Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Gillibrand and Castro And Babbard

At least 3 more entered the fray this week. None are making me super pumped.

Julian Castor is no surprise. He's been sniffing around for a long time. He is very young, but seems okay.

He says all the right things, was the mayor of the 7th largest US city (San Antonio!) for a while.

But there hasn't been any clamoring for him to run. He seems pleasantly bland. Maybe a pleasant bland Latino is the anti-Trump, but I am not sure that is enough going forward.

His experience seems a bit lacking to me - particularly none in International Affairs and we are going to have to repair a lot of relationships.

He seems fine.
Then there is Kristin Gillibrand.


She is my current Senator. I like her more than Chuck Schumer, but that ain't saying a whole lot.

Here's my 2cents on Gillibrand. She is in many ways perfect. She's a centrist (although recently she has been tacking left for the primary), she has valued women's issues for a long time.

She is reasonable, smart and capable. Again, she's not going to set you on fire.

But her big drawback is Hillary Clinton. IN two ways. First as a Democratic Senator from New York that was pretty conservative and is now more liberal - just like Hillary.  Second she worked for Hillary's election pretty hard. She is going to be easy to paint as a 2nd Hillary. And that is not good.




And then there is Tulsi Gabbard. That is a hard no for me.

Tulsi spent much of her early career fighting hard against gay marriage in Hawaii. She worked for her father's group "Stop Promoting Homosexuality" and the "National Campaign to Protect Marriage" and Hawaii's own "Save Traditional Marraige"

I know people can change their mind and I don't want her to lose her seat or anything, but I won't be supporting her.

From Fox News: Gabbard was a visible force against same-sex marriage, and in 2004 spearheaded a fight in the state against a same-sex union measure. “To try to act as if there is a difference between ‘civil unions’ and same-sex marriage is dishonest, cowardly and extremely disrespectful to the people of Hawaii,” she said at the time. “As Democrats, we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists.”

Disagreeing with me on a topic is fine, saying that my wanting to get married is somehow dishonest, cowardly and extremely disrespectful is her right. And my right is to judge her purely by her words. So let me respectfully say, no thanks.