Here's what's offensive about the Hackett scenario:

[tgnyc]

Although Hackett was running for US Senate, his first responsibility would have been to the people of Ohio.

Ohioans did not vote for Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, or Rahm Emanuel. For them to have the level of influence they apparently had (assuming the story we're hearing is true) in selecting Ohio's candidate is improper.

I'd say that if the Ohio Democratic Party wanted to meddle in the primary process, I would be less offended by that. Ohio elected Democrats are chosen by democratic voters from Ohio, and are therefore empowered to act on the behalf of those voters.

See the difference?

more: http://intelligencesquad.blogspot.com/2006/02/dropping-paul-hackett.html

[still_one]

1. He was just on springer

basically he said if the party leaders were against him, he could NOT raise the money

[LynneSin]

2. Party leaders are against some other candidates in PA and Montana

Don't see any of them dropping out of the primaries

[Pithy Cherub]

3. Who said the leadership was done meddling?

They have time to impose their will in other races. If they do then, they are absolutely arrogantly saying that they know better than everybody who should be a politician. :puke:

[LynneSin]

4. Who says these candidates are going to back down

I've met Chuck Pennacchio from Pennsylvania - that man doesn't seem like someone who backs down from a fight. I almost think he appreciates the fact that he's the outsider and doing a 'F-U' to the DSCC. That appeal is what will help him win support in Pennsylvania

[Pithy Cherub]

5. To be honorable and have valor is the result of Courage.

To name those who have wronged and wounded you and refuse to play in the cess pool shows true grit. To be valiant in a Don Quixote way also has its tremendous values. All things do not apply equally in every situation.

[Lexingtonian]

6. What I find offensive

is this portrayal of Hackett as a victim of a right wingerish hierarchy/conspiracy.

In all these 'outraged' polemics excoriating the Party and championing Hackett, I keep on seeing two things. One is that Hackett is more or less a classical Left politico, a power hungry archetypical populist who attacks The Establishment but is personally, at bottom, that conservative/centrist thing and isn't about fundamental change other than a change of faces and operating procedure. The other is simply wanting a soldier or blue collar-ish person in a position of power. These are both more or less class politics.

I dunno, maybe class resentment politics is all important and the itch that needs immediate scratching in Ohio. I can't for the life of me see it as a high priority on the national level at the moment. The national Party has to start with national priorities. Hackett was running for federal office, so the national Party is relevant- look at the business around Joe Lieberman and before him, Zell Miller, and tell me that parochial interests are paramount. As for the Ohio state Democratic Party, they weren't particularly impressed with Hackett as savior, evidently. And then there's the Ohio polling, Brown 46%/Hackett 24%.

So the Hackett outcry is really about attempting a populist/Old Left revival in hard times, as I see it. But the Liberal wing is ascendant in the Party, the populist/Old Left wing was crushed- and badly at that- in the past 2-3 national elections. And the arguments for Hackett are deeply Old Left/Marxist: a selfcongratulatory assertion of a conspiracy by an Establishment to oppress the little guy and his champion, the idea that donors are somehow not a constituency but a due entitlement of money on the basis of inherent virtue, and a contempt for bourgeois (i.e. middle class) values and methods imputed to and observed in Brown.

And as I look at the claim of 'meddling'...aren't that remarkably small set of people here who are agitpropping for Hackett very much the same people who wanted Zell Miller kicked out of the Party and backing a primary challenge for Joe Lieberman??? I suppose that's "different"....

Hackett is a perfect candidate for a U.S. House or Ohio state House seat, where he can push his ideas and initiatives. The U.S. Senate is about vetoing bad ideas and blocking or removing crappy people from higher offices- he doesn't come across as having the political width and experience and ability to hold back which that job is about.

[Tiggeroshii]

7. Ohio Dem leaders wanted Hackett out as well... n/t

[EFerrari]

8. Something to consider from "How to Steal an Election"

"There are no dirty elections without dirty politics, and indeed as long as the politics are not clean, it is almost impossible to prevent the electoral process from becoming tainted. After all, rules work only if they are enforced. America is a country that thrives on ferocious competition -- the sink-or-swim ethic of capitalist adventurism, forever flirting with the fringes of the permissible -- and few competitive arenas are more cutthroat than elective politics. To believe that smooth elections are merely a question of updated machinery and proper procedure, as many election officials and mainstream media outlets appear to have done since 2000, is to slip deep into denial and self-delusion. The system functions not on the principle of the common good, but on how much its participants think they can get away with. There is nothing virginally pure about American democracy, and there never has been."

-- Andrew Gumbel
http://alternet.org/story/32084