Greetings from Albany NY. After almost 3 years of reading the daily kos community. I finally needed to create a diary. I wanted to weigh in on the Hackett situation but more importantly its implications for the Party. We're quick to blast the DLC, but we need to be more critical of the party establishment as a whole. If they are allowed to they will just continue the same patterns that have been so wildly successful through the last few electoral cycles.
I am disgusted with my Senator Chuck Schumer for many things (most of all was his vote for the war), but this latest incident with Paul Hackett is just plain annoying. Old dogs unwilling to learn new tricks. If we win seats in Congress this year it is as a result of a public wave against the GOP. It has little to do with the Dems themselves. As the future of the Democrat party we must encourage outsiders to be part of the process as much as possible. That is the way that swing voters will see that we are a diverse party. This is not to say that Hackett is not at fault at all either... I can summarize my feelings on the matter in two parts.
1.The establishment (Even Kos in this case) went with their gut on this race. Brown is the more electable candidate after all. I am frankly convinced after years of watching Democrats trying to do the safe thing that our guts have shit for brains.
On one hand, I see the strategic value of pushing Hackett to run for Congress where he might win what should be a given GooPer district while Brown can clearly take the Senate seat. Furthermore, I think that Brown's ideology is more akin to my own being a left of left of center liberal democrat (although I agree with Hackett on gun control)
On the other hand Dems are idiots for using traditional means to push Hackett out of the race and expect that a straight shooting non traditional guy like Hackett will just bow to the pressure and fall in line with what the establishment wants. He is not an establishment person and as this past week proves, he is not going to kow-tow in order to keep his political career alive.
This was a race for the party to sit out and let the two fight it out, short of mitigating any fierce in-party fighting, Schumer, Reid and everyone else should have sat the fuck down and waited to see who would be left standing. I suspect that it would have been Brown regardless. Then Hackett would have lost, but he would have been even more gracious then he is being now and maybe he would run for Congress in '08, and for Voinovich's seat in '10.
However, due to the same old game being played in DC Dem circles we take a break in the media from Abramoff, and Delay, and Scooter, and more dead in war, and Katrina, and soldier charged for bloody vest and every fucking thing that lets America know that it really fucked up in letting Bush be president again... and we go to "veteran scorned by Democrats." Kind of fucked up what the Dems did to Hackett? Dude, I would think twice if I were any of the fighting Dems right now as to the intentions of my party and really, whether or not I wanted to get involved with this lot..
2. On a completely different note... Hackett really screwed up. As the original fighting dem, he ought to have remembered that he cast himself as a fighter. What would a fighter do? Stand up and fucking fight! Don't let politics knock you down... again, these are old dogs who are afraid to try anything new (Dean...duhhhhhhhh)...
We need Hackett in this country and in the Democrat party for what he represents. Without infusions of people like him into politics this country is doomed.
It bothers me that he is quitting now because of a bunch of bureaucrats. Fuck them (starting with Schumer)... but he should have put up the best fight he could muster. . Are other outsider dems dropping out and whining about their party not supporting them? No they will put up a fight and if they lose they lose (lets hope Lamont doesn't), and maybe they try again sometime, but they are fighting...
Unfortunately attacking Hackett as a whiner will not do anything for the party, only by ceasing to be the party of insanity (doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result) will we actually be the party that is capable (or even worthy) to govern this country.