Democrats Go Beyond Eating Their Own in Taking Out Paul Hackett

NOTE: This was moved to the top for the rest of Friday afternoon because of the importance of the topic and the need to address other business.
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Is There No Tactic That’s Off-Limits in Politics Any More?

No matter what you think of the man, David Goodman’s “Backroom Battles” story at Mother Jones about what was done to Paul Hackett’s candidacy by people in his own party, particularly the “war crimes” whisper campaign, should send chills down your spine (HT OH02).

What is also stunning is the attempt to believe (and I’ve seen it elsewhere already), in light of what is definitely known about his own party’s efforts to take him out, that Republicans(!) might have been behind the worst Hackett-attack tactic of them all (slight editing for profanity; bolds are mine):

Hackett was running against seven-term Akron Democrat Rep. Sherrod Brown in a May primary, with the winner going on to face two-term Republican Sen. Mike DeWine in November (assuming DeWine wins his own primary …..

But first, the Democrats had to get Hackett out of the way. The weapons used in the rubout included economic sabotage, whisper campaigns, and threats.

….. With Brown, a party insider, on board, the Democratic establishment quickly began pulling away from the fiery Hackett. Schumer, after having wooed him in August, called again in October. “Schumer didn’t tell me anything definitive,” Hackett told me at the time. “But I’m not a dumb ass, and I know what he wanted me to do.” Hackett, a maverick who relishes the fight, decided to buck the Beltway insiders, and stay in the race.

….. Swift boats soon appeared on the horizon. A whisper campaign started: Hackett committed war crimes in Iraq—and there were photos. “The first rumor that I heard was probably a month and a half ago,” Dave Lane, chair of the Clermont County Democratic Party, told me the day after Hackett pulled out of the race. “I heard it more than once that someone was distributing photos of Paul in Iraq with Iraqi war casualties with captions or suggestions that Paul had committed some sort of atrocities. Who did it? I have no idea. It sounds like a Republican M.O. to me, but I have no proof of that. But if it was someone on my side of the fence, I have a real problem with that. I have a hard time believing that a Democrat would do that to another Democrat.”

In late November, Hackett got a call from Sen. Harry Reid. “I hear there’s a photo of you mistreating bodies in Iraq. Is it true?” demanded the Senate minority leader. “No sir,” replied Hackett. To drive home his point, Hackett traveled to Washington to show Reid’s staff the photo in question. Hackett declined to send me the photo, but he insists that it shows another Marine—not Hackett—unloading a sealed body bag from a truck. “There was nothing disrespectful or unprofessional,” he insists. “That was a photo of a Marine doing his job. If you don’t like what they’re doing, don’t send Marines into war.”

A staffer in Reid’s office confirmed that Hackett had showed them several photos. “The ones I saw were part of a diary he kept while serving in Iraq and were in no way compromising. The one picture in question depicted marines doing their work on what looked like a scorching day in Iraq,” said the aide.

But the whispering continued, and Hackett was troubled. “It creates doubt and suspicion,” Hackett told me, saying his close supporters were asking him privately about the rumors. “It tarnishes my very strength as a candidate, my military service. It’s like you take a handful of seeds, throw them up in the wind, and they blow all around and start growing. It really bothered me.”

Hackett backers suspected the smear was being floated by Sherrod Brown’s campaign. A senior Brown staffer angrily dismissed the charge this week as “ridiculous.”

Brown campaign spokesperson Joanna Kuebler declined to respond to the rumors. She offered this prepared statement: “This campaign has never been about Paul Hackett or about Sherrod Brown. This campaign is about the hard working people of Ohio, and what Republican corruption has done to them.”

….. With the very real prospect of a smear against him going public late in the campaign—a la the Swift Boating of John Kerry—Hackett knew that dollars would be especially important for him. “If I don’t have the $2 million or $3 million it would take to respond in the final weeks, to influence the battlefield with my message, then I would just be reacting and I’ll get trounced,” said Hackett.

Hackett had demonstrated his ability to shake money from donors during a January fundraising roadshow in California and New York. But he soon discovered that top Democrats were attempting to cut off his money. The hosts of a Beverly Hills fundraiser received an e-mail from the political action committee of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) that concluded, “I hope you will re-consider your efforts on behalf of Hackett and give your support to Sherrod.” Waxman’s chief of staff, Phil Schiliro, said the e-mail was only sent to a handful of people and that “it probably came from a suggestion from the Sherrod Brown campaign.”

Michael Fleming, who manages Internet millionaire David Bohnett’s political and charitable giving, was one of the recipients of the Waxman e-mail. Bohnett has given to hundreds of progressive candidates, but Fleming says, “This was the first time I had ever gotten an email or communication like that. I find it discouraging and disheartening. It’s unfortunate that the powers that be didn’t let the people of Ohio figure this out. We should be in the business of encouraging people like Paul Hackett and viable progressive candidates like him to run. The message instead is don’t bother, it’s not worth your time.”

