Thanks Walter, But no Thanks...

Earlier today Jim Geraghty looked at the endorsements some current candidates are getting that they would be better off without:

Door Number One: NARAL’s statement that electing Rudy Giuliani ‘would help’ their movement?

Door Number Two: The Log Cabin Republicans’ ad praising Mitt Romney’s ‘Massachusetts Values’?

Door Number Three: Mike Huckabee’s kudos from Andy Stern's Change to Win union group?

What, no formation of a 527 group called “Hollywood Elites for Fred Thompson”?

Who would have thought the next item on that list would come from the Democratic side?

Mondale to Endorse Clinton

Former Vice President Walter Mondale, the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee, is planning to endorse Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), The Hill has learned.

Mondale’s endorsement could prove especially valuable in Iowa, which borders his home state of Minnesota. Mondale won Iowa overwhelmingly in the ’84 primary.

Remember though, Walter Mondale's last foray into politics was his embarrassing loss to Norm Coleman in the 2002 Senate race in Minnesota -- a race he entered only after the death of Paul Wellstone. Running as a legacy candidate -- and as someone who agreed with just about everything Wellstone stood for -- few thought Mondale could lose -- but he did.

Further, doesn't this serve to reinforce the idea that Hillary is little more than a throwback, tax-raising, big-government-loving liberal in the mold of well, Walter Mondale? And is that a good thing, when it's starting to become clear -- more than a year before the election -- that today's Democratic party is beginning to look a lot like the Mondale/Dukakis party?

It’s obvious from watching congressional Democrats and the party’s presidential candidates that they have decided the political environment has changed dramatically since Bill Clinton told the country that the era of big government was over.

They are again offering spending programs and calling for measures that would lead to tax increases of the type that they began shying away from after the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress.

They changed their ways after 1994 for some time, of course, because voters had made clear that they thought government was doing too many things with too much tax money. It was that realization that led a contrite Clinton to make clear in his annual State of the Union address that he, and his party, understood.

But, clearly, times have changed. Democrats are not only offering up programs that would enlarge the reach of the federal government and collect more money from taxpayers, but they’re doing so enthusiastically, confident the American people are on their side.

It's nice of Hillary to bravely embrace the 1970s style liberalism.