A Few Words About What Happened in Kansas
There was a special election in the Fourth Congressional District in Kansas on Tuesday night, the first of three such elections over the next month, all of which are being treated like bellwethers, or referenda on the current administration, or excuses to run up the old travel allowance on the part of political reporters. In Kansas, in a district that the president* took by nearly 30 points, a Republican named Ron Estes beat an insurgent Democratic candidate named James Thompson by a skinny six points in a race that was not entirely nationalized until the very end, when the president* himself chimed in and Tailgunner Ted Cruz made some personal appearances on Estes's behalf.
Whatever the amount of hype, this is a signifying result that can't help but affect the other two special elections, particularly the one in Georgia next week, a jungle primary in the Atlanta suburbs in which Democratic rookie Jon Ossoff seems to be a lock for one of the two run-off slots-and who has a very,very long shot at 50 percent of the vote, which would eliminate the need for a run-off at all, and which also would echo like a gong in Washington.
These districts are open because, in all three cases, the incumbent congresscritters were chosen for Cabinet positions in the current administration. (The Kansas district belonged to Mike Pompeo, who's now running the CIA, which must be gangs of fun at this point.) There is only one way for the Democratic Party to avoid benefitting from Tuesday night's surprising win against the spread, and that's to cram the result into the tedious template of the 2016 Democratic primaries. Thompson ran as an unapologetic Bernie Sanders liberal. That is a good thing. The formal Democratic apparatus largely left the work to various independent groups (the Daily Kos community was particularly active), so, naturally, as soon as the results came in, we heard the same tiresome establishment-vs.-revolution squabbling that made the last presidential campaign such a joy to be around.
Is this never going to stop? Is this weird dynamic in which the actual leaders-Bernie, Tom Perez, and Keith Ellison-all get along, but their supporters insist on an endless food fight, ever going to run out of steam? Are we never going to be rid of that dismal, stumbling exercise in petulant score-settling and mock populist posturing? Some people have a vested interest in keeping the campaign-and the attendant grudge-holding-alive. In a few cases, the interest is pecuniary.
The Hill ran an excerpt of the first volume of sour grapes on Wednesday morning. Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen are first past the post on the collected recrimination, and they prove conclusively that professional political consultants cannot be trusted as far as you can throw the Kennedy School.
Hillary's severe, controlled voice crackled through the line first. It carried the sound of a disappointed teacher or mother delivering a lecture before a whipping. That back end was left to Bill, who lashed out with abandon. Eyes cast downward, stomachs turning - both from the scare tactics and from their own revulsion at being chastised for Hillary's failures - Hillary's talented and accomplished team of professionals and loyalists simply took it. There was no arguing with Bill Clinton.
You see, those "talented and accomplished professionals" will work other campaigns. They are the permanent claque of sources that everybody needs going forward. And, good god, Halperin and Heilemann-and their faithful sidekick Mark (Bad Hat) McKinnon-haven't weighed in yet, and god alone knows what they'll produce. I have waited a long time for the Democratic Party to get the hell out of its own way. Now, the process seems generational. Everybody please shut up.
What happened in Kansas should be an occasion for unalloyed celebration. There are good arguments to be made that had the Democratic National Committee come tromping into that district with both feet, it would have done more harm than good. Leaving things to local activists, augmented by boots on the phone from all around the country, was a very sensible strategy. And it almost worked in a district so ridiculously conservative that one of the Koch brothers actually lives there. The impulse within some progressives to skunk up the garden party is a wonder to behold. Truly, it is.
Editor's Note: This post has been updated to reflect that Amie Parnes is the co-author of Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign, not Amy Chozick. We regret the error.
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