The Source

McCaskill not an Underdog, Just Unpopular

Claire McCaskill must not have got the memo:

Expecting to be "an underdog" in her re-election bid, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., tried to put some distance between herself and the White House during a televised appearance on Sunday.

"I'm anticipating being an underdog in this [2012] election, and that means I'm going to have to work twice as hard -- which is OK with me," McCaskill said on Fox News Sunday.

Being a vulnerable incumbent doesn't mean you're the underdog, it just means you're unpopular. And she's still having trouble coming up with reasons why she shouldn't have to be the underdog. Pressed to come up with a criticism of Obama, she comes up with the following:

"I think many of those things didn't get the focus they should have at that point in time."

That's not the language that an independent uses. It's what party loyalists say when their leaders screw up; that they're really right and their hearts are in the right place, but they got their priorities wrong for a little while.

This is what peer pressure from Emanuel Cleaver does to political careers.

 

Sowers Mulling Over Second Disastrous Bid for Office

After losing by a more than 2:1 margin, when his over-hyped campaign turned into Missouri's biggest disappointment, Tommy Sowers wants to assure his supporters that their money wasn't entirely wasted - according to an e-mail blast sent out last week, Tommy is considering running again for office.

For perspective: after raising more than $1.5 million dollars, Sowers only managed to do two percentage points better than the 2002 Democrat candidate for the same seat, who didn't spend a single dollar.  It's no wonder Roll Call labeled him one of the 'Most Outrageous, Absurd Candidates of 2010', and raised questions about whether or not it was ethical for Sowers to tell his donors he had a chance of winning.

And yet Tommy Sowers continues to miss the obvious...

As for me, after 18 months without a vacation, I'm on an extended one, practicing my Spanish and my fishing technique, reading and writing. There seems to be much interest in my next step and I'm humbled by the suggestions to run for office again in Missouri. Well, if you ever lost your first love, and felt then that you'd never love again, you know where I am with politics right now. But I also know from experience that being in love is better than not, and that with space and time, it happens again.

 

A Thanksgiving Story

We were told the story of Thanksgiving ad nauseam in elementary school - the Pilgrims arrived in America, and facing an unexpected harsh winter, almost starved to death. They were then saved by the Native American Indians, who showed them how to grow corn and catch wild birds. And then the first Thanksgiving feast happened. End of  story.

But is that what really happened?

Not at all. The original pact that the Pilgrims entered into together called for all their product (produce, clothing, et cetera) to be put into a "common store," and every one would get a "common share." In other words, the Pilgrims were socialists - they did not get to keep their earnings, instead they had to "spread the wealth around."

So how did that work out for the Pilgrims? Not so well. Why plant crops when you will still get fed? Why sew clothing when you will still be clothed? Soon, the nonworking Pilgrims outnumbered the working ones. So quickly after the socialist experiment started, the Pilgrims were cold and hungry. Not surprising, right?

Faced with potentially being wiped out by dwindling food stock in winter, William Bradford (the leader of the Pilgrims) decided to toss out the socialism model, and usher in a free-market model. The Pilgrims were all given a plot of land to do with what they pleased, and naturally after that no one went hungry or cold. More specifically, now that Pilgrims could buy and sell (and own) goods, there was a motive to be a productive member of their society, and so that society flourished. The Pilgrims short socialist experiment was over, and the long and glorious history of capitalism in America was beginning.

What's the moral of the story? Socialism has been tried, and it quickly failed. Miserably. Why go back to ideas that were abandoned in the 17th century? Be thankful this year that while our capitalist system is under attack, we have the freedom to protect and preserve it. You and I have learned this lesson, but people in power have not. Feel free to spread this story around.

Have a happy, safe and blessed Thanksgiving.

Jason Grill: Full of Excuses

Jason Grill has not one, not two, but nearly a dozen excuses why he lost - and none of them have anything to do with him or his narcissistic obsession with himself. Being petulant isn't exactly a good way to endear yourself to the voters.

Has the death of his political career really been exaggerated? We don't think so. You can take any chance that he would come back in a few years as a more humble, mature politician off the books, because he's not going to learn from his mistakes.

Rothenberg: Sowers an Outrageous, Absurd Candidate

Stuart Rothenberg writes in Roll Call:

I wrote about Sowers’ campaign in this space during the summer (“Missouri 8: For Sowers, Raising Money Is the Easy Part,” June 15, 2010), after I was shocked to see the amount of attention the campaign received in the national media. Still, even I am stunned at the absurdity of the campaign.

Sowers lost to Republican Rep. Jo Ann Emerson by more than 36 points in a race that any dispassionate observer would have said was a nonstarter. Remember, Barack Obama and John Kerry each drew just 36 percent in this district, while Al Gore drew 39 percent in 2000.

In other words, this is an impossible district for a Democrat even in a good Democratic year, let alone a year like 2010. Yet, Sowers raised almost as much money as Emerson did ($1.69 million to $1.86 million) and continued right up to Election Day to raise money and brag about his prospects.

