Baby, I’m back!
If Newt Gingrich, Chuck Norris, Bill Clinton and very possibly Eliot Spitzer have taught us anything this past year, it’s that there are second acts in American life. Michael Dukakis! Welcome back.
Massachusetts state leaders are mulling a temp to fill Edward M. Kennedy’s Senate seat pending a special election. But Massachusetts is a small state, and apparently most Bay State Dems not currently serving in the U.S. Senate would like to do so. Who to get? Notes Sue Davis (honk) in the WSJ:
The two names most frequently mentioned: Vicki Kennedy, who is well-liked, politically astute, and would be a reliable Senate vote if Congress succeeds in passing a health care overhaul, and former governor and 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, who at 75 has no further political ambitions but remains in good standing in the state.
Wow. Really? Rick Klein from ABC News quotes a former Dukakis cabinet member saying Dukakis passed health care reform as governor, and wouldn’t it be nice if he could be a deciding vote for the reform bill Kennedy wanted to see passed in the Senate?
This is mind-boggling. The Democrats have so many problems right now, the last thing they need is Dukakis, with his baggage and bad associations and let’s face it, still-pungent whiff of electoral failure, padding around the Senate and reminding everyone of the bad old days when they got rolled by the GOP.
Which means it’s precisely what is now likely to happen.
Giddyup!
