Landrieu Out as Palm Beach County Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner
Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Palm Beach County in Florida takes baby steps toward party discipline:
Democratic Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu is out as keynote speaker for the Palm Beach County Democratic Party’s annual fund-raising dinner next week because party leaders dislike her stance on health care reform, county Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel said today.
Siegel says “We just didn’t want to have a keynote speaker who’s not committed to cloture. It would have just been wrong.” Probably not the most devastating blow to a politician’s career, but good to see someone’s paying attention. Also this:
The Democrats’ annual dinner — formerly known as the Jefferson-Jackson dinner but this year rebranded as the Truman-Kennedy-Johnson dinner — is Nov. 14 at the Palm Beach County Convention Center.
Wouldn’t it make sense to change the name of these annual dinners on a permanent basis? The policies of Andrew Jackson’s administration—opposition to central banking, Indian removal, slavery, etc.—have very little to do with the modern-day Democratic Party. Something like a Roosevelt-Kennedy dinner would invoke historical figures while also invoking a recognizable predecessor of the contemporary policy agenda.
41 Responses to “Landrieu Out as Palm Beach County Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner”
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November 4th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
At least Landrieu is easy on the eyes as compared to bow wows like Boxer.
November 4th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Don’t the Republicans have Reagan Dinners? That’s suitaqbly more modern and relevant to the party’s beliefs.
November 4th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
At least Landrieu is easy on the eyes as compared to bow wows like Boxer.
Can’t you save this crap for your next frat house beer bash? We’re trying to have an adult discussion here.
November 4th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
To each his own, kafka. Barbara Boxer is a bit to the right of where I’d like her to be, but I still vote for her every six years cuz she’s totally MILF material.
One of these days, she’ll notice my support and reward me appropriately.
November 4th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Why anyone would want to claim Jackson is beyond me. My fiancée and I were checking wedding venues and one place had a room just off the ballroom with portraits of every single Republican president (the joint was founded in support of Lincoln) with no democrats in sight…except for Jackson. Jefferson may have been up on the wall too, but still, why would any institution go out of its way to associate itself with such a loathsome leader?
November 4th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
The policies of Andrew Jackson’s administration—opposition to central banking, Indian removal, slavery, etc.—have very little to do with the modern-day Democratic Party
I would disagree – while the DLC veneer blurs the image quite a bit, philosophically I think the Jacksonian championing of the common man vs established economics interests seems to be still a predominant differentiation of the Democrats vs Republicans. The Jacksonians, for example, were much interested in expansion of the sufferage and not just limiting it to those who own property. Does that sound to you like a Republican or Democrat?
November 4th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
The Jacksonians, for example, were much interested in expansion of the sufferage and not just limiting it to those who own property.
I’m sure their policies wrt black people voting were more in line with the modern GOP.
November 4th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
In Santa Barbara, we changed our dinner to “Roosevelt-Hamer,” recognizing FDR and Fannie Lou Hamer as the founders of the modern Democratic Party.
I’ve also seen Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt dinners in New York, JFK/RFK dinners, etc.
Seriously, enough with Jefferson/Jackson.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I totally want to shag that hottie Frank Lautenberg and don’t give a crap what Democrats name their dinners.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Like Reagan and Bush Jr, Jackson stood for the wisdom of uneducated rednecks, which makes sense since he was an uneducated redneck.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
At least Landrieu is easy on the eyes as compared to bow wows like Boxer.
I totally want to shag that hottie Frank Lautenberg and don’t give a crap what Democrats name their dinners.
Well, I’m about as hetero as a man can get–but I’d totally go gay for a night’s pleasure with Henry Waxman.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
As someone who was on the fringes of reform liberal Democratic party politics in New York in the early 1970s, I was amazed to hear the name Mark Alan Siegel, who used to be a leader of the left-liberal New Democratic Coalition up here. Turns out he’s moved to Florida — and from this item it sounds like he’s moving that party to the left, too. A lot of folks up north would get a kick out of this clip!
