Moral Victory or Another Lost Opportunity?

The always wise Rob Salkowitz of Emphasis Added on the near win of a Democrat in a special House election last Tuesday in a very Republican district:

Here’s the thing. Putting a scare into right-wing Republicans doesn’t work. They are not scared unless they are beaten. If they win by one vote, that’s enough to govern as though God had put them into office personally. Moreover, they see victory by any means as vindication of the rightness of their most extreme positions, and they view their opponents, no matter how many of them turn up at the polls, as fundamentally more dangerous to (their vision of) America than terrorists. If that sounds extreme, listen to their radio shows. Read their books. There is no such thing as a moral victory against people who are so certain in the infallibility of their ideology and their leadership that the entire purpose of their “governance” is simply to reward their friends and punish their enemies.

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Salkowitz is quite right in his analysis of GOP delusions of grandeur. Schmidt's near loss in Ohio will most likely not scare the pants off of the party faithful. However, I tend to look at this from the other way around. That is, I think that the real power of Hackett's near win is that it unequivocally illustrates to Democrats that beating the hell out of the Republicans in 2006 is not only possible, it's probable. Remember, this Ohio Congressional district has been in GOP hands for over twenty years; it's something like 70% Republican, and this upstart Democrat came within four points of winning. That means that many Republicans were willing to jump ship and vote for the kind of person who has been vilified continually for years as anti-American. No, most of the right wing will probably not understand the significance of this, but the left wing will: many conservatives are fed up with Bush's bullshit, and are willing to consider near-radical alternatives. Congress now belongs to the Democrats; all they have to do is claim their prize, and the unapologetic, straight-talking, Bush-bashing Paul Hackett has shown them how to do so. But will the wussified Democrats be willing to take the risk?

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