Sherrod, Harry, Chuck, and Paul: What Should We Make of it All?

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

You see these stories about Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer calling up donors and telling them not to give money to Paul Hackett.  I can understand Hackett supporters being upset, insofar as they think that Schumer and Reid made the wrong decision in backing Brown instead of Hackett.  But there's absolutely nothing wrong with calling up big contributors and telling them not to donate to some candidate. 

It's just a more high-profile version of what everybody does -- the netroots definitely included.  If you think the issues you care about aren't served by some candidate getting donations, you tell donors not to give them money.  We do it through blog posts, the big players do it through phone calls to rich donors.  If you think that part of the business of campaigning is outreach to donors in the netroots (and it is), you should agree that another part of the business is convincing the guys at the top to use their power on your behalf, or at least not against you.  Hackett didn't accomplish that.  Again, you can criticize Reid and Schumer for making the wrong move.  But making moves like this is their business. 

And that's a good thing too.  Primaries are the kind of money suck that should be avoided whenever possible.  You'd rather see big chunks of cash go to a candidate who's going to run against a Republican than a candidate who runs the risk of losing to another Democrat. I'm also happy that netroots cash won't be diverted away from the primary that matters -- Ciro's primary in TX-28 -- and towards internecine warfare in Ohio. 

We'll have a long time to debate whether Reid and Schumer made the right call. Sherrod Brown has been a tireless fighter in the House on just about every progressive issue, and the DSCC knows that.  His work on fighting tuberculosis around the world and his rejection of Congressional health insurance as long as his constituents don't have proper health care win big respect from me.  There's a lot that Paul Hackett could've done for our party too, especially as far as winning foreign policy media battles goes.  But after seeing how his campaign went, I'm wondering how successful he would've been as a Senator.

people familiar with Hackett's campaign say he was especially resistant to efforts by aides to get him to use one of the most efficient but unpleasant fund raising techniques: sitting at the phone for hours, calling friends, relatives, and strangers to ask for money. Tension over the problem led in January to the departure of his finance director.

Hackett, who prized his independent streak and proudly called it a family trait - he voted twice for Ross Perot for president and championed gun rights as well as gay rights - also chafed at having his schedule set by aides. On the weekend before he bowed out, aides say, he stunned his staff by refusing at the last minute to attend certain events - including appearances at several black churches - that had apparently been put on his schedule over his objections.

His wife, Suzi, alluded in an interview before his withdrawal to Hackett's difficulty adjusting to the life of a candidate.

"He's a very autonomous person," she said. "It's been very hard for him to do the political thing, where you let everyone schedule your life."

Fund raising in particular, she said, had been "a real struggle for him" because "Paul doesn't like to ask for help."

Another problem for his campaign, some aides say, was that Hackett - who billed himself as a political outsider eager to change Washington's ways - didn't seem to fully trust the political professionals he hired to help run his race. It was shocking but not out of character, they say, that Hackett announced his departure to The New York Times Monday without first telling his staff, who learned of it from the Times.

The failures of the Democratic Party over the last few years have convinced lots of activists that anything would be better than what we've got going now, and that maybe we need somebody who doesn't play the game like any of the current players do.  I sympathize with their frustration, but if this leads them to romanticize candidates who crash headlong into the unfortunate political realities that other politicians know how to work past, they're mistaken. Sure, I'd want our Senators to have a little more of Hackett's fire. But the idea that inexperience and swagger will add up to success is an error fit for Bush-loving Republicans, not Democrats.  And I can understand Hackett's hatred of fundraising -- even if atheists weren't automatically unelectable, it's one of the things that would drive me away from a political career.  But candidates have to be able to do it, and any number of other irksome things. 

Maybe Hackett would've made an amazing Senator.  But it's also possible that he would've had difficulty with the some of the most basic things, floundering in areas that never get much comment because they attract no media attention, and failing on organizational and practical issues that few bloggers know to be important.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with Harry Reid's Senate leadership.  While other Senate Dems (Judiciary Committee, I'm talking to you) have disappointed me in the last year, I have yet to see Harry make a bad move as Minority Leader.  I think it's fine if he gets experienced, competent role players rather than stars.  As much as I'd like to have Paul Hackett slamming Bush on cable TV, I know that Senators can stick around for decades, and I'd like to have the steady hand of Sherrod Brown steering us out of the current health care dystopia and every other problem that we face. 

In the end, Reid and Schumer picked the angel they knew over the mysterious (and potentially awesome) creature they didn't.  I'm tentatively supporting the pick, and I don't criticize them for picking. 

(The OH-2 blog notes that Rush Limbaugh tried to inject a racial angle into the story by claiming that Sherrod Brown was black, and had been given preference over the white Hackett.  I guess the whole Donovan McNabb episode didn't teach Rush to stay away from that kind of angle, and he still can't get it to work...)