More on Hackett

His withdrawal statement here.

Apparently Hackett was polling poorly against Rep. Sherrod Brown, and he had a fundraising disadvantage. That being said, why go to such great lengths to cut off his funding? If he was going to lose badly, why bother with strong-arming him out of the race?

I completely disagree with the prevailing opinion that primaries are bad for the parties involved. On the contrary, they can raise name recognition and throw a spotlight on specific issues that may help in the general election. In 2004 there were several Senate primaries. Here were the results.

Illinois: Barack Obama won as an underfunded underdog in a hotly contested primary. He went on to take the general by something like 80%.

Pennsylvania: Arlen Specter barely survived a bruising primary against a Club for Growth candidate, then went out and soundly defeated Joe Hoeffel to secure re-election.

Oklahoma: Tom Coburn got locked into a tough primary with Kirk Humphries (the Establishment candidate), beat him, and won the general.

Georgia: Johnny Isaacson made it through a tough primary and won the general with ease.

Florida: Mel Martinez had a difficult primary fight; he made it through and beat Betty Castor in the general. To be fair, Castor had to go through a primary as well.

There was a primary in the race to challenge Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, but Feingold was pretty popular. The only parallel I can see is the Pete Coors primary race in Colorado, which damaged him (and he eventually lost to Ken Salazar).

I just don't buy it.

Furthermore, there are a couple primaries on the Democratic side in this cycle. There's Morrison v. Tester in Montana, Whitehouse v. Matt Brown in Rhode Island, and Webb v. Miller in Virginia. Does it make sense to say that a Hackett-Brown primary would be bad for the Party, but these other ones WON'T be?

I'm sorry, but this conventional wisdom about primary races has to stop. I'm not in favor of party bosses determining my candidates for me.