Remember when Dan Onorato called Gov. Ed Rendell his “mentor“?
Well, that mentor is spending his last few weeks in office pushing the president’s latest stimulus idea: a half-trillion-dollar, six-year infrastructure plan to replace railways, roads, airports, and electric grids.
“This is the single best job creation we can do for this country,” Mr. Rendell said of the plan. “It puts people back to work.”
Ray LaHood, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, sought to strike a populist note, saying “There are no Democratic or Republican bridges or roads.”
Ed Rendell is no longer well liked in Pennsylvania. His approval is below 40 percent, and in that sense, not only is Dan Onorato at a disadvantage as a Democrat in an anti-Democrat year, but he’s cast himself, in some sense, as a philosophical protege of a man who many now revile.
And the more time Ed Rendell spends in front of cameras in advance of Election Day, the more Dan Onorato risks alienating potential voters displeased by a party seen as promoting more of the same.
Stimulus projects can create jobs in the short term, but the debt incurred lingers for the long term.