NY's Tasini: Can A US Senate Candidate Win An Election Without Selling His Soul (outside of a Frank Capra movie)?

I just listened to NY’s Jonathan Tasini on the Brian Lehrer show on wnyc.

Tasini is facing an uphill race for US Senator from New York against Gillibrand, benefactress of Wall Street largess, particularly from SEC-investigated Goldman Sachs. She is the latest puppet crony for corporations within our Congress. Schumer, also from New York, was a major architect for deregulation on their behalf declares Tasini.

Such an uphill battle, in fact, that though he faced down Hillary Clinton for the Senate race long ago and won almost one-quarter of the vote, The New York Times recently declared in print that Gillibrand was running uncontested on the Democratic ticket, which is a damn lie, upsetting Tasini’s mom, most significantly.

Why no acknowledgment? Because an honest candidate not cronied up with oodles of corporate backing will be WILLFULLY ignored by our premier national newspaper. In your face, America. The fourth estate is totally cronied up with corporations. Doesn’t that make you want to get Tasini elected all the more??? Disenfranchise honest truth-to-power candidates. That's the name of this long-term game.

Tasini said simply to Lehrer about the challenge of running an honest, non-compromised campaign, “Regular people must sell their souls.” He also confided that one of his supporters offered to hook him up with Wall Street backing and he refused. The dismayed supporter replied, “But, you’ll lose!”

Tasini will win. He will win the honest way. But he will need those of us who recognize and demand our right for integrity, empathy and intelligence in our government and its election process. We need to step up and prove the sell-outers in media and government ARE WRONG. Time for the status quo to go. Not Tasini.

Tasini is the most dangerous man in America right now one of his news diarists declared. Dangerous to corrupt corporatists and their political cronies everywhere. Dangerous to a lazy-assed kabuki playing Senate. Tasini is not a gamesman, he's a statesman. He's been fighting for the rights of the American worker for over 30 years. He's done a lot of social service work already, and its time to give him a strategic Senate seat where he will do the most good for us right now. We desperately need him.

Tasini can talk the talk with the best of them, better than the best of them, and WILL WALK THE WALK better than the best of them (are you listening, Obama? Take notes!) And we have got to get him inside. A clean and honorable representative of the people. Think of it, how refreshing. And as DCBlogger pointed out recently what a coup this would be!!

"Should Tasini win it would hit the Democratic party like a Thunderbolt. It would mean that a true lefty can win a Senate race in a big state. It will mean a defeat for Wall Street on its own territory..."

When Tasini was asked about the present Senate hearings of Goldman Sachs, he reminded the audience that the Congress now investigating the financial fiasco in this country PARTICIPATED IN CREATING IT! Legalized corruption, he calls it, from massive donations for campaign financing.

Incumbents are in trouble in this country Tasini warned. The populist rage of the looting of the American citizenry and the stealing of democracy by corporations, with their inside operatives, our US Congress, will sweep out incumbents. But with whom will they be replaced? New corporate puppets who can buy tv ad time and be courted by compromised media? The honest, truth-to-power, non-corporate-bank-rolled ones might as well be shouting into the wind?

The Tasini contest deserves attention, just not state-wide but nationally.

Tasini renews my faith that there are clean, smart, worthy politicians who can and will make a difference. But fasten your seat belts, fellow libs, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride. We gotta be loud, resourceful and supportive of him. And just like in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the rat bastards are gonna hit him and us with everything they got. It's a fight we gotta fight. For our own soul and the country's. What is left of it.

[cross posted: http://www.correntewire.com/can_us_senate_candidate_win_election_without... ]