Senator Obama, You're No Paul Wellstone

Chris Petersen, the president of the Iowa Farmers Union, just sent me the below message blasting Barack Obama for his attempts to paint himself as the most Paul Wellstone-like candidate in a conference call with ag supporters that has become very controversial in rural Iowa.

I would like to add to Chris's eloquent statement that in an interview with David Sirota in The Nation, Obama "dismissively labeled Wellstone as merely a 'gadfly' in a tone laced with contempt."

"No candidate is a Paul Wellstone"

During a conference call with rural supporters this week, Barack Obama claimed John Edwards hadn't "stood with Paul Wellstone" because of a vote on an agricultural amendment that Wellstone sponsored in 1999.

I don't think any of the current candidates should really compare themselves to Paul Wellstone, a man who epitomized political courage. But as a family farmer and nationwide / statewide family farm / Rural America advocate, I proudly endorsed Edwards because I think he has the most potential to bring Paul Wellstone's courageous principles into the White House and act upon them. It's for that reason that the AFL-CIO gave Edwards their Paul Wellstone Award in 2006. In contrast, Obama's closeness to big business and his accomodationist policy / issue philosophy makes a Wellstone connection quite questionable at this time.

Would Paul Wellstone have become the Senate's single biggest Democratic advocate of expanded subsidies to the coal industry that's driving the climate crisis? Would Paul Wellstone have voted, as Obama did, to allow credit card companies to raise interest rates over 30 percent? Would Paul Wellstone have supported expanding Nafta to Peru, sending Iowa jobs overseas? Would Paul Wellstone have taken so much money from hedge fund donors? Would Paul Wellstone have left millions of Americans out of his health care plan?

I knew Paul Wellstone. Paul Wellstone was a friend of mine. Some might be trying, but no one yet compares to Paul Wellstone's accomplished legacy in this election.