What Should Progressives Demand From Candidates - Sizzle or Substance?

[Wetzelbill]

What Should Progressives Demand From Candidates - Sizzle or Substance?
By David Sirota

Over the last week, there has been much attention paid to the 2006 U.S. Senate Democratic primary in Ohio between longtime champion Rep. Sherrod Brown (D) and Paul Hackett (D). Parts of the blogosphere have loudly billed Hackett as the true progressive in the race, despite his lack of concrete positions on various issues - a tactical move to try to prevent Brown from marketing his long history fighting the lonely fights in the trenches in Congress for the progressive cause.

The debate, while seemingly confined to one state, actually brings up a fundamental question for all progressives: are we going to reward with support our ideological heroes - the people who have fought the lonely, unglamorous, unsexy fights over the years for our cause? Or are we going to abandon these fighters for flavor-of-the-week candidates whose image/profile looks great at the moment, but whose position on issues we know little - if anything - about? And if we abandon the people like Brown who have gone to bat for us over the long haul, what message do we send to all of our other allies in terms of what they can expect in return for sticking their necks out and taking the tough votes/stands?

It's true - Hackett has said "you bet I'm progressive." And he has said "we need more straight-talking, straight-shooting politicians." But even when you look at his statements in his very short time in politics, it's difficult to see that he says those statements with much substantive conviction. For instance, Hackett has been billed as a star of the anti-war movement, with bloggers saying he has had been steadfast and outspoken in his opposition to the conflict in Iraq. And its true, now running in a Democratic primary where anti-war positions are politically potent, Hackett says "If I were the president, I'd tell the military to figure out how we systematically and in organized fashion get our troops out of there, because the war's over. It's not going to get any better. I think that the administration has got to permit the American military over there to fight..."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/what-should-progressives-_b_9454.html

[Demit]

1. If that's supposed to be a plug for Sherrod Brown,

implying he's the one with the substance, it's a pretty weak effort. All it is is an attempt to plant doubt in our minds about Paul Hackett. Even the story he links to, supposedly to show Brown's substance--the Congressional vote on the nonbinding resolution for an exit strategy--doesn't even mention Brown!

Not that I've been following this race closely, but I have read on DU about how Brown hemmed and hawed about getting into the race. That doesn't sound good. He sounds like a party drone who assumed he'd have no opposition in the primary and wasn't sure about running in the first place. Sirota can't even make a case for Brown as having substance, how is he going to convince us that he's what we desperately need--a leader?

[tk2kewl]

2. How about getting the folks who supposedly fight the good fight

to actually start aggressively calling out the admin and the repukes on a wavelength the average voter can connect with? :shrug:

The reason Hackett has captured peoples imagination is because he is willing to talk tough and say the war is wrong and bushCo is full of shit.