“Skullduggery” —“unfair and dishonest practices carried out in a secretive way in order to trick other people.”-from the AP story.
Many in the blogosphere agreed:
“Hackett would have probably won this seat,” David Nir, one of three founders of the liberal Web site SwingStateProject.com, contended in a blog posting Tuesday. “It’s much harder for me to envision the ‘northeastern Ohio liberal’ Sherrod Brown breaking the 49-percent barrier, particularly with DeWine moving to the center.”
Not everyone agreed in the world of Weblogs, or blogs, but there was plenty of anger and many threatened not to help Brown. Matt Stoller, a leading voice on the liberal blog MyDD.com who wasn’t involved in the Ohio Senate race, said Hackett represented a failure by bloggers to compete.”
-from another AP story. Stoller also said, “Don’t follow Paul Hackett’s example.” Also, MoveOn.org is asking “Should we take on right-wing Democrats?”
Howie opinion: We have our divisions and conflicting agendas, like everybody else, and I don’t have all the answers. But I do believe it’s a good idea to avoid the temptation to DIVIDE BEFORE WE CONQUER, whenever possible.
What say you?
Update [2006-2-15 18:5:59 by howieinseattle]: Fellow Seattle blogger Mollie Bradley-Martin (no relation!) observes:
“There is a silver lining to this mess though, and that is that Sherrod Brown is not a centrist Democrat, he is a progressive with a long record of supporting the issues that we care about most. He voted against the war, against the Bankruptcy Bill, against re-authorization of the Patriot Act and led the fight against CAFTA. However badly the situation was handled, the end result is still good. This is not a case of a DINO winning out over a progressive. This was an ugly intra-party feud that never should have happened. It was handled badly by everyone involved, but it is by no means a loss for progressives. While the top down dictation by party leaders in selecting the candidate of their choice is a problem we must all be willing to go to the mat in order to fix, this particular race, In the end, was a choice between two great candidates so we could hardly lose.
Progressives should wash the bad taste out of our mouths and get behind Sherrod Brown. He may lose, as he doesn’t have the crossover appeal that Hackett had (and those damn Diebold machines are still a problem), but he will surely lose without our support and regardless of how we feel about the way he entered the race, his record is one we can be proud of. This is a high-class problem for those of us on the left, two good candidates rather than the one bad one we’re so used to. If Brown will stay on message, take a lesson from Hackett and not only push hard a progressive agenda that benefits working Ohioans but shout it out at the top of his lungs, he’s got a very good chance of winning. And Paul Hackett should help make that happen, regardless of whether or not he was personally treated badly by the Party. There is no rest for the weary and this is going to be a long struggle. Like he said, “we must have the commitment and will to fight for what is great about our party and our country”. Don’t waste too much time licking your wounds Mr. Hackett, we need you on the frontlines.”
More comments about her post here, on The Smirking Chimp.