Talking about Daniels and next year's governor's race

Taking down Words wrote a post about how hard it will be to beat Daniels. Ok, this will not be easy and no reason to have false hopes. Hard work cannot be substituted for smooth phrases on blogs or the press. Whoever gets the Democratic nomination must be ready with three things: 1) better ideas than Mitch Daniels; and 2) a willingness to fight for those ideas, and 3) a party ready to back the nominee until the last vote is counted.

The Indianapolis Star wrote about Daniels' announcement and included this paragraph:

Daniels talked briefly about what he considered accomplishments so far, including erasing a big budget deficit, imposing higher ethical standards in state government, creating more jobs and paving the way for many new highway projects.

If these are his accomplishments, then let us hit him over the head with them until next November.

Indiana budget have always been a tricky thing to talk about. Even with our state constitution banning deficit spending, decades ago the General Assembly found ways to finance things off the budget so that the budget was balanced. Daniels' budget is probably no worse than any other - just as Kernan's was not any better than anyone else's.

What Daniels wanted to ignore in 2004 (and we Democrats failed to point out to him) was that any budget in Indiana has been a bipartisan budget - the Republicans have controlled Indiana's Senate most of my life. The Democrats get the House every so often.

Higher ethical standards? How many department heads have left for ethical reasons?

More highway projects? How many have been delayed even after Major Moves? People in Muncie might have a different opinion about more highway projects being completed?

Here is how I see Daniels first term: suggests raises income tax, lets proposal die, sells of Toll Road, brings DST to Indiana, ignores mess created by DST, ignores complaints about DST and Toll Road, ethanol, lets House Republicans push anti-gay marriage amendment to state constitution, goes overseas to find jobs, Honda to build factory in Greensburg, gets Rolls Royce to stay put (or something like that), shoots off mouth about how minority Democrats are car bombers, proposes new toll roads, finds out Hoosier do not like paying tolls and taxes, keeps mouth shut for most of 2007 legislative session, and now is making television commercials about health and fitness.

Some more bits from the Indianapolis Star:

"You will hear straight talk," he said. "If our problems are severe, we will not sugarcoat them. If the solutions we believe are best for Indiana are controversial, we will not flinch in proposing them."

Straight talk? That would be interesting from this guy. He makes the decisions and tell us to take them. So far, he has not only flinched from his controversial solutions that might be best for Indiana. Those proposals were:

1. Reforming local government - getting rid of township government
   
2. A state constitutional convention - mentioned briefly in first campaign and disappeared.
3. Genuine property tax reform.

All these are controversial, all would mean using political capital, and none can be turned to a profit for a private entity. Governor Privatize seems a new nickname for Governor Daniels. Putting governor and privatize makes the point, I hope, that Daniel's does not know how to govern but only to sell off this state. I say his business acumen goes only to short term gains. God help him and his employees if he were ever let run a business on his own.

I want to add education to the list of proposals avoided by Mitch Daniels. Not that I think education is controversial and so it is not on the list above. It could be if Daniels (and our other state leaders did what I propose for Daniels) would use his pulpit as a bully pulpit for change in this state. Any real change in this state requires a change in how we view education. I see too many people still who think that a high school diploma suffices for good employment. Too many people who tell their children that a college education is good for nothing real.

Daniels could attack that thinking but has not. Why not? Is Hoosier culture really something too big for him to attack? Or is this outside of his definition of change? If so, then why is only privatization within that definition?

I do want to pick apart this paragraph:

Daniels said many Democrats had embraced his agenda of change, but Jennifer Wagner, spokeswoman for the state Democratic Party, said many had not.

If Daniels is saying that Democrats want a change in this state, then he is probably more correct than he usually is in his pronouncements. I am one Democrat who wants to see better jobs, a diversified economy, less of a brain drain and more encouraging of local talent, maybe an overhaul of state government from top to bottom so that it reflects 2007 more than 1851, and a Democrat as Governor in 2009. (I would also like to see the end of class basketball and those who dreamt up that idea cast out from Indiana forever, but I am not holding my breath on that.)

Since I doubt Daniels meant his pronouncement as I just interpreted it, he must think that Democrats adhere to his agenda. That is so outrageous to make me think one of these solution must be true: 1) Daniels does not read his poll numbers because he is an idiot; 2) knows The Truth from another source such as voices in his head which makes him as delusional as his former boss in Washington, or 3) he still is smoking pot. One more just can to my mind: the heat got to him.

I do not think that majority of Republicans like Daniels' agenda of change for change's sake, his belief that calling something change (or good or what positive term you can remember him using for errant nonsense if viewed objectively) makes it a change. I cannot believe that anyone can find a Democrat buying into Daniels' agenda. That is how I interpret, Jen Wagner's response - that we Democrats want change but not what Daniels' calls change.

Consider that the majority of voters here do not vote. We need to give them an alternative to Daniels. That alternative must b e something more than a Republican Lite. Yes, that worked for Evan Bayh but time has passed for being content with just being elected. That attitude encourages apathy when needing action.

We need better ideas expressed better than how Daniels expresses his ideas. Daniels can be beat. It just will take some work.