"DEMOCRATIC QUAGMIRE"

Commenting in The Stranger about Darcy Burner's challenge to find more support in the outlying areas of the 8th CD, Eli Sanders writes

"We couldn't just pull out, because why would we be there in the first place?" asks Troy, the cook, echoing Republican-promoted circular logic. On the other hand, the national Democratic Party's vague official message on Iraq—that this should be a "year of transition"—actually synchs up quite nicely with what people here are feeling: a fatigue with the entire project, but a desire not to view it as an utter failure.

So when Dwight Pelz, the chair of the state Democratic Party, recently complained to national party chairman Howard Dean that the Democrats' mild message on Iraq is "not working," he clearly didn't have the town of Buckley in mind—even though its residents could help decide the hottest Congressional race in this state. Instead, Pelz had in mind the antiwar activists in urban centers like Seattle, the kind of people who have been making life miserable for Senator Maria Cantwell. These hard-left activists, who demand an immediate pullout from Iraq and nothing less, have heckled Cantwell over her 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq invasion and recently occupied her Seattle offices.

Why did Pelz ignore the people in Buckley in favor of these activists?

"What I was saying," Pelz told me recently, "is that the position of the party is not attractive to activists. We're having a hard time recruiting them."

Not surprisingly, Blair Butterworth, a Democratic consultant who is advising Burner in her race against Reichert, doesn't share Pelz's analysis of the problem. "His job is to whip up the base and get them going, and that's fine," Butterworth says, speaking of Pelz. "But the most important thing, I think, in the southern part of the 8th District, is 'home with honor'... I know the antiwar part of the Democratic Party, and I know that many of them intellectually understand that, but I don't know if they viscerally understand the depth of emotion of these working-class families."

This is, essentially, the Democrats' rhetorical quagmire on Iraq. What the activist left demands to hear from the national Democratic leadership is not what swing voters in places like the 8th District want to hear from Democratic candidates—and the party needs both the activists and the swing voters if it's going to take back Congress.

This may also help explain the conflict going on right now between netroots activists and Maria Cantwell.

On the other hand, Carl at Washington State Political Report says

"I'm not sure that Darcy Burner actually needs to win Buckley in order to win the district. After all, Kerry and Murray seemed to be able to do it."