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Landrieu Out as Palm Beach County Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner

Palm Beach County in Florida takes baby steps toward party discipline:

Democratic Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu is out as keynote speaker for the Palm Beach County Democratic Party’s annual fund-raising dinner next week because party leaders dislike her stance on health care reform, county Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel said today.

Siegel says “We just didn’t want to have a keynote speaker who’s not committed to cloture. It would have just been wrong.” Probably not the most devastating blow to a politician’s career, but good to see someone’s paying attention. Also this:

The Democrats’ annual dinner — formerly known as the Jefferson-Jackson dinner but this year rebranded as the Truman-Kennedy-Johnson dinner — is Nov. 14 at the Palm Beach County Convention Center.

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Wouldn’t it make sense to change the name of these annual dinners on a permanent basis? The policies of Andrew Jackson’s administration — opposition to central banking, Indian removal, slavery, etc. — have very little to do with the modern-day Democratic Party. Something like a Roosevelt-Kennedy dinner would invoke historical figures while also invoking a recognizable predecessor of the contemporary policy agenda.