Heid Heitkamp: With Democrats Like These Who Needs Republicans?

      One can see why she's a Democrat:

       "Democratic Senate candidate in North Dakota is distancing herself from President Barack Obama, saying that he has “failed the one test America had for him.”

      "Heidi Heitkamp, a former North Dakota attorney general seeking to replace the retiring Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), told the AP that Obama has “failed in the one test America had for him, which was to unite the country.”


      Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76706.html#ixzz1vnGgMURm

      "I think he needed to be more hands-on… I don’t think he’s done enough to think broadly and come up with solutions that would engage both sides in a reasonable dialogue,” she added.

       Right, there's nothing easier than to engage the Tea Party Right in "reasonable dialogue." Maybe she could write us a couple paragraphs of what passes for reasonable dialogue in Republican La La Land Circa 2012. I didn't even know they can spell the words much less engage in it.

      So should the DNC and the DSCC even bother supporting this seemingly self-hating Democrat? Let's listen to a little more of her:

      "Campaigning in the solid red state which went for John McCain over Obama in 2008, Heitkamp also distanced herself from the president on energy policy, especially his wavering over the issue of the Keystone XL pipeline."

      "So we’re going to wait until we have a better economy and have more costs?” she said, according to the wire service. “You look at it now, and it makes perfect sense.”

      "Heitkamp is facing off in the Senate race off against Rep. Rick Berg (R-N.D.), who was elected to Congress in 2010 with tea party backing."

      "The criticism comes amidst other signs of discontent among Democrats regarding the president, for example the case of rising Democratic star and New Jersey mayor Cory Booker criticizing the Obama campaign for its treatment of private equity."

       In reality the Cory Booker comment is a different order issue than Heitkamp. She comes from a very red state so it's not surprising that she has to run more against the President than against the Republicans. You see the other side of the coin in Massachusetts where there Scott Brown actually emphasizes his friendly relationship with the President. As much anything it's the difference between North Dakota and Massachusetts.

 

       The Cory Booker comment is of a different order and we'll look into that more in another post. For starters though the comments about Obama's treatment of private equity distorts things a little. All Obama has pointed out is there's nothing so privileging about Romney's past position at Bain Capital that gives him some unique vantage point to be "the economy's steward" as he tries to run. Whether or not private equity is mostly a good thing or not from a societal vantage point is another question. All Obama has actually pointed out is that there's nothing in Romney's time at Bain that suggests he has some sort of "deep understanding" of the economy. As Jared Bernstein Vice President Biden's former economic adviser has suggested, that's a fairly meaningless phrase in and of itself.