This Congressional race in what might be called a purple area of northern Nevada has come out of the gate with all the intensity and interest of a flat rock speeding across the Nevada desert. It pits two newcomers to national politics, Jill Derby (D) of Minden and Dean Heller (R) of,..of.., well Pluto as far as anyone can guess. So far neither is doing much to set an agenda or define themselves or even more interestingly, define the other candidate.
Heller's ex primary opponent provided some brief excitement after losing the primary by 421 votes by suing to get a whole new primary at taxpayer expense. That floated like a lead balloon and now the two former opponents have kissed and made up and are off on a tenous honeymoon experiment.
No one's quite sure where Heller stands on the issues except lately he planned to stamp himself as the same rubber stamp of his predecessor Jim Gibbons who was also a rubber stamp for Bush et al. Boing.. boing...boring. Sure, he has a website but you can't find anything there titled "Issues" to read and understand where he's going. Probably waiting for Rove to get around to dictating something for him to put in there since Gibbons seems pretty illiterate on any political subject after just spending 10 years in the House.
Jill Derby, on the other hand, has put together an admirable website (www.jillderby.com) on most of the major issues. Derby is striking a pose as independent of all party pressure to especially attract the important centrist electorate, particularly on the war in Iraq.
"To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub." (Hamlet: III,i).
The heart of Derby's solution to Iraq, if one can actually call it that, is two fold after you peel back the re-white-and-blue layers of rhetoric: 1) to establish "benchmarks" by which to guage Iraq's progress toward democratization which, according to prevalent Rovian philosophy in place and practice, ultimately leads to wonderful, harmonious peace and stability in Iraq allowing a story book ending therein for all future generations to marvel at how well the US can tear apart a country and put it back together again (given enough decades, enough lives, and enough trillions of dollars): and 2) to hang out in Iraq however long it takes for them to get a new Constitution which gives the Sunnis something other than the shaft.
So, what exactly are the wonderful "benchmarks" which are the bait to attract the centrist voters? Uh..., well, no one seems to know but candidate Derby. Would be nice if the electorate knew as well but that might only come after the swearing-in ceremony. This highly risky experiment in campaign strategy may float like a lead balloon becuase of the simple reason that the electorate has too often voted for lofty idealisms only to find after the election that the lofty idealisms had no basis in reality to represent the wants and dictates of the electorate. And this electorate seems mad as hell and wants red meat tossed to them rather than oatmeal.
Derby's other lofy idealism is to give the Iraqis time to draft yet another Constitution. The last one only took a couple of years to get done but what's a few more years in Iraq going to matter anyway? Iraq's parliament yesterday stormed out of session when the Shi'ite majority unexpectedly introduced their first bit of major legislation since convening in March (talk about the US "do-nothing" Congress!). The parliamentray IED is designed to take up the business of splitting up Iraq's enormous oil riches. It might seem to us westerners that stopping a raging civil war was somewhat important but that's not the Iraqis priority right now. Pretty much following along the lines of present party politics the measure is explicit in giving the Shi'ites and the Kurds the oil riches and the Sunni gets the shaft (again).
So much for the idea of getting a new Constitution in this century.
Several dots Derby fails to connect in her website are the war on terrorism, 9/11/, Afghanistan, opium, and especially last Wednesday's diplomatic IED - Pakistan giving complete sanctuary to Osama bin Laden in exchange for 36 US F-16C/D fighters and $5 billion dollars worth of hardware for their new toys (which rather complement their nuke bombs and missles, don't you think?) More on this connection in a few days.
It seems a shame that Derby is not taking full advantage of Heller's long nap here at this late stage in the elections. And it seems an even greater shame that Derby is posing as an independent cowboy type not taking advantage the present firestorm being created by Democratic leadership against the Republicans.
See Harry run. Harry runs with the money. See how Harry runs against the Republicans. See Jack run. Jack runs high in the polls. See Shelley run. Shelley wins races. See Jill run. (hang on, we've got to wait to turn the page here)
Uh..hasn't Nevadans already seen the independent lone ranger type enough in the White House by now? Seems like neither Derby or Heller want to get their hands dirty by throwing red meat out to the electorate leaving just about everyone scratching their heads to figure out just what the heck is the difference between the two "me-toos."