Skullduggery Indeed

I still think this whole deal with Hackett comes down to dollars and sense - Hackett lacked the former so he employed the latter, with a major shove from Schumer et al. It takes money to run a competitive Senate race and Hackett had only raised about $250k. I believe that if Hackett thought he could win the primary and general elections with the amount of funding that he had coming in - skulduggery or not - he'd have told Schumer and Reid to pound sand, probably in those exact terms. Hackett very well may have been able to pull off the primary and general elections, but being that far in the hole on fundraising this late in the game is a problem that I don't think he could have overcome.

Apparently, Hackett didn't either.

Now we can certainly question the wisdom of the DSCC and DCCC anointing whomever they want to run for these seats, but the better approach would be for us to be so mobilized that we can fund and support whomever we want to run for these seats regardless of what the DSCC or DCCC want. I promise you that if Hackett would have had $3 million on hand that he would have told the DSCC where to go and how to get there, but with only $250k raised he was working from a position of weakness. The truth of the matter is that I don't blame the DC crowd for trying to thin the primary field - that's what they do - I blame us, beginning with myself, for not sufficiently backing Hackett so that he could tell them to pound sand. We cannot find ourselves in a position where our interests are dependant upon the good behavior of others - we have to put ourselves in such a position that if anyone threatens our interests we can put foot to hindquarters.

Politics is a nasty business, and we have to prepare ourselves for whatever nastiness the DSCC, DCCC, or RNC brings our way.

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