An article Democrat Chris Coons wrote for his college newspaper may not go over so well in corporation-friendly Delaware, where he already faces an uphill battle for Vice President Joe Biden's old Senate seat.I thought conventional wisdom said Delaware was now solidly in the Dem column? Has it moved already?
The title? "Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist."
That might tend to move it this year. It would have fallen flat in 2008.
In the article, Coons, then 21 years old and about to graduate from Amherst College, chronicled his transformation from a sheltered, conservative-minded college student who had worked for former GOP Delaware Sen. William Roth and had campaigned for Ronald Reagan in 1980 into a cynical young adult who was distrustful of American power and willing to question the American notion of free enterprise.
To all of which he's going to reply that it was 15 years ago, when he was young and stoopid. Now he's older and wiser and he led the fight© for clean water and good jobs and smooth roads and a chicken in every pot and whatever else is dear to Delawareans' hearts.
Coons, the New Castle County executive who is running against GOP Rep. Michael Castle for the state's open Senate seat, wrote of his political evolution in the May 23, 1985, edition of the Amherst Student.
I don't think they let you graduate from Amherst if you're not at least a socialist, do they?
The source of his conversion, Coons wrote, was a trip to Kenya he took during the spring semester of his junior year--a time away from America, he wrote, that served as a "catalyst" in altering a conservative political outlook that he was growing increasingly uncomfortable with.