Sowers’ Sept. 19 e-mail fundraising letter borders on the delusional:

....

Still, isn’t there something at least a little wrong with prying cash out of people by leading them to believe that you can win when you can’t?

Sowers' campaign was, at a minimum, lying his donors about his chances to win (as we argued earlier). Rothenberg speculates that Sowers' campaign may have just been naive or ignorant about its chances to win, but we don't buy it - they conducted polling and released some of their numbers, while noticably failing to disclose the state of the ballot.

The media outlets that hyped up Sowers' failing campaign should take note, because they're largely responsible for this.

McCaskill Struggling with Political Reality

McCaskill made two interesting (and at odds) statements about her Party leadership in under 24 hours. The first:

Bob Priddy: Given the rhetoric we heard during the campaign, can the Democrats afford to keep Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in leadership positions next year?

Claire McCaskill: (long pause) Ummm, oh….you know, I am— (pause) My uh, desire to be candid and diplomatic are really in conflict right now. And it’s probably better I, that I just don’t address that question.

It's a little bit surprising that she was caught flat-footed by the question everyone else has been wondering about for weeks, but then again, she's been two steps behind ever since election day. The next day, her reaction to Politico was more polished but no more substantive. Note the jab at Emanuel Cleaver's early claim that turning her back on Obama would be disloyal:

“I don’t think you have to be disloyal to President [Barack] Obama, to be independent,” said McCaskill, who is facing reelection in a state that Obama lost in 2008. “And I think that’s the message that I got to make sure that Missourians understand: that I haven’t been afraid to differ from Harry Reid; I have not been afraid to take on Nancy Pelosi; I have not been afraid to tell the president he is wrong. And that I have been the independent that I think most Missourians want.”

If McCaskill wants to persist in arguing that she's doing everything right, we think she should go ahead and do it. This isn't a PR problem that can be fixed by self-proclaiming your independence, and for the next two years she won't be able to vote in secret like she could to get Nancy Pelosi elected as Minority Leader.

Nixon's announcements getting recursive

Jay Nixon's spokesman Jack Cardetti has announced that Jay Nixon isn't announcing his run for Governor on the 30th. This is starting to get a little bit recursive - should we expect pre-announcements for all of his future announcements over the next two years?

It's not like he could be sneaky about running for Governor anyway. He's out raising funds, and he doesn't exactly do that to help any of his fellow Democrats.

They can't do better than this?

Earlier Patrick Tuohey remarked on how thin the Democrat bench seems to be - and he was right. The St. Louis Beacon is now reporting that Susan Montee, "the first down-ballot incumbent in at least 50 years to lose re-election", is being tapped by some local Dems as a possible head for the Missouri Democratic Party.

Montee always had trouble sorting out the difference between political work and being an Auditor, and is probably better suited for a less serious job, but we really have to wonder: is this the best they have to offer? One could point to her loss and her inability to see it coming as reasons why she's too out of touch and poorly  positioned to rebuild Missouri Democrats, and let's face it; it's going to be a rough job.

With twenty seats lost between the Missouri House and Senate, Democrats have less to offer their donors, fewer people to do the work, and a more challenging task of rebuilding the party's infrastructure. And unless they want to repeat 2010 they need some fresh faces.

Montee isn't exactly a strong candidate, unless their strategy is to double down on the same failed way of doing things. We wonder if the chatter says more about the current status of the party than it does any particular replacements they might be considering.

Emanuel Cleaver's Danger Sense is Tingling

Just days after news broke that Claire McCaskill is one of the most vulnerable Democrat Senators, Cleaver popped in to publicly warn her against trying to be a moderate. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) warned Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) of "disloyalty" to President Obama if she should seek to distance herself from the White House in her re-election campaign.

Cleaver, who's seen as the likely next leader of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), cautioned the centrist senator of distancing herself from Obama, the way many endangered incumbents had done in the closing weeks of the 2012 election.

“Any attempt to extricate herself from him will be an act of disloyalty,” Cleaver told McClatchy in a piece profiling McCaskill's re-election campaign. “She will not do that at all.”

Which Dems will Step up in 2012?

Patrick Tuohey took a look at who the likely Republican and Democrat 2012 contenders will be, and rightfully concludes that the Democrats have a very shallow pool of talent. Note that one of the earliest indications that House and Senate Democrats in Missouri were going to have a bad year this November was the awful recruitment; they just couldn't field enough viable candidates.

Right now there aren't many obvious choices for Democrats, and it's not clear that many will have an opportunity to distinguish themselves in an increasingly small and disorganized minority.

Tuohey writes:

No Democratic members of Congressional Delegation (Lacy Clay, Russ Carnahan and Emanuel Cleaver) are likely statewide candidates.  St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay may run for the 3rd CD after Russ Carnahan retires or resigns.  Senators Victor Callahan and Ryan McKenna also have potential for higher office.  Representative Jason Kander has potential to replace Cleaver, but would not perform well in a statewide race.

Republicans, on the other hand have a list of candidates in waiting.

Read the full article here.