisan supporter of the stimulus bill.  He said that whether one calls it a ’second stimulus’ or not, more money needs to go to the states to keep them going for some crucial social programs (such as extending unemployment benefits).  He also said the $8,000 home-buying tax credit for new homeowners should be extended.

Zandi got into it a bit with Las Vegas casino owner and entrepreneur Steve Wynn, who sounded like RNC chair Michael Steele in insisting that government has never created a job, ever.

Zandi said that the stimulus aim was to provide an end to the recession, which Ben Bernanke has told us has already happened.

Granholm also engaged Wynn, calling him ’simplistic’ in some of his comments.  She stood up for good government, saying, “People are grateful for Medicare and Medicaid.”

Over on CNN’s Reliable Sources show with host Howard Kurtz, Obama Communications Director Anita Dunn went off on Fox News, calling it an ‘arm’ of the Republican Party.

She said, “They are widely viewed as part of the Republican Party. Take their talking points, put them on the air. Take their research, put it on the air.  Fox News often operates as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.”

This is as explicit as the White House has ever been about their feelings re Rupert Murdoch’s network.  Dunn did say that there was still a chance that President Obama would appear on the network in the future.  The president’s team seemed to be showing their intentions about the network last month, when the president did his “full Ginsburg” with everybody but the folks on Fox, blitzing the other cable and broadcast channels on a Sunday to talk about his agenda.

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