This is exactly what I am worried about

Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate endorses Kelo

...Calls Kelo Decision "A Positive"

Harold Ford Jr., a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Tennessee, has endorsed the Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. New London, allowing local governments to seize private property and give it to another private owner for purposes of econonmic development and to increase the government's tax revenue.

Does the Democratic party have some sort of death wish? Is it sleep-walking toward yet another cliff? Can't it see a wedge issue when it stands up and is about to hit it over the head? And does Ford really believe that  eminent domain helps economic development? Probably not -- in fact he may very well have never even thought about the issue. Perhaps he is just going along with conventional thinking in the Democratic Party echelons. And I guess that's my fear.

The Party needs to come up with a principled way to deal with the issue -- it likes activist government willing to step in and solve all problems. But must it insist on using eminent domain against people's homes? So that it can transfer the property to a business? A business such as a major league baseball team? That's what Republicans do.

Comments

[JRoth]

I've been quite vocal on this issue, so I want to be clear on this point:

While I think that claims (elsewhere) that this will be the biggest wedge issue EVER are beyond overwrought, I do think it would be foolish for the national Dem. Party to identify itself with this ruling. The optics of it are poor, and are especially poor for the putative party of the little guy. It will never be the little guy buying out the big guy. While I would argue that there are enough potential benefits to the big guy buying out the little guy to justify leaving the tool in the shed, I would never offer blanket support to the big guy.

Indeed, if I ever get my big Kelo post written at my blog, one of the things I'll make clear is that I've generally opposed ED implementation in my region. 9 times out of 10, I would probably oppose Kelo-style ED (maybe more). But I simply don't believe that the tool should be discarded by SCOTUS on principle, rather than chosen or rejected by local government based on appropriateness to a specific situation.

[Bellman]

JRoth: Going the other way on Kelo would not have constituted SCOTUS "discarding" the tool. Eminient domain would continue to be in the toolshed. It would simply not have been expanded in this way to allow a great deal of the benefit of the property seizure to remain purely private. "Economic spillover" is not sufficient reason.