Markos, grappling with last night's Massachusetts returns, cites Montana Democrats (and alludes to, I believe, our flat-topped Senator) as another example of hard-to-believe victories achieved, by part, by sheer hard work:In 2006, while researching Democratic gains in Red Montana, I asked a couple of state legislators how they won their tough races. I was looking for the magic message, but instead got a mundane answer: they knocked on doors. Lots of them. And they put tens of thousands of miles on their pickup trucks.
That's the strategy we saw in reverse in indigo-Blue Massachusetts -- a Republican who downplayed his GOP badge while putting in thousands of miles on his pickup truck. 200,000 of them.
Teddy never took his voters for granted, no matter how big an icon he was in the state. Brown didn't take them for granted either. He was aggressive, engaged, effective, and ... lucky as all shit. It's not every day you get to go up against a candidate who takes everything for granted, neglects to negatively define you, and heads out for vacation while the race is still on. Yesterday, a few hours before the race in Massachusetts was called, I was at the campaign announcement of Bryce Bennett. Bryce is a long-time friend and (full disclosure) currently a co-worker at Forward Montana. He's also among the hardest working people I know in politics. He's been out knocking doors in January in a strongly Democratic district (almost as Democratic as Massachusetts) despite a lack of filed opponents.
Why? Because that's what voters deserve. A lot of Scott Brown's voters probably disagreed with him on a bunch of policy issues. He will, soon, be among the most unpopular members of the U.S. Senate or a deep disappointment to the Tea Party crowd that elected him. But for at least a while, he was the only candidate in the game who appeared to give a damn what voters thought.
Separately, I have absolutely no patience for the Democrats in Washington, DC, who are now ready to throw in the towel on health care reform in the name of the Massachusetts results. This is a serious mistake for a number of reasons, both policy-wise and politically. Policy-wise because even the Senate bill is a significant improvement over the status quo. Politically because the last thing Democrats need to indicate to the country is that they, once again, have no substantive principles for which they'll risk their careers.
If the Democrats turn from this setback, weeping and scared, and crawl in a cave and become the part of 2003 again, there's a whole lot of us who will be more than ready to abandon ship. And for me it won't be because I didn't get single-payer or whatever else, my-way-or-the-highway bullshit, it will be because America needs a party capable of governing. The Republicans have proven they can't be trusted. The Democrats have one more year to make their case. |
