Liberal columnist Colin McEnroe of the Hartford Courant on Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumental’s campaign for Senate as a Democrat. Blumenthal should be coasting to victory against his Republican opponent, WWE magnate Linda McMahon, but he’s not. He was ahead by upwards of 32 points, now he’s ahead by just a few and McMahon is surging.
What Blumenthal Should Do
I have no idea, actually.
I suppose that first you have to admit that your current strategy isn’t working. You need sets of eyes and ears on what you’ve been doing. You have be decisively superior in your debates.
You have to decide — if you haven’t already — whether to write a check to your own campaign.
But the drift of this campaign is like climate change. At a certain point, the trends are so steep that it doesn’t matter whether we recycle or not.
It hasn’t gotten that bad yet, but it’s getting there. Blumenthal has just a few days to find a new message and a media strategy that fits his persona and then a month in which to pound it home.
There are so many Democratic campaigns like this now. They don’t know what they stand for, and are getting pulverized by anti-incumbency fever and Republicans who take a stand, noxious as their stand might be.
If a popular Democrat can’t win in a heavily Democratic state, then the Democratic Party is in big trouble.