We continue to get emails from Democrats either expressing their praise for Jack Conway’s ‘Aqua Buddha’ ad or their contempt for fellow Democrats who are condemning it. And it occurs to me whether, if Conway wins, which still seems like a longshot, whether he might not be the focus of his own ‘AquaBuddhist’ caucus up in the Senate.
Now, it’s important to note: in national terms Conway is not running on a particularly progressive platform. He does support the Health Care Reform law. But he’s practically banned President Obama from entering the state before November 2nd. He’s supporting the extension of the Bush tax cuts — at least temporarily. As Kentucky is a big coal state, he’s running as the candidate of coal. I’d heard that he was insisting that all campaign vehicles be coal powered. But that was apparently just a rumor.
But he’s got that ‘D’ after his name and he’s willing to fight really hard to beat a Republican opponent who’s a far-right extremist. And a lot of Dems like that a lot.
One of them is TPM Reader JB …
The response to this ad has been a very interesting Rorschach test for Dems and liberals. I think this issue has been a recurring theme at Matt Yglesias’s blog as well. I think many Dems want to be true blue throughout, upright to the end. They believe, strongly, that their policies are right and true and if all were fair, then they would be enacted. I would call it the Senate model where rules and procedure are as important as results. I think they believe that results, once achieved through only proper methods, will be harder to remove because everything was done the right way. The second group believes in the end result more than the means. This stance is the Republican party methodology writ large. From the dog whistle politics, to the scare tactics in campaigns, to the outright lying to the press, they don’t care how they get to the desired end, but that they get there. This group in general believes, in my opinion, that politicians are hired by voters and supported financially by supporters to achieve things and, as long as it is legal, it is fair game. For my perspective, the first group made us wait 60 years for universal health care, is making us wait for an end to DADT, lost the opportunity for clean technologies, and couldn’t pass legislation to force disclosure of the vast sums of post-Citizens United moneys now flooding the campaigns. In other words, they didn’t get the job done. I, myself, believe that I want results and if the methods are legal, go for it.
Late Update: David Dayen notes that Conway has been pretty progressive or perhaps better to say pretty populist on the banks. More generally, I think it’s fair to say that in general Conway would probably be a pretty aggressive populist oriented senator on a lot of fronts. Dayen’s right that Conway is not your typical Blue Dog. It’s more than his populist politics have veered a bit right over the course of the campaign, for fairly obvious reasons … He also supports the repeal of DADT, which is pretty progressive for Kentucky.
