General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: There is some serious cowardice going on here about John Kerry's seat. [View all]jeff47
(26,549 posts)Point 3.....so what? OMG! The President wants a close ally in his cabinet!!!!!! EEEEEEE!!!!!!!!
Point 4.....You are aware that it's possible to sell stock, not just buy it? Buying energy stocks in the past few years is a good investment decision - they've gone up a ton. If you're worried about conflict-of-interest, push for her to sell before becoming SoS (if she ends up the nominee).
Point 5.....Political capital doesn't get "spent" in the way you claim. At this point, backing down would be far more damaging to Obama - it would teach the Republicans that insane opposition works. Giving in on Rice now makes Obama shrink, and makes the Republicans larger. And it means Republicans will keep pushing Benghazi for the rest of the term. Doesn't matter that there's nothing there, the Republicans will just insinuate there was something wrong. Just like with Bill Clinton's first term.
Political capital goes up when you do things that are popular, and goes down when you do something unpopular. Blocking Rice over Benghazi is unpopular. So Republicans are losing political capital on this - despite what the pundits say, the public doesn't think there was anything wrong. Obama would gain by standing up to them.
Why should we copy the failures of the Clinton administration and listen to the pundits over the public?
Point 6.....Brown out-performed Romney by 20%. He only lost by 7%. The special election to replace Kerry would only have one race on the ballot. And we know that massively favors Republicans. Just the fact that it's a special election would gain Brown those 7%. And about the only person currently in a good position to beat Brown (Gov. Patrick) has said he wants to finish his term.
Additionally the Democrat in the race would have to build up their campaign infrastructure from scratch, while Brown just re-starts the the campaign he's currently shutting down.
It would be a very difficult race for the Democrat. Doesn't mean its not winnable, but it's most definitely not the cakewalk you propose.
If you want to try and disarm the Senate seat argument, you're much better off pointing out 55D/45R is really not different than 54D/46R.