Big winner: Dean and the netroots
Chris Bowers points out the major victories that netroots candidates won, often in races that the national party would have written off. Many people wrote of the blogosphere as a political force when the Dean for President campaign collapsed. But we didn’t just pack it in, we built a strong infrastructure for winning national campaigns in edgy districts.
A lot of credit for that has to go to Chairman Dean as well. Despite dire warnings, Dean has not led the party into dire ideological warfare. He ran strong candidates in record numbers of races, and won in races that people would have written of otherwise.
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I don’t see this as a win for Dean or netroots. Republicans lost seats because the populace perceived the whole party as ineffectual and corrupt. Ned Lamont was dailyKos’s favorite netroots candidate, and he lost big. Lincoln Chafee, a very liberal republican with a 66% approval rating lost for no reason other than he was a republican.
This wasn’t about what Democrats did, it’s what Republicans failed to do.
I don’t see this as a win for Dean or netroots. Republicans lost seats because the populace perceived the whole party as ineffectual and corrupt. Ned Lamont was dailyKos’s favorite netroots candidate, and he lost big. Lincoln Chafee, a very liberal republican with a 66% approval rating lost for no reason other than he was a republican.
This wasn’t about what Democrats did, it’s what Republicans failed to do.
Dean and the 50-state strategy, and the netroots that raised the money, are directly responsible for Testor and Webb in the Senate, and a huge number of house seats.
What they did was provide seed money to any good candidate — anywhere — to get a campaign off the ground. He has also spent the last two years building a state party appartus in all 50 states. This allowed many states that were previously not challenged to become battlegrounds — and the D’s won some victory’s there.
Lamount was a weird case, but even that could be seen as a victory for the netroots. It put the war on the agenda — when it was on the periphery before that.
I give Dean and the netroots credit because they expanded the field of competitive races. I think the success of minimum wage initiatives and weak showings on marriage amendments suggests more than just a rejection of Republicans.