Gillibrand

NY politics maven Julia has more. If I read her correctly, although my framing was more negative (and my title may have — like some others — implied that I wanted Kennedy; for the record, my choice among the two was “neither”) I don’t think I actually disagree. Here’s Julia’s bottom line:

Now, none of this means that I’m enthusiastic about having a Senator to the right of the one I currently have, or that I think the state which supports Virginia’s gunrunning should have a Senator with a 100% NRA voting record, or that I like the position she took on gay rights (although she’s already said that’s going to change now that she doesn’t have to vote her district), or that I’m happy about her family ties to Joe Bruno, George Pataki and Al D’Amato, or that I think that people to the left of her shouldn’t primary (as Carolyn McCarthy of Long Island is already planning to do) or that I don’t think that progressives should donate to those primary candidates if they’re so moved.

I basically agree with all of this. Indeed, I would if anything be more generous to Gillibrand; here dynastic ties to Republicans are a trivial issue (the proof is in etc.), and given the vanishingly small possibility of consequential gun regulation passing Congress in the near future, as long as she’s not in state politics I don’t much care about her NRA lockstep (and indeed can even see it as a point in her favor; if you have to attract Republican votes, better that than abortion.) It’s likely that, with a statewide constituency that she’ll be a generic moderate Democratic Blue State Senator (warning: my crumble under minor Republican pressure.) But, as Remo Gaggi says, why take a chance? There were solid progressives to choose from, which increases the possibility of a good senator rather than a DiFi-type wet. (And of course I agree with Julia about the political logic for Patterson, but that’s really neither here nor there on the merits of the appointment.)

I’m also intruiged by Lance’s argument that “[L’s upstate father] is worried about losing that district, too, but the odds are that it’ll be lost anyway after the next re-districting.” If true, this is important; getting a worse Senator plus potentially losing a house seat was what was should have been a deal-breaker. Perhaps this wasn’t an issue. But I also don’t see why this would be true, although I hope Julia or Lance or other readers who know more than I do can fill me in if there’s some quirk I’m missing. It seems to be that for Gillibrand to lose her seat in 2010 would represent gross incompetence on the part of Democratic leadership (not, admittedly, something than can be completely discounted.) I mean, it’s Gerrymandering 101 that you never re-district out your own incumbents — there must be plenty of ways to re-draw shrinking upstate areas that stick it to Republican instead. Am I missing something?