How many canidates will the Democrats field like Hackett in the next election?
1-3 would probably be a good guess.
There is the flaw in your observation, which I think is mostly wishful thinking on your part. Sorry, defeat is never a victory....not in war, love or politics.
I almost won her heart and soul, so I expect hot sex tomorrow.
I almost won the battle, so I know the war is won.
I almost won the district, so Hillary will reign in '08
Thomas:
Nice blog and nice analysis.
Democrats are going to have to do what Republicans have been doing all along - galvanize their base. The election in Ohio is a perfect example of how that strategy will score some wins on the Democratic side in 2006.
Oh, and web loafer, Hackett was an underfunded virtual unknown going into this race, yet he came within 3% of kicking a well-known, well-funded Republican's ass...in fucking Ohio. I was born and raised there - I'm impressed.
Yes, the Dems do have something to celebrate.
web_loafer:
"How many canidates will the Democrats field like Hackett in the next election? 1-3 would probably be a good guess."
Not a chance.
435 House seats are up for re-election.
232 of those seats currently hold up Republican asses. I expect that of the 232 Democrat challengers for those seats, 50-100 will be reasonably recent veterans, and 10-20 will be combat veterans of Iraq and/or Afghanistan.
Since Bernie Sanders usually votes with the Democrats, they would have to pick up 15 seats to take the House back. I expect them to pick up between 5 and 10 seats.
I doubt that we'll see any recent and/or Iraq-Afghanistan veterans in the 34 Senate races. The Democrats will probably only get a net gain of 2 or 3 seats.
The Democrats have been saying for some time that whether or not Hackett could get within 5 points of Schmidt would be a good test of whether his approach is workable. Nobody expected Hackett to win -- look at the numbers for that district. That he came within three points of winning indicates that he took away about a fifth of the Republicans' usual solid vote. In closer districts, that translates to solid Democratic victories next year. In "safe" GOP districts, it translates to some upsets, some close calls, and a lot of GOP money spent on defense that used to be spent on offense.
The strategic initiative has passed into the Democrats' hands.
Tom Knapp
Let's not forget this was Ohio, the home of Diebold, where the vote was stuck at a 500 vote margin for hours until all of a sudden Repug votes started rolling in. Demos have had it with wimps and wanna' be repugs ... this will be one hell of election ... even the 7th District will have a BIG fight with money almost equal. And Tom Delay will hang around Billy'sBoyToyRoy's neck like a smelly, sweaty, old gym towel.
Plus his new wife ... while former Ms BoyToy contines to milk the cows in Strafford. You know that she is Jewish?? Personally, I don't care, but imagine how that is going to go over with the goobers in Douglas County? We plan on being really man ... right now it's Creider, but Doug Harpool is waiting in the wings.
John,
Hehe ... the best-laid plans of mice and men. Matt Blunt was suppose to gravy train all the way to the White House on his dad's back, and now it looks like he may drag Pa down with him before he gets out of Missouri (except on junkets).
I have my doubts that the Dems can take the 7th this time, but if they put up a good fight, they can keep Blunt's money in the district instead of it being doled out to save Republican seats in close races elsewhere. I think that the Dems can pick up the 6th from your old friend Sam, though.
Bottom line on Ohio? GOP margin of victory last year: 44%. GOP margin of victory yesterday: 4% -- and that after the GOP poured an extra half a million bucks in at the last minute, publicly promising to "bury" Hackett When even "safe" seats like that one can't be held without huge national funding, then the GOP is in deep shit.
Tom
I was sent over here from a site called freedomdemocrats.org, and I completely agree.
Pro-freedom types with socially liberal leanings (in other words, people who are pro-freedom in the boardroom *and* the bedroom) are a massive untapped political base in this country.
To oversimplify a bit, I like almost every major democratic issue except their perceived advocacy of higher taxes and the anti-science attitude taken by some in the "green wing" of the party. (I say perceived because whether this is real or not is debatable.) Run candidates on a pro-freedom small-government platform and I won't just vote for them-- I'll campaign for them.
I don't know if it would be his district, but I would have liked to see a Republican state rep named Tom Brinkman run. Really good guy and has been a big friend of us Ohio libertarians. He isn't solidly libertarian, nor does he claim to be libertarian--but he leans heavily our way. He could have been a step in the right direction--a big difference from most of these Ohio Republicans.
Al,
Actually, Brinkman is in that district -- and ran for the seat. He placed third in the primary. According to Wikipedia's article on the race, The Ohio GOP party "leadership" pulled out the stops to keep him from winning -- he's been critical of Taft's tax policies, and he upset the "anointed" candidate in 2000 to get to the state legislature in the first place.
The major parties have a habit of trying to break their "libertarian" politicians -- the "leadership" works against them in the primaries, and if they're elected various pressures are used to try and make them squeeze into the big-government suit. That accounts for two of the reasons I went to the Democrats instead of the Republicans when I decided to go "major party" --
1) The Democrats have been losing, and are more likely to lighten up on "libertarian-leaning" candidates in order to win general elections; and
2) The Republican Liberty Caucus hasn't effectively worked to support "libertarian Republican" candidates -- instead of working against statist Republicans, they just slap a "libertarian" label on them -- which is why they call John McCain a "libertarian" and even have Rick friggin' Santorum on their top 10 list.
The Democratic Freedom Caucus may not have achieved notable success yet, but at least we don't lower our standards in order to pretend that we have.
Regards,
Tom
We need to get rid of the party system completely. Neither one of them are any good, and party politics just makes candidates need for large sums of money unavoidable. Not to mention having to deal with the national party and the special interest groups. I am convinced we need to go back to the way our foundign fathers set the political process up. There were no parties!
We can all start by registering independent. That will get their attention. Stop letting your vote be taken for granted by the two parties. No matter how you vote, register independent just to send a message.
If you want to run for office do not join or make a party. This will alllow you to operate outside the campaign laws. Just run as yourself and get a nioce grass roots group together to go around and knock on doors, hand out flyers etcetera. Of course we are talking about starting at the local level.
Tom, your comment about the RLC calling McCain a libertarian is not true. The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore attended the RLC's convention in September and pointed out the RLC's pointed REJECTION of McCain in the WSJ's Political Diary on 9/21 under the headline "Give me Liberty -- and Not McCain":
"Most seemed to regard front-runner Senator John McCain with apprehension and disgust."
He went further:
"The Republican Liberty Caucus -- the libertarian wing of the GOP -- held its annual convention in Florida this week amidst anxiety over the outlook in November and the longer term. These weren't happy campers, with resentment (bordering on contempt) over the GOP Washington spending spree and the rise of the nativist close-the-gates crowd within the party. 'We could sue our own party for abandonment,' one participant complained."
This does not sound like the RLC you regularly lambast in your flaming emails and blogs. It does, however, match my personal experience with the organization.
-- Philip Blumel
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