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Saturday, October 22, 2005

Here's where we show the Democratic Party the power of the netroots
Posted by Jill | 8:42 AM

I've just put up a link to ActBlue, where you can donate to some candidates I think are worthy of our support. This page was triggered by Paul Hackett's decision to run for Mike DeWine's Senate seat in Ohio.

Hackett is the Iraq war veteran who came within a hair's breadth of winning his staunchly Republican district's Congressional seat in a special election against a well-funded Republican wingnut. Now he's setting his sights on the Senate. His formal announcement.

This is one of those "it's his turn" cases, "him" being Rep. Sherrod Brown, who made no noises about running for the seat -- until Hackett started making noises that HE was going to run. Now Brown is forcing a primary, and the national Democratic Party is supporting him, on the grounds that "it's his turn."

This is exactly the kind of thinking that brought us the wonderful campaign of John Forbes Kerry, and the kind of thinking that's giving us here in New Jersey the bumbling gubernatorial campaign of Jon Corzine, who has managed to blow most of a 20-point lead by not running an aggressive campaign, instead deciding to rely on his greater name recognition. Corzine's support in the party led to the incumbent acting governor, Richard Codey, dropping out of the race, which is how we may very well end up with Governor Doug Forrester, since Codey is enormously popular in the state right now, with his appeal spanning both Republicans AND Democrats. So of course, the party instead chooses the party insider. Corzine is an insider with a solid progressive record, but he's an insider, and he's run a completely lackluster campaign so far.

Based on what I read from people in his district, Sherrod Brown is not a bad guy. But the fact that he only tossed his hat into the ring AFTER the race became competitive, and AFTER Paul Hackett tossed HIS in, tells me that Brown is yet another cautious Washington Democrat, very likely to cave into the peculiar conciliation towards the worst elements of Republican extremism that seems to be the hallmark of Washington Democrats.

I find the notion of "It's his turn" even more distressing. Back in 1984, a pre-scandal Gary Hart nearly overcame Walter Mondale in the presidential primary race to become the nominee, thanks to a grassroots campaign that presaged today's netroots. When it began to appear as if Hart might actually win this thing, the national party put more muscle behind Mondale, who became the nominee and lost soundly to the incumbent, Ronald Reagan. Does that sound familiar to those of you who don't remember 1984? It should, because if you substitute either the name "Dick Gephardt" or "John Kerry" for "Walter Mondale", and the name "Howard Dean" for "Gary Hart", you'll see that very little has changed, for all that said Howard Dean is now at least the titular head of the party.

I'm not saying that Paul Hackett, should he manage to fight the power and win the nomination and the Senate seat, is guaranteed to bring his no-bullshit style to the senior house of Congress. Last year it was another Midwesterner named Barack Obama who took the netroots by storm, and Obama has so far proven to be yet another cautious Democrat in practice. The same thing may very well happen to Paul Hackett if he manages to pull this off.

But what choice do we in Blogtopia really have? If we want to make this party stand for something, if we want to be better than the cronyism and greed that are the pillars of today's Republican agenda, guys like Sherrod Brown just aren't going to cut it. At least Hackett is unencumbered by hackery up to this point.

And that's why this New Jersey blogger is asking for support for Paul Hackett for Senate in Ohio.
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