Kos,
I am still dumbfounded over our exchange in yesterday's Crashing The Gate thread --http://www.dailykos.com/... - and now your paragraph defending Duckworth on today's midday open thread (http://www.dailykos.com/...).
Throughout the book you speak approvingly of the grassroots taking power away from entrenched interests, yet you are at best agnostic on the Duckworth vs. Cegelis race and saw fit to attack me personally for my posts in support of Cegelis.
This CTG passage about Jon Tester (p. 165) struck me in particular:
People will cross party lines to vote Democratic if they see and meet a genuine, authentic person, not a packaged, scripted, professional politician.
While Duckworth may be a genuine person, her campaign is as packaged as they come. The Chicago Sun-Times's Lynn Sweet calls it the DCCC's "campaign in a can." If Duckworth wins the primary, she will have no incentive to change strategies. As a result, no Republicans in that Red-leaning district are likely to consider crossing over (they'll all be coming out to vote R in the Governor's race).
Christine Cegelis, on the other hand, WILL go door-to-door, and to community meetings, and to train platforms, etc. so that people will get to know her personally and be willing to consider splitting their ticket.
Can you really not see this?
I have long believed that people like James Carville don't really believe in what they write and say on TV -- that it's all an act to them. I cannot believe that would be the case with you. Why would you have started and maintained DailyKos if it were? Yet you see what the DCCC (and now the entire DC establishment: http://blogs.suntimes.com/...) is doing in IL-6 and can remain neutral -- or even a little biased toward Duckworth? (One post on the Midday thread claimed that you had actually endorsed Duckworth on the radio - that isn't true, is it?)
I just don't get it!
It seems to me that supporting strong grassroots campaigns like Cegelis's is exactly what DailyKos (and Crashing the Gate) is all about. Perhaps the following can make the case better than I appear to be doing:
Pep talk for folks working for Cegelis (by William Rivers Pitt)
Got the word today that the DCCC landed Kerry, Pelosi, Durbin and a bunch of other heavies to throw fundraising letters out for Duckworth. Kevin Spidel asked me to bang out a pep talk for the troops who are probably feeling the weight. This is what I came up with. If you're working for Cegelis, this note's for you.
Thomas Paine wrote about days that try our souls. He'd probably be repeating himself if he'd been in the Illinois 6th this week. Schakowsky, Durbin, Obama, Kerry, Pelosi and indeed the entire DCCC decided that this was the week to throw their weight behind party-anointed candidate Tammy Duckworth, this was the week to throw Christine Cegelis under the bus, this was the week to shut these pesky progressives up and elect a candidate whose sole qualification for office is her ability to follow orders.
Right about now, you all are probably thinking about hanging it up, about the futility of fighting the national party, about where and how you could better put in time and effort that didn't leave you feeling like you've been kicked in the head. Nobody can blame you; hell, it takes an extraordinarily devoted person to roll the rock up the hill full in the knowledge that it will probably roll back down over you.
Here's the thing, though: this is good news. If Christine Cegelis was no threat to the DCCC's desire to manage things from soup to nuts, they wouldn't bother lining up all these heavies against her. If Christine Cegelis didn't bring so much to the table - her talent, her experience, her desire to affect real change, her progressive values - the DCCC and all these heavies wouldn't be looking this way.
They are looking this way. You have all their attention. You are doing amazing work, historic work, and the fact that they have thrown all this mess against the wall (hoping it will stick) is proof positive that you are having an effect.
These are the times that try our souls, yes, but these are also the times that change the rotation of the planet. In your hands rests the power to make political gravity reverse itself, the power to turn down to up, the power to send all the old machine politics flying into space. You are part of a national fight, one that is taking place from one side of the country to the other. We are all sweating bullets, we are all bulldogging through the trying of our souls. You are part of history, and you are making a difference.
Civil War historian Bruce Catton famously described General Ulysses Grant as someone who constantly wore the expression of a man who had made up his mind to run his head through a stone wall. Make that your game face. The stone wall before you is weaker than it looks.
Stout hearts,
William Rivers Pitt
http://www.democraticunderground.com/...
Thank you for reading this,
Jim in Chicago
P.S. to those in or near IL-6: if you can make it out to Des Plaines tomorrow (Saturday) morning, please consider coming out for this event: http://www.cegelisforcongress.com/...