Via Charlie Pierce. The Dem powers-that-be made the exact same mistake with Christie that they did with Dubya: The national Democratic party can be depended upon to punch its own nose with startling regularity. National Democrats stand by the decision not to play seriously in New Jersey, according to several who spoke with The Daily Beast. The calculation was two-fold, they said. First, the money required just to land a punch on Christie in the pricey New York and Philadelphia media markets could fund an entire campaign somewhere or sometime else when a Democrat had a chance of winning. When you have someone this powerful and this popular, you shrug it off and wait for the next one, a top Democratic donor said of Christie. Its not worth the financial investment to try to take him down or out.Second, Democrats firmly believe that no matter how strong Christie looks on Election Day 2013 in New Jersey, the Republican nominating gauntlet will eat his 2016 presidential candidacy alive before he ever gets a chance to face off against a Democrat in a general election. When it comes to national elections, weve seen how efficient and effective Republicans are at destroying each others reputations, so Ill leave it to them, said Robert Zimmerman, a national committeeman for the DNC. Chris Christie is a very powerful national candidate, but the question is can a mainstream Republican be elected by the Republican Party today? No. Wrong. Wrong. Very wrong. Incredibly wrong. Spectacularly wrong. Also, stupid. First of all, according to the latest NBC News/WSJ Poll, Christies numbers are plummeting just like those of every other candidate. Hes at 33 percent favorable right now. This is not a powerful national candidate. Hes weak and hes insecure and you can make him pop his cork as predictably as Old Faithful. In fact, your job, Democratic panjandrums, was to make him a national candidate before he is ready to be one. It was to make him a national candidate on your timetable, not his. Define, define, define. Spend whatever it takes to do that. Second, as Steve M. relentlessly points out, the Tea Party folk dont necessarily like the fact that Christie spent quality time with the Kenyan Usurper, but they love, love, love the way Big Chicken bullies the helpless and powerless. To hate like that gives their lives meaning, and Christie is a perfect vessel for that. Theyll settle for that more easily than they settled for Willard Romney, god knows. So depending on the Tea Party folk to bring him down is to gamble high on phantoms. This is the same ghastly strategy that aided and abetted the rise of C-Plus Augustus in Texas. It was their one opportunity to bloody him up, to wound him with ridicule until he (predictably) explodes, before the tingle rises up Chris Matthewss leg. That was worth anything they could have spent. And what campaigns, precisely, elsewhere in the country, was the Democratic party spending its money on that were so important that they took precedence over blowing out at least one tire on the Christie bandwagon? If you cant learn from the mistakes you made that helped elect George W. Bush, an intervention is clearly called for. And let me add that Christie is a lot more appealing to the average voter than the Smirking Chimp was, the media adores him, and the electorate is tired of partisanship gridlock. Im afraid well be saying President Christie --talk me down!
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 08:08:40 +0000