The Democratic Party: Clueless in Ohio

Regular visitors to Kiko's House are well aware of my dismay over the Democratic Party's inability to articulate a message -- that is, any message other than not having one -- and taking advantage of vulnerabilities in the Republican Party in general and Bush administration in particular, as well as a palpable uneasiness in the electorate as mid-term elections approach.

A subset of this is the Dems' failure to grow by embracing new blood.

Take the case of Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran who staged a surprisingly strong Congressional run last year in an overwhelmingly Republican district in red-state Ohio by running a campaign in which he was scathingly critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war.

Democratic Party leaders had persuaded Hackett to run against incumbent U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine in what would have been one of the most important and closely watched midterm elections. But now the very national Democratic heavyweights who had urged him to run, including Sens. Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, have pushed him aside so that Rep. Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of Congress, can face DeWine.

Hackett was told to again run for a House seat, but he's having none of it and has left the party in disgust and dropped out of politics.

"This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me," said Hackett, who was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving.

"For me, this is a second betrayal," he added. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me."

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Veteran blogger Mickey Kaus is usually a little too snarky for my taste, but he has a great suggestion for a Democratic campaign theme:

A Return to Normalcy

Read all about it here.

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One indication of how vulnerable the GOP is generally is a list put together by Roll Call's Stuart Rothenberg of the most endangered House incumbents. Only one is a Dem.

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Meanwhile, a new Gallup poll pegs Sen. Hillary Clinton as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination "amidst a field of relatively well-established political figures." She has a better than two-to-one margin over Sen. John Kerry, with former Vice President Al Gore and veep wannabe Sen. John Edwards, close behind him.

On the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani and Sen. John McCain "lead a closely contested race" among Republican registered voters.