It seems MSNBC and NBC can't quite get enough of bringing on Conserva-Dem (D-Wall Street) Harold Ford Jr. to spout some nonsense about how President Obama hasn't been quite gracious enough or kissed the rings enough of his Wall Street overlords or the other Masters of the Universe that represent the 1% in this country that are doing just fine these days.
Unfortunately he's still showing up on my DVR list with segments like this one and giving a bad name to what progressives and liberals there are left in the Democratic Party, who are actually looking out for the interests of everyday Americans.
I'd really love to know when either Meet the Press or the cast over at Morning Joe are going to finally quit bringing this man on who couldn't manage to win an election in Tennessee as some sage adviser who anyone currently running for office as a Democrat should listen to. I guess that will happen right along with them finally deciding to quit bring on their favorite racist, Pat Buchanan.
If NBC actually cared about their ratings, either Rachel Maddow or Chris Hayes who they've relegated to a morning spot so early on the weekends they're hoping no one watches it, would be hosting this show instead of Karl Rove's dancing partner.
Ford rattled off so many Republican talking points during this segment on Meet the Press, it was enough to make your head spin, but they continue to promote him as someone who is representative of the Democratic Party. Unfortunately they rarely allow anyone who represents the progressives in the party some air time to counter him and to push back on the fact that Ford does not represent the left wing of the party that is still looking out for the working class and the fact that there is actually a decent group of politicians in the Progressive Caucus in the House and a good number of Democrats in the Senate that still vote on the on the behalf of the working class in America.
Ford does nothing but give those Democrats a bad name every time they allow him on the air, which is of course the reason they have him on to begin with. He's no better than the litany of Fox "Democrats" we see on the air day after day to distort to their viewers the fact that there is still a progressive wing of the party looking out for them.
Full transcript below the fold.
GREGORY: Well--and Harold Ford, it was none other than Steve Jobs in the new biography by Walter Isaacson who, who writes about him meeting with Obama, and this is how The Huffington Post reported it. Jobs telling Obama "`You're headed for a one-term presidency,' he said at their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly." This is still the, the overhang they have to deal with.
FORD JR.: Look, their posture has been really bad. Their policies have not been nearly as bad. If you think about the beginning of his administration, people thought that he would pass card check, and there was great angst, concern and anxiety in the business community, particularly the retail community. He didn't do it. He's been...
WELCH: Tragic.
FORD JR.: Right. Well, he didn't do it. The congressmen tried, but he didn't do it, and it didn't get, it didn't get done. Cars, banks, financial institutions, he's been great. The EPA regulations he's backed off on. But the posture and the language and the rhetoric has been just too overheated. And to, to Mr. Welch's point, you can't, you can't incentivize the type of things that he--that they incentivized in this bill. Two, you have huge balance sheets on the part of corporate America, meaning they're making money. You got to incentivize them, as the president has asked, to use that money to stimulate job creation. There's a way to do it, if you have some certainty around regulations and taxes.
MITCHELL: (Unintelligible)
FORD JR.: And two, you've got 1.2, maybe 1.3 trillion sitting overseas.
WELCH: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
FORD JR.: Allow that money to come back. But...
MITCHELL: With Occupy Wall Street, how does he take that posture?
FORD JR.: He's the president, Andrea. He's the president.
MITCHELL: He's caught between two polar opposites.
FORD JR.: We Democrats...
BROOKS: It...
FORD JR.: We Democrats can't criticize Republicans for catering to the tea party and not be--and not say to our Democratic Party you got to look beyond Occupy and be willing to do what's in the best interest of the country.
