| I certainly don't want to make it a habit to link to conservative leaning websites, but in this case, Jack the blogger has well earned it. He pin-points the battlegrounds on which the Senate election of next year will be fought.
I have a few disagreements with him. I think his concern for Great Falls is a bit of personal bias. Tester's appeal among Veterans is growing, and that could heavily weight Cascade county. And I think he follows raw statistics a little too closely in the case of Stan Jones regarding Burns performance in Yellowstone County. Still, he doesn't succumb to what has become something of a pet-peeve of mine. Jack uses election statistics from 2006, but does not interpret 2012 purely through the lens of that election.
That would be the point of this post. Tester's detractors, right and left, tend to use 2006 as a baseline (pun greatly intended) for what will happen in next year's election. If I were to present the fact that since the passing of the 17th amendment, Montana has only elected 2 Republicans to the Senate, and that bodes well for Tester, most would see that trope for what it is. It is a pointless statistic, factual but irrelevant.
Many of the claims being made on blogs and in the news are similarly factual but irrelevant. The most egregious, of course, is that Tester only beat Burns by 3,562 votes. Be afraid of that tiny margin. No. Dennis Rehberg is not Conrad Burns, who by all accounts was far more amiable and likable than Rehberg is in person. (I personally can attest to that, though I abhor what Burns accomplished more than I laugh at what Rehberg has never done a damned thing of value.) Jon Tester was a newb challenging an incumbent. In this race, both Rehberg and Tester are incumbents in their own fashion, with Tester holding the seat in contest. There is no comparison with the vote tally of 2006, leading to 2012. None.
The second great trope is that Tester had a problem raising money in 2006. That's true. If not for Pearl Jam, and how I love them for this, Jon Tester's campaign would likely never have gotten off the ground. This election is much different. In the first several months of this year, Jon Tester has raised 1.5 million smackeroos. Dennis raised slightly more than $500,000, but put a lot of his own personal wealth into the campaign to report a war chest of over a million bucks. This bears no relation to 2006. What is surprising to me is the leftward reaction that Jon Tester is being bought for campaign dollars; that reaction coming angrily from the very people who cry loudly that they won't contribute to the Tester campaign until he becomes all and everything they expect. This, strangely enough, is one of the things that can adequately be compared to the election of 2006, in a particular sense. Jon Tester, an untried candidate, got the endorsement of Montana's large union organizations and padded his election campaign with their moneys. The AFL-CIO and other Montana unions are already fundraising for Tester's reelection. Strangely, this is discounted by those who wish to point out Tester's newly acquired corporate sponsors. I do wonder why. This is the sense in which the election of 2012 will have nothing to do with the election of 2006. Those who wish to point, and they are many, to Jon's money issues from the previous election had best be coherent enough to accept that money won't be the problem this year.
The state has changed. As Jack the blogger points out, certain counties are predictable. I'm not nearly as convinced as he is. In 2006, Gallatin County and Missoula county over performed. In 2010, Butte-Silver Bow and Deerlodge county radically underperformed. So did Gallatin. In 2010, Montana took a very hard turn to the right. This cannot be expected to continue. What is clearly dissimilar from 2006 to 2012 is that 2006 was an off-year election. 2012 isn't. We will be voting for Governor, we will be voting for statewide offices and we will be voting for the President of the US. More to the point, many will be voting for state legislative office based on the pathetic performance of the 2011 legislature. Turnout will be radically different from 2006. Comparisons from those hoping to promote the foolish fantasy of voter fraud, or those concern trolling about Jon Tester, will get swept away in the actual vote of 2012. We will find out which Montanans care, and which don't.
I hope that most of the progressives in the state give up the idea that Jon Tester's support is based on a minimal constituency given 2006. He may win, he may not. But the apples v. oranges thing is getting really old. The future is what it is, and we can affect it. Or we can rely on poor comparisons to the past. Your choice, of course. |
