Discussion for article #229376
This is not going to help you one bit, Mr. Weiland. It makes you look whiney, not to mention its going to make any bridge mending after the campaign that much more difficult.
And speaking of whiney…he complained about NOT receiving support from the DSCC, and then complains when he does receive ad buys from them.
Sort of like a cat with a closed door. Doesn’t matter which side it is on, its upset that the door is closed.
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In Weiland’s case, it is a cat with its tail caught in the door.
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I am a true blue progressive Democrat, and in this case I do kind of agree with him. There are times where Reid lets his ego get in the way of what is best for the party. In this instance this petty turf war fight between him and Daschle was counterproductive, as I am sure that in South Dakota, Daschle is far more popular than Reid is, whom I am sure is even more unpopular than the President is there.
Reid acting like a spoiled child from the beginning, when his guy was not the chosen one, and basically immediately writing off Weiland’s campaign was not at all helpful, especially in a midterm election, where we are at risk of losing the Senate. That is the time when Dems need to not act like that other party, and work together. I realize that the money has to go to the most critical races, but Reid’s immediate refusal to do anything to support this guy was just childish. This is why, along with the times he has been less than supportive of this President, adding to his problems, I have often tired of the Dems keeping him as majority leader.
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Not to play semantic games, but incompetence is not the same as sabotage, Weiland. Choose your words more carefully.
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South Dakota was written off long before Weiland became the candidate. And while I get the general motive behind your comment, consider this…
Since that poll in the first week of October was released, Presser has lost about half of his support. That is a sizable number of voters (about 15% give or take) that were quite willing a few weeks ago to vote for someone else than Rounder. Weiland has been unable to pick up hardly any of them since.
Thats a pretty good indication that A) the electorate in SD is decidedly right leaning and B) Weiland is not that great of a candidate. And quite possibly both.
In my opinion, that’s a pretty fair deduction on Reid’s part while determining how to parcel out limited funding to numerous races. Should we really open the floodgates and drop 10-20 million on an iffy candidate running in a very red state, and risk GA, NC, AR, AK, CO and KY? Every race this year is tight, so we simply don’t have that luxury…someone has to pick the potential winners and the obvious losers. It sucks, but its politics.
It really sounds like Weiland needs to follow some old DC wisdom…if you want a friend, buy a dog.
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Negative ads against the guy I was running against hurt me because they weren’t nice but helped the independent candidate? WTF?
Hashtag WATB.
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Sore losers are still losers.
I agree wholeheartedly with Weiland. He has ran a positive campaign and democrats did come in doing negative ads against Rounds. Democrats should have stayed out if they weren’t going to do the kinds of ads Rick wanted to do. And yes, I have no doubt democrats wanted to help Pressler.
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He has been a great candidate. He has visited every county in SD twice. He has worked harder than any candidate running in SD. He has attended every single debate. Rounds missed every one until the end.
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Well from what I understand he is pointing out the facts. The news I saw when it was first reported that the dems were putting one million into South Dakota was that it was intended to prop up the independent candidate. And a lack of favor with leader Reid was also aluded to in the same report.
So yes, I can see that the negative ads attacking the republican may be increasing his negatives and I can see why he would feel the need to come out publicly and say so. He has come out publicly stating he does not approve of the job Harry Reid has done as leader and that he thinks we need new leadership. I have felt the same way as someone who has watched the Senate for decades.
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What I meant by him not being a great candidate is, he wasn’t going to sway the electorate to vote for him. And the evidence to date backs up that up pretty conclusively.
No. It makes sense. Voters don’t like negative ads but such ads often damage the candidate they are directed against but they may back fire because voters don’t like them. In a two person race, the voter has limited choices – either don’t vote or vote for the guy who sent the ad. In a three person race if the ad damages the one attacked , the voters can express their displeasure about negative ads by voting for the person who didn’t send the ad on the grounds that he’s not involved in a nasty fight.
If national is going to get involved in a state race, it should be common sense and common courtesy to consult the campaign involved as to their preferences.
In addition, the aim of national is to prevent the take over of the Senate – so if an independent is more viable than the Democratic ticket they will be tempted.
Weiland is probably right that a positive ad would probably have been better for his campaign.
The national Democrats have no real interest in Pressler himself. Given how much danger there is of a take over of the Senate they have a great deal of interest in blocking Republican candidates by whatever political route is most viable. So they were probably much more interested in hurting Round’s chances than in anything else.
If they coordinated like that, it would cause the money spent by the outside group (and that’s what the DSCC is) to be treated as an in-kind contribution to the candidate, which, in turn, would result in a waiver of the group’s tax exempt status. One of the few remaining campaign finance laws Roberts and friends haven’t reversed.
And the thing is, negative ads by an outside group can be dealt with in your own ads. Tillis is doing it very effectively (unfortunately) right now, saying "hey, by now, if you believed everything you saw in the commercials by now, you’d believe Kay Hagan and I are both terrible people. But hey, neither of us is and here’s all the stuff the Koch Brothers told me to say to make it sound like doing their bidding will help you.
And, remarkably, each and every one of those ads follows or precedes an add by a dark money group telling blatant lies about Hagan.
I forgot about the problems of formal consultation. But the difference between the options for voters regarding a negative ad in a two person race versus a three person race remains. I don’t know if there are any studies about the matter.
I suspect there’s a poll sci dissertation, or at least a thesis, that could be got out of it if one could figure out how to gather data without ending up on the front page of TPM in the process.
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I agree that it was incompetence rather than sabotage. It’s why I don’t donate to the DSCC or DCCC. They’re both bad at their jobs. That said, Weiland is stupid to go public like this before the election. The circular firing squad is supposed to wait until after. I hope he somehow pulls it out, but sounds like a concession to me.