In terms of Tammy Duckworth’s candidacy, I get the point that many are upset at Rahm’s role in the race and that’s fair game.
What I don’t get are people trying to turn an accomplished woman into a simple tool of Rahm Emanuel. Tom Roeser provides the most recent example:
Emanuel has crafted for Duckworth what he believes will be a winning issue format. While she has received a medical discharge from the service, since Emanuel took her under his wing, Duckworth has announced that she will stay in the Illinois National Guard and would be one of about a half dozen members of Congress serving in the Guard. Her life experience can be used for her trade policy: Her husband worked at two companies that outsourced jobs to other countries, prompting her to advocate a mildly protectionist stance.
Now comes what Emanuel believes is the coup de grace. She goes hard left on social policy. She is not only pro-abort but even opposes parental notification for minors seeking abortions. Opposing parental notification is a bummer in the district and represents an extreme position, but Emanuel needs to placate the district’s small but potent liberal Democratic base in order to neutralize Duckworth’s primary opponent, Christine Cegalis who sounds not unlike Democratic national chairman Howard Dean. Duckworth also supports embryonic stem cell research which, at Emanuel’s direction, she blurs into plain “stem cell” research. Bearing the imprint of her political Svengali, Duckworth talks blandly of not “substituting government for family when it comes to making personal medical decisions”-a coded reference to Terri Schiavo, another appeal to a base which hated the Schiavo intervention.
Keep it up. If she becomes the nominee a lot over voters in the 6th are going to take this sort of crap and start to see the underlying implication being made by Roeser and others that a woman couldn’t possibly be able to have her own positions so it’s all evil Rahm’s doing because he’s the big strong alpha male. That’ll work wonders with moderate suburban women.
I think once one sees her on TV or in person, there is little doubt that Duckworth is a strong and capable women with a mind of her own. But, where Rahm comes in as Alpha is in MONEY, not Male. And EVERYONE gets that. Duckworth is getting all the financial (and other) help that Rahm won’t give to Cegelis, who is too progressive for him. Just from watching her TV interview I can’t believe anyone who pays any attention to the race is going to seriously think that Duckworth is brainless or incompetent.
And like I said, criticizing Rahm’s role is fair as are many other issues, but the Roeser crap is stupid. And to both Cegelis and Scott’s credit, they haven’t done that.
By and large though, most voters don’t pay attention to where one’s money comes from. It’s totally inside baseball (very public examples like Jack Abramoff aside).
While I would argue that Cegelis is still pretty well positioned here – I think a lot of her supporters are putting a little too much into the fact that the blog world is aflame with those who don’t like the DCCC’s actions here.
While there may well be a strong lot of 6th CD voters hammering this out online, the overwhelming majority of Dem primary voters in the district have never heard of Daily Kos, let alone having logged on and read of Rahm Emanuel’s supposed atrocities.
The citizen journalist aspect of the blog is what makes it fun and interesting. The open access is what often corrects mistakes and prompts debate. And sure it can drive news stories. But I would argue that the blog world is still one that operates in a relative vacuum, and one would do well not to mistake overwhelming support in that vacuum with even plurality support outside of it.
I agree Buck and that’s a good point. And an important aspect of this race is just how strong Cegelis’ name recognition is after the last race. If its high that’s an advantage, if it isn’t, she’s going to have a tough time. We’ve only seen one number on that publicly so it’s hard to gauge.
Blogs, to the degree they are important, influence people who are obsessed about politics and that sometimes bleed over to the regular press. They don’t directly count for many votes. They do offer a venue to organize and a cheap way to get some attention from elites.
Of course Roeser’s “crap” is “stupid”. He’s never made his GOP fealty a secret, and his on-air and in-print personality has always been that of a medicine show grifter. Step right up …