Vote and a Haircut

Cross-posted at Organizing Grievances

I voted today. Hooray!

Living on the left, my votes are not too hard to guess, especially since I have been sporting an Obama for President shirt since 2006.

The real race in Oregon is for the Democratic nomination for the US Senate between Steve Novick and Jeff Merkley. I'll go ahead and issue the standard caveat that both men are fine candidates and I am sure both will give Smith a run for his money in November, but there is no doubt that I hope to jeebus that Novick can pull out the victory. Novick is a dedicated Dem activist with a fiery streak and a willingness to talk out of turn every now and again. Merkley is the choice of the DSCC and has been seen as the "safe" choice, with a proven legislative record and all that.

Early on, Novick was the only Dem willing to run for the nomination. As a series of high-profile Dem politicians declined to run, there was an increasingly frantic search for a "name" candidate who would run. In the meantime, I saw Novick speak at our union convention and I was hooked (ha ha!). He not only said all the right things, he didn't say the wrong things. He didn't call for an expanded manufacturing base. He didn't call for tax cuts for the "middle class." And, most importantly, he didn't call for Democrats to put aside "distractions" and focus on issues important to "working families."

For those of you not in the modern labor movement, "issues important to working families" is code for focusing only on "pocketbook" issues and leaving behind such distractions as civil rights for gays, African Americans, or women, gun control, the War (unless it is discussed specifically as a drain on the budget), and all other social issues.

That Novick didn't say any of these things was a huge plus for me and, of course, meant he was unelectable and the scramble to find a real candidate was on. In the end, the Speaker of the Oregon House, Jeff Merkley, was willing to be the sensible alternative and I think it was expected that he would crush Novick, especially after picking up the endorsements of the sitting Governor and Big Labor. We on the left were sort of resigned to backing the lefty candidate in the primary and then switching over to the less dynamic candidate in the general. That Merkley would do everything in his power to distance himself from the left in order to attract the all important Portland-suburb-moderate-woman vote was as disheartening as it was inevitable.

But Novick used his head start exceptionally well. Rather than trying to mitigate all of his positions that put him at the margins of mainstream politics, he seemed to embrace them. Nothing exemplified this as well as his use of his hook. Novick was born without a left hand and uses a hook. He embraced this fact early by making his main campaign slogan, "A Fighter with a Strong Left Hook." He garnered national attention with his (first?) campaign ad.



His "Beer with Steve" campaign, wherein he toured the state and held fund raisers at bars, was also brilliant in that it seemed to challenge the idea that he was some crazy-eyed liberal fire-breather who would be a disaster for the party. Instead, he put himself forward as the kind of guy who might sit in a bar and say all the things you agree with. A regular Joe. (Contrast this with Hillary "Shot-and-a-beer" Clinton.) Voters seemed to respond, as money rolled into the Novick campaign and little was heard from Merkley. Although, to be fair, he was working behind the scenes to rack up those endorsements. Early polls put Novick far ahead and we began to ask ourselves if it was possible that Novick could win this thing.

Merkley has run the classic front-runners race, despite lagging in the polls. He's got his endorsements. He has tried to make Novick out to be a far-left looney. He has attacked Novick for "attacking" his fellow Democrats (wrap your head around that one). He argues that Smith is really afraid of him, not Novick. He puts out ads like this:



While the Merkley camp is touting his comeback in the polls and his momentum, they cannot escape the fact that polls have the race a dead heat, with a significant number of undecided voters.

This is the race I'll be watching election returns for. To paraphrase Pattyjoe, I want to believe that the Democratic party can nominate someone like Novick. If we can pull this off, there's no telling who we could elect or what we could do. For christsake, it might even mean that we could stop settling for the lesser of two evils and actually be excited about who we vote for and what we can do.

And now I am off to get my hairs cut.