There are those who say Paul Hackett is a winner even though he's a loser, and those who say he's just a loser like the other losers who are claiming he's a winner. Say that three times fast.
I don't think it's quite so simple. I'm not going to say that Hackett's a "winner." He isn't. He was a relatively inexperienced candidate running in a strong Republican district. Eons of studies about running for Congress tell us those two things often determine a race. He got national attention and support, but it caught on late. He had a lot of qualities that are always pluses in a race for the House: young, handsome, wife and small kids, veteran, passion for politics, articulate about his platform (not necessarily in that order). Hopefully he'll run again, though I am not ready for the Hackett/Obama '08 ticket the way some people are talking.
However last night as I watched - or tried to - election results come out on the web, there was definitely one big loser in this race: the mainstream national media. There was no coverage anywhere. The blogosphere - left and right - and local media were all over this story yet the nationals were nowhere, not even in their politics sections or regional coverage. When your Midwest headline is talking about "couple killed in classic car crash" you'd think maybe there is room for something about a hot special election. And yes, among others (the NYT) I'm talking about you CNN with your "Jennifer Aniston still loves Brad Pitt" and "dead woman gives birth to 1 lb. baby." The traffic on the web was incredible, and both the left and right were panting for information.
In the loser honorable mention category, we have the regional media. Some had little to no coverage. For them, see above. The others, I have a bit more empathy for. The Cincinatti papers and some local sources were getting up the returns, but slowly. They were also not very quick to inform - if they did at all - about the delayed counting in Clermont County. At least some of them tried. It's clear that they also didn't plan well for the traffic they got. I'm slightly empathetic, because it's easy to say "you shoulda seen it coming" but sites crashing was a major problem last night.
Looks like Daily Kos was a big winner. The Ohio Democratic Party had old information - though I admit they were probably pretty busy to be fiddling with their web site - and Kos became report central. I'm curious about what their site traffic was last night, as people sought information (this is finally where I found links to local Ohio news sources), complained, hoped, prayed, hatched theories, and everything else under the moon.
Grassroots democratic organizers are going to be winners, I think. This taste of competitiveness has a lot of people stirred up, and if the party and its organizers can capitalize, they may be able to get closer the right's success at mobilization. Pretty intangible, for sure, but a possibility. The democratic party, if they don't fuck it up, might come out winning from this, getting more good candidates in the pipeline, and gaining momemtum.
Finally, there are some regular people who may benefit from this. Of course there are those who might get a new representative. However I am specifically thinking about veterans of the Iraq war, and especially those returned veterans who aren't marching in lock step with the rhetoric of the Bush administration. In the last couple of years I have met a few veterans like Paul Hackett, volunteers willing to do their duty, but confounded by the mismatch between the politics and the reality of the war. Veterans who are moderate democrats who are no knee-jerk opponents of defense, but who truly support liberty, especially at home. Veterans who think, ah, maybe I should run for office, and then think they can't. I think Hackett's campaign has shown us that they can, and they can be competitive. And if they don't win, they can bring their issues out in campaigns. None of this will see the light of day if they don't run, and I think Hackett's candidacy might give some people who have lots of courage, a little bit more confidence about entering into the political arena.
Posted by binky at August 3, 2005 09:15 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics