Al Mascitti made a great comment about the dressmaker’s form that is Mike Castle:
“our Republican Representative, who in no way represents the majority view of Delawareans.”
Bold assertion, but I think it’s based on a faulty premise — that Castle’s voting record represents the man.
The problem any Democrat will have is that you don’t run against the voting record, you vote against the person. And Mike Castle the person sounds a lot different from what you’d assume from someone with his voting record.
If you go by what he says, rather than how he votes, I think he DOES represent the views of a majority of Delawareans. That’s why he has been elected with vast majorities almost every time he has run.
You can all speak against that reality all the way to November, but it won’t win you the election. He has many millions in his war chest, and that will buy lots of media time in which all he’ll have to do is sound reasonable to make your premise ineffective.
That really captures the situation – but I would even go one step further.
Mike Castle actually believes that what he says is the real deal and his votes are just flukes and artifacts of a broken system, not a broken sense of morality.
Castle DOES think his words speak louder than his actions and he DOES think that he has opposed George Bush in spite of his voting record that demonstrates the opposite.
How does he do it? For one thing I think Castle is utterly in love with the mythology of Mike Castle. He has been in politics for so long that he thinks that what Celia Cohen writes about him reflects reality. He thinks the losers and sycophants that rush to him at Vicmead are the salt of the earth. He lives in a bubble that is so impervious to reality that 2 + 2 really does equal five.
When his campaign literature says, “We only send one, so let’s send out best.” he thinks that he is the best possible Congressman available to serve Delaware. His votes are utterly irrelevant.