Libertarian Democrat Running in Maine
Congressman Tom Allen has officially announced that he will challenge Susan Collins for her Senate seat in Maine.
Freedom Democrats’ Logan Ferree and I discussed Rep. Allen and the possibility of him challenging way back in March. I liked Tom Allen quite a bit when I lived in Maine (voted for both him and Collins when I was there). Tom Allen is the real deal in terms of a Libertarian Democrats. Logan reminds us:
What should worry Senator Collins is that Tom Allen has already has a record that will appeal to the voters of Maine’s 2nd District, in addition to his own 1st District. He is leading the fight against the REAL ID Act; he favors outright repeal, not just delaying implementation. He voted against the original passage of the REAL ID Act, supports medical marijuana, favors open relations with Cuba, voted against reauthorization of the Patriot Act, and supported an effort to block funding for electronic surveillance programs not approved by FISA.
Maine is an interesting state because it’s very difficult to cut it up by partisan lines. It’s part New England, part Deep South, with a strong Western streak thrown in to boot. It’s also one of the most Libertarian states in the union, and Tom Allen, while by no means a purist in terms of his own libertarian streak, is nevertheless somebody who, like Jon Tester in Montana, is a Democrat of a potentially new stripe. Conventional wisdom holds that Democrats challenging in Republican areas need to become Republicanish. But the GOP has ceded such a huge amount of ground that Democrats can win being strong progressives but with a heavy civil libertarian bent, as Jon Tester did in Montana, Brian Schweitzer before him, and Jim Webb in VA, etc.
It’ll be interesting to see how Rep. Allen fairs in Maine. Collins is not particularly unpopular in Maine (actually, the country’s fifth most popular Senator–Olympia Snowe, Maine’s other Senator, is #1), but the GOP brand is, and the War in Iraq hugely is, and Allen has made it something of a mission to link her to all that. His is, at best, a second tier challenge given Collins’ popularity, but if events fall the right way and 2008 is another wave election with Iraq being particularly contentious, he’s got a fighting chance. And, if he wins, he’ll be an interesting member of the Democratic Congress. For my money, this is a race to watch.
Tom Allen on the web:
http://www.tomallen.org/
He’s against fast-track trade authority, for comprehensive federally provided health insurance, wants to reengineer the federal contracting procedure to favor small business, opposes defense cuts that impact upon his district, and wants substantial increases in federal job training programs.
I get all those stances from a three-minute perusal of his site.
Brad, to be a Libertarian of any kind, one must support individual freedom in the social AND economic spheres. This guy, like Kos, is a dedicated statist on economic matters. To use the term “libertarian democrats” to describe these people is an absolute hijacking of the term. They are traditional 1970s liberals. There may be nothing wrong with that, but let’s call them what they are.
Comment by Rojas — 5/9/2007 @ 12:05 pm
Before they achieve their inevitable electoral success, it is important that the Libertarians purge their ranks of imposters.
Comment by Adam — 5/9/2007 @ 12:22 pm
I think there is a difference between insisting on sane definitions and conducting purges.
Comment by Rojas — 5/9/2007 @ 12:29 pm
The description Brad applied is ‘Libertarian Democrat’. I don’t take that to mean ‘Libertarian who’s running as a Democrat’, in general, but more of the ‘liberaltarian’ sort. Additionally, if the guy wishes to get elected, he does sort of need to put out some policy positions that are popular with the constituency whose vote he is after.
One item you pick out doesn’t make sense to highlight, to my mind. If you wish to run for the Federal government, you have to represent your district and I don’t think that unilateral declarations to keep your district’s nose completely out of the federal trough are the solution to the problem of Federal largesse (something I, myself, favour). The absence of a platform to try to get a multilateral resolution (through legislation) is a bigger problem, libertarian-wise, than is a commitment to attempting to safeguard current federal largesse for his own district.
That all said, I don’t think that he’s much of a Libertarian Democrat, either.
Comment by Adam — 5/9/2007 @ 1:41 pm
He also supports pay-as-you-go budgeting rules, opposed the President’s Medicare plan (as well as the bankruptcy bill), favors eliminating estate taxes, of the budget says:
Is against gay marriage, supports looking into alternative voting methods (he says IRV, but I’m sure we can get Clay on him), says of Kyoto:
Supports an outright ban on all “torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of prisoners in U.S. custody”, provide a legal reassertion of the Geneva conventions, and end extraordinary rendition.
You can find his votes on everything here.
And to be a Democrat of any kind, one must nominally support individual freedom in the social sphere and to some degree be a statist in the economic sphere.
To be a Libertarian Democrat, then, one must exist in that pretty huge space between the two. In any case, I don’t use the phrase to distinguish between Libertarians and Libertarian Democrats, I use it to distinguish between Libertarian Democrats and other Democrats.
Actually, more than that, I’ve argued for awhile that there are two directions that the Democratic party can go. More towards Western-styled tough Libertarian Democrats (here I’d put guys like Jon Tester, Russ Feingold, Brian Schweitzer, Jim Webb), or pugnacious grassroots “progressive” Democrats (of the Howard Dean, Paul Hackett, Ned Lamont, Al Gore 2.0 stripe).
To me, Tom Allen decidedly falls towards the former. But he is still, before anything, a Democrat. There’s no Libertarian orthodoxy that he has to adhere to, and he wouldn’t get his foot in the door at a Libertarians Anonymous meeting. But, as a Democrat, he represents a far more civil liberty minded, fiscally responsible, open trade and diplomacy (albeit with lots of health care and environmental crap tacked on), measured foreign policy, even more socially liberal than the party norm, area of the Democratic party.
He certainly has a lot of issues on which he is NOT in any way Libertarian (you’ve laundry listed most of them), but so does everybody who is not…well, a Libertarian.
Comment by Brad — 5/9/2007 @ 5:28 pm