November 4th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Landrieu Out as Palm Beach County Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner
…and also let me congratulate the Democratic Party for not giving into its cannibalistic impulses. I feel the traditional beef or chicken would be a much less controversial choice of entree.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Jackson might not have been the best educated American President, but he certainly was not ill-educated. What he is, is poorly understood. At the risk of being unpleasant and controversial, what do we make of a a President who never denied (or, admittedly, confirmed) allegations that he was Metis?
November 4th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
I used to live in Asheville, NC, where the annual Dem fundraiser is the Vance-Aycock dinner. These two loathesome individuals helped “redeem” the state from the “Negro Domination” it suffered under Reconstruction. Change may come to that name, although the state party is still very conservative. Lots of nominal dems voted for Jesse Helms, and the party is fairly schizophrenic still.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
When I read that the dinner is in the South, I immediately assumed it was Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson. On reflection that doesn’t make sense, but it’s nice to know we could be doing worse.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Roosevelt-Kennedy dinner would invoke historical figures while also invoking a recognizable predecessor of the contemporary policy agenda.
Say what? MY thinks that Roosevelt invokes Obama’s policy agenda more than Truman-Johnson? Is he kidding us?
November 4th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
At the risk of being unpleasant and controversial, what do we make of a a President who never denied (or, admittedly, confirmed) allegations that he was Metis?
I think they’d say his ethnic heritage is nowhere near as important as his ethnic cleansing of Georgia and Tennessee.
And to head off the relativism bullshit, this isn’t just me as a 21st Century man saying this; John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United Fucking States Supreme Court and his fellow justices said that it was wrong, and Jackson told them to go fuck themselves.
I’d say that they’d talk about this.
In Jackson’s favor, however, was how he dealt with Calhoun and the rest of those racist slaveowning fucks from South Carolina. Namely, he told them not only to fuck themselves, but to measure themselves out for hempen neckties if they even thought of talking back to the United States Government.
Which is, of course, what ought to have been done to the Confederate leadership.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Greg:
And we all agree that ethnic cleansing is wrong, and are very glad that the world missed the climactic monstrosity of Iroquois Removal. (And got Mormon Removal instead.)
But we beg the question of what it means to cleanse an ethnos, as opposed to actual people. Indian removal affected 50–60,000 people. What happened to all the other Indians east of the Mississippi? Answer: their Indian ethnicity went to Oklahoma, while the people stayed behind, becoming, like Jackson, White.
The Jacksonian model for the social role of racial identity: your race is what you say it is. If you want White privilege, claim to be White, and vote like you mean it.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
That is not at all true.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
How long have these things been going on? One of the things that didn’t get ditched after my parents died was a very elaborate program from the 1961 San Francisco Jefferson-Jackson day dinner listing (among many others) my father, who was a very small fish in the Truman administration at the time.
Perhaps the Vance-Aycock dinner is honoring Zabulon Vance for his pro bono defense of Tom Dooley? No, that’s baby bomer nostalgia, it’s much too early for that.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Grrr. Got to get that font fixed — that was the 1951 dinner, hence Truman administration.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
I like how the fact that it’s her position on cloture — not health care reform itself — gets magically lost between the quote and the lede. But hey, there’s no real difference between enforcing party discipline on procedural matters and simply stomping on all dissent.
I suppose it’s made more defensible by the fact that — judging from the comments — the readership wasn’t interested in much beyond validating its own preconceptions.
November 4th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
andy: That whole aspect of the Jacksonian/Whig split seems like it’s pretty orthogonal to the modern Democrat/Republican split. The Whigs wanted a strong Federal government building infrastructure and managing the economy in order to promote economic development, and I think that’s a solidly Democratic and progressive value that isn’t just some bit of DLC cronyism. To contrast, the Jacksonians wanted a small government and had the ideal of keeping agrarian. When it comes right down to it, the teabaggers share an awful lot more with the Jacksonians than the Democratic party does.
To oversimplify greatly, the Jacksonians were populist but conservative, and the Whigs were progressive but inegalitarian. Both parties have something to like from each of them.
November 4th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
good point 23; as kafka might say, she’s a real filly-buster.
