I’d like to follow up on Darryl’s piece about Darcy Burner’s polling. Specifically going after the unelectable meme. That she’s “some kind of ultra-liberal Daily Kos Manchurian Candidate destined to be an also-ran.” Darryl does good work dispelling it.
Leaving aside the Kos thing, I think you have to say that the most important factor going forward in the first is whatever Democrat gets through is going to have to earn it. The district isn’t a gimmie for anyone; it’s rather large and neither party can hold a claim to it. So I think whoever works hardest and can present a compelling vision to the voters will win.
But here’s the interesting thing to me: All of that also applies to the newly created 10th district, and many of the people who are opposed to Darcy Burner because she lost a tough race don’t seem to have any problem with Denny Heck running again. Many of the same people criticizing Burner are calling the district centered around suburban-exurban Pierce and Thurston Counties the “Denny Heck District.”
Now, it’s probably a moderately Democratic district, and one Heck should be able to win if he works hard and presents the right message. Problem is, he’s already lost in a district like that, and unlike with Burner it wasn’t to an incumbent. To be clear, I think Heck can win the 10th and Burner or any Democrat can win the 1st. But I wonder why the narratives are so different between the two of them.
Heck is a good ol’ boy (in the approved-safe-by-establishment-pols sense). Burner isn’t. It’s about that simple.
I was opposed to Heck running in the first place.
Pete @1 has pretty much nailed it.
Btw, the state senate just passed gay marriage.
Let’s see, Darcy lost twice in a district that was more Democratic than the one she is running in this year, while Heck’s new district is more Democratic than the one he lost in. Darcy lost in relatively good Democratic years, Heck lost in a fairly good Republican year.
There’s no comparison.
Sure there is, they both lost.
Jeb,
You overlook the obvious distinction: Darcy was running against an incumbent, and one whose image had been polished in the region for years. Heck…not so much.
@4,
I’m not sure your characterization of either new district is particularly accurate. Trading Vancouver and Southwest WA for JBLM and South Pierce seems about even. Baird won the supposedly conservative 3rd district pretty easily for over a decade. In any event, surely losing an open seat held by a Democrat is worse on the merits than losing to an incumbent Republican.
I’ve written a piece urging 1st District Dems to take a look at the other candidates, and have no particular animus with Heck (although I supported Pridemore in 2010, I think I gave him a little money and definitely wrote favorable things about him). But I think the situations are closer than a lot of the coverage would suggest.
Are police infiltrators posing as Occupiers trying to discredit the Occupy movement? This videographer thinks cops may be using “black box” tactics in an attempt to portray non-violent protesters in a bad light — and to prevent journalists from filming Occupy events.
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/msn...../#46223598
Your affection for Darcy is showing.
Her problem is not that anyone sees her as a radical, though some may, but that she is not seen as part of the local scene.
Her actions and her PR since losing to the sheriff,have been well outside of the issues that affect the first.
This does not make her a bad candidate but it does beg the question of why is she running? Who does sh3e want to represent? What interests does she have in Washington State?
Let me give you a great example … tonite I attended the Town Hall mtg where the six state university presidents, along with ranking folk from MS, the lazy B, and REI discussed higher ed.
A few politicians showed up, but no one from the first. Darcey, if she had come, would have heard a lot of first district angst about issues like immigration, education of the children of foreigners who come to work at our high tech companies, why Boeing and MS feel they should not pay more taxes, …
These are all issues that Darcy .. or any of her opponents …could use to make their case. Instead, she still seems to be running as a fave of the progressive bloggers.
I worry that even oif she does get to run in the final, that her detachment from WA state issues will give her Reprican opponent a huge advantage.
@ 8 RR
The Police have always used agent provocateurs to establish justification for their violent reactions. As an example, the anti-war protests during the early 70’s in every college campus around the country saw military recruiting offices burned, and masked people throwing molotovs at uniformed officers and other violent attacks, and it came out during the FBI hearings in 76-77 that they had instructed local Police Departments all over the country to plant out of state or newly recruited young police officers in amongst the crowd and into the organizing committees to deliberately provoke and instigate such incidents.
It came out that the police themselves were the people burning those recruitment offices and trashing the campuses. It’s all in the congressional record. They admitted it. In Oakland, Police officers have been observed smashing car windows and storefronts for the purpose of being filmed later by the national news corporations for their propaganda.
It’s only a matter of time before they start filling stadiums with the mass arrestees like they did in Chile in 73 and Czechoslovakia in 68.
Can you cite some proof or a link that has some backup to that claim?
LMFAO…..maybe you should hide under your bed then…
#11: I’d have to search for it (and I don’t want to spend the time doing it right now). But I remember pretty clearly that about the time of the 1972 Republican Convention, the FBI and the Justice Dept. were trying some anti-war protesters on charges of conspiracy to bomb something-or-other.
They wanted the convictions right before the convention, because they had plans to use it as an excuse to bar all protesters from being anywhere near the convention site. They remembered Chicago in 1968 and were determined to make the 1972 convention an unblemished coronation of Richard Nixon’s second term.
But the trial didn’t go so well. In fact, it was a complete embarrasment for the FBI and the Justice Dept. Since there was no violence of bombing perpetrated by the group, they could only charge them with consipracy, which they had to prove. But the only “witness” to the “conspiracy” was an FBI agent planted in the group. Moreover, witness after witness testified that the FBI plant was the only one trying to encourage the others to use violence, bombing, etc. Everyone else thought he was crazy – to the point of trying to schedule meetings without telling him so they could avoid him. It didn’t work because the FBI had them bugged and the plant showed up at the meetings, uninvited – the protesters thought that was strange, at the time.
The protesters were acquited. But the Justice Dept. still used the “threat” of violence from protesters as an excuse to seal off the convention site, and the streets around it, from protesters. That policy continues today under every Republican president, to the point where thy now set aside ironically-named “free speach zones” behind chain-link fences and far out of sight of anyone other than the media which decides to go out of it’s way to try to locate and talk to those people.