Here's an idea for Patrick:

Sell an income tax cut to people by advocating a change in law (constitution?) to get rid of the flat tax in MA. If you made it a progressive income tax you could give most people a big tax cut by creating more tax brackets without losing revenue.

So instead of having one tax bracket at 5.3% that everyone has to pay, you have say 5 tax brackets, starting at 2.5% and then working up to 10%, with low income people dropping off the roles. That way, middle class people get a tax cut, and the revenue for the government is collected more fairly across incomes. You could end up actually increasing revenues if it's structured right.
 

I had the great pleasure of voting for Deval Patrick in the primary this morning, and I hope that I can vote for him again in November.  He has a solid lead in recent primary polls and last I saw has a fair lead against the Repub candidate.  

(The Repub candidate is kinda ho-hum, and is saddled with the legacy of being Lt. Gov. to Mass Gov. Romney.  Romney -- on top of being a not-very-good governor -- has spent the past couple of years travelling around the country bashing his own state, in the deluded impression that he's got a shot at the Presidency.)

The Des Moines Register story is at best taking Warner's statements out of context. There's an AP story that gives a better take on the Governor's remarks.

He wasn't endorsing Bush's irresponsible fiscal policy or his tax cuts. He was critiquing Kerry's campaign strategy and making implicit comparisons with the way he sold a progressive budget package in Virginia. From the Register:

"Warner said wealthier Americans may be willing to support what would essentially be an income-tax increase, but only if it is portrayed as part of a fiscal strategy that includes trimming government waste and curbing spending."

That's what Warner did in Virginia. As the hotline blog pointed out:

He took that approach in Virginia, although the state legislature wouldn't submit to an increase in income tax rates. Instead, a coalition of Republicans and Democrats gave Warner a slight tick up in the sales tax and a boost in the cigarette tax. It raised about $1 billion in revenue. The acquiescence of Republicans and voters in one of the most distinctly anti-tax states in the union suggests to some analysts that voters nationally are more willing to pay more if they can taste how the increased revenue will help them educate their children or drive customers to their businesses.

For the record Warner proposed tax increases on the wealthiest Virginians and tax cuts for more than 64% of the population but he couldn't get that passed. He's not just a verbal critic of the Bush approach, he's taken the opposite approach while in office.

The AP puts Governor Warner's remarks into a fuller context :

Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner courted business leaders Monday, arguing Democrats must move beyond their "traditional family" and saying the Bush administration has given them a rare shot at doing just that.

"It's hard for me to find a business person today and look them in the eye and describe how this administration in Washington is fiscally conservative, or how this administration in Washington can put together a reasonable balance sheet for our country," Warner said.

Warner met over breakfast with leaders of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, a coalition of key business leaders that leans Republican but has occasionally been swayed by Democrats. He argued that an ideologically driven agenda in Washington doesn't make sense from a bottom-line perspective.

"I think this community understands we're in a knowledge-based economy, but we've got a crowd in Washington that rejects stem cell research, rejects global warming," said Warner. "That doesn't move our country forward."

And then there's this quote that my colleague at Forward Together, Lars Anderson caught on tape but which didn't make the papers:

With regards to the Bush tax cuts, in a time of war, to give the most successful in our country a tax break is not morally right and not economically right.

Eric's campaigning to replace Patterson (Spitzer's running mate and the next Lt. Gov.) as head of the Democrats in the state senate, right? Do you have any sense of how that race is going?

Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner courted business leaders Monday, arguing Democrats must move beyond their "traditional family".....

Democrats have been moving beyond (i.e. ignoring) their traditional family (i.e. base voters) for more than a decade of defeat.

Democrats like Warner need to move beyond pandering to Republicans since it's a proven path to failure in most instances.

Its true that Schneiderman has amazing charisma and perhaps you are right to use the word Clintonian. However I recall a great line he's said time and again about where the DLCers were wrong. He says "You can't beat a movement through triangulation, you can only beat a movement with another movement".

The ex-Virginia governor claims Democrats could appeal to more voters if they'd stop alienating the wealthy.

Yawn, whatever. There are plenty of liberal rich people, who will always vote for the democrats.  You could maybe swing like 3% of the rich, and that's like what, 0.05% of the population?

The rich affect policies with their pocketbooks, not their votes.