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Potential Senate hopeful Harold Ford Jr. compared Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to a boss-controlled "parakeet."

SCOTT BROWN’S victory last week in the Massachusetts Senate race, following the Republican gubernatorial triumphs in New Jersey and Virginia, marked the third time in three months that the Democratic Party has lost the support and trust of independent voters. The message these voters sent was clear. With one out of five Americans unemployed or underemployed, President Obama and the Democratic Party need to shift attention away from health care and toward a bold effort to create jobs, improve the economy and rein in the size of government. Here are four simple steps we must take immediately to put us,...

Here is video of Don Imus today talking with Frank Rich of the New York Times, where Imus called Democrat Harold Ford Jr. a "gutless weasel." Imus said Ford had once been a friend of his program, but after Imus "got in some trouble," Imus indicated he feels Ford "abandoned" him. Ford's name came up because he is considering a run for the U.S. Senate in New York, and Frank Rich had asked if Ford had even been to all the burroughs of New York. . . . (VIDEO)

Many New York Democratic insiders are privately speculating that if the Democrats face a Martha Coakley loss - or near-loss - in Massachusetts to GOPer Scott Brown in tomorrow's senate election, it increases the odds of a Harold Ford Jr. candidacy. The logic, several longtime Democratic strategists and insiders said, is that if Coakley loses such a blue state - and the seat held by Ted Kennedy, one of the senate's most liberal members, for nearly 50 years - then it spells trouble for other Dem incumbents in the fall. Rep. Charles Rangel, a firm Kirsten Gillibrand backer, dismissed any...

NEW YORK — "Are you a New Yorker?" It was the evening of Jan. 11, and Chris Matthews was on MSNBC asking what many in this city wanted to know about Harold Ford Jr. "I live in New York," the former Congressman from Memphis answered. "My wife and I plan to start and raise a family there. I pay taxes there, and once you pay taxes there, you feel like a New Yorker." "But are you a New Yorker?" Matthews pressed. "I am." "You're a New Yorker?" Matthews continued. "Say, 'I am a New Yorker.'" "I am a New Yorker,"...

Despite talk about a possible run for the U.S. Senate seat in New York, former Memphis Congressman Harold E. Ford Jr. still lists a condo on South Front Street as his home. He shows the Downtown address as his primary residency on records with the Shelby County Election Commission. And he last cast a ballot in Shelby County during the November 2008 presidential election. "He voted at an early-voting site for the November 2008 general election," Shelby County Election Administrator Richard Holden confirmed Tuesday. Holden said election records indicate that Ford has listed 415 S. Front, Unit 12, as his...

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said yesterday that Harold Ford Jr. has every right to challenge Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand because "this is a democracy." "Do people have a right to run? The answer is yes," said Cuomo, when asked about the possibility of the Tennessee transplant taking on the poll-challenged upstater in a Democratic primary. "Debate can be a good thing . . . This is a democracy, the last time I checked," said Cuomo, who himself is feeling mounting pressure from black leaders such as former Mayor David Dinkins, Rep. Charles Rangel and Gov. Paterson's dad, Basil, not to challenge...

Developing NYT LEAD WED.... Harold Ford Jr. is serious about challenging Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for the Democratic nomination, against wishes of party leaders... Developing... ***'If I am elected senator from New York, Harry Reid will not instruct me how to vote'***... An insider says 'There has been no decision' about a run...

WASHINGTON — The White House made it clear on Monday that it opposed the prospect of Harold E. Ford Jr.’s running for the United States Senate in New York, even as Mr. Ford, the former Tennessee congressman, showed no signs of being deterred. The remarks from the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, were the first offered by the Obama administration since Mr. Ford said last week that he was seriously considering challenging Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand in this fall’s Democratic primary. Mr. Gibbs said that the administration backed Ms. Gillibrand, who was appointed last January to fill the seat...

This is what happens when you try to please everybody. In other words, this is what happens when politicians get distilled down to their most basic essence. Kirsten Gillibrand was a perfectly legitimate — if somewhat obscure — member of Congress. She represented her district in upstate New York ably, bucking her party’s left-wing leadership when their policies ran afoul of her more sensible constituents. Her honorable independence from party leaders earned her appreciation from voters back home and applause from groups that don’t normally like Democrats.

