Mark Pera's campaign
Considering the energy posting for Pera here and here, you have to wonder if it was time really misspent due to a badly flawed understanding of the issues and voters in Illinois's 3rd district.
Take a look at some of the postings on why Pera's campaign made so much sense and you really have to wonder if Pera's supporters aren't way out-of-touch.
Compare their disconnect in the third with many of these same folk's abandonment of John Laesch in the 14th --a guy who I think would stand a chance against a widely disliked Oberweis especially with Obama at the top of the ticket in November-- and you really have to wonder about their political horse-sense.
The silence on Pera, or worse: WestsideGirl in Kos, doesn't auger well for progressivism.
So seduced by a millionaire's money as the path to power, they'll dump their political principles. That McCain doing just the opposite and winning should tell us something about 2008.
15 comments:
What the 2008 campaign tells me about John McCain is that he'll say just about anything to get himself nominated, including cozying up to Jerry Falwell, reversing course on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, saying he’ll now consider speaking at Bob Jones University, caving on White House demands on torture and backing down on campaign finance reform. "Mr. Straight Talk" has turned into a flip flopper of major proportions. You’re dead wrong Bill, he would not be a good example for progressives to follow.
Bill, we have been over this. It is sad that we got trounced as badly as we did.
I don't know, I think we were most seduced by the his campaign issues page which clearly laid out the reasons for working against Lipinski.
Now we get to see if you prediction about the IL-3 being competitive in the general is gonna come true?
Is the GOP even bothering Crash_Dev...they need to contest for competition.
I'm not sure the Illinois GOP is in that frame of mind.
The Progressives need to reach out to Hispanics. Hispanics nationwide are pissed off that the supposedly liberal Congressman Shakowsky and Jackson TRIED TO ELIMINATE EVERY SINGLE HISPANIC ELECTED OFFICIAL IN A SINGLE ELECTION!!!! NO HISPANICS DUE TO THE LIBERALS.
Diversity is not just liberal white and Black.
Obama is losing in other states because of no Hispanic participation.
Bill,
Did the Green party do anything at all worth noting on Tuesday? If not, they should have been ashamed of themselves.
Speaking of which, why didn't you make a go for some office as a Green? It couldn't have hurt.
The thought has crossed my mind Choli... look at the issues in my area and they all surround resources, consumption and development. The Greens get wrapped up in national issues and overlook the advances they can make locally.
Circumstances are going to force me to curtail blogging for a while, much less get involved in politics, so I'm a bad choice at the moment...
...but you thought is well taken.
PS no I don't Greens have done much although I think they are running a candidate for Kane County board and I haven't heard much about her of late.
Bill-
The Greens have a long way to go in changing the mind-set of your area. It's not just the development itself, it's the kind of development. Kane is expected to add 300,000 people over the next 25 years. Where will they go? If the rest of Kane County develops like Campton Hills with large lots, well and septic, there will be no farm land left, and very transit-unfriendly. But the "5 miles away from everything, five miles away from nothing" mindset hates denser development...just go to any planning or zoning hearing in your community.
Most everyone is overlooking one critical issue in the 3rd CD election results: abortion. The pro-life candidates received over 60% of the vote, and that isn't a coincidence. Even though this district does vote Democratic in presidential elections, in a choice between a pro-life Dem and a pro-choice Dem, the pro-life Dem has the advantage. There are a lot of older, pro-life Democratic Catholics in this district - I believe it has more social security recipients than any other Chicago district. Therefore, I think Pera made a HUGE mistake making abortion the top issue item on his website and in his debate speeches. No need to rile up the pro-life base, as he seemed to do.
I live in the district and it shouldn't be stereotyped as pro-choice just because it votes Democratic in Presidential races. And the voters of the 3rd aren't as stupid as many Pera supporters have claimed - they are just more complicated (they also like the fact that Lipinski brings home the bacon).
Lastly, many elections come down to how likeable the candidate is, and Pera needed to be very likeable to beat an incumbent. At the debate in LaGrange I was anxious to see how he handled himself, but he came across as mean from the start when he used his personal statement to attack Lipinski. While he proved he could raise money from the liberal bloggers, he also proved he wasn't that great of a candidate.
Read my exchange with Pera on Embryonic Stem Cell research.
Mary Schnieder should take note.
Demanding support of using human embryos for stem cell research, and eventual therapies, as a litmus test to define progressive is a very bad tactic.
Has anyone in the state ever lost an election because of some sort of anti-nepotism? I just don't think the voters really care that much about the issue when it actually comes down to the voting booth.
They only case I can think of is Bill Beavers' daughter. Oops, scratch that, she was beaten by Jesse Jr's wife, so that just was nepotism beating nepotism.
You run against Lipinski talking about the corruption tax: the price we pay for the combine in Illinois.
Bill-
In a perfect world the "corruption tax" would be a big issue. But with things as they are, the insiders have the upper hand, because who wants an idealist who can't get anything done vs. an insider who will get their share or more for the constituency?
...good points but my response would be get rid of the corruption tax and we can grow a bigger pie in Illinois. Corruption a powerful barrier to investment.
I didn't say this would be easy by the way. But we're at a point in time when politics is up in the air.
There are big opportunities out there for people with ideas wanting to build new coalitions.
This election didn't show many of those kinds of candidates though.
Alex,
Latinos were behind Pera and actively volunteered and raised money for him.
--
Bill,
Somehow the Pera campaign didn't connect to the voters it needed. Polls have shown time and again that when 3rd CD voters recognize a Lipinski opponent they prefer the opponent.
Lip has high negatives in district, but also has high name recognition.
See ArchPundit for more, notably in comments.
That's sort of the point.. a machine guy with high negatives wins because progressives want to make embryonic stem cell research the issue.
There was a time when Liberals would have given the benefit of the doubt to people who find human embryos "human" instead of denigrating them as "Bush Dogs".
Pera simply deserved a loss to a guy with high negatives for not understanding a complexity that blue collar folks in the 3rd easily understood.
Post a Comment