DL Interviews 22nd District Challenger Rebecca Young

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I’ve known Rebecca Young since we both responded to a call to “meet up” and discuss the candidacy of a then unknown governor from Vermont named Howard Dean. We were both intrigued by the man who had the nerve to say what was obvious to us, but nobody was saying: George Bush was making a mistake by attacking Iraq. Since then Rebecca went on to push to reform the Democratic party from the outside as the head of Progressive Democrats for Delaware and from the inside as the New Castle County Democratic Party’s Secretary and a member of the State Party Executive Board. This year she took her advocacy for good government one step further and decided to run against long time incumbent Joe Mirro in the 22nd senate district.

Rebecca was good enough to take a few minutes away from door knocking to answer a few questions (via email). Click more to read the interview.

Markell/Lee Debates

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Debates What: Debate When: Sunday October 19, 2008 Where: First Unitarian Church, off 202 Time: Doors open at 6.30 p.m. What: WDEL 1150AM Debate When: Wednesday October 22, 2008 Where:…

Katz v Clatworthy: Round 1

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Candidate night in Delaware, some boredom mixed with a little fireworks. Let me start with the fireworks. Dr. Mike Katz (D) is running against John Clatworthy (R) for the State…

On Political Civility

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Could you imagine a US Presidential campaign where one side said of another that by winning their opponent “were radicals who would murder their opponents, burn churches, and destroy the country”? How about a loser in a Presidential election that calls his opponent, “Judas of the West”? Maybe a political operative that would forge a letter to a foreign government and said government’s response would destroy a President? Or, most famously, a handful of men try to spy on their opponents and get caught destroying the man they supported?

Sadly, a lack of civility in American political discourse has been the norm in our history and not just a recent addition in our troubled times. Though sometimes it just doesn’t seem that way. In Reconcilable Differences, Ronald Brownstein writes:

From the final years of Bill Clinton’s presidency through Bush’s two bruising terms, American politics has been polarized as sharply as at any point in the past century. Party-line voting in Congress hasn’t been so prevalent since the days of William McKinley and Theodore Roose­velt. In the history of modern polling, Republican and Democratic voters have never held such disparate views of a president’s job performance as they do of Bush’s.

But as the 2008 Presidential Campaign comes to a close, we are once again examining how we got to this place and, more importantly, how we get out of it. Over the past few days, I hope one has seen on Delaware Liberal (we’re having internal debates as well) an examination of our political discourse.

But what is civilitiy? And what is meant by political civility?