As any Kossack not living under a rock knows, Jon Tester defeated John Morrison in the Democratic primary for Montana Senate. Defeated him handily, well outside anything anyone I know expected.
While the margin of victory was surprising, what was even more surprising to me was the primary itself. And I believe we are doing a great disservice to it.
More on the flip.
Way back in November of 2005, when the race was just getting going,
Hotline had a write-up about how Montana Democrats were putting out an ad going after Conrad Burns for being hopelessly corrupt. It included this sentence:
Morrison and Tester, relatively unknown to voters at this early stage, are likely to train their fire at Burns, rather than at each other, although a spirited primary in this state with a new, spirited Dem governor is assured.
And that's exactly what happened. Despite being close the entire way, despite the scandal that rocked John Morrison late in the game, and despite the fact that either candidate would have a legitimate shot at knocking of Conrad Burns, neither side really went nasty in order to win.
It's an attitude that continued right through Morrison's concession yesterday.
Tester called Morrison a "class guy," and told Morrison's supporters that "I welcome them on board and I will do my best to consider every one of their interests as we move forward with this campaign." <snip> "Tonight our journey does not end, but rather, it begins," said Morrison who smiled determinedly throughout his concession speech. "The campaign to restore integrity to Mike Mansfield's seat cannot lose."
In short, this primary was exactly what proponents of primaries have had in mind when they say that primaries can benefit the party. I've generally been a skeptic of a lot of primaries, because I've seen how they can create bad blood (Brown-Hackett, Cegelis-Duckworth etc.). But this was a clean primary that likely will make Jon Tester stronger for the general election, and no one can deny that it more than served its purpose.
Because the primary was cleanly fought, because the candidates themselves seem to want no part of the sniping, I think we here at Daily Kos need to reevaluate how we talk about this primary. And primaries in general for that matter. If we really believe what we're saying about the constructive benefit of primaries, then we need to adopt a more constructive tone ourselves. John Morrison lost a tough race, and he lost it with dignity, and he went out talking about the real issue; Conrad Burns. We should learn a lesson from that.
The narrative of "grassroots candidate beats DLC" may have some truth, and it may feel like a vindication, but it also goes against the tone that the candidates themselves adopted. Throughout the entire primary, the candidates never lost sight of Conrad Burns. They never let their squabbles overshadow the primary goal, and they never turned nasty. Nor, for that matter, were Paul Hackett and Sherrod Brown or Tammy Duckworth and Christine Cegelis quite as nasty as we here at Dkos were.
I'm a convert. I believe in primaries when they're handled correctly, as this one was. But we play a role in the way that primaries are handled. Setting up dichotomies like "beltway, DLC Dem versus true grassroots Dem" only perpetuates the negative atmosphere of Democratic primaries, and makes them less effective in producing a strong, unifying candidate for the fall. John Morrison and Jon Tester adopted the right attitude. I believe we need to follow their lead.