If Harold Ford Jr. runs for Senate in New York, he just might face questions about comments reportedly made by his father describing his hometown of Memphis as a "Christian city" during a 2006 diatribe against a Jewish House candidate. The "Christian city" comment wasn't major news in Tennessee at the time, but it's likely to resonate in New York, home to the country's biggest and most politically active Jewish populations. Ford Jr. wasn't in the crowd at the time, but the comment was published in the alt weekly Memphis Flyer. Ford Sr. — speaking at a rally for Ford...

Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid reached out to Mayor Bloomberg today to urge him not to get behind former congressman Harold Ford Jr., if the Tennessee transplant decides to take on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in a primary, sources told The Post. The conversation came the same day that Bloomberg's 2009 campaign manager Bradley Tusk and his pollster, Doug Schoen, had lunch with Ford, sources said. Reid placed the call after reports that Bloomberg was open to backing Ford - who's seriously weighing a challenge to Gillibrand - against the junior senator, who was appointed to her post last year...

Harold Ford Jr. Weighs a Challenge to Gillibrand By MICHAEL BARBARO January 5, 2010 Encouraged by a group of influential New York Democrats, Harold Ford Jr., the former congressman from Tennessee, is weighing a bid to unseat Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand in this fall’s Democratic primary, according to three people who have spoken with him. Mr. Ford, 39, who moved to New York three years ago, has told friends that he will decide whether to run in the next 45 days. The discussions between Mr. Ford and top Democratic donors reflect the dissatisfaction of some prominent party members with Ms....

Encouraged by a group of influential New York Democrats, Harold Ford Jr., the former congressman from Tennessee, is weighing a bid to unseat Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand in this fall’s Democratic primary, according to three people who have spoken with him. Mr. Ford, 39, who moved to New York three years ago, has told friends that he will decide whether to run in the next 45 days. The discussions between Mr. Ford and top Democratic donors reflect the dissatisfaction of some prominent party members with Ms. Gillibrand, who has yet to win over key constituencies, especially in New York City....

According to MSNBC's Chris Matthews, if Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford loses Tuesday, you can blame it on white conservatives. On Sunday morning, as he appeared in a segment hosted by Alex Witt, Matthews chided whites for an unwillingness to vote for black politicians, contending that "blacks vote for whites," but "whites don't vote for blacks." Matthews added that in states with large black populations, fear leads whites to become conservative Republicans. Matthews: "The larger the black population, where the whites are afraid historically, and in Deep South states, they tend to become very conservative Republican out of fear, whatever,...

On Tuesday night former Representative Harold Ford, now chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, said that Democrats would win in 2008 “because the country needs a change”. That got me wondering just what changes the Democrats would have in mind for us if they won. Since the Bush policies led us out of the Clinton recession of 2000 and also the post 9/11 crash, and resulted in seven years of growth, prosperity and record-breaking, continuous low unemployment, would the Democrat changes reverse this record? Or how about the trillion dollar tax increase that the Chairman of the Democrat-controlled Ways and...

We ended the last century with America's economic might at its zenith, with Americans at their most optimistic, and with nearly all who endeavored to make the most of their opportunities and talents getting ahead in life. John F. Kennedy's declaration that a rising tide will lift all boats was alive and well. Middle-class Americans generate little or no national savings. We've had four straight years of rising productivity and falling incomes. Many Americans are earning less, while the costs of a middle-class life have soared: In the last five years, college costs are up 50 percent, health care up...

"They'll find their way back to the middle. And if they don't, they won't win." So says a blunt Harold Ford Jr., chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, of his party's current crop of presidential candidates. The question is just how many would-be Democratic presidents recognize the wisdom of his words. Mr. Ford is in a feisty mood throughout our chat, as well he might be given the shelling his group has recently endured at the keyboards of the far left. Skip back 15 years, and the DLC stood as the proud architect of Bill Clinton's "New Democrat" campaign victory....

The much ballyhooed debate on "Meet the Press" between former Congressman Harold Ford Jr. and Markos Moulitsas, publisher of the liberal Daily Kos website, was instructive for what it revealed about both the divisions in the Democratic Party and the underlying disingenuousness of both factions. Ford was defending the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), an organization that holds itself out as centrist, urges the Democratic Party to move in that direction, and proudly claims former President Bill Clinton as its most honored member. Moulitsas was there to represent the more leftist wing of the party, which has used his website to...

ONE woman's not enough for 37-year-old bachelor Harold Ford Jr.. The former Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Tennessee was holed up at Blue Ribbon Sushi on Sullivan Street with three blondes on Wednesday night. "They all stayed until 2 a.m. singing and dancing, and he was pretty tipsy," one onlooker snickered.