Wampum

It's as if Schumer and his ilk want to destroy their own party - or, at the very least, destroy women's rights. Over on Kos and MLW - Hackett is often being referred to as 'conservative' and 'Republican-lite'. Well, I investigated his opinions - and he is staunchly in favor of reproductive rights for women as well as other areas of individual freedom - including the LGBT community. But for some reason, party line hacks want to present him in another light. Frankly - the Democratic Party lost me completely over Alito - this crap over Hackett is just more of the same!

Schumer annoys me sometimes, but he's not so bad, and you certainly can't blame him for trying to do what's best for his party.

In PA, he has a guaranteed win with Casey. Taking Santorum out of the Senate is worth gritting your teeth on Casey. Remember, Specter beat Hoeffel 53-42 in a state that Kerry won. Even when the incumbent is weak, advertising and incumbency are powerful. Better Casey than Santorum; 'nuff said.

In OH, Hackett did not allow the party to clear the field for him. He dithered when he should have been announcing, which impelled Brown (who himself was none too decisive) to jump in. Once the two were up and running, Brown was polling 20 points over Hackett. The party wanted its rock-star candidate to hold office, but to hold office you have to win primaries, and Hackett wasn't going to.

My guess is that Schumer et al tried telling him, but were ignored since Hackett had so outperformed expectations against Schmidt. At a certain point, they needed to extract him so that Brown could have a pleasant primary and focus on beating DeWine. better Brown than DeWine, too, I think.

The failure here was to mollify Hackett enough to get him to play nice. Rock stars have egos, and you need to do what's necessary to keep them happy. That is where I fault Schumer. He should have found a way to placate Bono.. er, Hackett.