Clueless Democrats

This is about the dumbest thing you could do:

Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and popular Democratic candidate in Ohio's closely watched Senate contest, said yesterday that he was dropping out of the race and leaving politics altogether as a result of pressure from party leaders.

Mr. Hackett said Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, the same party leaders who he said persuaded him last August to enter the Senate race, had pushed him to step aside so that Representative Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of Congress, could take on Senator Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent.

Mr. Hackett staged a surprisingly strong Congressional run last year in an overwhelmingly Republican district and gained national prominence for his scathing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War. It was his performance in the Congressional race that led party leaders to recruit him for the Senate race.

But for the last two weeks, he said, state and national Democratic Party leaders have urged him to drop his Senate campaign and again run for Congress.

"This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me," said Mr. Hackett, whose announcement comes two days before the state's filing deadline for candidates. He said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving and said he would not enter the Second District Congressional race.

"For me, this is a second betrayal," Mr. Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me."

I'm tempted to say that this NEEDS to bite the Dems in the ass, to get them out of this clubby inner sactum "we don't want primaries" notion. It's stupid. Primaries battle-test candidates, particularly ones who haven't run statewide before. They allow the candidates to highlight Democratic issues and give them name recognition. You could talk up and down about how tough battles in primaries hurt candidates, and I'd like someone to show me any proof of that. The toughest primary I can think of in 2004 was Specter, and he won handily. Why in God's name are Democrats afraid of Democrats?

Worse, this happened to Hackett, a hero in the netroots and the first high-profile Iraq war veteran to run for Congress. There are now 56- 56!- war veterans running this cycle as Democrats, many of whom have explicitly said they were inspired by Hackett's race in 2005.

I was all set to write a diary about how the Dems will win big this November in spite of themselves, because the Fighting Dems phenomenon will give them a message that the establishment fears. But I guess the Establishment refuses to win without putting up a fight.

I'm depressed and I'm not about to get over it soon.

Listen to this complete moron:

"It boils down to who we think can pull the most votes in November against DeWine," said Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. "And in Ohio, Brown's name is golden. It's just that simple."

No it isn't, a-hole, it boils down to who THE VOTERS think can pull the most votes. This institutional "Father Knows Best" syndrome by the ossified Democratic Establishment has led us to a loss of Congress for the better part of 12 years, the Senate off and on for the same number, and multiple Presidential elections. I'm not so sure you know best about ANYTHING!!!

Grr...