It appears that the Big Stinky Cheeses of Demdom lie as pathologically as their GOP soulmates

It would count for something if thugs like Master Rahm and the DCCC stooges would stop lying about why they hate candidates like Colleen Hanabusa, but don't hold your breath.

by Ken

As Howie and I have frequent cause to note, the increasingly unapologetic right-wing sympathies of the Democratic Party leadership make it harder and harder to distinguish the power-brokers of the two major parties without a scorecard.

In his Morning Line today, washingtonpost.com's Chris Cillizza has an updated version, faithfully "carrying the water" for the Big Cheeses of Demdom, of an earlier item on the latest development in the lineup for the November election for the Hawaii House seat just lost to the Republicans in a special election:

Former Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii) has opted not to run for the seat in the general election a week after he and state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa (D) split the Democratic vote and handed the seat to Rep. Charles Djou (R-Hawaii) in a special election.

The good news for Democrats in the Case decision is that are now likely to avoid a difficult and costly primary - the latest in the nation, in fact. The bad news is that the candidate they are left with is the one national party leaders -- if not their state counterparts -- regarded as the weaker of the two candidates.

Hanabusa had the support of the state's two senators -- Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka but party leaders in Washington didn't see a path to victory for her since she struggled to win over moderate Democrats and independents. While the White House and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee made it quite clear they preferred Case, neither entity wound up officially weighing in at all -- a move that effectively ceded the seat to Djou for the next six months.

The November general election, of course, provides much different dynamics. There won't be two Democrats on the ballot, and the electorate will be different too. Regardless of what party leaders thought of Hanabusa before, she will now likely be the only Democrat on the ballot in a district where President Barack Obama won 70 percent of the vote in 2008.

I have no doubt that the Big Cheeses of Demdom hate Hanabusa and love Case every bit as much as loyal Waterboy Chris represents. They're just lying their sorry butts off about why.

According to Waterboy Chris, it's all about "electability." "Party leaders in Washington didn't see a path to victory for her since she struggled to win over moderate Democrats and independents." This sounds like hard-headed politics, but it's really just bullshit. They love Case because he's a proven right-wing Democratic hack, and they hate Hanabusa -- beyond the fact that she's a woman (for a woman to draw official party support these days it appears she has to be either really rich or really conservative) -- because she believes in traditional Democratic values, which drives demon Dem corporatists like Master Rahm bonkers. So much so that, as they demonstrated all too blatantly in the special election, they'd sooner see a Republican in that House seat.

Howie covered this race at some length in January, and indeed the election played out just as foreseen, with Case running third behind Republican Charles Djou and Hanabusa, thereby allowing Djou to turn the seat Republican. There are no reports of Master Rahm, the man who supposedly lives to build Democratic majorities, shedding tears.

Is it not obvious that Master Rahm and his stinky Beltway stooges aren't afraid of Hanabusa losing; but rather are riddled with angst at the prospect of her winning? Of course the Master has been playing this game for ages: masquerading as the bare-knuckled battler on behalf of the Democratic Party when his real interest is purging the party as much as possible of pols to the left of, say, Heath Shuler, and maximizing the ranks of what we might call "coin toss" Dems. Or should I say "bushels o' bucks" Dems?

I guess I stand corrected regarding my recent suggestion that the Stinky Cheeses have stopped pretending that the issue in their support of all these crap candidates is an "electability" thing:

In this election cycle even the pretense of an "electability" factor has more and more been dropped, as the official party organs increasingly find themselves stumping for candidates who (probably fortunately) couldn't beat any candidate unencumbered by a sex scandal. It becomes increasingly clear that the party hacks support right-wing "Democrats" because they're the people they're most comfortable with -- people who will fit right into the Beltway's kabuki politics, where "order" requires giving highest consideration to the people who pay for it.

Just as spinmeistering, you have to admire the effrontery of the Stinky Cheeses in imposing their view of both Democratic values and Hawaiian politics over those of the state's Democratic U.S. senators, Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka (left), both of whom solidly endorsed Hanabusa. (There can't be a lot of precedents for a national party overriding the judgment of two senators of their party.)

It could be argued that Akaka holds a grudge against Case for primarying him in his 2006 reelection bid, but that seems to quite a good reason for holding a grudge -- not to mention a commentary on Case's party "loyalty." Inouye and Akaka have made it clear that they welcomed Case to Congress after he wangled his way -- via an earlier special election, in 2003 -- into Hawaii's other House seat, vacated by the death of Rep. Patsy Mink, but that he was a great disappointment to them as a congressman, until he gave up the seat to try to oust Akaka.

Case really thinks he belongs in the U.S. Senate. Howie noted that he's said to check the newspaper every day when he wakes up to see if maybe the 85-year-old Inouye didn't. Not surprisingly, given his virually Republican voting record, during his brief time in Congress he was a favorite of the K Street cash dispensers, and as the Dem Stinky Cheeses showed in the special election, they'll go a long way to advance the electoral prospects of one of their own.

As the general election race for the House seat now held by Republican Djou gets into gear, we'll find out what they're prepared to do for a real Democrat like Hanabusa. Political common sense says this is an R seat ready and waiting to be returned to the D column, but that's without reckoning on the interest of the Stinky Cheeses of the national party in keeping her far, far outside the Beltway.

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