Another Murphy/Murphy Update

Via Atrios, I happened to come across this post from OpenLeft about more inanity from The Politico regarding the “conventional wisdom” of why Dems should roll over and play dead and that will heal all that is divisive about this country and the world, fa la la…

Somewhere down in Mike Lux’s good post about why this is utter nonsense, I came across this item…

The campaigns that tended to win last year were the aggressive, populist outsider campaigns. Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, and Jim Webb each upset their opponents by running those kinds of campaigns, while Harold Ford played defense and lost. In Pennsylvania, establishment defender Lois Murphy lost while aggressor Patrick Murphy won. In Kentucky, establishment defender Ken Lucas lost while populist aggressor John Yarmuth won.

I don’t think you can pigeon hole the race in PA-06 last year in quite that manner. From what I’ve been able to determine, what you might call the “cultures” of the two districts swung slightly towards the Dems in PA-08 (favoring Patrick) and towards the Repugs in PA-06 (favoring Gerlach).

And though Lois lost by 2 percent to Gerlach in ’04, she managed to lose by 1.2 percent in ’06. I know that’s small comfort, especially when she had a fundraising edge over Gerlach and the climate for Repugs last year, then as now, is terrible (as it should be, since they brought it on themselves).

But I would argue that Patrick’s military service in ’08 made the difference with the war as the big issue, helped in no small part by the Repugs’ idiotic reapportionment of the district to include Philadelphia and Montco, which swung solidly for Patrick to more than offset Mikey’s minor edge in Bucks. And in PA-06, Gerlach identified himself more solidly with the Repugs on guns, “limited government” and all the “liberal us vs. them” garbage than Lois did on core Dem issues which are infinitely more important (though she did a good job and I’m not trying to demean that).

What I’m saying is that, in PA-06, Gerlach pressed more of the right buttons with “the faithful” than Mikey did in PA-08. I’m not sure Mikey could pull off an ad where he’s hunting quail in full gear and casually insulting Democrats in disgusting ways without making it look like play time – and I mustn’t forget the impact of Gerlach’s robo calls (and how con-vee-nient that the Forbes link on this has expired).

Again, I think Mike Lux makes a lot of good points, but I just thought I needed to clear that up a bit.