It always burns my britches to hear this stupid meme about the Democratic party in Philly being so corrupt being bleated over and over, whether by newcomers or old farts. Compared to the Bush administration, whose Attorney General in recent Congressional testimony "couldn't remember" a grand total of 74 times, and whose testimony is contradicted by that of his top aide, Philly corruption is very small potatoes. When the Bush administration and the national Republican party, which BTW is hemorrhaging corrupt officials, many of whom are actually in jail, with many others indicted and on the way, is finally put to bed and a moderately decent party emerges again, maybe Philadelphia Republicans can again hold up their heads and be taken seriously.
And remember, winning the Democratic primary helps, but Sam Katz lost to John Street in 1999 by less than 10,000 votes. Street bowled Katz over by 58% last time around basically because Katz was so stickily tarred by Bush's brush. -- Ross Bender http://rossbender.org On 4/27/07, Mike <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hear hear. As a relatively recent transplant to Philadelphia I find it hard to take seriously anyone who would actually want to be involved in a political system this backwards. As far as I can see none of the candidates are actually offering concrete plans for what they would do to improve this city, and that seems to be because they don't have to; each of them is just working on turning out their core supporters, hoping that's more than 20% of the party base, and counting on the Democratic hegemony to land them in office. Whatever you think of either party, I think it has to be clear that multi-party competition, involving candidates from opposing parties offering competing visions and concrete plans for the city, could only be beneficial. Hwe achieve that when the Democratic party machine is so corrupt and pervasive is another story entirely. Mike
