Via Atrios, referencing Mother Jones, comes an anecdote about Paul Hackett, who seems very much like my kind of Democrat - someone with a backbone who isn’t ashamed of who he is or what he believes in.
I think he’s absolutely right on that last note. Furthermore, Democrats need to routinely step up and fight for issues they believe in if they want others to step in to fight alongside them.
On a tangential note, and not that they will all be Hackett-like candidates, there are a large number of veterans running for office. Here’s a list, in case you are interested in supporting one.
My first thought, cynic that I am, was whether the heckler was a Democratic plant. That’s what I would have done.
But you’re right that Hackett’s an interesting Democratic candidate here in Ohio. Brown might have SOME chance of beating him in the primary, sure, but I think DeWine is pretty worried about facing a veteran who’s for Ohio and against the war and nearly beat Schmidt in one of the more conservative big-cities in the country.
I admit that thought crossed my mind as well. It doesn’t really fit with the way he comports himself otherwise (call me naive), and if it was a setup and he was able to appear “still steamed” an hour later, he’s got fairly good acting chops.
Rather than approach something like this with the hand-wringing that Democrats have become accustomed to (“Was it real?” “Is it a bad political move?” “Will we be seen as hot-tempered?”) I think, instead, we should start expecting our Democrats to actually be stand-up people, and kick them to the curb when they are not.
I can’t very well argue with that. I’m not exactly a democrat booster, myself. But standing up for yourself and damned to the consequences isn’t a bad tactic.
Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid leaned on him to quit the race so Sherrod Brown could run. They wanted him to reprise his House run instead. When he refused to do that, they started going after his doners, and pretty much left him no choice.
At this point, Paul Hackett doesn’t know if he is just out of the race, or out of politics for good.
As far as I know, he’s said he’s out of politics for good. I was very disappointed to hear this. I’m of two minds on the whole thing. First, while it probably makes sense to strategically place resources, I think the political machinations of the Democratic party have been, in recent years, pretty much failures. I’m inclined to believe him and feel that the party leaders should go screw themselves.
On the other hand, if he really wanted to run in the Senate race, he should have run in the Senate race. He’s supposed to be able to stand up to anyone - surely he could stand up to the Democratic party. Seems a bit like a pouty “taking my ball and going home” act, and not at all like the person I had understood him to be. Very disappointing all around.
To a point I agree with you Hentor, but do you think he could have realistically ran a campaign with the party leaders calling his donors and telling them to stop supporting him? Campaigns cost a lot of money and if his donors dried up, he would be dead in the water.
I do wish he hadn’t said he was giving up politics completely. He is the kind of person that we need to have in office.