The Club for Growth is jeering at DailyKos and the netroots for not beating Cuellar. Their record is not much better: they did all they could to unseat Specter and fell short. They targeted Mark Warner and all of the Republicans who voted for his tax plan. The result? Tim Kaine won and so did all of the Republicans (except one who lost to a Democrat). The point of a primary challenge, as conservatives discovered, is not necessarily to win the primary. It is virtually impossible to win a primary against an incumbent, but by making them sweat, you make it clear that they cannot take the base for granted.
Here are the facts: the netroots got involved in the TX-28 primary way too late. Ciro Rodriguez had a poor organization and the only reason Cuellar didn't flatten him was the involvement of--netroots. Before Cuellar's "Lieberman moment" at the State of the Union, Ciro's challenge was a joke. In the time in between, that and the primary, we were able to make this race competitive. Ultimately, Ciro just didn't have the organization needed to turnout his voters early. If we had been involved from the beginning, we might have had a different outcome. Another problem with this race was that it was based on regionalism, not ideology. Cuellar's home county backed him because he's their boy, no other reason. That combined with incumbency and a stronger organization than Ciro did not help.
So why do DailyKos supported candidates lose? Here's why: DailyKos and the netroots do not go out supporting candidates who are going to win easily. The netroots look toward the toughest races and try to expand the playing field and also take on the Democratic establishment. We see the netroots going into the toughest places, where Democrats have not won in decades. Ohio-02 was an impossible challenge and Hackett's 48 percent was an incredible achievement. But he lost. What good does that do? Well, I'll bet most of the people in places like Ohio-02 have never seen a Democratic candidate, so they just believe everything they hear about them. Voting Republican is like breathing--no need to even think about it. But then, when a strong Democrat comes along, they scratch their heads and start thinking about the alternative. Maybe they'll still vote Republican, but it'll get them thinking. A few more of them might decide to vote Democratic in 2006, which would help statewide. As Howard Dean said, you can't win if you don't show up. We wonder why people in some states vote Republican. Well, what else will they do if there's no alternative? But when you start showing up, even if you run and get your ass kicked, you get people to think about your ideas and realize there's an alternative out there. Look at Colorado. Bush still won in 2004, but the people there realized that there was another option besides voting Republican. When you first try to change something, you're going to lose--a lot, if not every time. But gradually, you start getting better and soon, you'll start winning. That's what happened with Colorado. We picked up a lot of votes there in the presidential race, but still lost. But next time, we're going to win there. Now if you want DailyKos to have a better record, you could have it back a bunch of Democrats running in easy races. But what's the point of that? The point is to support candidates who'll promote progressive policies.
Look at Ralph Yarborough. He ran twice in the Democratic primary against an ultra conservative Governor, Allan Shivers. He got his ass kicked. Now he could have just said "to hell with it, these conservatives are too entrenched and there's just nothing I can do" and quit. But he ran again, this time against conservative Democratic Sen. Price Daniel. Yarborough came close, but Daniel stole the election. But when Daniel retired from the Senate, Yarborough ran for his seat and he won because of all of his name recognition from his previous runs for governor. So the lesson is, you can quit and say you'll move to Canada or you can tough it out and not ever quit.
So what's the point of futile primary challenges? Well, if you don't do them, how will politicians know that their supporters are angry at them? Angry letters won't do it; they're experts at ignoring those. But if when they run for re-nomination and someone takes a big chunck of their vote in an election that should be a freebee, they know there's a problem. Arlen Specter was an entrenched incumbent and he laughed at the prospect of a primary challenge to him. Then suddenly it got serious and he only survived by a whisker. But have you seen him since then? He rammed throught two anti-choice Supreme Court nominees despite being "pro-choice." Henry Cuellar probably had no idea until today that 47% of his voters thought he was doing a poor job and wanted him out. He likely figured the last election was close just because he took on an incumbent. But 47% of his party's voters thought he did not deserve to be re-nominated. He'll quickly see that if he's got aspirations for statewide office, he'll have to mend his relations with labor and his fellow Democrats. And Lieberman? Even if he doesn't change his position on the war, he's going to get a lot more liberal on everything else. If he survives, he should have had to sweat enough to realize he has to change. Like Arlen Specter, a strong primary challenge will change him. Yes, Ned Lamont will lose, perhaps by quite a bit. So if a Lamont loss is going to make you cry, shed your tears now. If he wins, that'll be incredible, but don't expect that to happen.
Now recently, I've seen some posts lamenting how nobody cares after Cuellar's win and that we're going to lose seats in 2006. Take a breath. Calm down. This was a primary where the most important issue was where the candidates were from. Not ideology. Most of Cuellar's voters probably don't agree with him on CAFTA or his other votes, but he's their hometown boy, so he gets their vote. Bush and Republican corruption will be much bigger in the November election (remember, Cuellar may be a closet Republican, but the "D" beside his name doesn't make people associate him with Bush). Let the Club for Growth laugh, they don't have a stellar record of success. Just look at Rhode Island: no matter what happens, they lose. If their boy Laffey loses, well they lose. But if he wins, he gets his neocon ass kicked by the Democrats.
Don't forget the big picture: even though progressive candidates may lose primaries or lose in overwhelmingly Republican areas, the goal is to make the party more progressive and expand its appeal. And we do that just by showing up.