Hmm, I wonder if Hillary or Obama will be willing to get out of the way for a Nader campaign? Isn’t that what Anthony Pollina’s asking the Vermont Dems to do for him in his race for governor? I tell you, he must have bought a lot of people a cup of coffee during all his time at the coffee shops because – for some reason – people keep taking him seriously. Pollina is clearly the Teflon-wrapped loser of Vermont electoral politics. He just keeps losing and being nothing more than mediocre in his non-electoral endeavors but the media and his Prog sycophants keep drinking from his well. Perhaps that’s his greatest achievement: Doing very little other than basically hanging around but still being taken seriously. Not a bad gig – albeit boring after the first couple of decades.

Take Pollina’s current campaign for governor. After getting barrels full of ink for months with his little game “considering,” “thinking,” “intending” to challenge Gov. Douglas, Pollina has now announced that he’s raised more than $100,000 for his campaign. Great. Nice work. But what about the issues? Not a peep. I’ve read more about his haircut than his stand on any of the major issues.

I’m sorry, if you’ve been considering, thinking and intending to run for the state’s highest elected office for months and then raise $100,000 to do it, I would hope your single source of communicating with the voters would look better than this. Go ahead and click on his campaign website and see for yourself: The only function working there is the function to provide your credit card number and give him cash. Issues? None. Bio? None. Vision? Zero.

Wasn’t Pollina the one who understandably complained about the fixation the two big parties had with raising money? Yes, he was. And he once believed in campaign finance reform and public financing of elections – until, that is, it got in the way of his own political ambitions. Boy, oh boy, how times change. With convictions like these, who needs a third party?

I remember when the Pollina who gleefully gobbled up $300,000 of the taxpayers’ money to run for lite-guv in 2002 spoke about how insidious it was that candidates from the two major parties would build financial war chests to scare away the electoral competition. Oh well, never mind about that Pollina. Because the new one is now all for sucking up the cash, making it the focal point of his early campaign and trying to scare away the competition that seems all too scared of its own shadow anyway.

I guess I’m just old fashioned but I always thought a progressive or populist campaign would seek to highlight the issues and rally the people – not just their checkbooks. But, so far, Pollina’s campaign has made it clear that unless you’ve got a credit card and a willingness to just blindly believe that he’ll do and say the right things on the issues, it’s got no use for you.

Hey Tony, nice haircut. Now how about putting your thinking cap on and serving up some actual position papers, policy statements, visions, etc. And, please, update that website already. Or are you just waiting for the voters to visit with you at the coffee shop?