Golden showers
Everybody is pissing on Jared Golden.
He must be doing something right.
Golden is the incumbent congressman from Maine’s 2nd District, which comprises those parts of the state where economic development mostly consists of black-market Chinese pot facilities. He’s a Democrat if you use that word loosely, and given the divided nature of a country where one can’t be too choosy about one’s allies, loosely is the only reasonable way to use it.
Golden, who’s locked in a tight race for re-election to a fourth term, never got politically toilet-trained. He was no fan of his party’s national leadership under the likes of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and doesn’t seem to find the abrupt transition to Kamala Harris to have been anything other than cosmetic surgery. In a less fractious era, that would be considered common sense.
But this is no such era. Bring on the haters.
Former Portland mayor and avowed liberal Ethan Strimling wrote in a column for the Maine People’s Alliance website Beacon: “When Rep. Mike Michaud and Rep. John Baldacci served in CD2, they certainly took votes that party leaders opposed, but they stuck to the core values of the Democrats that elected them. Golden’s path has been decidedly different, rejecting some of the core values (and the leaders) of the party that elected him.”
There’s a lot to unpack here. As a state legislator and U.S. congressman, Michaud consistently voted against LGBTQ rights, until he ran for governor and belatedly admitted he was gay. As governor, Baldacci opposed meaningful efforts to expand health coverage for low-income Mainers, instead pushing through a convoluted plan that eventually collapsed under legal and fiscal pressures.
Core values, my ass.
It’s also worth noting that lots of Golden’s votes against party leadership were for pro-cop and pro-Israel legislation, neither of which is in defiance of any of the Democrats’ illusionary “core values.”
But it might be unfair to expect Strimling to grasp that concept. He’s a guy who rides his motor scooter through Portland traffic without a helmet.
What Strimling and the far left are really upset about is an op-ed Golden published in the Bangor Daily News in July just after Biden’s disastrous debate performance. Rather than try to excuse the president’s failing mental capabilities, Golden told the truth: “Donald Trump is going to win.” Then he said the thing no Democrat is allowed to even think: “And I’m OK with that.”
To make matters even more unacceptable to the Strimlingers, Golden refused to endorse Harris, saying, “our choice in leaders should never be a knee-jerk decision driven solely by party.”
You might think such a rejection of liberal orthodoxy would earn Golden praise — or at least a little slack — from the right. If you thought that, you’re an idiot.
Within days of his shocking admissions, I received the first of several mailers from Restoration PAC, funded by a conservative billionaire, claiming Golden’s a tax-and-spend liberal. “He went to Washington a moderate,” it read. “But Golden flocked to Joe Biden and the D.C. Democrats.”
Funny kind of flocking.
In August, Republican State Rep. Josh Morris of Turner wrote an op-ed for the Portland Press Herald claiming Golden was too tied to the Dems. “Bipartisanship means a lot to me,” Morris wrote. “I haven’t seen that with Rep. Jared Golden.”
This is as hypocritical a line of attack as we’re likely to see this election year. Ratings by both liberal and conservative interest groups show Morris is a GOP hardliner who almost never crosses the aisle. Golden holds the record as the Democrat who most often defies his party.
Morris does make one telling point. Golden brags about his refusal to accept corporate PAC money, but the congressman takes donations from industry trade groups. “So, in Golden’s world, he won’t accept a dollar from Exxon’s PAC,” Morris wrote, “but he will accept money from the American Petroleum Institute, which is funded by Exxon and others.”
Morris doesn’t quite dare to take that criticism the next step by alluding to how industry PAC money might have something to do with Golden’s less-than-stellar environmental record. To do that, he’d have to admit Golden had voted pretty much like a Republican.
Of course, the far-right Maine Policy Institute wasn’t going to waste an opportunity to pee on Golden’s shoes. In his BDN column, MPI boss Matthew Gagnon correctly took the congressman to task for his feeble excuse for not endorsing Harris’ candidacy because he didn’t know “what kind of leader she would be.” And Gagnon noted how irate (pissy?) Golden got when reporters refused to buy that nonsense.
Golden’s moderate credentials served him well through three election cycles. But now he needs to adapt to a new reality. In these Trumpian times, that centrist label merely means conservatives see him as a flaming libtard with a weak bladder. To liberals, he’s part of the mushy middle, wetting himself at the prospect of taking a real stand.
Best advice for Golden: diaper up.
Dampen my enthusiasm for urination jokes by e-mailing aldiamon@herniahill.net.
