| I'll just say it here ... Bob King's flirtations with Matty Maroun is the least brilliant political move since Charles I told the Long Parliament to take its demands for a constitutional monarchy and cram them with walnuts. Teh Demas. The unions are pouring $25 million into an almost certain losing effort. Why is it going to lose? Well, it doesn't help that it appears that UAW President Bob King was flirting with an alliance with Ambassador Bridge billionaire Matty Moroun, which smells rancid. But the main reason is that the business group against Prop 2, Citizens Protecting Michigan's Constitution, is running a stomach-churning campaign scaring voters into thinking that Proposal 2 will unleash child molesters in the classroom.
It's actually hard to know where Bob King's blame for the campaign's lack of response to the anti-Prop. 2 ads begins, and where it ends for the people hired to run the campaign in the first place. I noted on this site a couple of months ago that even then there were clearly people associated with the campaign disenchanted with its leadership. Ultimately responsibility for the success or failure of the campaign as a whole rests at King's feet. I have a hard time separating the spineless reaction to the anti-Prop. 2 ads and leaked news that Bob King went to Matty Maroun looking for cash. They're both symptoms that something is deeply wrong with the Proposal 2 campaign. But, who knows, maybe the polls on it are misleading. Teh Demas hits on a point raised here before and worth dusting off to hit again. In 2010, the Democratic Party had a chance to win ... something. Instead, it sank a bunch of late campaign money into Virg Bernero's deadman walking gubernatorial campaign. That's after Labor bought him the nomination, because a Dillon candidacy threatened an innerparty reckoning over whether it had become too entrenched and too stale to be very competitive. It's once again time to revisit that. |
