Is the Democratic Party trying to commit suicide?

[No Elephants]

I am beside myself.

I hope this WAPO story about the Maine race for Olympia Snowe's U.S. Senate seat is not true.

It says that the Democrats were not going to support the Democratic candidate because the Indie candidate was polling well ahead of the Teabagger Republican candidate.

The Democrats just assumed that the Indie would win and then caucus with them, even though he said publicly that he had not decided whether he would caucus with Democrats or with Republicans if he won.

:wtf:


No, really, :wtf:

Recently, though, the Teabagger is catching up with the Indie, so the DNC is first going to back the Democrat with an ad buy. Meanwhile, the other two candidates have quite the head start.

Geez. After all the talk about how desperate the Democrats are to hang onto the majority in the Senate, this is what I read today?

Thank heaven Akin put his foot in his mouth in Missouri about "legitimate abortion." At least that made me fairly confident McCaskill would keep her seat, but this story is beyond insane.

As The Fix’s Aaron Blake wrote Thursday, the Maine Senate race has become a tricky situation for national Democrats. Convinced that King would caucus with the Democrats if elected (even though he has not ever publicly said he would), party strategists have taken a hands-off approach and have all but ignored Democratic nominee Cynthia Dill.

Maine Democratic Party Chairman Ben Grant penned an op-ed in the Portland Press-Herald Friday expressing his support for Dill and questioning those who have opted to believe King will automatically caucus with the Democratic party if elected.

“He says he doesn’t plan to caucus with anyone or that he hasn’t decided. I’m choosing to believe that he’s telling the truth, and that caucusing with the Republicans is a legitimate consideration for him. That alone is a disqualifier for me and many Democrats,” Grant wrote.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee and other outside groups have spent $1.5 million boosting Summers, and recent polling in the race shows that it’s having an effect, as the well-known former governor’s once commanding lead has shrunk over Summers, who is running in second.

“It’s remarkable to see national Democrats now spending money in a state where they refuse to even endorse their own nominee,” NRSC Executive Director Rob Jesmer said in a statement.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/09/28/national-democrats-to-hit-the-airwaves-in-maine-senate-race/?wprss=rss_politics






The focus of the DSCC spot will say a lot about the posture Democrats intend to adopt in the coming weeks. The launch of the buy is also an implicit acknowledgement that Summers is gaining in the polls.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/09/28/national-democrats-to-hit-the-airwaves-in-maine-senate-race/?wprss=rss_politics

[No Elephants]

1. Sorry I messed up the OP. It was supposed to end after the first link.

Since it's there by mistake, it should at least be in quotes, but it is too late to edit.

Meanwhile, is it still important to elect Democrats? The DNC and the current head of the Party seem to think that ain't necessarily so. Lieberman, Crist, Chafee (Gov), Specter, and now King. And those are only the ones that (a) I know about and (2) leap immediately to mind.

In how many less publicized races did local or national Democrats decide that the Indie, or the Republican running as an indie because he or she could not get the Republican nomination, would be just as good, and perhaps preferable, to the Democratic candidate?

If the DNC and the head of our party don't think it matters much if the Democrat gets elected, or even prefer the DINO, Indy or Republican, how am I supposed to care?

Ponder this: if the DNC were a DU poster, it would have given DU2 grounds for banning several times by now.

[Enthusiast]

2. FWIW, I understand

that the GOP now considers the Akin race viable. They have decided to re-support Akin. And the polls are now showing him to be competitive!

In all honesty, I think the last thing the President and the DNC wants is a real Democratic majority. I don't mean your fake Democratic majority like in 2008, I mean a real Democratic majority where they would have to reform the election process and rein in Wall Street and the military industrial complex.

[No Elephants]

3. As of a couple of weeks ago, McCaskill was up by 9 points.

Originally, many in the Repub. Party decided to cut him loose--no endorsements, no dollars, etc. (Much as Democrats treated Martha Coakley when she ran against Scott Brown, now that I think about it, though, after the fact, the DNC denied having cut her loose.)

But, they apparently have reconsidered now. Romney's dim prospects for gaining the Oval Office may have something to do with that. So, they are funding Akin now. How many of them will want to associate their faces with his is yet to be determined.

I don't know whether they are funding him because they consider him viable or because they hope funding will make him viable. Perhaps that is a distinction without a difference, though.

There was a time, say 1919 C.E., when women of both Parties would definitely have voted for McCaskill under these circumstance. But, Democrats have for decades let evangelicals teach people that Jesus wants everyone to vote Republican and wants women to submit to their husbands in all things without offering any different view.

Aargggh.

In all honesty, I think the last thing the President and the DNC wants is a real Democratic majority. I don't mean your fake Democratic majority like in 2008, I mean a real Democratic majority where they would have to reform the election process and rein in Wall Street and the military industrial complex.

That's fair and, I think, very true. However, they are in no danger whatever of a majority of real Democrats in Congress. Right now, I cannot think of a single Democratic Senator I would put in that category any longer and Progressive Caucus has gone from over 100 members in 2006 to around 70 now and even its members end up voting neoliberal. Moreover, many of them are aging out or redistricted out. (I used to make a possible exception for Franken, but then he knocked me for a loop by voting against food stamps.)

So, I think that the very last thing they want is any kind of Democratic majority, especially a sixty vote Senate caucus majority. Either would make it harder to explain certain things away with "Republican obstructionism."