Sen. Schumer was also reported to be trying to turn off Hackett’s cash spigots. No one would confirm this to me on the record. But veteran political activist David Mixner, who described himself as “a fanatically strong supporter” of Hackett and who helped sponsor a New York fundraiser, confirmed that he “received calls from a couple people in Congress urging Paul Hackett to withdraw or not to contribute money to his campaign.

….. Hackett was infuriated by the subterfuge. “I felt like I got f****d by the Democratic Party because they enticed me in and then they pulled the rug out from beneath me. It sounds eerily familiar to sending in the military to Iraq, which was a misuse of the military, and then not giving them what they need to fight.”

In what is being called the Valentine’s Day Massacre, Paul Hackett threw in the towel, and insisted he would not be running for elected office anytime soon. He declined requests to switch races and run again in the Ohio Second Congressional District against Rep. Jean Schmidt, saying he had promised the candidates currently in that race that he wouldn’t run. “My word is my bond and I will take it to my grave,” he declared.

As word spread about the intra-party intrigue that helped bring down Hackett, supporters have reacted angrily. “If the Democratic Party continues with these suicidal decisions, we will continue to defeat ourselves,” declared Yolanda Parker, who recently attended a California fundraiser for Hackett. “The only strategy the Republicans need to stay in power is patience. They just need to wait while our party self-implodes through idiotic decisions such as the one to pressure an articulate Iraqi war veteran to pull out of the race.”

You people out there who somehow think Karl Rove might be behind this need to get a grip. You’ll note that Paul Hackett isn’t mentioning Republicans. Don’t you think he would if he could?

If this isn’t a wake-up call to rank-and-file Democrats that they need a wholesale change in leadership, I don’t know what is. The country needs two viable parties with ideas and positive energy, but one of them is disintegrating.
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UPDATE: I would think that the “war crimes” revelations in the Mother Jones piece will only add to the speculation yesterday in this article (HT Ace) that Hackett’s withdrawal and the causes of it will lead to serious tension in the Democrat Party for at least the remainder of this election year, if not beyond.

UPDATE 2: Rush has been all over this in the opening segments of his first two hours. I’ll excerpt this evening when he posts most of his program transcript at about 6 PM.

UPDATE 2A: Here’s what Rush had to say in the first hour (what he had to say in the second hour, which was essentially a read of the Mother Jones piece, was not posted; link will work until Monday at about 6PM) — He spins it and generalizes it to the entire party (but you didn’t really expect him not to, did you?):

Reid Torpedoed Hackett for “War Crimes”
February 17, 2006

RUSH: If you want to have some fun this afternoon when the program is over, go visit any liberal blog website, because Mother Jones has an article, a very long article, on how Paul Hackett got sabotaged by Harry Reid. Paul Hackett was going to run for the Senate against Mike DeWine in Ohio. The Democratic Party came in and they sabotaged him. They threw him under the bus; they threw him overboard, and now we know why.

Mother Jones has done some investigative journalism here, and it turns out that the Democrats believe that Paul Hackett committed “war crimes” while in Iraq. They had pictures, and Dingy Harry and other Democrats started spreading rumors that Hackett committed war crimes in the way he dealt with Iraqis, and that they had pictures — and they got on the phone and they started telling Hackett’s donors about this and told them not to donate anymore, had to get rid of the guy, and Hackett is fit to be tied.

When the blogosphere finds out about this — because Hackett was their hero — you know, it’s not often a Democrat can find a person wearing a uniform that they admire, and they had found one in Paul Hackett — and now the very party that they’re at odds with already… I mean, the blogosphere, the kooks out there in Kooksville despise these elected Democrats. They think they’re a bunch of cowards and linguini-spined wimps, and when they find out that the Democratic Party skewered this guy and tried to make him out to be, “Just like George Bush, just like a war criminal.” Oh! folks! The eruptions at Democrat Underground, Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, are going to be priceless today.

UPDATE 3: OH02 links to a Daily Kos post by Pounder. The discussion is, uh, spirited. I think we’ll be waiting a LONG time before Markos weighs in on this. I’ve stopped being surprised at anything, but there are a number of Kos commenters trying to imagine GOP involvement in this. Zheesh.

UPDATE 4, Feb. 18 (HT OH02): Mother Jones ran a blog reax piece yesterday that made Kos, supposed whiz David Sirota, the Ohio Democratic Party, and by implication the national Democratic Party look even more dishonest, disingenuous and condescending than they have previously in this matter — a difficult feat indeed.

UPDATE 5, Feb. 18 (HT OH02): Mia Culpa compares Kos then and now on Hackett. Devastating. Buckeye Senate Blog concludes, “So Reid knew about it (who is going to be keynote speaker at the kos convention), Schumer Knew about it and apparently ODP did too and no one did anything other than knife Hackett in the back.”