News You Go to an Election With the Candidate You’ve Got
Today’s front-page New York Times article on the Cantwell/McGavick race doesn’t quite get it right.
The angle of the article is this: Anti-war voters and Sen. Maria Cantwell have both become less stubborn (anti-war voters swallowing their pride and supporting Cantwell) (Cantwell tweaking her position to satisfy the Democratic base) in a pragmatic compromise focused on beating Republican challenger Mike McGavick.
The NYT writes:
With a practical eye on that very different political reality, Ms. Cantwell and many of her antiwar critics have moved closer to each other, and the senator’s lead over Mr. McGavick has increased to double digits in some polls.
I think the article overplays the compromise angle—at least from Cantwell’s side of the equation.
As evidence that Cantwell’s changed her tune? The NYT cites the bill Cantwell sponsored with Sen. Joseph Biden in early August prohibiting permanent bases in Iraq (that’s a solid example, but it’s all they’ve really got.)
The NYT also cites Cantwell’s recent statement that if she knew then what she knows now—she wouldn’t have voted for the war. That’s not such a great example. First of all, it’s a wacky hypothetical that doesn’t mean anything about her current position on Iraq. Second: McGavick said the exact same thing…before Cantwell did. (She wasn’t about to get outflanked on the left by her Republican opponent’s enticing soundbite.)
The NYT also alludes to Cantwell’s support for the Levin amendment (which kinda sought a timetable for U.S. withdrawal). This is also a shaky example because the Levin amendment is limp legislation (it doesn’t mandate a thing) and it’s squishy—meaning, Cantwell could just as easily use the Levin amendment as evidence that she’s not an anti-war lefty if she had to. And the fact of the matter is, she’s not an anti-war lefty.
I wrote about Cantwell’s pseudo transition last month and concluded this way:
Senator Levin’s own press release stated: “The amendment… doesn’t establish a timetable for redeployment and it does not call for a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.”Indeed, neither does Senator Cantwell. But Democrats don’t care about subtleties these days—they just want to win.
The liberal NYT wanted a neat story that explains why a Democrat who has got more in common with Joe Lieberman than Russ Feingold is a-okay in 2006—a weird phenomenon that doesn’t live up to conventional wisdom about the war and this season’s supposedly renergized Democratic party with its supposed backbone transplant. So, the NYT fudges it to make it look like Cantwell is responding to anti-war critics.
The story—and it’s been the story going back months now, when Cantwell started racking up Democratic organizational endorsements before she ever started to make superficial adjustments to her war stance—is this: Washington Democrats are desperate desperate desperate to take back the U.S. Senate. That means they’ve been forced to ignore Cantwell’s position on the war.
Covering Cantwell’s race, I’ve had a chance to talk to Democratic voters on the campaing trail, and they all say the same sorts of things when I ask what they think of Cantwell’s position on the war: She’s great on the environment; McGavick’s worse; she voted on bad information; it’s not the only issue.
The real story in Washington state isn’t that Cantwell compromised with an outraged base, it’s that Democratic voters are simply sucking it up on the war. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but that’s what’s going on here. And frankly, I think Cantwell’s been politically smart to stick to her guns.
Maybe it's not desperation. Maybe the Democrats don't actually have that big a problem with Cantwell's war record.