Obama made big mistakes in his first two years in the White House, but losing the tightest governor's race in Florida history is not one of them. That, Democrat Alex Sink did all by herself.
The blame game boiled up on Friday; "... Sink pointed an accusatory finger Friday at what she called a "tone-deaf" Obama White House to explain why she narrowly lost her campaign," in Politico. As readers of EOM know, I disagree. And I was a Sink supporter.
I listened carefully to Alex Sink's stump speech at a Jefferson Jackson dinner in Miami a few years ago, when she officially announced her campaign. I didn't like it then. It was a saccharine appeal to the earthy values of North Florida and of sober business judgment. It neglected, completely, to tag Republicans-- and in particular Republican land speculators-- for the biggest economic conflagration in modern Florida history. And I didn't like the speech when she used the same one throughout the campaign, or at the end, in closing the final television debate against Rick Scott, now the governor-elect of Florida.
In Sink's campaign, there was no substance for the new Florida and no inspiration beyond conservative values that are all well and good, but also doomed the earlier campaigns of Florida Democrats from Buddy McKay, to Betty Castor, Jim Davis and her husband, Bill McBride, who ran a similarly lackluster campaign in 2002. Try as I did, and others: Sink's bland prescriptions stuck like tarballs on the sole of a shoe.
Nothing to rally or inspire urban voters. Nothing to inspire Hispanics, African Americans or the young voters who flocked to Obama in 2008. Sink complains, "I faced headwinds from Washington that I liken to a tsunami and was going up against a guy who had unlimited resources... I could have overcome either one but not both." That is just plain wrong.
Alex Sink vacuumed up enough Democratic money to run a credible state-wide campaign. Sink's idea of credible messages may have focus-grouped and poll-tested, but they added up to not enough. Sink couldn't defeat a health insurance company centi-millionaire who should have been held accountable for the largest civil fine in US history, $1.7 billion. Sink, the state's CFO, should have hammered Jeb Bush to the billions in losses in the state administration funds; investments in exactly the risky derivatives that connect up to the housing crash.
Sink tells Politico, "(People) preferred to vote for somebody with questionable ethics than for somebody who was associated with the Washington Democratic agenda." The truth is that she failed to energize voters and relied, instead, on the same worn-out brand of Democratic campaigning that Obama successfully avoided, in Florida, in the run up to the 2008 presidential. That's right: Barack Obama side-stepped Florida's Democratic establishment in winning the state for a reason. But instead of learning the why's and how's of Obama's dodging the Democratic establishment, Sink relied on out-dated thinking of the Tallahassee minority and marginalized; including Alex Penelas' chief strategist--the Democrat who cost Al Gore the 2000 presidency-- who made the mistake of violating television debate rules that he himself conceived with respect to communicating with candidates on stage. Think that cost a hundred thousand votes?
Today Barack Obama is shouldering the weight of the mid-term elections, but he is not the one who is "tone deaf" in Florida. It is Alex Sink and old-line Florida Democrats who cost Florida a critically important election.
10 comments:
Why she lost: 1. Brian May to the rescue- the lobbyist who made the call to Alex Sink during the debate. 2. NAACP snub by Sink. 3. Didn't counter the charges leveled by Scott against her. It appeared to voters two unethical people were running.
I was really happy to read this blog because I thought Sink had screwed up but I was not sure. Now I know that she and the rest of the democrats in this State are not my kind of real democrats, all they are, are true politicians looking to get elected. Over the years people who had power have asked me to run and I have always said "I may be crazy, but I am not stupid" there was no way I would be one of them.
Holy cow, Gimleteye... you have finally made it to my list of respected and honored commentators. You'r so right about Sink, it's painful. It's too bad that in this important and difficult election we were represented by a Florida homemaker, who obviously didn't belong in the corporate world, and even less in politics.
Sink a homemakers? Are you kidding?
She should have picked a South Florida Hispanic as a running mate. Manny Diaz (as much as I hate his love of concrete) would have done the trick.
"Didn't counter the charges leveled by Scott against her. It appeared to voters two unethical people were running."
Very, very true.
If she was slightly better looking she would have won too. Sad, but true.
I think her campaign made several missteps that lost it for her.
I think one of my main issues is that she never came up with a succint message to get her ideas across.
We all know Crazy eyes was 'lets's get to work.' Even though this election should have been more than just jobs, that slogan hit home and stuck with people.
Sink bounced around alot of ideas (all good) but her campaign didn't seem to stand for anything.
appeared 2 unethical people running is so right.
We have to somehow stop this ongoing negative campaigning!
The media portrays every candidate negatively.... no one wants to run.
This governor's election just proves the adage that any more, elections in the United States are between two piles of shit; and we just get to pick the smallest pile.
I think Sink performed remarkably well by coming so close. You'd expect all the Rubio voters to have voted straight republican and given Scott a landslide. yes, lots of it was probably ani-scary eyes, but some of it was probably because Sink was smart and did not come off as threatening to the conservative north. But I do wish she had not trashed/blamed Obama. Bad form.
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