Iraq Vet Takes on Politics:Tammy Duckworth

[cal04]

The smiling candidate in rimless eyeglasses and a long woolen skirt maneuvers carefully among tables and chairs as she works a crowded Starbucks. She is taking small steps, and the reason for the slight awkwardness in her gait is not instantly clear. Reaching to shake hands with a voter, she says: "You may have heard of me. I'm the Iraq war vet who's running. I was injured over there." Talking with another, she says: "I actually lost both my legs. I can walk because I got really good health care."

Tammy Duckworth, Democratic candidate for Congress, cannot escape the catastrophic wounds she suffered as an Army helicopter pilot in Iraq. And, for the purposes of her candidacy, she does not want to. For better or worse, her injuries are her signature, her motivator and, she hopes, her ticket into the consciousness of voters in the Illinois 6th District. "I can't avoid the interest in the fact that I'm an injured female soldier," Duckworth, 37, says in an interview at her campaign headquarters in Lombard, west of Chicago. "Understand that I'm going to use this as a platform."

That is just what a pair of influential Illinois Democrats expected when they recruited her to seek the seat surrendered after 32 years by Republican stalwart Henry J. Hyde. Sen. Richard J. Durbin and Rep. Rahm Emanuel appealed to Duckworth when she was still recovering from her injuries, dissing the up-and-running campaign of fellow Democrat Christine Cegelis, who took 44 percent of the vote against
Hyde in 2004. Duckworth, who considers the Iraq war a mistake, is among about a dozen veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan running for federal office this year, at last count all but one of them Democrats.

The party leadership is calculating that candidates who wore the uniform can offer a credible counterpoint on national security to Republicans who have dominated the debate from the campaign trail to Capitol Hill. That's fine with Duckworth. She sees the race -- and pretty much everything else since Nov. 12, 2004, when an insurgent's rocket-propelled grenade exploded at her feet -- as a second chance. "I know this sounds really corny, but I've just got to be more," Duckworth says. "I've got to be more than I was."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/18/AR2006021801295.html

[MisterP]

1. part of this might be the DCCC trying to salvage itself by grasping

at leftists--Brown and Duckworth are strongly anti-war and anti-neoliberalism. But it's hurting more than helping, since (1) it's at the expense of Hackett and Cegelis and (2) anti-war and -neoliberalism is like cyanide to apparatchiks and cryptocon kingmakers like Emmanuel and the War-Party Wing of the Dems. This should end up like a reverse Marbury vs. Madison for them, from a long-term perspective: exercising their power in order (basically) to lose it.

[acmejack]

2. Excuse me?

They brought Duckworth in at the expense of Cegalis. Christine ran in Ill 6 last time, built the grassroots organization, and nearly beat Hyde with 44% of the vote, amazing everyone. Tammy didn't even actually live in the district Ill 6!

[MisterP]

3. that's what I said (I think)

by setting Duckworth AGAINST Cegelis, for example, DCCC and Co. are harming themselves by creating bad blood with liberals, who don't want to see lib-vs.-lib competition and fighting. It also poisons the atmosphere as a whole.

[awoke_in_2003]

4. Never fear good GOP'ers

she is probably soft on terrorism, just like that dastardly Max Cleland. :sarcasm:

On edit: added sarcasm tag just in case some didn't get it.