God, I hate election post-mortems. It seems like everyone decides to predict doom and gloom or commit hari-kari over the latest netroots endorsed candidate.
It's such a mess. Of course, WE'RE never wrong for picking the candidate of our choice. It's ALWAYS the fault of the Republicans. Or the DLC. Or those nasty Beltway consultants.
Well, it's time to face some nasty facts, kids. And those facts are below.
1. Busby was running in an overwhelmingly Republican district that is front-and-center in the immigration battle. A perfect storm for a successful Republican defense, even it was Duke Cunningham's former district.
2. This was not a general election. It was a special election. Ergo, turnout will be low, no matter what. It doesn't mean a damn thing about what will happen nationally.
3. On the same front, all this means is Bilbray gets the seat for the next five months . After that, guess what? We get to start all over again.
4. Despite all this, Busby increased her numbers well above what she got against Cunningham last time out.
I understand the netroots desperately needs a win. I understand getting mad when the netroots puts energy into a candidate like Busby, or Rodriguez, or Cegelis and they lose. We'll probably feel the same way if and when Webb and Lamont go down, too. And we look for somebody to blame -- the DC Dems, the party "establishment", the voting machines, the Republicans.
Well, enough with the goddamn postmortem. You are going to win some, and you will lose some. We lost more than we won yesterday. We won Jon Tester. We won Debra Bowen.
"Crashing the Gate" is about long term change. It's about showing people you can help raise the stakes of races that wouldn't normally be in the limelight without the help of the DC Dummy-crats, right? Yet we fell right in line with the DC line and thought CA-50 was a prime target.
I say, enough. I read the Election Guide from Roll Call recently and found this little nugget about Coleen Rowley, former FBI whistleblower, 2002 Time Magazine Person of the Year, and Democratic candidate for Congress in MN-2:
Rowley shunned help from national Democrats and experienced operatives for months, and it showed. Last summer her fundraising was abysmal, and local lawmakers were taking a second look at getting into the race.
Now, I don't know anything about Rowley other than what I read about her in Time Magazine. But why isn't she a prominent person to get our support here in the blogosphere? She seems like the perfect netroots candidate: she's rejecting the Beltway consultant class, she's got a high profile resume and she needs fundraising help. It's also a chance to prove Roll Call wrong (with their stupid comment about how campaigns seem to flounder without national consultants).
Yet I haven't heard a peep about her here. Seems like we should be picking our candidates better...
...as well as setting our expectations lower. For instance, we're not going to win everything out of the box the first time. But if we start making races competitive solely on the basis of the netroots, we're going to start winning these races outright, very soon.
So that's my rant on all things CA-50. It's one district in a special election. Thinking it's all going to hell in November because Busby lost is like thinking your team won't win the World Series because they lost a spring training game. It's pointless.
The only thing that will work is for us to start taking over our local, state and eventually national party with the long term goal of creating change in how our party functions.
That's what "Crashing the Gate" means. It's not about special elections. It's about a 20 year revolution.