November 4th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
It is the will of Landrieu.
November 4th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
There’s a lot of tradition in the Jeff-Jack (as they called it when my dad was a Democratic county chair in Michigan); I still recall the story Jimmy Carter of giving my peanut-necklace wearing mom a peck on the cheek at the 1976 Jeff-Jack in Detroit.
Are those anachronistic? Yep. So are Republican references to Lincoln, but both Jackson and Lincoln are seminal presidents to their respective parties.
November 4th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Props to Navamske for the Star Trek reference.
November 4th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
What Mark Byron said. These are annual dinners — fundraisers, really — that go back a while. No reason to change the name just ’cause Matt’s just found out about them.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
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November 5th, 2009 at 2:03 am
I would disagree – while the DLC veneer blurs the image quite a bit, philosophically I think the Jacksonian championing of the common man vs established economics interests seems to be still a predominant differentiation of the Democrats vs Republicans. The Jacksonians, for example, were much interested in expansion of the sufferage and not just limiting it to those who own property. Does that sound to you like a Republican or Democrat?
You’re forgeting that most Jacksonian Democrats were in favor of Anglo-American whites voting without property restrictions. They actually rolled back the voting rights of free blacks in the North and weren’t so excited about immigrants voting either. Part of the reason that the Democrats started falling apart in the North during the early 1850s (aside from schisms over slavery) is that the Know-Nothings peeled away a good number of their base voters.
I’m sure their bitter opposition of a federal role in the economy (internal improvements and second bank of the U.S.), opposition to protective tariffs, nativist tendencies and support for the inherently elitist institution of slavery in the south outweigh their stance on the universal sufferage issue also.
Jackson’s also practiced “crooney capitalism” with is use of “pet banks” to replace the Second Bank of the U.S. when the charter expired. He basically deposited the funds of the Second Bank of the U.S. into specially chosen banks in the states and let the Bank of the U.S. wither on the vine.
Meanwhile the state banks engaged in risky loans and investments in the west, especially in Mississppi and Arkansas where there was a cotton-driven land boom. Finally the inflationary pressures of all of the money the banks issued (no cash in those days-banks issued their own “bank notes”) caused the panic of 1837 which crippled the economy for another eight years when the banks issue more meny that they could back. Sound familiar?
They sound more in the current Republican tradition to me.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:09 am
> At least Landrieu is easy on the eyes as compared to bow wows like Boxer.
Can’t you save this crap for your next frat house beer bash? We’re trying to have an adult discussion here.
I thought that was an “adult” discussion. What, health care is the first thing that comes to mind when you see that pic?
November 5th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Landrieu is not of the Body?
November 5th, 2009 at 8:30 am
Don’t let that picture fool you. She’s like 30 in that photo. She was born in 55 and has lost the cuteness. Her entry on wikipedia and her website has a much more recent picture. Why do you keep using this old photo Matt?
November 5th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Her entry on wikipedia and her website has a much more recent picture. Why do you keep using this old photo Matt?
I know, that’s my point. Matt deliberately set it up for an “easy on the eyes” reaction and then Midland gets all huffy that it doesn’t lead to a deep and serious intellectual discussion.
Not that I mind but Midland’s beef is with Matt, not the commenter.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:42 am
In case you’re wondering, refusing to talk about anything but a woman’s appearance, when the subject is her professional life, is sexist asshole behavior.
Not that I think you were wondering.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:54 am
What, health care is the first thing that comes to mind when you see that pic?
One of the rights and responsibilities of adulthood is not saying the first thing that comes to mind. For example, my first response to your post would have been semantically equivalent to the previous sentence, but with more cursing.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Why do you keep using this old photo Matt?
Because it’s the first Creative Commons-licensed result from a Google image search for “Mary Landrieu”?
November 5th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Ok, lydia and cminus, valid points. I still think Midland was too trigger happy in his policing, that’s all.
November 5th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Purge the moderates! Purge!
November 6th, 2009 at 12:11 am
“Discipline,” you call it. I can think of more appropriate words.