Your warm-fuzzy, feel-good political story of the morning comes to us from Stu Rothenberg, who spins us a delightful tale of the travails of one Tommy Sowers of MO-08. Sowers is apparently one of the darlings of national Democrats, particularly the political and entertainment celebrity factions of it; he’s raised a bunch of money from them*. He’s also being thoroughly beaten by incumbent Republican Jo Ann Emerson – an April internal poll put her up by 50 points – which leads Stu to note:
With so many Democratic candidates running in close contests, you’d think party contributors might try to be strategic about their giving. Instead, many have opened their wallets to a personally appealing candidate who, by every indication, has no chance of winning. It’s difficult to believe those dollars wouldn’t be of better use in other races.
They would be, Stu. The Democrats’ problem here is that they’re trying to recreate their successful 2006 & 2008 strategy of putting up ‘conservative’ candidates who will then turn around and vote however their liberal owners tell them to. Unfortunately, after four years of insane deficit spending, utter contempt for the desires of the American people, complete betrayal of both fiscal and social conservative principles, and a relentless demonization of anybody who showed the least resistance to the Democratic agenda… yeah. That’s not going to work this go-round.
But they’re certainly welcome to keep trying. Which they probably will: some lessons aren’t really learned unless there’s some pain attached.
Moe Lane
*Just not as much as Emerson, though.