In Praise of Fighting Dems

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

People at Daily Kos and elsewhere are getting all excited about congressional candidates with military records. Dadahead isn’t. He says, “Why anyone would think that being a veteran is an advantage for a Democrat, after the the flame-out of Wesley Clark and the swift-boating of John Kerry, is beyond me.” I happen to think that running a bunch of congressional candidates with Iraq War records is an excellent idea, and I'll respond to Dadahead’s arguments.

There’s a world of difference between a presidential candidate who has the mannerisms of a Senator invoking his Vietnam service, and a congressional candidate who actually sounds like a soldier invoking his Iraq service. Kerry had a long public record, and there were more things that could interfere with his attempt to cultivate a military image. One of these things was his own speaking style, which sounded nothing like the stereotype of a military man. The war he fought over 30 years ago was against a different enemy. By contrast, congressional candidates who served in Iraq – especially if their bearing, like that of Paul Hackett, fits some military stereotype – will get instant credibility on a huge issue in contemporary American politics.

Which brings me to Hackett. He polled 48.3% in a district where Republicans held a 3-1 registration advantage and no Democrat in 12 years had surpassed Lee Hornberger’s 29.1% score from 1993. Jean Schmidt’s weakness and Hackett’s donations from werewolves are part of the explanation. But there’s no doubt that Hackett’s military background, around which he built his campaign, accounts for a big chunk of the improvement. If you’re looking for data to predict how Fighting Dems will do in congressional races, he’s the best comparison case.  

The vast majority of the Iraq veterans in the primary won’t face anything close to the Swift Boating that Kerry faced. Remember that Kerry had a Nixon-appointed stalker, John O’Neill, connected to a pool of 527 money and a network of veterans who hated him for his part in the Winter Soldier investigation. Most congressional candidates won’t have anything like that against them. And if they do, they can still respond as Kerry should have – by thrusting out their chests on TV and using the allegations as a platform to boast about what they actually did. Furthermore, as Jean Schmidt has recently learned, actual politicians slander ex-soldiers at their peril.

Dadahead is wrong to criticize Hackett supporters for past strategic incompetence, and use this to attack their reliability. The Kossacks who love Hackett so dearly aren’t the people who brought you John Kerry – they’re the ones who wanted to bring you Howard Dean. (Okay, that doesn’t support my point as well as I hoped. But it’s more a case of throwing strategy to the wind than strategic incompetence.) So I'll be self-aggrandizing here and ask Dadahead to take it from me. I’ve done reasonably well at this – thinking that Hackett would do very well but not win his House race, and arguing against Kerry’s electability (at least, relative to Edwards) since my first blog entry ever on Kos. Being an Iraq veteran should be worth a few extra points to House candidates, possibly more if they play it right. One shouldn’t automatically vote for veterans in primaries, but it is something worth getting pretty excited about.