As fun as it is to poke fun at Harold Ford—and there’s plenty to poke fun at—his candidacy is seriously dangerous. He is basically running as the candidate of the deracinated overclass, people who aren’t from anywhere but want to run things everywhere.



Over at the Daily Beast, Peter Beinart explains:

The American system has its problems, to be sure. It encourages provincialism, a focus on the local rather than national interest. But it also produces a certain rough-hewn populism. Voters expect you to know and care about the places they live, even if those places aren’t glamorous or globally significant. And they expect you to be able to relate the things you believe to the place you’re from.



Harold Ford Jr. is taking a blowtorch to all that. He knows nothing about New York. What he knows about is the American overclass, a large chunk of which happens to reside in the Empire State. His campaign is the brainchild, in large measure, of rich donors who went searching for someone to run against interim Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. His economic agenda consists of defending Washington’s bailout of Wall Street, proposing a large corporate tax cut, and opposing caps on executive pay. “I’m a capitalist,” Ford explained, in justifying his position on executive pay. “I believe that people take risk, and there are rewards if they do well; they should lose if they don’t.” This from a man reportedly earning close to $1 million a year from an investment bank bailed out at taxpayer expense.



Ford’s candidacy is a dystopic vision of the political future, a future in which the American overclass dispatches its young into the provinces armed with so much money that it doesn’t matter that they know nothing about the place they’re supposed to represent. Let’s hope that Ford’s candidacy fails spectacularly. New York needs representation in the United States Senate; the Regency Hotel does not.

Actually, you should go read the entire Beinart piece at the Daily Beast, which is quite funny.