The Lefties Lose Again

Paul Hackett is an Iraq War veteran who ran against Republican Jean Schmidt in a special runoff election in Ohio. Hackett has pretty much run a one-note campaign against the President and the Iraq War which had garnered him the adoration of the lefty blogs, especially the folks at dKos, which fashions itself the next wave in political campaigning.

Well, Hackett lost pretty handily tonight despite his late apparent snuggling up to the President and a not-very-conservative opponent.

This makes Markos Moulitsas and his Kossacks 0-17 in political campaigns thus far. Their efforts to angry up the base doesn’t seem to be a very effective political stragety, but that hasn’t prevented them from using it as their go-to. I think this election shows that the blogosphere probably isn’t ready for the primetime of campaigning – at least not in the way that Moulistas chooses to go about it. The lesson here is that while the left side of the blogosphere is good for bomb-throwing, it makes a pretty ineffective campaign tool. Most voters just don’t particularly care what a bunch of partisan firebrands have to say about the campaign. I suppose that the fiery ruin of Howard Dean’s campaign wasn’t a harsh enough lesson.

It will be interesting to read the reaction from that side of the blogosphere about why their concerted efforts failed so badly. My guess is that we’re going to get a hint right here from this post on MyDD where the writer wants to gather ammunition to attack the voting machines. Again, you can believe that a large part of the story will be ginned up fables about voter fraud and the evil hand of Karl Rove upon it all.

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Category: Political Pontifications