Richardson lost my vote

Not that he was ever in the running with me, but hearing Gov. Bill Richardson’s responses to many of the questions at the Presidential Forum at the YearlyKos conference made me sour on the candidate with the best resume in the field. Here are my reasons in no particular order:

Reason 1: Justice Byron White. Richardson was asked why did he consider the Byron White as his ideal Supreme Court Justice given that he was anti-Roe and has a very mixed record on affirmative action. To his credit, the New Mexican Governor simply stated, he was wrong and that he regretted making that remark. That admission drew a loud round of applause. But then Richardson told an audience of 1,500 bloggers in a flippant manner that he only did so because he figured if Kennedy nominated Justice White, he must have been a good pick. This not only tells me he does not take the judiciary very seriously, but also that he is not do his homework before making serious statements.

Reason 2. Then he unequivocally came out for a balancing the budget amendment. I give him props for having the balls to do so. Of course, he prefaced his remarks about a budget amendment by assuring all of us that we would not like what he was about to say. He was right. In fact, he was roundly booed for it. Most discussions about balancing the budget usually results in cutting back on services to already underserved communities — i.e., the poor and people of color — while still beefing up military spending. Not a fan.

Reason 3. Hauling ass out of Iraq. I understand that Richardson thought he would acquire some street cred by articulating a strong anti-war position in front of a netroots crowd. But I felt as if he was either insulting my intelligence or being very careless in his thinking. “We have had 240,000 of our troops moving in and out of Kuwait in a very short period,” he said. “If it’s a question of logistics and leaving some equipment behind, I’m ready to probably leave some of our equipment behind.”

Umm…like what exactly? Like the stinger missiles, RPGs, rifles, and Lawd knows what else the U.S. left behind in Afghanistan once we hastily pulled out after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and we could Central Asia altogether because the Soviet Union collapsed. It does not take a defense expert to realize there is a lot of destructive equipment out there that any number of nefarious people could use to wreak more havoc. Just him floating this as a suggestion demonstrates a poor grasp of the issues.

I really wanted to give this cat a chance. But I don’t think he is serious about his own candidacy.