But there's more. When the Maine Sunday Telegram ran a long, 4,000-word profile on King , including in-depth interviews with folks who have known and worked with him over the years, his campaign promptly posts the article on his campaign website -- but with all the negative or even unflattering references in that article redacted.
Juvenile behavior, anyone?
The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram formally protested this treatment of its copyrighted material, demanding that the redacted article be immediately removed from King's website. The King campaign, tail between its legs, meekly complied. And, of course, the Waterville Sentinel, a sister paper to the PPH, then explained all this in a second newspaper article that highlighted all the sentences and phrases that Angus King did not want you to see if you hadn't already read it in the paper.
I believe that people vote for a candidate whom they know, and/or one who seems to share their values and outlook on major issues of the day.
As a former governor and, before that, as a host on public television, King has been counting on people knowing who he is.
But what about his values, and his outlook on the major issues facing the country? What do we make of King's claim that he is a "moderate"? These days, what does that mean? Is he in the Olympia Snowe mold, a "moderate" who voted for the Patriot Act, voted to deny habeas corpus rights to Guantanano Bay detainees, who voted to confirm Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, who voted in lock-step with the Republican Party she represented? That kind of "moderate"?
Oh no, you say? He's not that kind of "moderate."
Well then, what do you make of King touting his recent endorsement by Erskine Bowles, of the Simpson-Bowles fame?
Remember the Simpson-Bowles Commission? Check out this 2010 article in TMP Media . Unless Congress acts, the Commission would force increases in the costs of participating in veterans and military health care systems; would increase the age of Social Security eligibility to 69. It would cut the annual Social Security cost of living increases, would repeal or significantly curtail a number of popular tax deductions (including the state and local deduction and the mortgage interest deduction), and would "limit Congress to collecting taxes on income made within the United States, reducing or eliminating taxes on American expats and revenues companies earn abroad," among other things.
All earmarks? Gone. Subsidized student loans? Eliminated. NPR funding? No more. The list goes on.
That kind of "moderate"?
Charlie Summers has said he would vote to repeal Obamacare, and supports the Ryan budget and the Republican platform. As her party's nominee, Cynthia Dill has the Democratic Party platform as her baseline.
What does King have? He says, on any given issue, he will vote the way his constituents in Maine want him to vote. In a state as deeply divided as Maine is on key issues, that's a real cop-out. What King is telling us is that he has no baseline, no substance, no core values that will guide his thinking and his votes. That, to me, is downright scary.
Given all this, what I don't get is why the national Democratic Party is not following the lead of the national Republican Party, and slamming both King and Summers in support of its Democratic nominee Cynthia Dill. Especially now that post-Republican-ad polls show King slipping -- AND ALL THE SLIPPAGE MOVING INTO DILL'S COLUMN, not into Republican Charlie Summers' side.
What are they thinking?
Well, they're probably thinking they can work with Angus. They probably thought the same thing when the national Democratic Party (not the state folks) froze me out in my 2006 run as the Democratic nominee running against Olympia Snowe, the last Democrat to do so. Sen. Chuck Schumer, who was then head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, refused to take my calls, even after a pitch from then-Gov. John Baldacci. I got no help whatsoever from the national outfit that was raising money all across the country -- including in Maine -- ostensibly to support their Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate. No money, no polling, not even an email blast. So I got 22 percent of the vote, and they got Olympia Snowe back, where she proceeded to vote with the right-wing Republicans every time they needed her to.
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