Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

There were several interesting posts yesterday on the 2006 senatorial campaign in Pennsylvania. Since it’s a bit late and I’ve never had much of a talent for concise summaries, I’ll just quote a little from each post and urge you to read them all in their entirety.

The post that started the day’s festivities was written by jpol and was posted on both Booman Tribune and Daily Kos. Here’s a little.

For those not familiar with this race, Bob Casey Jr. is the candidate the Democratic Establishment has anointed as its chosen candidate to oppose Santorum this fall. Most of the other potential candidates were muscled into withdrawing from a primary race to make way for Casey, though Chuck Pennacchio, a progressive running an insurgent campaign, remains in the race and is building an impressive grass-roots organization determined to capture the nomination for their candidate. Bob Casey Jr. is the state’s Auditor General and son of Bob Casey Sr., former Pennsylvania Governor. The Democratic Party hierarchy believes that Casey, a Conservative, is the best candidate to beat Santorum both because of his name recognition, and because they perceive of Pennsylvania as “blue” Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with “red” Alabama in-between. The problem is that it is often difficult to tell Santorum and Casey apart, much to the consternation of Progressive Pennsylvania Democrats. Casey is anti-choice and supports over-turning Roe v Wade. He opposes stem-cell research; supported Congressional intervention in the Terri Schiavo case; endorsed the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito; supports capital punishment (Santorum actually comes down on the opposite side of this issue); supported going to war in Iraq and opposes an exit strategy with a timetable; supports prayer in schools; supports the Patriot Act; opposes gun control et al. Many of the same large corporate PACs have contributed to both the Santorum and Casey campaigns[…]

The Democratic establishment may be betting that Santorum-haters will vote for Casey simply because he is not Rick Santorum. I for one am working for Chuck Pennacchio. I will vote for Chuck Pennacchio in the May primary. I will not vote for Bob Casey Jr. this fall if he is the Democratic nominee, and if the progressive circles I travel in are any indication, there are a lot of Pennsylvanians who, while wanting desperately to send Rick Santorum packing, aren’t desperate enough to vote for a candidate like Casey, who many of us consider to be Santorum’s Democratic counter-part. How ironic if it ends up that head-in-the-sand Democrats end up re-electing an unpopular Rick Santorum to the United States Senate.

Jpol hits on a point that I’ve been trying to make for some time. Despite all the polling evidence to the contrary, I don’t feel that Casey is the best candidate to run against Santorum in November. Indeed, I can’t imagine a worse candidate. As jpol points out, Casey doesn’t have much support in the hard core, activist progressive base. While this, in and of itself, doesn’t constitute a huge number of votes, it represents the sort of person who will talk to their neighbors and leaflet their neighborhoods. These are the people who will staff phone banks, stuff letters, canvas door to door and work their asses off to get out the vote. Will they do that for Casey? Combine that lack of base support with Casey’s crap political instincts and lukewarm Vaseline stump presence and you have a recipe for disaster.

Chris Bowers disagrees.

The first thing that strikes me about this passage is that the author indicates that it is someone else’s fault that s/he plans to not vote in 2006. I find that a shameful and childish abandonment of responsibility. How can someone indicate that s/he isn’t going to vote in 2006, and then call people who are going to vote “head-in-the-sand” Democrats? Very sad.

The second thing that strikes me not about this passage, but instead about the entire article, is just how wrong it is about Casey’s chances in this election. To say that Casey will probably lose to Santorum is both preposterous and an indication that someone has never really paid attention to election horse-races before. Casey is over 50% in oevery poll against Santorum, even though he is the lower-name ID challenger and lower-name ID challengers receive the bulk of the undecideds in elections. This is called the incumbent rule, and you can read more about it here, and see my research on it here. Further, Casey has actually been pulling further and further ahead of Santorum over the past year according to the Q-poll trendlines. At this point last year Casey was only up five points on Santorum. Now, he is regularly up double-digits. Still further, Casey has over 3.5M in the bank, and has raised more money this cycle than any other Democratic challenger. Yet still further, on election night in 2004, Casey outperformed Kerry by 415,000 votes in Pennsylvania. It is not as though he is a newcomer to this. Thrown in the fact hat Casey’s unfavorables still have not crossed into double-digits despite 60% name ID, and you are looking not just at a Casey victory, but rather at a 15-20% blowout.

I just can’t respect the election analysis of anyone who would argue that Casey does not have an excellent chance to win this race. All evidence points to this being the best chance Democrats have had to defeat in incumbent Republican Senator in decades. If you let your personal animus towards Casey to keep you from recognizing that, then quite frankly I think you should reconsider you ability to analyze the rest of the world in an objective, reality-based fashion

I doubt that Chris has ever had any respect for me (why would he?), so I’m risking little by writing that I think Casey’s chances of beating Santorum in November are piss poor. Casey is trashing Santorum in public opinion polling right now - he’s absolutely murdering little Rick. That’s great as far as it goes. One thing to remember, however, is that one of the candidates listed in those polls is an extraordinarily talented politician who has made a career of winning improbable victories, despite the fact that his views are completely out of synch with the views of his constituents. That candidate isn’t Bob Casey. Another thing to remember is that one of the candidates listed in those polls has shown an unfortunate ability to blow huge leads and yank defeat from the jaws of victory. That candidate, sadly, isn’t Rick Santorum. Not only is this a classic lesser of two evils election, the candidate we presume to be slightly less evil, is politically inept.

Here’s a little of what Booman had to say about the previous posts.

Chris is right. Casey has an excellent chance to beat Santorum. But, what he ignores is that anyone would have a good chance of beating Santorum. The polls have almost nothing to do with how much money Casey has, how good of a organization Casey has, or how well Casey performs as a candidate. It also ignores other polls that show that the more people learn about Casey, the less they are inclined to support him. Jerry took a different analytical tack than Chris.

Jerry focused not on the current polls, or the coffers of the candidates, but on what future polls are likely to look like as voters become better informed about the candidates. The concern is that Casey’s support will erode substantially and perhaps fatally, once voters realize that he is a wingnut.

Chris, Jerry, and I all are supporting Pennacchio. We all know him personally, and his wonderful campaign manager. We are all working for him. We support him because he best represents our values. But after that, our similarities begin to differ. Chris is confident that Casey will win. I am modestly optimistic that he will win. Jerry is pessimistic. Chris and I will vote for Casey in November. Jerry won’t.

Obviously, I have my doubts about Casey’s ability to beat Santorum. But will I vote for him? Right now, I honestly can’t say if I will or I won’t, should it come to that. I’m not a single issue voter and I never will be. I don’t expect perfection out of any candidate and I’m not waiting around for the perfect Democrat with perfect positions. I do have at least a little grounding in reality. But here’s the problem, I don’t have a single issue problem with Bob Casey, I have an every issue problem with Bob Casey. Whether it’s stem cell research, the death penalty, the Iraq War, women’s rights, gun control, gay rights, living wages or universal healthcare, my views are 180 degrees from Casey’s. The only reason I can think of to support him is that, if elected, he may vote for Harry Reid to be Senate Majority Leader, and I’m not at all convinced he’ll even do that…

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 18th, 2006 at 3:54 am and is filed under General, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.