Why Jon Keller is repulsive and the Warren campaign should never have allowed him to moderate.

[No Elephants]

I mentioned local Boston political commentator Jon Keller in connection with his being the moderator of the first Warren-Brown debate.

Thanks to the reddening of PBS during the Bush years, the late Andy Rooney's daughter, Emily Rooney, has at least two shows on WGBH, our main public broadcasting channel. One of them involves a panel discussion to which Jon Keller was added in recent years.

The panel was discussing the charges about the host of a children's show on BBC having allegedly molesting hundreds of children during his career on the BBC.

Here was Keller's first comment. (Italics indicate where he lowered his voice to a barely audible level and spoke very quickly and bold indicates where he raised his voice to a near shout.)

"The Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, the BBC, some of our (in the case of the BBC) most progressive institutions.

First of all, what makes the BBC a progressive organization in the context of England as a whole? If anything, it's probably relative conservative.

Second, the BBC was only one of the three organizations he named. The majority of the three are decidedly conservative, at least in the U.S.

He does craven, dishonest things like that all the time.

As you may recall, I reported that his very first question in this important first debate was about Warren's alleged Native American heritage, which he framed in terms of a character issue. And then let Scott Brown pound that issue, which had at that point, been Brown's biggest charge against Warren, until the first break.

Had I been in the Warren campaign, I would never have agreed to him as a moderator, certainly not of the first debate.

Contrast that with the Brown campaign, which flatly turned down the Kennedy Senate Center as a debate venue unless Vicki Kennedy would agree not to endorse Warren.

Democrats always congratulate themselves on being so much smarter than Republicans. I certainly believe that Warren is smarter than Brown. But, when it comes to organization building and strategy, I have to hand it to Republicans. Sadly, I also have to hand it to Republicans when it comes to "the Southern strategy" and dirty tricks.

I guess forty years of Democratic control of Congress (thank you Franklin, Eleanor, Jack, Lyndon, New Deal, New Frontier and Great Society)made them desperate. And spiritually downright ugly.