Letter to Emanuel, Schumer, etc. re: Hackett (need input)

DancingBear

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Tue Feb-14-06 12:56 PM
Original message

Letter to Emanuel, Schumer, etc. re: Hackett (need input)

(DU -Please give me your thoughts. I am holding back on this letter for now, for I am literally shaking with rage. Your comments are aprreciated. Thanks.)

Dear Mr. Emanuel,

Are you happy now?

Thanks to your back room behavior, along with your partners in cowardice Mr. Schumer and Mr. Reid, you have taken the BEST hope the Democratic Party has had in years and tossed it to the wayside. To no one’s surprise, you first gave Paul Hackett the big thumbs up, only to work behind the scenes against him to help dry up his fundraising and in turn promote a candidate that first said no, then yes.

Let me tell you a little story. I went to school in Ohio, and lived there for a time after graduation. My in-laws live in southern Ohio, including my brother-in-law. He is a big man, a millwright by trade, and knows little of beltway politics, save for the fact that he takes voting very seriously if there is a candidate he believes in. He respects the flag, and he is sickened by what is happening to this country. When a man like Paul Hackett speaks, my brother-in-law listens. When a veteran looks him straight in the eye and says “I was there”, he listens. Paul Hackett commanded the respect of not only my brother-in-law, but of the men he worked with. The hunters, the guys with the pick-up trucks, and the blue collar lunch pail union guys who work 60 hours a week and nod in approval when a soldier speaks the truth. They would have voted for Paul Hackett. They will not vote for Sherrod Brown. I only wish you could understand why.

So, with the mother of all gift horses dropped into your collective laps in Paul Hackett, what do you do? Do you stand behind a man who isn’t afraid to tell the truth, and who – with NO HELP from any of you –almost turned an absolute guaranteed Republican seat blue? Of course not. You work to cut his legs off, and then ask him to go against his own word and hobble off down to the House, where you and only you have decided his political future should lay.

Instead, he stood true to his word, and let those whom he promised take their turn. What a noble concept, Mr. Emanuel - honesty. With that, Paul has now left the political arena for good, stinging from the deceit that you showered him with at every turn, and knowing that even those within his own party will stick a shiv into anyone who upsets the apple cart.

I am disgusted with my party today, Mr. Emanuel. Disgusted. There are thousands upon thousands of us out here who WAIT for the day that this party will return to its roots, and that it will bring forth candidates who live not for some half-cocked notion of what constitutes electabilty but instead cry for this nation and are not afraid to walk the walk to make it whole. There are liars in The White House, Mr. Emanuel, and the graveyards fill up daily with the young. A man came to you who had seen the dead when they still lived, and all he wanted to do was to be able to tell the American people what he knew. There were tens of thousands of us who wanted to hear, because unlike all of you we are not afraid of this cabal any longer.

Fifty-six veterans are running for Congress this year under the banner of the Democratic Party. They are “the band of brothers”, and they will speak out. How many of them will you try and silence, or try and “re-locate?” How many will quit because you give them no support, financially or politically, because the bombs they may throw land too close for comfort? How many times will your DLC logic stick yet another Republican in the halls of Congress?

Not one more dime to you, Mr. Emanuel, or any of the hopelessly naïve fools who think that running an upstate unknown Ohio Congressperson who will be branded by the right as a “big city liberal” trumps running an Iraqi war veteran who could have galvanized the grass roots and brought a little of that old time religion back into a party that has been sitting on its collective ass for years. Not one more dime to those who will next look to cut Howard Dean off at his knees, throwing him an official Paul Hackett Prosthesis and saying “sorry, all roads lead to the BIG money.” Not one more dime to those who will by whatever means necessary throw progress and truth down a rat hole when it comes to selecting our next Presidential candidate.

I worked for this party for years. No more. I stood in the New Hampshire cold and in the Ohio rain for what I thought would be a turning point in the Democratic party, and I get repaid by an act of political cowardice so brazen it should have a G.O.P seal of approval next to it. No more. Your Democratic party is dead, but mine, you see, is alive. It is alive in the candidacies of all those brave men and women who WILL speak truth to power, and who will not stand down. Those are the people I will be supporting. They may not win, for the cowards are entrenched deeply, but they will get my time, my money, and my support.

Your Democratic Party can, will all due respect, go to hell.